From the Future of Mobile to Fancy Swag, What I Expect to See at D11

I'm coming almost straight from Moscow to AllThingsD No. 11, but I have no doubt the conference will keep me awake – both onstage and off. A few years ago at D, I was sitting at dinner with Bill Gates when he said, "The future of search is verbs." That insight hasn't helped Bing much, but it has certainly come true: More and more "search" is actually actions, such as booking a restaurant or a flight, downloading a song, buying a sweater or signing up for an event.

So what do I hope to hear this year? There will certainly be many iterations of, "This is the year of mobile and our company is the epitome of mobile." The internet of things and 3D printing and ubiquitous surveillance will surely get a mention. Sheryl Sandberg will be leaning in, while Tim Cook will be leaning out of tax havens. ... Marissa Mayer is not on the roster, but assuming she doesn't acquire anything else in the meantime, attendees from Yahoo! will explain how she plans to leverage Tumblr...and I'll be taking photos of everyone for display on my newly enhanced Yahoo!/Flickr stream.

The D format is mostly unvarying: penetrating questions from Team Walt'n'Kara (Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher), with audience complaints, statements and sometimes actual questions adding unexpected drama. But there are always a few speeches or special sessions; this year, Elon Musk will help introduce a non-spacey crowd to newspace, which is now becoming a respectable market, just as PCs did in the '80s or the Internet did in the '00s. And he may mention Tesla once or twice.

Internet of thingies

The internet of things is a world in which the experimental, prototyping attitude of software hackers now infects hardware hackers. My favorite anecdote from someone developing an intelligent pill bottle that can remind users to take their pills and make (almost) sure they had done so: "We went out to a shopping mall yesterday to see how people reacted, and we learned a lot. Today we're making a new prototype, and tomorrow we'll got out and test it again." No more sending specs to China for a new mockup to be delivered in weeks...

Indeed, for human users this is the year of mobile. Mobile isn't just handsets and, "How do we monetize ads on those tiny screens?" It's also connecting humans to the physical world. People carry their phones, not their tablets, and in doing so they contribute to Big Data about their movements and also their pulse rates, their sleep patterns and the like. You can bet that the team from Disney (Tom Staggs and Anne Sweeney) will be talking not just about Snow White and Bugs Bunny, but also about crowd movements, waiting time optimization and other phone-based data.

As mobile gets more important, the geographical balance shifts: There are far more mobile users in, say, Africa than the U.S. or Europe. For Americans, mobile phones offer a delightful consumer convenience; for many people in poorer countries, they are capital equipment.

And so, it's also the year of outside-the-US: More and more activity, from startups to user activity, is happening outside the US. Kazuo Hirai of Sony will be talking about Dan Loeb's proposal for change at Sony; Loeb had quite an impact at Yahoo! Those people from outside the US are watching us closely, while we are hardly aware of them. There are no stats on non-US attendees, but I plan to count them this year and I would bet they have gone up. (Women speakers are also on the rise – five of 25 this year on the list I have.)

And of course, don't forget the swag. I'm still carrying my AllThingsD bag from D7, and I have it on good authority – though I'm going out on a limb here – that I'll be wearing a Patagonia jacket on my way home Thursday night.

Read more coverage of D11 from Influencers:

• Horace Dediu: What I Want Apple CEO Tim Cook to Talk About
• Chris Fralic: What Makes D So Great?
• Ilya Pozin: The Tough Questions Tech CEOs Need to be Asked
• Dave Kerpen: 6 Secrets to Better Networking at D11, or Any Conference
• John Abell: Google, Give Us a Hint -- Is Chrome or Android the Future?
• Rita King: When Will Twitter Monetize TV?
• Bill Gross: My Favorite Moments From the Past 10 Years of D

Photos: Apple CEO Tim Cook, top, talks with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher (Asa Mathat/AllThingsD); News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, center, sits in the crowd (Esther Dyson/Flickr).