GPS has become near mandatory on new handsets and the new iPhone 3GS even has an inbuilt compass! The future of mobile is the Internet in your hand, but what if the Internet knew exactly where you were at any given time?

Knowing where you are and customising services and messages to your exact location is the dream of many marketers and application developers the world over. From being lost in New York at lunch time and finding that the best Falafel you’ve ever had is just down the road from you (Yelp) to knowing where your friends are at any given time just by pushing a butting (Google Latitude) LBS is pushing forward new boundaries and stretching the imagination. This month we invite big brand names and seasoned experts to our panel to discuss LBS or “Location Based Services”, some say the holy grail of mobile,

We will be asking our panel what is this the reality of LBS today? Where are we now and where will we be in 5 years time, how does LBS actually work and how can you integrate it into your services? We will explore the opportunities this incredible technology presents as well as the darker side of privacy concerns, covering who’s doing what, from iPhone apps to Smart Maps, and everything in between.

We welcome our LBS gurus for the evening:

Brent Stafford of Navteq

Brent is not stranger to LBS  and has worked worked in various technology and executive positions in the fields of car navigation, location based services, geographic information systems, hydrographic services, transport policy, business development, strategic planning, He has written and presented many papers to national and international audiences and parliamentary committees on these topics.

Navteq was acquired by Nokia in 2007 for $8.1 Billion Dollars to aid Nokia’s entry into navigation technologies on handsets. With Nokia being the largest manufacturer of GPS units in the world you cannot ignore the power of LBS in your hand. Navteq specialises in mapping the world around us, they don’t just focus on the maps but also on content for those maps providing highly detailed information on your surroundings.

Mark White of Locatrix

Mark is the founder & CEO of Locatrix Communications. A well-known mobile guy, he’s been a speaker at GSMA conferences in Barcelona and Macau, and has twenty years experience in the telecommunications and computer industries in a whole bunch of countries. Not a bad bloke to have a beer with

Locatrix uses mobile location to shape and create content experiences that engage subscribers and create higher ARPU for Telco’s. Locatrix is also a core contributor to the GSM Association’s OneAPI initiative, which is defining a standard way that network enablers (including location) can be opened to a much larger pool of web developers. The company was a finalist in the 2007 Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards.