We’ve been thinking for a long time about having a mobile-centric event that wouldn’t get lost in all the converging agendas of our mega Interactive Local Media conferences. That’s what we’ll do June 27 at our Mobile Local Media event in San Francisco. It should be a totally new discussion and perhaps a turning point for the industry.

Some of the 30+ cutting-edge speakers include legendary Silicon Valley VCs Stewart Alsop and David Hornik; Groupon‘s Mihir Shah; PayPal’s Mok Oh; Google‘s Surojit Chatterjee and Brendon Kraham; Pandora’s Heidi Browning; and Yelp‘s Mike Ghaffary.

From some perspectives, all roads lead to mobile. Apple’s switch to its own maps from GMaps suggests the big stakes that are involved. Roughly half the U.S. population now has smartphones. It gets deeper. Forty percent of Groupon’s usage is now coming from mobile devices. Yet there are major question marks, mostly surrounding monetization (see “Facebook, IPO”).

One of the big question marks is the efficacy of mobile advertising. We also are deeply investigating mobile applications as we track the growing non-advertising sectors in social media and deals.

Given my orientation toward deals and shopping, for instance, I am especially looking forward to moderating MLM’s fireside chat with Groupon’s Silicon Valley leader Mihir Shah, and a panel of mobile shopping/loyalty experts featuring LevelUp’s Josh Capilouto, shopkick’s Doug Galen and Mogl’s Jon Carder.

Please join us June 27. You can register here. Use the discount code “MLMBLOG” for $100 off.