Chicago Mobile Alliance The clearinghouse for Chicago mobile events & info

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  Turbocharge your App Sales – MoMo Chicago February Meetup

Date: Tuesday, Feb 22, 2011 - 6:00pm

Location: Morning Star - 22 West Washington St, Chicago, IL

Register:  http://www.meetup.com/momo-chicago/events/16179791/

Selling mobile applications is far more difficult than selling SaaS applications.  In December of 2010, the iPhone App Store averaged 627 new apps every day.  The Android Market averaged 243.  Long gone are the days of throwing an app up into an app store and watching the dollars flow.

We explore many different marketing channels you can use to market your app.  We will explore the pros and cons of each channel.  Then we will look at how to instrument your mobile business so you can make data driven decisions.  Learn how to create ways of lookng at your prospective customer’s actions to inform how you market to them.  Finally, determine how your customers are using the product to drive future sales.

About Bernhard Kappe

Bernhard Kappe is the founder and CEO of Pathfinder Development, which helps companies rapidly launch products. In this role, Bernhard works with startups and existing companies to create effective business models and product-market fit, position themselves in the market, create outstanding product design, utilize Agile development to build great products, and manage customer acquisition and
retention.

As a veteran entrepreneur, Bernhard strives to make Chicago a technology epicenter by leading the Chicago Lean Startup Circle and the Chicago Product Management Association, organizer in the Lean Startup Machine and events such as this one, and mentoring startups to help them be successful.

About Todd Wyder

Todd Wyder is Chief Product Officer at Pathfinder Development and has been involved in product management, marketing and engineering for over 25 years. Todd has worked on products for GE, Axciom, YesMail, OMRON Electronics, Appointments 1,2,3, Mitsubishi, Fanuc, AT&T, AHA! Interactive, Schoolnet, OASIS, Calendars.com, CatapultMySales, Coe Truman and many others.

To register:  http://www.meetup.com/momo-chicago/events/16179791/

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  Integrated Channel Strategy – Niti Vaish of Slalom Consulting

Highlights from the discussion

• Multi-channel must be integrated, holistic & actionable. 
  • This means, the strategist must look at the dependencies between mobile, social and digital channels.
  • Need a 360 degree view of the consumer
• Clients who ask "Can you build me an iphone application?" are missing the point
• "Let's start a twitter account & a fb page." are free steps that can be taken, but don't deliver any value.
• It's easy to understand why they want to be in this space
  • 130 million iDevices
  • 300,000 iphone apps (in last year??)
  • > 10 billion downloads from app store
  • In terms of market share, iPhone is far beyond Android and Blackberry
  • Nielsen projects smartphone = 50% penetration
  • 650 million facebook users
  • 200 million twitter users

Nevertheless, creating an iPhone app without understanding an integrated strategy, with clear objectives is a waste.

IMC Strategy

• Mobile channel
  • 2008 didn't bring year of mobile
  • 2009 brought online site to mobile, without leveraging device level info
  • Most companies simply took online presence and transferred to the mobile presence.
• Social Channel
  • Brands look at the channels in isolation without looking at the dependencies between the channels
• Digital channel 
  • BI & Web Analytics
    • Organizations must define the objectives of the channel
    • Must have processes in place to handle feedback
    • Else, they will miss out on the ROI for focusing on these channels
  • Extracting Insights
    • To do this, they must understand their customers. Who are they? What segments do they fall into?
    • Most of this data sits in a database, but in the social channel, it is unstructured - twitter feed, comments, etc. how do you leverage this for product innovation or process improvement?
  • Information Architecture & Search
    • Is the site well defined? Is IA well defined with easy to find information?
    • Are users pulled out of context?
    • Do you provide filter and sort functionality to drill down to the most important nuggets?
    • Keep user experience consistent with popups, hover data. This all goes back to design. How well is it defined?
  • Content Management
    • How well is your CMS integrated with your website?
    • Your content should created once and re-purposed across all your channels.
    • You do not want your content for the mobile site created specifically for that channel.
    • You want to re-purpose content and business rules, and the biggest bang for the buck.

Developing a Multi-Channel Strategy

• • Listen to and engage with my customers
    • HD did a fantastic job with the goal of building a community around a cause of natural disaster
    • not pushing product, but showing another face
    • JetBlue is just promoting distressed inventory on twitter
    • Best Buy's customer service supports through a whole network
  • Start to leverage that unstructured data in order to draw insights in order to make product improvements and process enhancements?
    • The conversation is happening - you might as well get involved
    • Be honest and take negativity head on
    • Forrester's has coined a term of "multi-dimensional customer engagement" as this integrated multi-channel strategy. the "customer journey".
Firms must a cultural shift to adopt social media and goals to be well defined
• Aligning these goals within the organization and human resources against those goals is key.
  • One big problem is that these teams are split.
  • What's under IT, marketing, or product facing? Social is typically under PR? Digital is under PR.
  • Important to align the cross functional teams. But it needs to be staffed by people who understand dependencies across the groups.
  • Channel strategist should be a cross-functional role

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  midVentures DESIGN+DEVELOP Series: Mobile

midVentures Technology Partners is putting on a series of events called DESIGN + DEVELOP for the Chicago tech community. Their next event is focusing on mobile: "Introduction to iPhone & Android Apps" and is targeted to designers, developers and business people. The event is being held at the SYNC Technology Center in Greektown on Thursday, January 20 from 3:30 - 9:00 pm. Tickets are $25 - 50.

For more information or to register, go to: http://mvdesigndevelopjan2011.eventbrite.com

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  Creating an Integrated Multi-Channel Strategy, Using a Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach

Please join us for the next gathering of mobile industry professionals & enthusiasts on Monday, January 24, 2011, at 6:00 pm. This event is free and generously hosted by Morningstar. Please RSVP today at:

http://momojan2011.eventbrite.com/

PRESENTATION OVERVIEW

Niti Vaish from Slalom Consulting will discuss creating an integrated, holistic, actionable multi-channel strategy using a 'top-down-bottom-up' approach with a goal to meet business objectives, enhance customer relations and develop a 360 degree view of the customer. The presentation will provide the building blocks for creating a multi-channel strategy and will provide insights, tools and a methodology of how to 'connect the dots' between the various channels and guide clients into looking at the big picture rather than focusing on a single channel.

MEETING DETAILS
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Date: Monday, January 24, 2011
Time: 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Topic: "Creating an Integrated Multi-Channel Strategy, Using a Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach"
Presenter: Niti Vaish, Slalom Consulting
Location: Morningstar Offices, 7th floor, Chicago Loop
Location Notes: Please bring a picture ID for the security desk.
Directions & Parking: Morningstar's offices are at the corner of State & Washington. There is (paid) parking in the building. It is also well served by buses and the El.

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  Chicago Mobile Holiday Mixer

We're bringing together all of Chicago's mobile industry groups for a big blowout holiday mixer! There will be demos and giveaways, plus networking with cool mobile industry people from all areas of business & development. We look forward to seeing you there!

Tickets are free but space is extremely limited! Please RSVP at:

http://chimobileholidaymixer.eventbrite.com

Getting there...

• Parking: There is limited street parking plus a few private lots in the area.
• Public transportation: The Merchandise Mart El station is about three blocks south and Grand & State (Red) is about three blocks to the east. Bus service is also available along La Salle and nearby streets.

Participating Chicago-area mobile industry groups:

• Mobile Monday Chicago
• ITA Mobile Visionary Roundtable
• Heartland Mobile Council
• Chicago CocoaHeads
• Chicago Android
• Chicago Windows Phone 7 Developers Group
• AsSeenOnPhone

Generously sponsored by:

• Nokia: Learn more about the $10 million Calling All Innovators contest currently under way in the USA and co-sponsored by AT&T. Check out demos of the new Symbian^3 devices launching worldwide, including the flagship Nokia N8. Participants of the two-day Qt training workshops will also be joining us.
• ICS: As a Nokia-certified Qt Consulting and Training partner, ICS is co-sponsoring and instructing the Qt Training workshops on 12/6-7. ICS also offers free Qt Training webcasts at www.ics.com/icsnetwork
• Microsoft: Check out demos of the recently launched Windows Phone 7 devices and speak with locally-based tech evangelists.

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  Upcoming Mobile Events: Nov & Dec Roundup – And our Holiday Party!

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  Mobile Web Development – 30 tips in 60 minutes

Please join us for the next gathering of mobile industry professionals & enthusiasts on Monday, November 15, 2010, at 6:00 pm. Please RSVP today so we can put you on the security list & better plan refreshments:

http://momonov2010.eventbrite.com

PRESENTATION OVERVIEW

The Mobile Web provides the opportunity to build once and run everywhere. This presentation will provide 30 practical tips on how to build contextual, performant, secure, pretty and portable mobile web applications that will work across all the major Smartphone OSs and browsers.

First things first, we'll dive into the components of a mobile strategy and how to deliver mobile tactics rapidly while keeping the bigger picture first in mind. Learn best practices for translating your existing website functionality and new ideas to the mobile context. We'll review living the mobile world and how to design apps that provide you with a competitive advantage and an engaging end-user experience.

MEETING DETAILS
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Date: Monday, November 15, 2010
Time: 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Topic: "Mobile Web Development - 30 tips in 60 minutes"
Presenter: J Schwann, Mobile Technology Practice Partner, Solstice Consulting
Location: CITYTECH, Inc. Offices, Chicago Loop
Location Notes: Please bring a picture ID for the security desk.
Directions & Parking: CITYTECH's offices are located in Chicago's Loop on the corner of Wacker Drive and Wells Street looking over the Chicago river and the Merchandise Mart. There is limited parking in the area, but good bus and El service. For detailed maps & directions, please see their web site: http://www.citytechinc.com/content/en/home/contact.html

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  “The Mobile+ Event”, 11/17, 5:30, ITA (Chicago Flex)

The Chicago Flex meetup group is bringing in an Adobe developer evangelist to discuss using Adobe Flash as a development platform for mobile experiences. For more information and to register, please visit:

http://mobileplus2010.eventbrite.com

Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010, from 5:30 - 8:30 pm

ITA TechNexus
200 S Wacker Dr
Suite 1500
Chicago, IL 60606

An overview of the event:

Android, iOS, BlackBerry Tablet OS, Google TV, web, desktop, television, smartphones, tablets... The current technology landscape offers huge opportunities for developers.

Join Adobe Developer Evangelist Kevin Hoyt as we discuss where we are from a business perspective, where we're going from a technology perspective, and how to reach all these great new platforms with Adobe Flash. See first hand how to develop for Android, the new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, and Google TV.

And, as if that's not enough, there'll be a raffle for a copy of an Adobe CS5 Creative Suite product, and a copy of Adobe Flash Builder 4.

Space is limited and advance registration is required. If you register, but then your plans change, please cancel your reservation or email info@chicagoflex.org

Mobile Monday Chicago Events:  Cross Platform Mobile Development: The Easy Way to Develop Native iPhone & Android Apps

Please join us for the next gathering of mobile industry professionals & enthusiasts on Monday, October 18, 2010, at 6:00 pm. Reserve a ticket today as seats are limited. FREE!

http://momooct2010.eventbrite.com

PRESENTATION OVERVIEW

Jeff Schwartz will present "Cross Platform Mobile Development: The Easy Way to Develop Native iPhone and Android Apps." Jeff will focus on the challenges facing enterprises as they try to build native applications for multiple platforms. During his talk, Jeff will create a weather application that runs natively on iPhone and Android devices.