Saturday, after another fabulous breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, we settled in for what would prove to be an exciting day of brainstorming.

Derek Brown one of the original founders of Mobius, gave us a quick overview of the coup that had just occurred in Bangkok before showing us a video about deploying computers and technology in emerging markets. Derek has been living and working in Thailand for over a year...lucky guy! He also spoke about the challenges of bringing intellectual property to a country that may or may not understand the concept.

Microsoft's Chris Sorenson gave a mostly confidential speech about Crossbow, the next version of both Windows Mobile for both Smartphone & Pocket PC. Devices running Crossbow will be appearing in the second half of 2007.

Horace Luke spoke about UI Futures, which like last year was also a largely confidential sharing of information. I can say that it was near impossible to keep the drool from escaping my mouth. Horace & his team have an incredible vision, and if we can just "hold on" a little longer, then we will all see a GUI on new devices that will put to shame anything seen thus far. No joke.

The rest of the afternoon was spent working on what will from now on be known as "The Mobius Project". We were all divided into three groups in order to brainstorm on the needs of three distinct demographics. Our goal was to imagine the perfect device for our assigned group, and decide upon which features and hardware it would include. I was put into the Social group, and we had a great time loudly vocalizing what we thought our revolutionary device should include and entail. Our working lunch was one of the most fun sessions I enjoyed at Mobius, partly because in this smaller group we were able to hear from some of our Asian attendees who had been quieter during the larger group sessions.

We were supposed to wrap up by 3:30, but we kept going until nearly 5; none of us were ready to quit. John Starkweather was so cute because he kept asking if it was all right with us that we were running over time...heck, we were in Thailand and it wasn't like we had anything planned; we were happy to keep going!

To wrap things up, and as our final event, John had got the hotel to place flags on an empty expanse of their lawn. Our goal was to toss an antiquated handheld; who ever tossed the farthest would win. Those French guys...they are pretty crafty! Several times we heard, "you all have baseball", or the like - but when it came time to toss they were the ones that threw the PDA well past the farthest flag! After this event, Mobius was formally over...but we weren't done yet!

As a group, we agreed to meet for dinner and venture into Patong, the local tourist trap. After a harrowing ride in a Thai Taxi, we pulled up in the middle of a bustling tourist area. My first order of business was to run across the street and get some cash from the ATM. I knew that the ATM would be dealing Baht, but it was still confounding to see my choices listed in the thousands' range. 1000, 2000, 5000, 10,000 Baht - I wasn't sure what to take out! I settled on 2000 Baht because it sounded like a hefty sum. With the conversion rate of 37:1, I had only withdrawn about $55! Some big spender...but I would learn that was enough money for a great evening!

Viroon Vichianwattanachai, our official Thai ambassador, took us to a family style outdoor restaurant where he ordered various dishes which we all devoured. It is always great to have a local that knows the language and knows what to order from the menu - and Viroon took this job very seriously. This was easily one of the best meals we had on the trip - and that is saying a lot.

After dinner, we headed down one of the alleys into Patong. Vendors lined every street and each bar was thumping music while bar-girls shimmied inside. We hit the street stalls, where with Chris Sorenson's bargaining help I scored a foot tall metal sculpture of the Alien. In hindsight, I wish I would have bought the Predator that was next to it. :0(

Sunday morning a group of us met for breakfast and then decided that as this was our last day, we needed to go be a bit touristy. I had been itching to go to the Monkey School down the street from our resort, so John, Derek, Joel, and Jenneth and I took a cab ride down the road. Our first stop was the Cobra Show, where we saw feats that can only be seen - hardly described.

This would be a good time to mention that all of my photos from the trip are in my Flickr account. I have a lot of really awesome video, too...which I will eventually upload. :0)

Before the cobra show was finished, Jenneth had to leave and go back to the hotel to catch her flight. We that were remaining thought it would be fun to next go get a picture with the elephants. Instead, we wound up riding them! Our mantra for the entire day seemed to be "when else will we ever do this?!", and one of us would repeat it any time there was something to do that the others weren't sure about. So yes, we rode the elephants in the rain, and it was incredible!

We started to think it would be prudent to get back to the hotel to finish packing and change before our flights, so we returned to the Moevenpick, ate lunch together, and then went back and prepared for our return trips.

I don't know about you, but 40 hours of travel time is a lot for me. However, for a trip like this, every bit of butt & back pain was worth it!

I saw things that I have never seen before, met people I would have never met otherwise, and did things that I can tell my grandkids about one day. How often does that truly happen?

So Mobius Thailand, to sum it up, was a great time not just for the gadgety-goodness that we were shown, but also for the community ties that it strengthened. I think it is safe to say that every one of us attending had our friendship circles widened to include worldwide sites that we had never visited - if only because of the language barrier. For me, the world became a much smaller and friendlier place because of Mobius 2006.

The list of member sites attending included: G-A Gay from www.akihabranews. com, Nghia from www.pdafrance. com, Howard from www.howardchui. com, Jason from www.pocketpcthoughts.com, Joel from www.geek.com, Judie from www.thegadgeteer. com, eric from www.phonescoop. com, CheeWee from http://www.ppcsg.com, Jenneth from www.roam-magazine. com.au, Paul Matt from http://www.threegmobile.net, Viroon from www.thai-g.com, Andrew from http://www.windowsmobileinjapan.com and http://hq.andrewshuttleworth.com, Ed from www.brighthand. com, Alvin from www.spug.net, Kenny from www.mobique. com, Derrick from www.pocketpc. com.hk, Chiang from www.mobile01. com, Atticus from www.chinese. engadget. com, Lim from www.mypdacafe. com, Larry from http://www.PALMisLIFE.com, and HT from http://twpug.wolfnet.com.tw. Gosh, I hope I got all of those right!! :0)