MobileMonday Brisbane

Despite some last-minute speaker withdrawals (unfortunately due to illnesses – we hope everyone is doing better now), Mobile Monday Brisbane held another successful event at Brisbane’s Exchange Hotel last night, filling the Corner Bar with interesting talks, discussions and networking.

QUT’s Dr Dian Tjondronegoro, head of the Mobile Devices Lab kicked off the meeting with a presentation on Branded Applications, the growth of smartphones and strategies that developers can employ to help their mobile applications demonstrate value.

Then two terrific local success stories – Mike Boyd of Cupstart shared his story of launching a mobile service from scratch in just a few months, followed by Chris Kettle’s insightful view of just what happens when your application (in this case the brilliant MyMovies application) makes it to the front page of a category on Apple’s AppStore. Mike’s enthusiasm and passion for good coffee was infectious as described the process of launching a new business from scratch, while Chris was able to describe the statistics behind finding yourself in a prominent position on the AppStore, and how it affects business outcomes. Well done to both of these Brisbane mobile entrepreneurs.

To close the evening, Mark White from Locatrix shed some light on a successful grant application under the new Commercialisation Australia funding programs, answering many questions from budding business builders in the audience.

Thanks again to our speakers, and also to our wonderful venue, the Exchange Hotel’s Corner Bar. Next month we will hold our first Demo Night – stay tuned for details and keep Monday April 18th free in your calendar!

A new record – over 50 attendees – was established at last night’s MoMo Brisbane event at the Exchange Hotel.

Guests were treated to three engaging speakers, from mobile developers who took the “Just Do It” theme to heart by talking about real-world, deployed mobile projects.

Continue reading “August a MoMoBNE Record!” »

MobileMonday Brisbane continues to gain momentum! A good-sized audience gathered at i.lab’s Toowong offices to network, have a few drinks, and check out a series of showcase presentations from some of Brisbane’s mobile innovators. The showcase format – 8 slides, 4 minutes – allowed a great mix of products, technologies and mobile media to be shared in an interactive environment.

Sam Collins from Locatrix

The first speaker was Barefoot Software’s Mike Hillsdon, who presented Barefoot’s on-device portal publishing solutions. Mike drew on Barefoot’s experience with major brands, showing interactive mobile catalogs and shopping carts they have created for companies such as Country Road & Mercedes Benz.

Next up was Sam Collins from Locatrix Communications. Sam presented Salamander, a Locatrix-developed Mobile Device Attribute Detection system. Salamander lets mobile developers access mobile handset attributes (screen size & resolution, browser type, supported J2ME etc) in real-time via a web service, allowing revision-controlled updates from the public WURFL data file. It also allows for application- or network-specific extension attributes, which helps your application and content to be optimized for each target handset.

Chris Kettle from My247

MobileMonday Brisbane co-founder Chris Kettle then presented My247’s forthcoming mobile and web projects, including a social network publishing and QRcode links for every venue to send mobile handset users click directly onto a venue’s mobile site. This approach helps both in usability – you can invite your friends to a specific venue to meet – and also in driving traffic to a venue’s mobile site for special offers, forthcoming event details etc.

Finally, SMS Fun’s Creative Director Matt Ascough  presented their free SMS mobile portal community. SMS Fun lets users send free SMS to their friends, recharge their pre-paid mobile accounts and much more.

Chris Kettle closed the formal part of the event by announcing a must-attend event: AIMIA Queensland is holding a “great debate” entitled Can your mobile phone save the planet? The event will be held at QPAC in Southbank from 4:30pm on Monday 18th May, the debate will be followed by networking drinks and then Mobile Monday’s May meeting. We’ll post more details here and at the various social networks in the next week – it promises to be a very entertaining evening.

A big thanks to our speakers and everyone who attended – it was agreed that the mobile community in Brisbane is certainly gaining momentum. Thanks too to i.lab for again providing the venue, and Locatrix Communications for sponsoring the evening’s refreshments. See you next month for another Mobile Monday!