Dear Mario,

Reading your blog today (garciamedia.com), I spotted a June post I had missed: what your dream tablet conference in 2012 would look like. We have just finished the programming for the coming 5th Tablet and Apps Summit (October 30 in Frankfurt).

So I ran a checklist hoping you might agree with our topics and take “your dancing shoes” to our summit…

- We seem to agree that it’s necessary to “Rethink Media Apps on Mobile and Tablets”. What you call the next generation of news apps.

- We did not call it an iPad conference. The iPad is still the best. Our speakers from Stern magazine and GQ magazine will probably be with you on that. But from a publisher’s point of view, you need to stimulate the competition. So we have invited a Microsoft evangelist and two European publishers who have started to explore Windows 8 possibilities and tablets.

- We are looking at the wider meaning of mobile platforms. You would probably not recommend that. But we do think it’s important to understand usage in order to better serve tablets AND smartphones.

- We focus on two things that are of importance to you:

One is the ‘App economy’. Stephen Pinches (Financial Times), Caio Túlio Costa (representing Brazilian publishers) or Philippe Jannet (for the French publisher consortium) and Stijn Schuermans (VisionMobile in UK) are responsible for the App economy side of the summit.

Second is how to translate what we are learning from the user experience into good design. Martin Belam (Emblem UK), Alexandra Hardiman (New York Times) and Kate Collins (Star Media Group in Canada) will explain how they integrate user expectations in the evolution of their mobile products.

- I can see your raised eyebrows: you wanted a 3 day-conference. OK, then I suggest our participants spend one day in our conference and the next two days reading your excellent book “iPad Design Lab."

best,

Valérie Arnould