MobileCampNYC: A Saturday with Mobile Enthusiasts

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.

The presenter opened it up and let people throughout the room talk about what they were working on in this space. Several people in the room already have had success with location-based marketing:

• Buzzd helps people discover what’s going on around them right now based on GPS.
• 8coupons texts deals to your mobile phone and you just have to flash your screen to the cashier to get the discount.
• Unype shows discounts in stores around you.

People in the room agreed that there are two major issues inhibiting progress:

1. Devices need to be awake to receive the messages. So when I’m walking past the coffee shop, I only get my coupon if I happen to be using my mobile device. It doesn’t wake up and alert me that I’m walking past some great deal.
2. People love their privacy and may not want companies collecting their GPS coordinates every step of the way (literally).

All this sounds cool, but it also sounds like a lot of spam. I can’t wait to see what this becomes over the next few years.

Designing for Real-World Game Experiences

Next I went to hear Karen Schrier and Nick Smolney discuss digital games that can played in physical space. There are several apps already doing this, most notably the Japanese game Mogi Mogi, which allows you to pick up virtual items by moving to physical spaces.

Karen and Nick, however, took a different approach and are focusing on creating real-world games with a social purpose. They wanted to create a game that started to capture the large discrepancy of food prices throughout the city and that revealed which stores had the best tasting and lowest cost items. Any New Yorker can attest that a can of salsa on one block can be $3 and then that same item can be $6 a few blocks in another direction.

Using New York City as a board game, they developed a game that broke people into teams and had each team shop for a grocery list at the grocery stores and bodegas in a certain area of the city. The teams had a set budget and amount of time for shopping, and in the end they were judged on lowest price and best taste. The result is a growing database that is collecting the current price points of items at different stores.

It was an interesting look at what games, mobile devices, and social communities can create.

Building Things that Make New York City Easier

Dennis Crowley, best known for creating Dodgeball, led an exploration of the many mobile applications we New Yorkers are scrambling to create. He zipped through what seemed like 50 examples of apps that mix GPS location with an element of community in an attempt to make our lives on this cement island a little easier.

Here’s just one of the many New York-specific examples: On sunny days, New Yorkers seem to all end up craving one thing: a think shake from the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. So we each head off to the park only to discover that everyone else is there and the line is wrapped all the way around to the dog run by the R train entrance. Ugh. But those days are over! Some clever soul whipped up the Shakeshake Twitterbot, which allows people in line to update the rest of us on how long, or short, the line is. (Pst. Go now! At the time I’m writing this, the most recent post says: “hi no one in line. The data is correct!”)

And for you non-New Yorkers, he also discussed apps for all locations. Some were simple, like Umbrella Today? which texts you on mornings when you should carry your umbrella.

As with location-based marketing, these nifty apps face the same issues with privacy concerns and the hurdle of sleeping devices. But there are some new challenges as well because of the community aspect:

1. Each app faces a cold start, and most aren’t very useful until the crown shows up.
2. Early adopters often leave because they don’t want to wait it out for others to join the party.

In addition, Dennis mentioned another point that I hadn’t ever heard someone verbalize when it comes to mobile games: they’re not all that fun. He cited the example of Nike, which allows you to track the times and paths of your runs on their site and even challenge other people. He said it would be a lot more fun if he could snap a picture of the large graffiti mushroom that was recently painted on the Williamsburg Bridge, upload it, and then others could earn points by running over the mushroom, like in Super Mario Bros. I run the Brooklyn Bridge, but I’d happily take a detour to earn some extra points.

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1. Test Your Site on Mobile Device Simulators
2. Suddenly I’m Surrounded by Touch Screens!
3. The Web’s Future: Peering into the Crystal Ball
4. Brick and Mortar Stores Try to Simulate the Online Shopping Experience
5. Google gPhone