scattered observations of mobile learning week

Greetings from UNESCO's Mobile Learning Week in Paris (18 and 19 February). Following are a few observations and thoughts. These might present a more-than-reasonably skeptical view of the proceedings... 

• It's tiring when the socially focused representative of a global corporation responds guardedly about open platforms. Someone here was asked about providing open APIs and opening their platform; the response was somehing like, "We've determined that if we opened our platform we couldn't provide the rich user experiences that we currently provide." OF course it's about money, probably, and why not acknowledge this? You've just demonstrated impact among 7 million users (or more, I lose count), you don't need to justify or obscure a profit motive in that instance... 
  
  
• A lot of the projects on the podium here approach English language learning via mobile tools. Cool, but getting content and mother-tongue instruction is IMHO much more critical. And much more difficult -- in part because of funding.
  
  At least, if that's what you're doing, cite evidence that learning English in a given context leads to improved social and economic well being. Hmmm?