Editor’s note: The webinar has ended and all links go to the product page.
As many of you know, I am very very picky about mobile sitebuilders. I get pitches to write about them all the time on mobienthusiast.mobi, and I have so far turned every one of them down because they are clunky and don’t work or make you use a subdomain or make you pay for the service every month without removing the company’s branding.
Yesterday I attended a webinar [edit: the webinar is over and now links to a product page with a how-to video from the webinar] hosted by my friends and mentors Jason Fladlien and Wilson Mattos. I know them personally, I have been coached by both of them and have paid a lot of money in travel fees and conference fees to see them speak because they are that good. Those of you who know me, know that I rarely attend conferences because I have small children at home and the investment had better be worth it for me to leave town.
The first half of the webinar is all about mobile and marketing and stats. The host, Jason Fladlien, gives slide after slide of marketing tips and techniques for why your clients should buy a true mobile site and not just one that has been modified for mobile with a WordPress plugin. I plan to use these strategies personally, as they make total sense to me.
The second part shows a mobile sitebuilder that has an emulator inside the WordPress dashboard, allows you to create icons on the fly without much editing, and has an interface that looks like the home page of an iPhone.
There will be a second webinar today at 12 noon Pacific Daylight time, and if you are interested in working with local businesses (or online businesses) without mobile sites, there are a lot of strategies here that you won’t want to miss. I would urge you to register for it even if it is the middle of the night in your part of the world, because they will email you a link to the replay.
I don’t remember everything I saw, but here are some of the things Jason touched on in the webinar and will likely cover again in the webinar today:
- Mobile marketing
- How to find clients
- How to build a mobile site (he does it live)
- Importance of keeping a site lightweight to load quickly and keep data costs low
- Why not to use video and how to do it if you insist on using it anyway
- How to make a header for a mobile site quickly and easily
- Where to find icons
- Q&A
I am sure I am forgetting something, but the overwhelming feeling I got looking at this mobile sitebuilder is that it has what I need and what I have been wanting personally for a long time. Let’s face it, it is very difficult work to make a mobile site work on a phone, and when you add tablets like the iPad into the mix, it’s very easy to throw your hands up in frustration and say, “ok, it’s just going to look like this.” Well, as a professional web designer, you can’t afford to do that when your reputation is on the line.
Disclosure: I am an affiliate for the product because I believe in the team, their customer support, and their refund policy. I only post products with affiliate links here if I have personally tested them or if I know the developer and have experienced their customer support and refund policy to be valid.
If you see this post after the webinar, contact me and let me know.
Mobile takes center stage at the 2010 South By Southwest Festival Interactive Track, which runs March 12 through March 16 at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, USA. The following is a partial list of seminars and training on the schedule.
What’s Hot in Mobile at SXSW
- Maps 2010: How iPad Impacts the LBS Market
- The UX of Mobile
- Touch + The Holy Grail of Delight
- Organizational Pitfalls on the Path to Multichannel Experience
- Time + Social + Location. What’s Next In Mobile Experiences?
- Mobile – the Great Channel Equalizer
- iPad: New Opportunities for Content Creators
- The Real Mobile Scoop – Agency, Manufacturer, and Carrier
- Web Evolution: The Rise of Mobile, APIs and Runtimes
- Is App-vertising the Answer
- Augmenting Your Brain With Android
- Google Hackathon: Mobile Maps, App Engine, Chrome Extensions
- What If Your Phone Had Five Senses?
- Cross Device Accessibility: Is This For Real?
- Building Mobile Games on the Windows Phone Platform
- Mobile Computing and it’s Contribution to Technology’s Exponential Growth
- The Final (Mobile) Frontier: Battery Life in Africa
- How We Built the SXSW Mobile App
- Convergence 2010: Ten Cool Things That Could Happen This Year
- Mobile Development with the Flash Platform: iPhone and More
- Augmented Reality – Gimmicky Trend or Market-Ready Technology?
- Pass it Back! Kid Apps on Grown-up Devices
- Location Beyond iPhone: Locating 100+M Phones
- Location-Based Marketing and Advertising: Targeting the Mobile Consumer
- Mobile Content is Social
- Mobile Advertising in 2010: How to Pay the Bills
- QR Codes and 2D Barcodes: Bridging Physical & Digital
- Mobile Commerce
- Mapping and Geolocation: Turnkey Approaches You Need to Know
The full SXSW Mobile schedule (may not be viewable on some phones) includes information on presenters and a summary of what each session will cover.
While you’re there, check out the updated SXSW.mobi site for mobile access to the South by Southwest Festival.
Microsoft evangelists are getting more involved with the mobile developer community by organizing the first Windows Mobile Developer Camp event. It’s scheduled for August 19 in Redmond, Washington at the Microsoft Campus. WinMoDevCamp is a series of upcoming free, not-for-profit gatherings to develop applications for the upcoming release of the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 O/S. The event is currently being planned in seven cities around the world.
This event is not directly associated with Microsoft, however, the organizers say they are getting support from them in this effort, and it is being hosted at the Microsoft campus. WinMoDevCamp is driven by private individuals that are simply interested in developing applications on and growing the community around the new Microsoft Windows 6.5 platform. Giovanni Gallucci and Jennifer Conley are the organizers of WinMoDevCamp.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time at one of the Microsoft regional offices learning about product launches and other training. If they are sending trainers, trust me, you’ll want to be there. Hey, Giovanni and Jennifer — consider this my request for an invitation to a San Diego MoDevCamp if that city is chosen (it hasn’t been yet), which is home to Qualcomm and a substantial Nokia facility.
According to organizer Giovanni Gallucci, Microsoft is
“sending members from the Windows Mobile Developer Team to each event. Telligent has stepped up to provide the social platform that we will use to host our new community and, FireHost is providing hosting on the site that we are currently building. We already have over 7 cities confirmed for the event with the expectation of having several cities participating in the event itself via live streaming from their physical locations. We will host separate events in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Austin, London, Singapore, and Toronto. The first event will be in Seattle on August 19, 2009. With three weeks until the event, we are almost “sold out” for the first event.
The soon-to-be-released MoDevCamp website will have facilities for local events to organize as well.
MoDevCamp Dates
- Seattle on 8/19
Venue: Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington in the Cascade Auditorium
- Dates will soon be
announced for the following additional locations: Austin, London, New York, San
Francisco, Toronto, and Singapore.
- Microsoft’s MoDevCamp organizers encourage mobile developers to host their own events on the same dates.
Register for Microsoft MoDevCamp
Registration: Eventbright will be utilized so that registrations are broken down by
city. Contact the MoDevCamp coordinators (giovanni [at] gallucci.net) to set up your city for an event so they can provide you with the necessary registration pages and subdomain on the (not-yet-live) website.
The events are inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, and MacHack, and the original
iPhoneDevCamp to develop applications (local and web based) for mobile devices that
run the Windows Mobile 6.5 Operating System.
According to Microsoft, attendees will include mobile developers, web developers, .Net Developers, UI designers, and testers, all working together. Development projects will include both
solo and team efforts. While some attendees will wish to work solo during the event, the MoDevCamp coordinators encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams. All attendees should be prepared to work on a development project during the event.
Microsoft MoDevCamp Attendees will:
- Create new applications for the Windows Mobile Platform.
- Meet and work side-by-side with team members from the Microsoft Mobile
Developer Experience team.
- Migrate existing mobile applications from the iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre
to the Windows Mobile Platform.
-
Create applications to support Windows Enterprise Applications.
- Test and optimize applications for Windows Mobile 6.5.
This blog entry is part of Carnival of the Mobilists (computer link), a weekly roundup of mobile blog posts.
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