:: 6.30pm for 7pm, Mon 4th May 2009
:: Level 3 @ The Blacket Hotel
:: Entry on King Street via the Blacket Hotel. (Here’s a map)

App-Tastic!

Apple recently announced 1 billion iPhone apps had been downloaded from their App Store. How can your app get discovered amongst the 25,000 already there !?

To answer this question, we’re very happy to welcome Keith Ahern of mogeneration who will show us  what it takes to get a viable presence on the App Store and get noticed. Keith will also talk about when to do a mobile web site, when to do an app and when to take a hybrid approach.

Keith Ahern (Founder and CEO, mogeneration)

Keith has over 13 years of innovative software and service development, five of which has been in mobile. Keith was previously Mobile Technology Manager for News Digital Media (online division of News Ltd), where he helped grow NDM’s mobile channel from simple SMS services to engaging mobile websites with millions of page views each month. Keith’s career began  with web pioneer Netscape in Silicon Valley working on the Navigator browser and later worked for Philips Research and Development Palo Alto where he was granted two US patents. Keith has a BInfTech & Telecom (Hons) from the University of Limerick, Ireland.

MoGeneration has the following web apps and native apps for iPhone:

• Lingopal - Chat, flirt and insult in 42 languages on your iPhone
• Xumii - One iPhone Social Networking app - all social networks: Facebook, MySpace, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Flickr etc.
• OzWeather - the best weather app for Australian iPhone users - #1 in the Australian App Store (co-dev with OzPDA)
• Moo Shake! - a fun educational iPhone game for kids - #2 Kids game in the Australian & US App Store
• The Australian Business Edition for iPhone - The Australian on iPhone
• TrueLocal - Find, Plan and Share Australian businesses while on the go.

As ever, promises to be a fun + entertaining night. Bring your mobiles and business cards, and RSVP now to secure your place. Mobile Monday Sydney is a free event.

DON’T FORGET - It’s at LEVEL 3 upstairs at the Blacket Hotel

> RSVP NOW!

:: 6.30pm for 7pm, Mon 13th October 2008
:: The Privilege Bar (part of the Blacket Hotel
:: Entry on George St., (corner George and King.) Map here.

iPhone App Development - sponsored by SMSPoll
The final part of our series on Mobile Futures has us taking a close look at an exciting explosion in innovation and opportunity : the iPhone Mobile App Store phenomenon.

With event sponsorship by recent Pitch NSW ‘08 winners SMSPoll - thanks guys !

Mobile App Stores - Critical to Device Success?
Arguably pioneered by Nokia under a different (albeit clumsier guise), the App Store Concept has been a stellar overnight success for Apple via its iPhone+iTunes platform.

“In its first month, Apple’s App Store sold more than 60 million programs, pulling in an average of $1 million per day…” source: WSJ, Mon Aug 11, 2008,

The iPhone App Store let’s you buy everything from humble widget-style services to full-3D haptic-controlled computer games direct from an icon on the iPhone touchscreen (and also lets you pay using your iTunes account details). You can then manage and backup your purchases the next time you sync your music and photos via iTunes. We’ve tried it - its seamless. No wonder its been a roaring success.

Some grumbles have been heard from developers about Apple’s ‘mysterious black box app approvals process’ of course - something Google is already noting is an out-of-the-box advantage of Android and their much anticipated App store. You gotta love competition.

iPhone Web Apps - Design, Code, & Profit
We thought the best way to get up-close to this ‘phenomenon’ is to get some pals from MoMo to share their journey in this exciting space - so to that end we’re excited to welcome the experienced iPhone dev team from Key Options Development, consisting of

Marcus Schappi – Sweeper
Tim Chandler – Coder

who’ll be talking about their experiences with developing iPhone Apps, including the Qantas app available in the iTunes store now, via these themes :
Design
• The Three Rules of Designing iPhone Web Apps

Code (Tim)
• Taking advantage of the iPhone

and Profit (Marcus)
• App Store Top 100 Calculations.

Presentations and discussions will be ably compered by Mobile Monday Sydney’s own Oliver Weidlich, himself something of an iPhone app design guru.

Bring your mobiles & business cards
Should be a fascinating night with demos, stories from the cutting-edge, and fascinating personalities and people to meet. Come along and meet your peers in the Sydney mobile and wireless industry! Entry is free, but to guarantee your place click here to RSVP.

:: 6.30pm for 7pm, Mon 1st September 2008
:: The Privilege Bar (part of the Blacket Hotel
:: Entry on George St., (corner George and King.) Map here.

Do you love or hate your mobile?
The second part of our series on Mobile Futures - this time focusing on what we all know to be true : user experience is absolutely vital to humanising technology.

At the very beginning of what may well come to be known as the era of multi-touch, we’re going to be examining some different aspects of the user experience with some of Australia’s stars in the field.

iPhone Usage Analysis
James Cleary from groundbreaking Australian mobile company Amethon will speak to this topic, presenting some of their analysis of iPhone usage.

Defining Perceived Value in Mobile Media
Mobile expert Mac Walker will be discussing a new model for understanding customer perceived value in mobile services, drawing on his years as a manager of 3G mobile portals.

Mobile User Experience
Finally, Sheen Yap - Head of User Experience and Creative Services at 3 Mobile will be talking about the critical elements of the user experience on mobile.

Bring your mobile !
Should be a fascinating night with plenty of real-world insights and lots of opportunities to meet new people, make personal and professional contacts, and be inspired. Come along and meet your peers in the Sydney mobile and wireless industry!

RSVP now, and to see how we roll checkout these pictures from last month’s show. See you there !

:: 6.30pm for 7pm, Mon 7th July 2008
:: The Privilege Bar (part of the Blacket Hotel
:: Entry on George St., (corner George and King.) Map here.

The Road to Damascus
Its been a long, slow road moving beyond the ‘on pack promotion’ or ‘tv-voting’ style thinking typical of the last 10 years of Mobile marketing, but if entries in last year’s ADMA Awards and the frenzy (hype?) around the release of the iPhone are anything to go buy, smart marketers will soon be moving many new “direct, targeted and personal engagement via mobile” ideas out of the ‘experimental’ budget and into the ‘prime channel’ budget.

Or will they ?

Joining us to discuss

• Cliff Rosenberg, Mobile Marketing Awards Chairman
• Adam Dunne, MD of MMA ADMA awards winner Aura Interactive
• Melissa Adameitis, Client Services Director from another MMA ADMA awards winner Tigerspike
• David Hayes, Head of Sales & Marketing at mobile marketing pioneer, IDS.

Exploring these topics
We’ll be covering recent case-studies in successful mobile and mobile-integrated campaigns, recent industry and consumer developments (think iPhone!), and new sponsorship and marketing opportunities opened up by the rapid mobilisation of internet services.

• Is it still an uphill battle getting clients to mainstream mobile in their campaign thinking?
• Are data charges still a barrier to consumer acceptance of creative?
• Global ad agencies talk about being integrated across digital and mobile, is it true ?
• Are new pathways like code readers and Bluetooth transforming customer expectations ?
• What impact would mobile full web browsing have on the types of campaigns digital and mobile marketers can run ?

Asking the questions and sparking debate will be MoMo’s own Tim Parsons.

Bring your mobiles and business cards
Should be an interesting night with some great networking opportunities alongside your peers in the mobile industry. Entry is free, but to guarantee your place click here to RSVP.

A great night had by all - and here’s the story on the UTS Master’s of Interactive Multimedia website to prove it !

Thank you to the great team from iWifi Bondi, and to our expert panellists Marcus (Airspan), Eric (Unwired) and Maurie (TeleResources) - who were able to transform “WiMAX vs 3g+” into “WiMAX PLUS 3g+” (with 80Mbps on its way by 2012, yum).

The iWifi Team L - R: Ranjeet Elkunchwar, Winnie Yang, Urs Kemmann, Joyce Huang, Dave Kaplan and Caroline Chung

For those of you who missed the iWifi Bondi presentation by the UTS student team, check it out via their wonderful presentation thanks to slideshare.com below… puts us “industry professionals” in the shade !

| View | Upload your own

It was really all about People at the last Mobile Monday Sydney.

People sharing their stories:

Tamzin (3), Paul (SoundBuzz), Matthew (5thFinger) (and Tim - MoMo)

People debating the iphone:

L-R iPhone hope: Chris (My247), Oliver W. (MoMo), iPhone hype: Oliver P. (TigerSpike), Shane (MoMo).

Despite an eloquent and passionate attack on the iPhone hype by Oliver P. and Shane, the audience decided in favour of the iPhone:

People enjoying the night:

We even had people voting live !
Checkout the audience survey results here, thanks to Rob Manson of Mobile Online Business for a fantastic live demo - it was fascinating seeing the audience reaction and profile unfold in realtime.

Congratulations to Tyson Lundbech for winning the lucky door prize of an N6120!

Despite having literally touched down 3 hours before, tonights guest speaker and sponsor - Gary Chan from Forum Nokia - wowed and wooed our audience of over 100 people with his urbane, engaging and frank presentation of Nokia’s Forum Nokia, Widget and Mosh product and channel development strategies.

Our guest panelists were also articulate and engaging :

• Oliver Palmer from TigerSpike
• Oliver Weidlich from Ideal Interfaces, and
• Jennifer Wilson from NineMSN.

Its got to be said that Jennifer in particular stole the show via her two key pronouncements:

• nobody really knows what web 2.0 actually is, let alone mobile web 2.0
• if web 2.0 is anything, its really about conversations in content both 1-to-1 and 1-to-many
  

and

• it took ages for TV to move past simply being “radio with pictures”; how long is it going to take until mobile content and applications stop being “radio/tv/internet on a small mobile screen” ?

What a fascinating night was had by all ! We look forwards to seeing you again next month, when we’ll have some exciting announcements about the Mobile Mondays programme for 2008.

Next Mobile Monday Sydney is on Monday 5th November 2007
:: 6.30pm for 7pm kickoff!
:: The Shelbourne Hotel, 200 Sussex St
(corner of Market & Sussex streets)

Theme : M-Payments, with keynote & sponsorship by

…featuring a panel on the future of M-Payments with

• Dinuke Ranasinghe, Product Director at PayPal Australia;
• Harold Dimpel, Managing Director mHits Limited;
• Rob Manson, Co-Founder Paymentz;
• Hugh Spear, CEO Dialogue Communications

We’ll be discussing emerging opportunities in the space, as well as examining industry innovations such as the UK’s recently launched Payforit service, a payments platform supported by all major UK carriers.

Also featuring an interview with futurist Mark Pesce
“Mark Pesce, one of the early pioneers in Virtual Reality is a writer, researcher and teacher. The co-inventor of VRML, he is the author of five books and numerous papers on the future of technology.” - Wikipedia

Next Mobile Monday Sydney is on Monday 8th October 2007
:: 6.30pm for 7pm kickoff!
:: The Shelbourne Hotel, 200 Sussex St
(corner of Market & Sussex streets)

“Innovation in Mobile Pathways for Marketing” sponsored by

The perennial challenge with any mobile marketing campaign is smart, simple, consumer-friendly pathways. In this role SMS has been the king of the TXT2WIN on-pack-promotion, but some exciting new challengers are vying for a piece of the action and looking to enable a fast track pathway to the mobile internet.

QMCODES Introducing i-nigma

New market entrant and this month’s sponsor QMCODES is a case in point. Get the i-nigma reader by sending an SMS to 0429 883 688 (works best on 3G phones, look for it in the applications, games or ‘my own’ folder depending on your model), then shoot the smartcode below and [if you're not stuck in a walled garden] you will be seamlessly redirected to an m-site and m-survey at qmcodes.com/momo put up by the startup’s CEO Antony McGregor Dey and his team.

Try it out ! Then come along on the night and find out more.

Is 2008 set to be the year of mobile marketing ?

The AIMIA Mobile Industry Group has just released its mobile advertising guidelines, and this year’s ADMA awards offered us case-studies featuring clients ranging from Johnson & Johnson to Paramount Pictures. These are exciting times and we’ve put together a panel of acknowledged leaders from the industry to discuss them with you:

* Melissa Adameitis, Agency Business Director from Communicator
* Paul Buchanan, Managing Director at Soundbuzz
* Antony McGregor Dey, CEO at QMCODES
* Adam Dunne, Sales & Marketing Director at Aura Interactive

Bring your mobiles and business cards, and click here to RSVP !

WOW - a record number of over 130 punters packed out the Shelbourne Hotel on Monday 2nd of July to hear our Mobile TV presenters and panellists go through their paces. Check out the crowd photo :

Content-wise, Martin Farrimond from Broadcast Australia gave us some very interesting research showing that in fact yes, people will watch up to 30 minutes of long-form TV on a mobile device, albeit for around $20 or less per month on average.

Chris Noone from NineMSN confirmed that yes advertisers are very keen on convergent mobile advertising campaigns, with that carriers still have to get zero-rated video streaming access sorted out so that end-users can experience mobile video campaigns without fear of high data charges.

Ben Kinealy from Telstra Bigpond revealed that he’s all for off-deck competition pointing out that it will both grow Telstra Bigpond’s data charge business while dropping prices to individual consumers which we all know must be a good thing.

Finally, Anthony Ward from TBSGroup was very positive about Web 2.0 style on-demand and collaborative-filtering behaviours crossing over into the mobile TV space - and equally circumspect on who the carrier was that he’s been working with to develop strategy within mobile video!

Thanks must go to a wonderful audience, putting up with what had become cramped conditions. Even our sometimes flaky sound system couldn’t blunt the razor-sharp atmosphere. Gripping stuff!

Thanks also to Chris Kettle of My247 and Christina Grant of SparkTV for their excellent reception work.

Until next month !