A lot happens in a week on vacation. The US government stays in business, Apple is apparently sucking up all the smartphone profits, and I joined the Board of Directors at Mobile Portland!

What’s Mobile Portland? From the site: “Mobile Portland is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating, promoting and supporting the mobile technology community in Portland, Oregon and the surrounding areas.”

Jason Grigsby has been running Mobile Portland with the help of a steering committee for the past three years, building it into one of the the largest user groups in the Portland area with over 1000 members. Our first act as a Board was to incorporate as a non-profit organization and set in action our plans for a device lab that people from all over the country can come and use. I’ll use Jason’s quote to ReadWrite Web’s Marshall Kirkpatrick to introduce the concept to you:

One of the major challenges for [mobile] platform vendors, carriers, and handset manufacturers is how to make sure the best apps are available on their products. One of the biggest challenges for mobile developers and businesses is getting access to devices for testing. Not even the largest of companies can afford to purchase all of the possible devices on which their software or services may run on.

If you think about it, this is a major challenge. Even if you are developing for iOS only, you still have to support multiple versions of the operating system on iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPad, iPad 2 and multiple generations of iPod touches. Add to the mix Android, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry alone and we are talking a mess of devices.

I’m excited to be involved and happy Jason asked me to join the Board! Great things ahead.