Here is a recap of the conference:

Julian Dolce, Senior Flash Developer at QNX Software (recently acquired by RIM) and author of the soon-to-be-released “Android Development with Flash”, talked about using Flash CS5 / Adobe AIR to develop native Android apps. She shared various code snippets on how to tightly integrate with the Android OS including accessing hardware APIs and best practices. AIR for Mobile, as Julian pointed out, is currently being ported to a number of platforms including BlackBerry and is great for anyone looking to build and deploy native apps across a number of platforms.

Tariq Zaid, co-founder of SelectStart Studios, an Ottawa-based mobile development shop, walked us through the ins-and-outs of iPhone development and a case study of their wildly popular iPhone app called Headquarters, a mobile client for Basecamp. Key takeaways include keeping your designs simple, giving UX high priority in organizations and following Apple’s design and development guidelines.

Colin Melia of DreamDigital and a speaker and trainer of Microsoft Technologies, treated us to a live demo of the often-talked-about-but-rarely-seen Window Phone 7. Julian introduced us to some of the new technologies the platform brings and walked us through the process of creating a simple WP7 app using Silverlight, XAML, native C#, and integrating with a cloud-based service like the Twitter API. WP7 is slated to be release in November of this year, and plans are underway to help developers get ready to have their Apps deployed in time for launch.

My discussion “HTML5, CSS3 and other fancy buzzwords – Bringing sexy back to the mobile web” spoke to some of the new APIs available to mobile web developers thanks to HTML5, CSS3 and other related technologies. I touched on various aspects of HTML5 including geolocation, offline support and storage, audio and video tags, and made sure to provide lots of code samples, things to watch out for, and how mobile web developers can best leverage the new APIs for their apps. For more about this discussion, check out my presentation slides.

All in all, it was a great day for anyone interested in mobile and code.

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Mohammad Jangda is an application developer at Vortex Mobile who builds mobile web and social apps at work AND in his spare time: www.vortexmobile.ca or www.digitalize.ca

Why this will work.

Facebook is the all-powerful Borg (for those non Trekkies out there – they assimilate, adapt and propagate). With 500 million subscribers (and reports that 150 million of these are mobile), sheer size makes Facebook the clear favourite.  In my opinion, Foursquare, Gowalla, My Town, etc. are officially the underdogs (if they weren’t before).  Naturally, Facebook is faced with the issue of privacy, and provided they allow users to self-provision and dictate terms, then chances of success are high.  Reaching eyeballs via facebook places substantially increases the efficiency of ad dollars and brings us another step closer to the perfect delivery of WHEN and WHERE. 

What does this mean from a marketer’s point of view?

The ecosystem has added a slew of new terms that strategists, planners, brand managers, and CMOs must be aware of for water cooler chats.  This announcement could mark the dawn of Facebook mobile monetization where ad products and services will emerge.  I suspect Places may be the final straw  that pushes those brands that don’t have a mobile friendly destination to get one, as those brands can leverage the open graph API to ensure their  brand communities can enjoy a seamless mobile experience.  Who knows? Facebook could be the first organization to really marry mobile commerce and social platforms – they have a great Trojan horse model to explore with other products and services.  In the near-term, Vortex is anxious to socialize mobile properties and mobilize brand communities.  New DIY tools and APIs will strengthen the value proposition for our partners, some simple use cases include:

• Consider a beer or spirit company that uses experiential marketing. Imagine a promotion where X number of people that check in win, or 1 in X who check in to a restaurant/bar are entered to win a trip.  Participants earn bonus ballots for socializing their whereabouts via Places and ta-da, we have next generation swarming.  Amplify this experience by posting user generated content (such as pictures and video) and let your Twitter followers and Facebook friends see your world on demand.  When boiled down, many marketing fundamentals still apply: LOCATION, EMOTIONS, LTO (limited time offers)/SENSE of URGENCY,  SHARED CONNECTIONS and WORD OF MOUTH.

Carriers (and OEMs) could be X-factors in mobile/social media

There is no doubt that carriers and handset manufacturers want in on the action.  Geo-fences and location-based alerts are on their radar, as they battle the perception that their place within the mobile ecosystem is simply as dump pipes and dummy terminals.  Arguably carriers and manufacturers have some tricks up their sleeve. A Canadian trial called OneAPI could allow carriers to get in the game by providing client-side information all accessed through a web API. OneAPI has the potential to be a total game changer as it offers SMS+ MMS aggregation, billing services, and targeting, and with the right partnerships, could offer a location-based experience that is as seamless and accessible, if not more so, then one offered by Facebook.  (Click HERE for more details about ONE API.)  http://www.gsmworld.com/oneapi/

Mobile commerce means different things to different people, depending on who you’re talking to.  I’ve come across the following definitions of Mobile Commerce:

• PSMS (Premium SMS) where a user’s mobile bill is invoiced due to a user sending a premium rated SMS to a short code (MO) or by the user accepting a subscription type billing for alerts.
• NFC (Near Field Communication) where an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) equips handsets with Hardware/Software that facilitates a wave and pay type of solution.  (May also use RFID – Radio Frequency Identification, Bluetooth, enhanced SIM cards)
• Other often used terms are Mobile wallets, where users can use third party providers like PayPal to facilitate transactions.
• Mobile banking is another popular term that gets thrown into the mix, however M-Banking has very little coverage in this post.

The M-Commerce I’m talking about is payment of products or services via credit card (debit card) using an encrypted mobile internet protocol to facilitate purchases.  You’ll also hear the term PCI DSS compliant in this mix (for those not familiar with this acronym, it means Payment Card Industry Compliance Data Security Standard).  It’s designed to mask/encrypt the credit/debit card information.

Our discussions with retailers have yielded some thought provoking information, most significantly that consumers are making purchases from their mobile devices on NON mobile friendly e-commerce sites.  Not surprisingly the benchmarks for time on site is lower, bounce rates are higher, basket size is lower and drop-off is higher when comparing the experience to established e-commerce portals.  Nonetheless the major point here is that PEOPLE ARE BUYING!

This begs the question of the ROI (the Hard ROI not media ROI) of developing a commerce portal that is mobile friendly where benchmarks narrow.  To me, this seems like one of the easier business cases to build especially considering the enormous momentum of web friendly handsets, affordable data fees, and increased propensity by consumers to use their Credit Cards on mobile devices.

Mobile marketing will reach new heights because transactions will close communication and campaign loops to purchases.  Now we have scenarios where end of the season clearance sales will live inside mobile portals.  It’s also worthy to recognize other channels of mobile marketing that will benefit from commerce like SMS.  Reward your loyal SMS subscribers with first to know and exclusive offers and alerts of discounted items.  Use mobile display banner ads and yield exceptionally high click through rates of featured items and convert to checkout.  Develop mobile friendly versions of emails for those consumers who read e-newsletters on handsets.  Explore affiliate mobile networks (and cross retailer downloadable applications) and pay the content owners or application owners upon conversion to sale.  I’d like nothing better than to see SMS joke of the day ads replaced by “Be the first to own an iPad! Click here”.

Some thought starters…

Go to your webmaster and ask him/her to pull the web reports on types of browsers accessing your site.  Parse the data and look at bounce rates of mobile browsers vs. traditional browsers.  Take a quick audit of your page views accessed through mobile browsers, what information is being viewed?  Some of my guesses are Store Locator/Maps, Store Hours, Specials and Price Comparison tools.

Pull the report from your email CRM activities, see how many page views are coming from Mobile browsers – and then look at your newsletter on your handheld.

Start asking for mobile numbers and opt-ins from your sign up section of your website – you’ll be shocked at how many consumers are willing to give up their mobile number.

Look at using web to mobile tools like “send to my mobile” for online flyer/catalog searches that will send wish lists, product information, mobile coupons, store address etc direct to your via a shortcode (Or by updating your native application through the PUSH API)

Tag offline media like flyers, FSIs, POS, print, newspaper, OOH with mobile messaging calls to action and start changing impressions to interactions and now transactions.

If your site has e-commerce does your commerce provider have the ability to use webservices, you’ll need to decide on a transcoded (operation of changing data from one format to another, such as an XML to HTML, so the output will be displayed in an appropriate manner for the device) mobile site OR to build from scratch (potentially using a mobile internet middleware solution) optimizing navigation and content for groupings of mobile handsets based on form, feature and function.  Do NOT compromise on user experience.

The advent of mobile transactions will better equip marketers to assess the dollar value of a mobile number, which in my mind is critical for next generation mobile strategy.  Our industry must move beyond last of the budget and end of the year throw in experiments.  Above all focus on utility, don’t think of mobile as native application, OR messaging, OR mobile web, OR mobile advertising – these are all ANDs.  Finally don’t build your mobile strategy on an island – it must integrate and fit within your overall communication plan.

The marketing world is changing, and connecting this demographic with your brand is the next evolutionary step to reach your customers. Adopting a properly designed mobile strategy has been proven to increase foot traffic to stores and generate sales. Other than the holiday season, the Back to School shopping cycle ranks as the largest revenue producing period for the retail sector. Over $1.5 billion was spent on children’s clothing, accessories and stationary in Canada while more than $7.6 billion was spent stateside in the third quarter of 2008. Although parents are paying for the goods, the purchasing decisions are strongly influenced by the kids. The demand is there and the medium is established; the onus is now on the retailers.

If you visit your local mall or school, you would be hard pressed to find a student without a mobile phone.  Teens and tweens carry their mobile phone with them everywhere they go, as a necessity for communication and an expression of their social status.  For a brand to reach this critical demographic, it must include mobile communication in its marketing mix.  There are a variety of benefits a mobile Back to School campaign has, including:

1. The ability to draw foot traffic to stores and retailers, therefore increasing sales. Retailers can use SMS alert with mobile coupons to drive traffic (some retailers have traffic counters to measure lift post alerts), other transaction enabled mobile sites use display mobile ads to increase traffic and convert clicks to sales.
2. Personal connection with teens via their most prized possession which is always on them. Mobile opens up a static channel where the user can always be reached in a medium where they are open to hearing marketing messages and are consistently using.  Brands benefit from the connection with increased awareness and recall, not to mention the associative innovation benefits.
3. Remarketing ability ( Holiday Shopping and more). When one campaign door closes, another campaign window opens. One of the primary benefits of utilizing SMS in a marketing campaign is capturing mobile phone numbers in the form of an opt-in list that can be used for subsequent marketing campaigns. It is imperative that dialogues continue and proper value exchanges are served to those loyal mobile users.  We must strive as an industry to quantify the value of a mobile number.  Without assessing a value, mobile will be reduced to one-off tactical tests which only industry laggards can afford to invest in.

Now more than ever, brands need to reach back-to-school shoppers in new, innovative, and most importantly, relevant ways.  A long-term strategy is the key to raising brand awareness which will translate to increased sales.