Phil McKinney, CTO of HP's Personal Systems Group (aka the new home for Palm), has proposed a really interesting talk for the upcoming SXSW 2011 conference. From the proposal:

Can you predict what the future will look like in 5 to 10 years? Hacking the future requires the ability to dream, to visualize and the ability to connect the impossible with the possible. In this session, Phil McKinney will make some bold predictions for the future - backed up with a number of breakthrough prototypes. This session is a futurist's view of the world that will surprise and alarm you.

We particularly are intrigued by the mention of "breakthrough prototypes." That could be anything from the rolling displays McKinney showed at MobileBeat 2010 to (dare we hope it) some next-generation webOS devices.

To help make this talk happen, though, community input is crucial, so come on, webOS faithful, head on over to McKinney's PanelPicker page, cast your vote (free registration required), and let's win this one for the team!

Source: Rahul Sood on Twitter

HP CTO Phil McKinney just finished his speech at AlwaysOn and as expected, there were no major announcements to be had. McKinney did discuss some of the roadblocks between where we are and where we need to be with regard to mobile cloud computing - hitting on issues like the US falling behind in broadband infrastructure and companies intervening between app developers and users in oppressive ways.

McKinney also once again mentioned HP's thinking with regard to the future of devices with those flexible displays, though he went one step further and hypothetized about separating the display from the device - ex. your connection could be your watch and you display could be a flexible display, your phone, or heck, even your entire wall as in the slide above. Who wouldn't want a webOS Wall?

Q&A time brought a lot of questions about Palm. McKinney once again mentioned HP's size and scale, natch, but he also pointed out that that he has given phones as prizes to HP engineers who develop good webOS apps:

Inside of HP with the 47,000 engineers I issued a challenge [...] for the HP engineers to go create apps, consumer apps [...] I stopped counting at 750 apps and my mailbox has totally exploded.

Some of those apps, by the way, have popped up in Palm's Beta Apps feed.

McKinney pointed out that Palm does not get in the way of letting developers connect directly to their users. In fact, enterprises are free to create their own app distribution systems. McKinney also pointed out that HP supports homebrew: 

We also support the homebrew guys. You hear about all the guys hacking phones and unlocking the phones, we actually encourage that. You can go out to PreCentral or any of the sites that support the Palm homebrew guys. they'll tell you how to unlock your phone and how you can download the homebrew sites. The homebrew guys have just done some phenomenal work from the standpoint of really unlocking the true power of webOS.

Lastly, McKinney reiterated some of the points we heard last week: "We are also restating that our focus is webOS and Windows 7," meaning that Android is on the outs with HP for sure as is Windows Phone 7. He also reiterated that the Windows 7 Slate is meant solely for enterprise, HP is most definitely working on a webOS Slate device, and finally that Rubinstein wasn't whistlin' dixie when he said webOS 2.0 is coming.

Want to show Phil McKinney the same love he's showing the community? He's looking for some help creating an 'audio brand / entrance theme' for when he heads out to give speeches. The person who creates the best theme will win $1,000 to boot. Check it out here.

Update: the presentation video is online now.

Source: AlwaysOn & ViVu livestream.