Last Saturday I attended MobileCampNYC at the Microsoft office in midtown Manhattan. According to the website, the goal was to bring together mobile enthusiasts, explorers and professionals from the NYC metropolitan area to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobility. As with all BarCamp events, it was an ad hoc gathering where the presentations were determined that day based on who showed up with a presentation in hand.

This was my first BarCamp event, and I was fascinated by how structured this ad hoc event actually was. The day’s schedule was organized on the fly over coffee and doughnuts an hour before start time. Anyone who showed up ready to present wrote the name of their presentation on a piece of paper, and the organizers taped each presentation name on a wall under an open time slot and room. The attendees picked what session they would attend based on the options on the wall, and just like that the slots filled up and we were off to learn about the current state of mobility.

Below is a quick recap of some of the sessions I attended. I don’t have all the presenters names because, as I mentioned, there was no official schedule, and some people said their names too quickly for me to jot down. Oh, and please pardon the quality of my photos. I took them with (you guessed it) my mobile phone.

Introduction to Developing Apps for the iPhone

In this first session, the presenter walked us through the steps on setting up a “Hello World!” application on the iPhone or iTouch. He showed us the basic registration process and how to download the SDK. He showed us the drag and drop interface and other WYSIWYG features. Then he demoed the device simulator, which lets you preview your application on an iPhone or iTouch through your computer screen.

This was definitely an introduction for beginners (he actually did an advanced session in the afternoon), but it allowed us to get a good overview of the process so we could know what to expect. (Plus I ate a cream-filled doughnut during this talk, so I was happy.)

Location-Based Marketing

The next session I attended was on how to market to people through mobile devices. For example, companies are exploring ways to deliver real-time messages based on where people are at that moment. So if you’re walking by a coffee shop, a coupon to buy one coffee and get a free donut (so I still have donuts on the brain) could appear on your screen. Ideally, these would even be personalized or behaviorally targeted, so a vegetarian wouldn’t get a $1 off a cheeseburger coupon.

Continue Reading “MobileCampNYC: A Saturday with Mobile Enthusiasts”

I’ve recently read a number of articles on “how business technology helps in a downturn” and “technologies that can help generate revenue” and it got me thinking “these have to be great areas to explore especially if I’m in a shaky position right now”.

So, based on my internet explorations, here are some niches you should think about getting into to survive the next year, be it starting a new division where you work or promoting how your skill set fits these niches if you are looking for a new job or the next freelance gig.

1. Business Intelligence

While you may think that it is too late to figure out your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and executive dashboards to help make intelligent decisions on what to cut and what to keep, it may only take a few weeks if not days to get key business reports in place before you make a business decision that will cut your nose off to spite your face in 2009.

Don’t you want to be the one who shows the executive team the right decision to make based on facts versus the wrong based on emotion and hypothesis?

2. Open Source

Why keep expensive maintenance contracts on vendor supported applications when numerous options may exist for certain business applications in the open source world? While no license fee is paid, companies will have a need for people who know how to implement and support these systems especially since there will not be paid support moving forward. If anything this may be a way to cut cost, maintenance, and keep talented employees by having them learn how to implement and maintain other applications.

3. Application and Storage Virtualization

Sometimes going for open source solutions for highly complex systems isn’t possible. But many vendors are now delivering their applications “in the clouds” to help companies reduce the IT burden of maintaining these applications in-house while providing an inexpensive way to access business applications based on demand. Options to store data externally may be more realistic then applications themselves.

4. SOA

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a concept on how to design architectures via a set of discrete services that can be reused and rearranged to create new value add applications and facilitate agile business processes without having to rely on IT staff to make the changes. Due to the increasing IT costs to stay on top of continued business process changes due to IT taking too long to respond, lack of integration with other systems for more accurate, real time information, and just providing the ability for an end user to make a change than IT, tools and applications that either employ SOA principles or facilitate having a SOA environment will continue to rise.

5. Unified Communications

From missing leads due to not being connected to new forms of user interaction like Facebook, or reducing redundant communication channels, unified communications provide both to help optimize business processes and enhance communication with end users so that latency is reduced and device dependency removed.

6. User Experience

The user experience has changed drastically over the last 5 years. It’s not about doing it your business way anymore, it’s about doing it how the consumer wants it, and wherever the consumer is as there are tons of “edge” devices today like smart phones and richer mobile device clients. You need to know the value RIA (Rich Internet Applications) can provide and make it available to your user base before they leave your online service and move to another RIA.

And, don’t forget about tying your internet sites and mobile clients into social networking sites – it’s where users are beginning to lurk and link to everything they do.

Learning more about these technologies will help you to stay in demand, find ways to cut costs, and keep your client base at your own company.

A lot of companies today turn more and more to social media as a way to enhance their visibility.  After reading an article titled Study finds PR aids startups’ funding efforts, I started thinking about PR and it’s role within a business’ marketing efforts.

I keep hearing everywhere around me that PR is dead and that the new marketing medium is social media.  While I believe that social media is a great way to reach new audiences and build more authentic relationships, I think that PR plays it’s own role as the main stream media has great reach and can’t be left out of the mix, but the introduction of the social media newsroom template has maybe changed PR forever.

If hiring a PR agency is not be in your budget,  here are some tools you can use to generate Press for your company for FREE:

Get reporter queries in your email

HARO – stands for “Help a Reporter Out” was created by a PR guy Peter Shankman. Each day, you’ll receive up to three emails, each with anywhere from 15-30 queries per email. They’ll all be labeled with [shankman.com] in the subject line, for easy filtering. If you see a query you can answer, go for it!  And it’s all FREE!

Find & Build relationships with reporters

Use Twello to find reporters who cover your industry.  Twello is a search engine that searches Twitter account entries.  You can run a keyword search by keyword “reporter” to find anyone who has included that keyword in their Twitter profile (bio, name).  You can also search by News & Media categories to help you identify reporters.  Once you find the reporter, try to build a relationship with them before pitching your stories.

Easily create a social media newsroom

PitchEngine makes it easy for you to incorporate PR assets like video, audio and images directly into your press release and share it with your media contacts via email and cut-and-paste links or post it directly to Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook.  You can create an account for free.  Your Press releases will be hosted for free for 30 days and you can purchase a subscription to create a permanent media newsroom.

Tap into the existing resources

The Publicity Hound is a great resource of Free publicity articles and ebooks.  It covers a broad range of topics including: Writing Press Releases, Pitching and Contacting the Media and Bloggers,  TV & Radio Publicity, Newspaper & Magazine Publicity, and much more.

Do you know any other resources for generating PR at no or low cost?  Let me know!

I just read a story in Wired Magazine about a new barcode scanning technology on clothes introduced by a  Netherlands-based online apparel company W-41.  W-41 is introducing T-shirts and sweaters with a special logo that stores your personal info in a bar code that can be scanned.

If you spot one of these unique logos in the wild (bar, club, methadone clinic, DMV), you surreptitiously snap a photo of it with your phonecam and a tiny app directs you to the wearer’s LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace profile. You can then decide whether a “Hello” is in order.

While this new technology is really cool I do have to wonder about our personal privacy boundaries.  It is one thing to “meet” people online, where seemingly you have the “Internet/Web” protection, but it’s another thing to offer up all of the information about yourself to a complete stranger standing next to you on a sidewalk (as a woman I also have to worry about safety).

Another thing that worries me is how this technology will potentially dim the personal & professional line even more.  

What do you think?  Am I just paranoid?  How much do we let technology take over our life?

I don’t know about you, but when I think India and IT, I think outsourced software development and call centers for other parts of the world.  But after my recent trip there I learned a lot about India – the side those of us, in other parts of the globe, don’t realize about India if we grew up in the Internet boom era.

For example, did you know…

• Less than 2 percent of Indians own a computer (China is 10 percent)
• 45% of India’s population is under 25
• 20 new Institutes of Information Technology are being planned to be built in the near future
• Mobile device usage is expected to explode over the next 5 years, expecting growth of 536% over this time period
• Until recently, the government did not provide free education for children in their elementary and secondary years

What does this all mean?  A lot of opportunities all around and a class of Indians are about to be raised with education and mobile devices in their hands.  They will be the ones to help push the countries growth into the future, that is, as long as they decide to stay in their home country versus move to the states.