This year, every attendee to the Office 2.0 Conference (press excluded) will receive an iPhone. Gathering over 500 people using the exact same mobile device will allow us to learn a lot about user interfaces, workflows, and usage patterns for mobile online applications. In essence, this upcoming edition of the Office 2.0 Conference will quickly turn into one of the largest experiments on mobile productivity & collaboration ever attempted.

For various logistical reasons, the iPhone will be shipped directly to you after you register to the conference. By default, you will receive the 4GB model, but will have the option to upgrade to the 8GB model for an extra $115 ($100 + taxes + PayPal fees). And if you already own an iPhone, you will receive a Sony PlayStation 3 running the Firefox web browser on Linux. After you register and once our process is setup (first or second week of August), you will receive an email asking you to select your device and to confirm your shipping address. You will then receive your device within a week approximately. At that point, you will have to activate your device by subscribing to an AT&T plan. Unfortunetaly, we cannot pay for subscription costs.

During the event, you will use your iPhone to lookup the conference's agenda, the biographies of speakers, and the map of the facility, thereby saving a lot of trees. Using applications developed by Etelos, you will also be able to exchange your contact information with attendees and exhibitors, schedule meetings with participants, and provide real-time feedback during sessions. The conference's facility will also provide a scalable WiFi network that will allow you to access any online application, leveraging the full power of Apple's wonderful device.

As with any experiment (background), some things are bound to go wrong, and learning from failures and mistakes is really what the experiment is all about. So while we hope that everything will go well and are working really hard to make it so, we must ask you to remain supportive of our effort, even if your iPhone comes a little bit late (hopefully before the event), or has to be replaced by another device because the world’s supply of iPhones goes down to nothing before the event.

Thank you for your participation!