Mobile Portland

Meet Walmart Labs: Portland’s Latest Mobile Powerhouse

admin — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:10:56 +0000

The news that Walmart had acquired local iOS development agency Small Society surprised many people. Twitter was abuzz with questions like:

Walmart has an office in Portland?
Why did Walmart Labs decide to locate an office in Portland?
What is Walmart Labs and what does it do?
Why did Small Society decide to join Walmart Labs?

For those familiar with Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, these aren’t new questions. After many years working for companies like Mozilla and Palm and starting the popular Ajaxian blog, Ben and Dion finally struck out on their own and created a company called SetDirection.

The company operated in stealth mode making many curious what Ben and Dion where working on. But within a few months, Ben and Dion announced the SetDirection had been acquired by Walmart and that they were going to lead Walmart’s mobile efforts.

Mobile Portland Meeting

Date:

Monday, January 30, 2012 - 5:30pm

Mobile Marketing Panel

admin — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:25:49 +0000

Associated Event:

Mobile Marketing Panel

admin — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:27:39 +0000

Despite the massive growth in usage of mobile devices, mobile marketing is still a small percentage of the total marketing budgets of most companies. eMarketer found that Americans spend 8.1% of their media time on mobile devices, but mobile only represents 0.5% of the total advertising spend.

So mobile marketing remains under the radar, but not for long:

Google CEO Larry Page announced this month that mobile advertising revenue “has grown 2.5x in the last 12 months to a run rate of over $2.5 billion”.
Banner Ads on Mobile Devices See Higher CTR Than On PCs
10% of Search Ad Clicks From Mobile
Local Advertising Revenues In Mobile Will Grow To $2 Billion By 2014
82% Of Brands Plan To Boost Mobile Budgets Over Next 12 Months
Gartner projects mobile advertising to be $20B worldwide by the end of 2015

We’ve assembled a diverse panel to take a closer look at mobile marketing to answer questions about what works, what doesn’t, and what people should be thinking about as they start to ramp up their mobile marketing campaigns.

About the Speakers

Jeff Lorton, Co-Founder, LynkSnap

Jeff Lorton is co founder and managing partner at LynkSnap Mobile Marketing Solutions. Both a visual artist and a mobile marketing disciple, Jeff has adapted his love of design, iconography and symbolism to the new medium. Along the way his firm LynkSnap has forged closet ties with the US mobile barcode leader Scanlife/Scanbuy and the Canadian scan to pay developer Mobio ID.

Today, LynkSnap specializes in creative mobile marketing concepts that create unique and interactive brand experiences that combine conventional lifestyle print, outdoor advertising and digital media with advanced QR code functionality or what Jeff simply calls QR 2.0.

Recent local clients include the Portland Timbers and the Oregon Wine Board.

George Kurtyka, Head of Entertainment Partnerships and Business Development, Nokia

George is a seasoned wireless, online & digital media professional with extensive experience in partner management and business development on 4 continents.

George is responsible for global, regional and local content partnerships and cross platform, integrated marketing programs. Head up all Partnership and Business Development activity for the Entertainment vertical globally.

Sean Roy, Founder Matua Media, co-Founder DialogHealth

Sean is the founder and principal of Matua Media, a successful consulting firm who helps businesses of all sizes leverage technology to achieve their organizational goals. He develops mobile strategies, innovative products, and launch plans for companies in a wide range of industries including healthcare, automotive, advertising and analytics.

Sean has more than 12 years of experience leading marketing technology products and has implemented solutions for both entrepreneurs (such as OneCommand and author Robert Shemin) as well as internationally recognizable brands like Vodafone, BP, Jaguar, Burger King, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, and Saatchi & Saactchi. He also led the development of the award-winning, cloud-based mobile marketing platform of Run the Red, a leading mobile marketing company in Australasia.

Sean has recently co-founded Dialog Health, a company who specializes in mobile solutions for the Healthcare industries.

As much as Sean loves to geek out and talk about Mobile…it’s all lost when someone starts talking about Rugby, Wine or the St. Louis Cardinals…and not necessarily in that order.

Daniel Timothy Wood, Digital Strategy Director, tenfour

Daniel T Wood (@dtwood) serves as Digital Strategy Director at tenfour with the fortunate charter to guide the concept and creation of mobile and social programs for Toshiba, Hawaiian Airlines, Parallels, Air New Zealand, Cisco, Tektronix, Intel, Dell, IBM, Draftfcb, DSI, Best Buy, and Staples.

He's spent an equal number of years in software start-ups as advertising agencies and enjoys seeing the lines merge and business models blur.

Daniel finds that coffee shops are his creative sanctum and dry erase markers - his weapon of choice.

Mobile Marketing Panel

Monday, October 24th, 6pm
Doors open at 5:30
Urban Airship / Cloud Four
334 NW 11th Ave.
Portland, OR 97209
RSVP | Map

Thanks to our Sponsors

Thanks to azad, Urban Airship and Cloud Four for helping sponsor Mobile Portland this month.

Mobile Portland Meeting

Date:

Monday, October 24, 2011 - 6:00pm

Mobile Analytics: Who? What? When? WHERE?

admin — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:46:45 +0000

Associated Event:

Mobile Analytics: Who? What? When? WHERE?

No Mobile Portland Meeting for September 2011

grigs — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:54:56 +0000

There won’t be a Mobile Portland meeting this month. We’ll resume in October and are planning on having a social event in the November / December timeframe to close out the year.

I’m sorry we’re missing this month. I dropped the ball. I’m been swamped this month and lost track of time. By the time I realized how close the meeting was, we were unable to line up speakers and put on an event of the caliber we’ve come to expect.

Thank you and see you next month!

Jason

Awesome Mobile Web Tools and Frameworks

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:45:52 +0000

Associated Event:

Awesome Mobile Web Tools and Frameworks

Mobile Analytics In Depth Sessions

grigs — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:53:00 +0000

Do you have a mobile app or website? Then you need to make time on Monday afternoon for the Mobile Analytics In Depth sessions.

See we love getting great speakers, but we never seem to have enough time with them. Each panelist gets at most seven minutes at the beginning to talk about what their company and product does before the panel discussion begins.

And of course the panel discussion is going to be enlightening, but it is going to focus on the big picture of mobile analytics which may not be as helpful if you’re trying to figure out the nitty gritty details of how to track your mobile app or website.

Frankly, when you’ve got Flurry, Ground Truth and WebTrends in the house, how can you resist the opportunity to pick their brains more?

The sessions will start at 3 pm. Each speaker will have 30 minutes with some time after for questions. We’ll wrap up around 5 pm giving you time to grab a bite to eat or you can stick around and mingle with the other attendees and speakers. We’ll start up the normal meeting around 6 pm like usual.

So come by Mobile Portland early on Monday for this more intimate and in-depth look at Flurry, Ground Control, and WebTrends and stick around for the main event later in the evening.

Details

When: Monday, August 22nd
Mobile Analytics In Depth Sessions: 3 - 5 pm
Mobile Portland Meeting w/ Analytics Panel: 6 pm
Where: Urban Airship / Cloud Four
334 NW 11th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
RSVP: Please RSVP below for the afternoon sessions. Please RSVP separately for the evening Mobile Portland meeting.
Cost: Both events are free. Space in the afternoon session may be limited so sign up in advance!

Mobile Portland Meeting

Date:

Monday, August 22, 2011 - 3:00pm - 5:00pm

Mobile Analytics: Who? What? When? WHERE?

admin — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:53:00 +0000

This month we’re adding Mobile Analytics In Depth sessions in the afternoon before the normal meeting. These sessions are your chance to get the rundown from the panelists on how they help track app and site usage. Space is limited so signup today!

Answering questions like, “What percentage of people who hit the home page put something in their shopping cart?” is old hat.

But combine analytics with mobile and you get a new set of questions like, “What percentage of people in our store looked up product information on their phone? How can we correlate that behavior with sales?”

One of the heralded eight unique abilities of mobile is that “mobile has the most accurate audience measurement”. Yet most businesses and developers have yet to consider how to track mobile usage accurately, let alone how mobile might be able to provide better information.

Mobile analytics isn’t solely about the web either. Analytics for native applications can help game developers figure out what levels players are having the most trouble on and determine which promotions increase in-app purchases most.

On the highly competitive playing field of mobile, any small edge can make a difference.

We’re excited to have an expert panel this month to talk about Mobile Analytics. Frankly, you’re not going to find another opportunity to get such a diverse set of opinions on mobile analytics. You won’t want to miss it!

New this Month: In Depth Afternoon Sessions

We love getting great speakers, but we never seem to have enough time with them, especially when they are on a panel and is made worse when speakers travel a long way to present at our meeting.

So this month we’re trying something different. In addition to the normal evening meeting, each panelist will also have a session in the late afternoon where they can talk more in-depth about their products and how they can be used.

The sessions start at 3 pm and last thirty minutes each. Space is limited so sign up now to attend.

About the Panelists

Eric Rickson, Director of Mobile Analytics, WebTrends

As Director of Mobile Analytics at Webtrends, Eric Rickson is responsible for driving product strategy and evangelism for Webtrends measurement solutions for mobile. Most recently, Eric was responsible for emerging markets and vertical market measurement solutions at Webtrends with an emphasis on retail, CPG, Media and Financial Services.

Prior to Webtrends, Eric was a Strategic Consultant helping businesses understand and optimize the performance of their digital channels using various analytics solutions. Eric brings over 11 years of experience as a digital analytics professional working with brands such as Coca-cola, Wells Fargo, Visa, Microsoft, and Nike.

Michael “Luni” Libes, Founder & CTO, Ground Truth

Luni is a serial entrepreneur and mobile industry visionary who has participated in five start-ups, four of which he founded. Luni’s latest startup is Ground Truth, a mobile measurement company and division of Mobile Intelligence Solutions, where he serves as Chief Research Officer. Past companies include Medio Systems (mobile search and advertising), Mforma (mobile gaming and applications), 2WAY (enterprise collaboration systems), and Nimble (pen computing, PDAs, and early smartphones).

Isabelle Pain, Publisher Business Development Manager, Flurry

As Publisher Business Development Manager at Flurry, Isabelle Pain helps iOs and Android developers use mobile analytics to improve user retention and monetization. Recently, Isabelle has been focusing on evangelization of Analytics 3.0, the latest release in the Flurry analytics tool, which allows developers to create cohorts and funnels of users to identify their best audience.

Prior to joining Flurry, Isabelle founded the US office of Playsoft, a mobile development and porting house. As a Global Product Manager at Gameloft, she managed the Marketing launch and user retention strategies for a series of iOs and Android games. Isabelle brings a solid understanding of the importance of mobile analytics in building and monetization of an audience on mobile.

Erik Onnen, Director of Delivery and Architecture, Urban Airship — Moderator

Erik Onnen is the Director of Architecture and Delivery for Urban Airship where he works closely with the analytics and reporting platform that he helped author. He has over a decade of experience building high throughput, data-driven systems across a variety of industries including mobile.

Mobile Portland Meeting

Date:

Monday, August 22, 2011 - 6:00pm

Device lab update: Creating a non-profit, setting up the board, and moving forward

grigs — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:22:09 +0000

When we set out to create a device testing lab, I thought it would go faster than it has. The biggest challenge thus far has been creating a non-profit organization.

While I’ve started one company and been involved in others in the past, I have no experience with creating non-profits. Over the last few months, I’ve gotten a lot of conflicting direction on what to do, whether or not Mobile Portland will qualify as a tax exempt, and how to proceed.

These conflicting directions caused delays. My company, Cloud Four, is still a small business. We couldn’t afford to sit down with lawyers and have them take us from zero knowledge to non-profit incorporation. In order to make minimize costs to both Cloud Four and the future non-profit, I needed to learn a lot more about what it means to run a non-profit.

Thankfully, I got some great guidance from Audrey Eschright who has been involved in a few non-profit organizations. That guidance helped me get to the place where I understood the differences between things like 501(c)3, 501(c)6, organizations with members and those without.

You can look at it two ways. I finally had enough information to communicate efficiently with a lawyer. Or I had enough information to be dangerous.

The Initial Board of Directors

The other thing that I learned on my journey was that my vision for the board of the non-profit wasn’t optimal. I had originally thought of pulling from the group people who had been involved in helping meetings and just making a board. The composition was an afterthought.

Awesome Mobile Web Tools and Frameworks

admin — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:00:13 +0000

Interested in building apps using core web technology—HTML5, Javascript and CSS?

Then you don’t want to miss Mobile Portland this month as we take a look at three awesome tools and frameworks for mobile web development.

We’re pleased to welcome David Kaneda, Brian LeRoux and Patrick Mueller to Portland. They’ve graciously agreed to take time out from their busy OSCON schedules to talk to us about:

If you’re doing any mobile web development work, these are tools you need to know about. And given the number of apps that include embedded web views, it means nearly everyone is doing some sort of mobile web development.

Special OSCON Note

Mobile Portland is a free monthly meeting open to anyone. If you are in town for OSCON, please feel free to join us. All that we ask is that you RSVP so we know how many chairs we need.

You can take the MAX train for free from the convention center and then take a short walk (.4 mi) to the meeting location.

If you’re a Portlander who isn’t attending OSCON, you should! Not only is the largest open source conference, but there are mobile tracks with detailed presentations from Patrick Mueller and two of Brian LeRoux’s Nitobi colleagues.

About the Speakers

Brian LeRoux, Nitobi SPACELORD!1!!, PhoneGap Contributor, Mobile Web Enthusiast, Tolerant of JavaScript, Trucker Mouth

Brian LeRoux is the lead at Nitobi Software with the prestigious title SPACELORD!1!! He also has the dubious distinction of being the creator of wtfjs.com despite a twisted love for the language of the web. To make matters worse he actually has a non-breaking space tattoo.

Aside all these ridiculous distractions he is also responsible for leading the direction on the wildly popular PhoneGap software project that has the audacious goal to provide a web platform complete with device APIs for all smartphone operating systems.

David Kaneda, Creative Director, Sencha

David Kaneda has nine years of experience designing in a variety of fields, from architecture and fashion to education and software. Recently, David created jQTouch, a Javascript framework for iPhone development. David also maintains WebKitBits, a site about the browser engine in Safari, Google Chrome, and the iPhone.

David currently works as creative director at Sencha, and is responsible for the look and feel of their websites and software, including Sencha Touch.

Patrick Mueller, WebKit contributor, IBM

Patrick Mueller is a software developer at IBM in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina. He’s been working on web software and mobile software for a long time. Don’t ask how long, unless you want to hear about how great it was to use Smalltalk for web and mobile software development.

Thanks to our Sponsors

Thanks to azad and Urban Airship for helping sponsor Mobile Portland this month.

Mobile Portland Meeting

Date:

Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 6:00pm