An initial assembly of mobile software researchers and practitioners was held in May of 2013. There were 21 attendees, a keynote speaker, and eight papers. This paper is a summary report of that meeting. A second meeting (MOBS 2014) is in the works as part of ICSE 2014 in Hyderabad, India.
At the meeting, presentations were divided into three topics: testing and quality assurance, security and privacy, and process. After the presentations, attendees were invited to nominate their favorite challenges in mobile-enabled systems. Consensus was reached on three major categories: quality assurance, interoperability, and architecture and design. Breakout groups then met to discuss each of these topics independently, and these discussions are summarized in the paper. The overall conclusion of the conference was that, while current mobility research is valuable, it has overlooked an important point: mobile devices are being studied as standalone units, and they should be studied as nodes in a much larger system.
The paper is fairly short (four pages) and easy to read. Despite presenting it as a summary, the authors have packed a lot of information into a small space. Links to the individual presentations can be found at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/community/mobs2013. Anyone designing mobile systems should at least scan the paper and check out the website. Between the summarized ideas and the links in the reference section, there is much valuable information to be mined.