If you haven't heard of Over the Air (OTA),  it's an annual mobile developer event that brings together 600+ mobile developers, designers & enthusiasts for two days of technical workshops, inspirational talks, and an overnight Hackday. The 5th annual Over the Air 2011 will be held on Friday & Saturday the 1st & 2nd of June at Bletchley Park - the home of the WWII code-breakers who decrypted the German Enigma machine, the base of Alan Turing 'father of Computer Science', and final resting place of Colossus, the first programmable computer.

The workshops are put together by and for the developer community,  featuring new platforms, operating systems, APIs & SDKs; and tutorial sessions that feature real business cases, new insights and a healthy dollop of inspiration. Attendees are invited to stay overnight so that they can work on ideas, apps and hacks on the fly – to be entered into the various Hackday competition categories and demo’ed on the second day. It’s a great relaxed vibe of bean bags, gadgets, knowledge sharing, hacking & geeking out.Over the Air is run and managed by it’s co-founders: Dan Appelquist, Matthew Cashmore and Margaret Gold.

Now the team are ready for the next challenge: Hack Reality, a hackathon where attendees have the opportunity to create hacks on real stuff, mixing together mobile devices with controllers (Arduino, OpenPicus, Netduino), Augmented Reality (Wikitude), games (LEGO MINDSTORMS, Kinect), 3d printing, domotic systems and more. Everything will interact, everything will go mobile, everything in just one day.

The aim is high and tickets have sold out, but we thought you might enjoy watching what more than 80 Italian developers and designers will come up with at the CNR of Bologna on the 4th February.

Visit their site http://www.whymca.org and stay tuned!

	Riccardo Bosio: @ riccardobosio
	Alfredo Morresi: @ rainbowbreeze
	Andrea Piovani: @ andreaaa_p
	Paolo Sinelli: @ pasine

The 5th annual Over the Air will be held on Friday the 1st of Saturday the 2nd of June at Bletchley Park - for two days up to 600 mobile developers & designers be based at Station X, hacking in the shadows of the WWII Enigma & Lorenz code-breakers, and hanging out at the home of Colossus the world's first programmable computer....we're planning on launching the Alan Turing Centenary Year celebrations in style!

Over the Air is a unique tech-agnostic event for and by the developer community, featuring technical workshops where attendees can roll up their sleeves and tinker with new platforms, operating systems, APIs & SDKs; and tutorial sessions that feature real business cases & new insights. Last year we explored the themes of security and encryption, and this year we'd like to make a strong connection with Alan Turing's legacy.

Boistered by enthusiastic cheers of approval, we'll once again be holding the event at Bletchley Park, launching the Alan Turing Centenary year celebrations in style...

The event will be held at the fantastic Ravensbourne College opposite the O2/Millenium Dome during November 4-6. Think 400+ developers, designers, journalists and kids looking at the Future of Journalism...

And you gotta love their byline: "Less Yak, More Hack"!

http://mozillafestival.org

As an attendee of Over The Air, the organisers of the Power of One Conference are offering a special 50% discount, just use the code OTA when booking at http://p0wer0f1.com (yes, the newsletter said 20% - it's now 50% FTW!)

Power Of One is a celebration of a tipping point. The power is now with the small agile organisation that through technology can change the world. This one day event is designed to motivate and inspire entrepreneurs and developers.

The event will be looking back at past experiences of starting tech businesses from scratch and looking forward to new possibilities and opportunities that abound, and will help you find the best ways to get your ideas heard and how to get funding to turn them into reality.

Tickets are only £99 + VAT (minus 50% with your discount code), which includes the conference, plenty of coffee, food, and a party at the venue after the talks with free beer.

You will also be one of the last people to set foot inside the iconic Battersea Power Station before it closes for long-term for redevelopment.

It's exactly this buzzing combination of community & creativity & energy that makes all of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes absolutely worth it. When I see that first stream of attendees arriving at the registration tables, I always think "it's yours now, my part's done".

In fact, we hit a new record ourselves: over 600 people came to the event over the weekend, with nearly 500 with us for lunch on Friday. For any of you that were at the Friday evening Ignite Bletchley Park talks, I think you'll agree that an epic amount of pizza was consumed as well! The head-count in the Mansion at 2:00 am (which doesn't include those in the Marquee or in tents on the lawn) was 120. Amazing.

Although OTA11 was free to attend as always, we did ask attendees this year to make a small donation to the Bletchley Park Trust, and we're thrilled to announce that we managed to raise (at the time of writing this post) £2,293.77 on their behalf. (Please note that the National Museum of Computing is a separate charity, who would very much welcome your support as well.)

We're also chuffed that the BlueVia team chose OTA11 as the time and place to not only debut their new BlueVia t-shirts, but also to launch ConnFu (which is still in closed beta).

There is an Over the Air Group Pool over on Flickr, if you've taken photos, please add them there.

Many of you have taken Instagram shots, like this glorious view of sunrise over the tents on the lawn taken by mdales - we hope you upload those as well.

We've asked all of our speakers to upload their slides to Slideshare and tag them ota11 and overtheair; as well as adding them to Lanyrd.

Feel free to add stuff to our Facebook Page as well.

For those of you who missed it, you may want to check out the Twitter feed to get a feel for the goings-on.

Blogs

Adam Cohen-Rose's Workshop Session Notes at OTA11

Ubelly's Interview with Lyza Danger Gardner 

Ubelly's write-up of Day One at Over the Air

Simon Judge on Over the Air and Kirin

Caroline Mockett's blog post about attending OTA11

Stephen Nicholas on his QuickR entry

Giorgio Venturi on Cracking the User Experience at OTA11 

Ashley Burton's OTA11 Mobile Web Notes and Wrap-up

Dan Murphy's post on the Pearson Blog

Novoda on their Wearable Build Status Bot

Andrew Savory on Over the Air 2010, 2011

Tom Hume on Andrew Betts' talk about the FT  iPad web app

Tom Hume on Open-sourcing Kirin at OTA

Franco Papeschi on One Day at Over the Air 

Dale Lane on his competition entries at Over the Air 2011 

Dale Lane on using BlueVia APIs

Media

photo by spiritquest on Flickr

Forbes - Bletchley Park Coders take on the Mobile World

BBC Internet Blog - Camping in a Digital Public Space: Over the Air 2011

The Fonecast - I'm no developer, but I still fell in love with Over the Air

Huffington Post - Hackers get Hired at Bletchley Park

TechCrunch - Mobile devs need to get to Over the Air this week

Guardian Apps Blog - London to become mobile centre of the world - for a week 

Video

David Vella's "hastily put together video" on Vimeo.

Bill Thompson's Ignite Talk on YouTube

Terence Eden's Ignite Talk on YouTube

Podcasts

Audio report - The Fonecast - Interview with Dr. Sue Black, Daniel Appelquist & Paul Johnston

Mobile apps, mobile web, mobile widgets, mobile device hacks... pretty much anything with a mobile spin is welcome. If you've gotten a brain wave for something that doesn't quite fit - let us know about it anyways, we have an 'other' category for just that purpose.

The demonstrations slots will be 90 seconds - that's right 90 seconds. You have a short time to show us what you've built so go straight for the good stuff. The Marquee will not have wifi, so if this is a crucial part of your hack - let us know in advance so we can set up with a hotspot.

You will be called on stage one at a time to show your stuff, after which the judges will leave to deliberate.

Kids are especially welcome at our Competition Presentations on Saturday October 1st starting at 14:50 in the Marquee Tent. Kids are free to register. Just bring them along to the registration desk when they get here and we will give them an all-access badge for the event. Besides the Over the Air sessions and competition, we are also running free tours of Bletchley Park, and you are also free to visit the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley.

The weather forecast for Friday and Saturday is looking beautiful, making Over the Air 2011 an excellent opportunity to bring the whole family out to Bletchley Park. (Many have told us already that they will be bringing their kids - including the organisers!)

Although we have the Mansion booked out for the event, the Park is situated on 29 acres of lovely green trees & lawns (now just starting to turn), and there are plenty of other things to do and see - for children of all ages as well as adults.

With this weather, you may find yourself spending more time in the children's corner or walking the grounds than in the various museums, but it will still make for a great day out.

Bletchley Park - Block-B Exhibition Centre

Officially opened in June 2004 by HRH The Duke of Kent this exhibition centre, housed within one of the original wartime buildings, tells the 'Complete Bletchley Park Story'. The museum depicts the incredibly complex processes of interception, decryption, translation, interpretation and analysis that were needed to produce the vital intelligence that proved so important in ending the war. Block B houses Stephen Kettle's famous Turing statue, and there is also the orientation room were you can view a short film that offers an overview of the site. It is also home to admissions and the Bletchley Park gift shop.

Check out the Young Codebreakers Zone for some great resources to inspire kids before hand.

The Toys and Memorabilia Collection

A large varied collection of playthings and domestic artefacts related to everyday life in the 1930's to the immediate post-war period. There are toy soldiers, model trains, model vehicles, Britain's lead farm and garden, and make-do-and-mend toys, dolls and teddies. Those who are studying or are interested in the National Curriculum 'Britain since the 1930's' will find this collection of much interest.

Model Railway

Always popular with all our visitors this display features a working model railway, complete with tunnels, miniature trees and junctions.

The Society's club room is open to the public from 12.00 - 16.00 (12.00 - 17.00 in Summer) on most Saturdays and Sundays throughout the year. There are usually two or three layouts in operation, including a 'Thomas' layout which is always popular with children. There are also modelling exhibits and displays about the real railways' contribution to the Second World War.

Bletchley Park Garage

There are two 1930's Austins on show from the film The Eagle Has Landed featuring John Standing, a direct descendant of the Leon family. The Talbot and the 1938 Ambulance (now owned by the Trust) were both used in the film Enigma. A 1940's garage forecourt shows the cost of fuel, etc, and tools used during this period. Some post-war cars are displayed to compare design styles and are of much interest to visitors. The garages were built to house the numerous vehicles that came to Bletchley Park every day during WW2, including the vast number of dispatch riders who brought the originals of the coded mesages intercepted at the Y Stations across the country.

And much more:

The National Museum of Computing

Photo By stevecadman on flickr

We have some good news. London Midland have kindly worked with us to offer 150 free train tickets to Bletchley Park from London Euston. We have 75 tickets on the Friday and 75 tickets on the Saturday. They are returns that will allow you to travel out on the Friday or Saturday and come back on either day - magic.

There will be a team of Over The Air Runners (look out for the people wearing black t-shirts with the OTA logo on the front and STAFF written on the back) who will have the tickets and details of the trains. They'll be stood right in the middle of the Euston Station just in front of The Body Shop. They will be at the station from 7am until 1pm on Friday and Saturday.

The tickets will be released on a first come first served basis - so get there nice and early for your free train ticket.

If you've not registered yet there are a few places left - head over to the registration page - and remember, you can register at the event and make your donation in cash.