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.
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4 FREE Tools for Do It Yourself Public Relations (PR)
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!
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Future of Web Design: crowdsourcing is community with a point
Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired, and author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business defines crowdsourcing as
the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
At the Future of Web Design Conference this week, Derek Powazek gave a great presentation about how to use and leverage “Crowdsourcing”.
Derek’s simple definition of crowdsourcing is ”community with a point”. In his presentation, he gave us information and tips on how to manage the Wisdom of Crowds and what makes crowdsourcing work. Here is an overview:
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Great Social Media Enterprise Tools to Investigate
Ok, true, it has been a few weeks since The New Marketing Summit (TNMS) in Foxboro MA, but I still wanted to share with you some of the great finds that I discovered there. The exhibitor companies that I met offer great social media tools that serve many marketing and community needs of the companies trying to reach their customer.
Whether it be the functionality, or tracking, or analyzing trends these tools do it. They might be a great fit for your company or for some of the clients that you work with.
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State of the Blogosphere 2008
Technorati has released the research findings from the 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report. This year, for the first time, they surveyed bloggers directly about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially.
One-third of bloggers are 25-34, and one in five are self employed. Three out of four U.S. bloggers are college graduates, and 42% have attended graduate school. More than half have a household income over $75,000. As a group, they are educated, affluent, and influential.
Read all of the research findings by following the links below:
- Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?
- Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
- Day 3: The How of Blogging
- Day 4: Blogging For Profit
- Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere
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