How to innovate in a disruptive mobile market from an incumbent Ecommerce position: lessons for both startups and established enterprises.

Orbitz first launched a mobile site in the Spring of 2007 and continued the next few years focusing on providing timely and helpful information for travelers. Fast-forward to 2010, it brought the ability to book travel (flights, hotels, and car rentals) through its mobile website and followed up with launches of apps for iPhone/Android later that year, as well as an app for iPad in July 2011. It also launched similar offerings globally under different brands. Throughout this time, the company has dealt with issues surrounding how to successfully tap the opportunity of this emerging growth channel while maintaining a competitive footing in its current business: online travel.

Do you have questions on whether to execute with in-house development resources or outsourcing partners? How to find/keep mobile talent as well as how to organize them to develop and launch new products? How to build features that span online and mobile channels? How to square a mobile channel within an online brand? Using his 5+ years of experience at Orbitz, Chris Brown, VP of Product Strategy will discuss the strategies and tactics that large, consumer-facing Ecommerce enterprises can take in order to craft and deliver successful mobile websites and applications. More Details and Registration Here.

Join MoMo Chicago & Nokia for a night of app demos, tech talk, open bar & appetizers

Our friends from Nokia are hosting this networking mixer and app demo at the classy Bin 36!  We will have the opportunity to meet with Dave Bost -Developer Evangelist, from Microsoft who will be doing a presentation on Mango App Development and a Nokia representative talking about upcoming programs and training.

When: Monday, August 29, 2011, 6:00 PM
Where: Bin 36 - 339 N Dearborn St, Chicago, IL
What:  Talk with Nokia and Microsoft reps, see demos, network, open bar & appetizers

Advance Registration Here – If you would like to demo an app, please contact Sheena Chandok

Apple Worldwide Developer Conference Roundup

Daniel Slowinski of the Nerdery (http://www.nerdery.com) will be providing the details on iOS 5 and the new launches from WWDC ‘11.

Monday, June 20, 2011 – 6:00 PM

NAVTEQ – 425 West Randolph Street Chicago, IL

About Daniel Slowinski

I graduated from the University of Illinois in 2009 with a BS in Computer Engineering. I started my career with Motorola in Schaumburg working on proof-of-concept and low-volume specialty products for the government and private industry. After taking up an interest in iOS development, I left Motorola and joined the Nerdery to fulfill a growing desire to develop mobile applications. I have attended WWDC in 2006 and 2007 and have been an avid Mac fanboy since my first iMac in 2001. I have an interest in all of the latest technologies (but not an expert in all of them) and have as much a passion for software as I do for hardware.

We will bring together several experts in leveraging the cloud in mobile app development for a panel discussion on Monday, March 21, 2011 at 6:00 PM. We’ve just announced the panel for this discussion please Register Here.

Moderator

Mark Wilson – Philanthroper & Gizmodo

Mark Wilson is best known for his work at Gizmodo, where he was a Reviews Editor and still contributes weekly articles at a friendly alumni capacity. He’s also done his rounds in the freelance world, writing for sites like Kotaku, PopMech and Esquire. What pulled him away from the glitz and glamor of professional blogging? He’s started Philanthroper, a daily deal site for nonprofits.

The Panel

Chris Balcer – Slalom Consulting

Chris Balcer is a Solution Architect at Slalom Consulting focused on cloud computing, mobility and the Microsoft .NET technology stack. Over 12 plus years of technology work, Chris has implemented solutions ranging from console applications with AS/400 integration and VB6 to most recently mobility and cloud computing with Windows Azure and Android 2.1

Mark Ferry – Roundarch

Mark Ferry, Director of Technology at Roundarch a digital  strategy and solutions firm.  Mark has a background in physics and a long history of software development and architecture across all industries.  Mark is the creator of a mobile framework known as EchoServ, which enables developers to use sound to execute commands between devices.

Tom Gersic – Model Metrics

Tom’s role as Senior Technical Architect involves technical design and oversight of projects for Model Metrics’ clients, he has spent over 10 years architecting and developing solutions with a wide variety of languages and platforms. His experience with multiple cloud and mobile technologies has made him a valuable asset on a wide variety of projects at Model Metrics, and he has consistently delivered successful solutions to clients both large an small.

Tom’s work has been deployed to rapidly growing and innovative companies such as Groupon and has been scaled across large organizations such as Abbott Labs, ADP, Allergan, Medtronic, Walgreens, and Zimmer, who rely on applications he designed and built for enterprise-level deployment. The development effort he led with Zimmer resulted in the largest enterprise iPad deployment ever.

Jeff Judge – Signal

Jeff loves technology and using it to solve problems big and small. As co-founder and CEO, Jeff is responsible for ensuring that the company has what it needs to be successful and executing against it’s mission of providing simplified solutions for making every digital interaction between marketer and consumer genuine and compelling.

Prior to Signal, Jeff worked for Orbitz Worldwide where he led the engineering team responsible for vacation packaging, the company’s most profitable product line. Prior to Orbitz, Jeff worked for technology consulting firms Diamond Management & Technology Consultants and Cap Gemini.

Jonathan Ozeran – Lextech

Jonathan currently leads client strategy and mobile product design for Lextech Global Services, an enterprise mobile application development group that has built some of the most advanced iOS apps in the world. Apple asks Lextech to help brief government agencies and enterprises on the power of the iOS platform to help open their eyes to mobile possibilities.

Before coming to Lextech, Jonathan established and led the mobile applications unit for the Tribune Company within its interactive division. While at Tribune, he assembled a staff of mobile-focused engineers and managed the design and development of numerous mobile applications including the Los Angeles Times for iPhone, Chicago Tribune for iPhone as well as an Android application for the Chicago Blackhawks. .

Date: Tuesday, Feb 22, 2011 - 6:00pm

Location: Morning Star - 22 West Washington St, Chicago, IL

Register:  http://www.meetup.com/momo-chicago/events/16179791/

 

Selling mobile applications is far more difficult than selling SaaS applications.  In December of 2010, the iPhone App Store averaged 627 new apps every day.  The Android Market averaged 243.  Long gone are the days of throwing an app up into an app store and watching the dollars flow.

 

We explore many different marketing channels you can use to market your app.  We will explore the pros and cons of each channel.  Then we will look at how to instrument your mobile business so you can make data driven decisions.  Learn how to create ways of lookng at your prospective customer’s actions to inform how you market to them.  Finally, determine how your customers are using the product to drive future sales.

 

About Bernhard Kappe

 

Bernhard Kappe is the founder and CEO of Pathfinder Development, which helps companies rapidly launch products. In this role, Bernhard works with startups and existing companies to create effective business models and product-market fit, position themselves in the market, create outstanding product design, utilize Agile development to build great products, and manage customer acquisition and
retention.

As a veteran entrepreneur, Bernhard strives to make Chicago a technology epicenter by leading the Chicago Lean Startup Circle and the Chicago Product Management Association, organizer in the Lean Startup Machine and events such as this one, and mentoring startups to help them be successful.

About Todd Wyder

 

Todd Wyder is Chief Product Officer at Pathfinder Development and has been involved in product management, marketing and engineering for over 25 years. Todd has worked on products for GE, Axciom, YesMail, OMRON Electronics, Appointments 1,2,3, Mitsubishi, Fanuc, AT&T, AHA! Interactive, Schoolnet, OASIS, Calendars.com, CatapultMySales, Coe Truman and many others.

To register:  http://www.meetup.com/momo-chicago/events/16179791/

On January 24, 2011, Niti Vaish of Slalom Consulting delivered a very insightful discussion of how to go about creating an integrated multi-channel strategy. Niti discussed the maturity evolution that takes a brand from the place where they say to a consultant "I want an iPhone app" to the level where they have products and processes to extend their brand and extract positive ROI from those sources. Multi channel Strategy MoMoChicago January 24, 2011 Highlights from the discussion

• Multi-channel must be integrated, holistic & actionable.
  • This means, the strategist must look at the dependencies between mobile, social and digital channels.
  • Need a 360 degree view of the consumer
• Clients who ask "Can you build me an iphone application?" are missing the point
• "Let's start a twitter account & a fb page." are free steps that can be taken, but don't deliver any value.
• It's easy to understand why they want to be in this space
  • 130 million iDevices
  • 300,000 iphone apps (in last year??)
  • > 10 billion downloads from app store
  • In terms of market share, iPhone is far beyond Android and Blackberry
  • Nielsen projects smartphone = 50% penetration
  • 650 million facebook users
  • 200 million twitter users

Nevertheless, creating an iPhone app without understanding an integrated strategy, with clear objectives is a waste. IMC Strategy

• Mobile channel
  • 2008 didn't bring year of mobile
  • 2009 brought online site to mobile, without leveraging device level info
  • Most companies simply took online presence and transferred to the mobile presence.
• Social Channel
  • Brands look at the channels in isolation without looking at the dependencies between the channels
• Digital channel
  • BI & Web Analytics
    • Organizations must define the objectives of the channel
    • Must have processes in place to handle feedback
    • Else, they will miss out on the ROI for focusing on these channels
  • Extracting Insights
    • To do this, they must understand their customers. Who are they? What segments do they fall into?
    • Most of this data sits in a database, but in the social channel, it is unstructured - twitter feed, comments, etc. how do you leverage this for product innovation or process improvement?
  • Information Architecture & Search
    • Is the site well defined? Is IA well defined with easy to find information?
    • Are users pulled out of context?
    • Do you provide filter and sort functionality to drill down to the most important nuggets?
    • Keep user experience consistent with popups, hover data. This all goes back to design. How well is it defined?
  • Content Management
    • How well is your CMS integrated with your website?
    • Your content should created once and re-purposed across all your channels.
    • You do not want your content for the mobile site created specifically for that channel.
    • You want to re-purpose content and business rules, and the biggest bang for the buck.
    Developing a Multi-Channel Strategy
    • Listen to and engage with my customers
    • HD did a fantastic job with the goal of building a community around a cause of natural disaster
    • not pushing product, but showing another face
    • JetBlue is just promoting distressed inventory on twitter
    • Best Buy's customer service supports through a whole network
  • Start to leverage that unstructured data in order to draw insights in order to make product improvements and process enhancements?
    • The conversation is happening - you might as well get involved
    • Be honest and take negativity head on
    • Forrester's has coined a term of "multi-dimensional customer engagement" as this integrated multi-channel strategy. the "customer journey".
Firms must a cultural shift to adopt social media and goals to be well defined
• Aligning these goals within the organization and human resources against those goals is key.
  • One big problem is that these teams are split.
  • What's under IT, marketing, or product facing? Social is typically under PR? Digital is under PR.
  • Important to align the cross functional teams. But it needs to be staffed by people who understand dependencies across the groups.
  • Channel strategist should be a cross-functional role

midVentures Technology Partners is putting on a series of events called DESIGN + DEVELOP for the Chicago tech community. Their next event is focusing on mobile: "Introduction to iPhone & Android Apps" and is targeted to designers, developers and business people. The event is being held at the SYNC Technology Center in Greektown on Thursday, January 20 from 3:30 - 9:00 pm. Tickets are $25 - 50.

For more information or to register, go to: http://mvdesigndevelopjan2011.eventbrite.com