Last Saturday, a group of local geeks and biz folks gathered on their day off to talk about where mobile is going and how it is going to get there. This was the first ever Mobile March event inspired and organized by the local group, Mobile Twin Cities.
The morning was kicked off with an opener by Lisa Foote and a keynote by Mark Mosiniak. Lisa Foote, co-founder of MixMobi, as promised, delivered a quick summary of the mobile market based simply on the numbers. I was shocked to see text messaging generates more revenue annually than music, movies, video games, and internet content combined, and in those few minutes, over 650,000 text messages were sent generating over $1M in revenue. The numbers she presented show there is opportunity in the mobile space and it is not going away anytime soon. Mark Mosiniak, of Best Buy, gave a brief review of the history of mobile phones from the very beginning, starting by describing the tin can phone he and a friend used as a child. I was particularly interested in Mosiniak’s review of the Best Buy’s five ideas to “keep it simple”:
- Use single sign on – all apps use the same user name and password
- Blur the lines between customer service and marketing – combine these roles and build relationships with customers to keep them satisfied and coming back
- Online to offline – using coupons sent to mobile devices which can be used in-store
- My Phone is My Wallet – allowing shoppers to pay on-line or in-store with the mobile device, similar to the “chip” in some credit cards today
- Small Businesses Need Apps – mobile is not just for the big guys, there is a need for mobile in small business
Both Foote and Mosiniak set the stage for the rest of the day.
The day was split into two tracks, business and technical. Although very interested in the technical aspects of mobile development, I also wanted to get exposure to the business side as well to learn some of the motivations, strategies, and successes of mobile. In the one business track session I attended, the panel of experts spoke about having a mobile strategy before leaping in. Just because it’s on your website does not mean it is meant to go mobile. Most interesting to me was the recurring theme that this whole day was offered to both business and technical folks. A mobile strategy cannot be defined or executed on by any one part of an organization and it must be a cooperative effort between different groups like IT and marketing.
I spent the other three sessions on the technical track, learning about Blackberry and iPhone application development, as well as the non-technical work that goes into it. As a new iPhone owner, I was particularly interested in the iPhone session. With goals of writing my own app, I was hoping to gain more insight into the technical aspects of developing a mobile application. The sessions were only about an hour long and started by introducing each platform and what goes into getting the app released into the app store. With the short time, we were barely able to start looking at code for each of the sample apps, however I got just enough of a peek into the mobile world to see that I wanted more.
The entire day was the same – each session a quick peek into the different areas in mobile. This was really my first look into the mobile space and I felt like we barely scratched the surface. With a technology still in it’s infancy, it sounds like the mobile community, both on the business side and technology side, is still learning about where mobile is going and how it’s going to get there. As with any technology, it is constantly changing, keeping us on our toes. I enjoyed spending the day learning more about it and am looking forward to the next Mobile March!