So I'm enjoying a relaxing summertime meal with my son when, suddenly, he slices his finger.  Like any parent, I went into crisis-management mode.  I rushed him to the ER to have the situation taken care of. And as I waited for the various specialists to evaluate and repair the gushing digit (thankfully no serious, long-term damage) I had time to ponder the wireless quotient of my surroundings.  I was in one of the world's preeminent medical centers, but there was no trace of the smart health technologies that, since the late 90s, have been "poised" to revolutionize modern medicine.  What had gone wrong?

I asked one of the technicians why all the gurneys weren't rigged with m-health devices, and his answer was simple:  "It's because patients vomit on the equipment."

For years we've had visions of smart cabinets that order refills when medications run low, phones that double as payment mechanisms and closets that order new socks when matches mysteriously disappear.  While the technology for all this exists, the solutions simply have not materialized.

The fact is, the road to m-everywhere is littered with landmines.  In the hospital scenario, an entire ecosystem of operators, paramedics, doctors, patients, equipment manufacturers and applications developers loses out on a host of opportunities, not least of which is improved health for patients and increased revenue for all the other stakeholders.  Whether the issue is trust, security, integration, design or projectile hazmats, it's time for mobile rollouts to stop exploding on the sectors that need them most.

In my opinion, we solve this problem by revisiting some basic principles in policy, technology and best practices-and by extending that knowledge to three core verticals: health, finance and retail.  If we put the right heads together in the right setting, we can jumpstart an entire industry.  But more on that in a second.

There's no doubt the mobile industry has done a great job of establishing infrastructure from an end-to-end standpoint.  And admittedly we've made progress.  The evolution of networks, devices and their respective technologies did a great job of setting the stage for a company like Foursquare, for example, where simple, location-based triangulation allows us to check into places, collect badges and win prizes for coming back.  Foursquare's success demonstrates a market that's ready for action.  The question is how to activate it.

How does an enterprise set about creating a mobile solution that's secure, easy-to-use and serves as a faithful brand extension?  Would the CIO start with technology vendors?  Or UI designers?  Or end users?  What role do policymakers and regulatory bodies play in this equation?  In many ways, asking an enterprise to go out and deploy a mobile storefront is like asking a person to go out and build their own car-starting with steel, rubber and glass.  A CIO would have to browse menus of devices, applications, security protocols and compliance measures until they had something even reasonably workable.  Impossible?  Not at all.  Prohibitive?  Completely.

But the fact remains: If you knew the refrigeration on your organ-donor van had failed, would you follow through with the transplant?  Would you like to pay for your groceries by holding your phone to the register? If you knew the truck carrying your new computer slammed on the brakes at 70 mph, would you accept the delivery?   In my opinion, all we need is a simple roadmap, the one page at the beginning of the book that sets out all of the components-and all of the solutions.

Earlier I mentioned the importance of putting the right heads together.  To that end, I've gotten together with industry luminaries Tom Boyle, Daniel Csoka and Andrea Farris to found the M3 conference, the first invitation-only event to focus on mobile solutions for health, finance and retail.  M3 is not a trade show!  Rather, it's a world-class networking and business information exchange where we bring in no more than 100 pre-qualified buyers from the mobile industry supply chain-all expenses paid-and personally introduce them to a group of hand-picked sellers. 

Once there, we'll treat the buyers to the best and brightest strategies for leveraging mobile as a reliable business driver.  Using case studies, fireside chats and targeted keynotes, M3 will lay out the obstacles to adoption that typically hijack mobile deployments and that account for a long list of corporate casualties.  Most importantly, our guests will return home with the toolkits they need to handily pull off mobile deployments well into the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, M3's proven, "hosted" format provides sellers with the ultimate opportunity to speak directly to pre-qualified decision makers who can increase their ROI.  Buyers get an efficient method to speak with C-level executives from supplier firms, witness new technologies firsthand and accomplish objectives in a focused timeframe.  M3 takes place November 29^th to December 1^st at San Diego's beautiful Grand Del Mar.

Right now, non-traditional mobile companies have virtually unseated mobile incumbents.  We've seen carriers get snapped up in fire sales and handset manufacturers plummet from world domination to the bargain basement.  But as m-health, m-finance and m-commerce rumble to life, the industry's earliest players can return to a seat at the table.  The Yankee Group predicts the mobile transaction ecosystem will be worth more than $1 trillion by 2015.  For the operators, device manufacturers and platform architects who invested billions in networks, spectrum and advocacy, suiting up our three verticals in mobile will do more than put them back on the map; it will create a new map altogether.

For more information on M3, please visit http://www.m3mobilityexchange.com/.