Mobile Miscellany - Monday 30 July 2012

Happy Olympic Monday Everyone

It's been a little while since our last update so quite a lot to cover today.

Mobile Marketing Live - 25% off and opportunity to win a free stand

As mentioned before, the lovely people at Mobile Marketing Magazine are holding Mobile Marketing Live on 1st and 2nd October at the Business Design Centre - check out the details at http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/live/ and use code MOMO25 for a 25% discount.

Not only that, but there's a competition for one lucky Mobile Monday London start-up a chance to exhibit free, which would normally cost £2,000. Find out moreand get entry details on the blog: http://www.mobilemonday.org.uk/2012/07/win-stand-at-mobile-marketing-live.html - but hurry! Closing date is tomorrow!

Vodafone Smart Accessibility Awards

We've held a couple of events in support of this. The first was a Monday Evening session on 11th June, on Inclusive and Accessible Design which yielded fascinating insights from people with different types of accessibility impairments - read about the event here: http://www.mobilemonday.org.uk/2012/06/event-round-up-11th-june-inclusive-and.html.

We also ran a workshop on 19th July (a Thursday) which dived into more detail on some of the accessibility issues raised on 11th June. If you missed it and happen to be in Dublin on 21 and 22 August (or make a special trip!) then there will be a much extended version of that workshop there. Read all about it at http://www.inventorium.org/events/vodafone-smart-accessibility-awards-2012-e200k-prize-fund/.

All this is useful of course in raising awareness of inclusive design issues. However, there's a specific purpose in mind too, and that is to promote the Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards 2012. Make sure to check out the 4 awards which share a prize pot of EUR 200,000. Entry is now open and closes on the 15th October. Information about the categories and entry criteria can be found at http://developer.vodafone.com/smartaccess2012/home/

Samsung Smart App Challenge

Also as previously mentioned, our lovely annual sponsors Samsung are currently running their Smart App Challenge 2012 which has 80 prizes in a prize pot of over $4M ... yes, you read that right, to be exact USD 4,080,000. It's already started, and closes on 30th Sept - so check it out at http://www.smartappchallenge.com/eng/main.do 

The Mobile Academy

As you may be aware, we are working with our friends over at UCL and putting together a new programme for "people who want to build successful mobile channels and products". The first of our 12 week programmes will now start on 18th September 2012 and will run to mid December.  Also, so that you can make as many sessions as possible, the programme will run onTuesdays and Thursdays from 6.30 to 9pm, with two consecutive sessions on each night. 

I'm delighted to tell you that friends ICT KTN are offering 12 fully funded places to The Mobile Academy worth over £300 each. Applying for an ICT KTN funded place is simple:  Make your case in 100 words, email it to info@ictktn.or.uk by 8th August and the winners will be announced by 14th August.  This offer is open to all ICT KTN members.  Membership is free, and if you are not already a member, you can join by visiting http://www.ictktn.org.uk.

More details about The Mobile Academy at http://themobileacademy.org.uk.

Campus Party Berlin

If you're looking for a major tech event to attend (10,000 attendees from across Europe) at the end of August then you should check out Campus Party in Berlin. It will take place at Tempelhof Airport from 21 to 26 August. According the the Campus Party people: "Campus Party is the biggest electronic entertainment event in the world. It's a weeklong, 24-hours-a-day technology festival for thousands of “campuseros” - hackers, developers, gamers and geeks. Equipped with computers and other toys, they camp on-site and immerse themselves in a truly unique environment."

Our friends over in MoMo Berlin are putting together a Europe wide MoMo extravaganza - they're still working on the details, but when ready they'll announce them here: http://www.mobile-monday.de/. More details about Campus Party at http://www.campus-party.eu/2012/index.html

Next Events

We're working on an event schedule which will resume in September. September 3 to be exact, when we will be kicking off the season with an Mobile Apps Marketing related event, supported by our generous annual sponsors, Samsung.

Looks like there may be as many as three events in September - a record for us! We'll keep you posted as things develop.

Enjoy the Olympics, have a great summer!

Jo

Win a stand at Mobile Marketing Live

Our friends at Mobile Marketing are offering one lucky Mobile Monday London start-up a chance to exhibit at this year’s most anticipated mobile marketing show; Mobile Marketing Live.  

Taking place on 1-2 October at the London Business Design Centre in Islington, you will get your own space in the Innovation Zone, including a 2 x 2 stand space, full promotional branding and two free tickets to the conference.  The total package is worth over £2,000.

To win the chance to exhibit at Mobile Marketing Live, make your case in no more than 200 words to david.murphy@mobilemarketingmagazine.com.  The competition closes on Tuesday 31 July and the winner will be announced on Monday 6 August in our newsletter.

For more information, check out www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/live and good luck!

Mobile Payments - More than just replacing payment cards...

It was a full house for Mobile Payments chaired by David Birch of Consult Hyperion and produced in association with ICT KTN (http://www.ictktn.org.uk) on 2nd July.  


Our panellists were: 
* Nathan Cushnie  - O2 Money, Head of Product Strategy & Development, mCommerce, Telefonica UK)
* Russell Sheffield - Innovations Director, Paythru
* Jennifer Payne - Marketing Manager, Ponti's Group Ltd
* Iain Herd - OEM & Platform Partnership Lead - Global Business Development at PayPal Mobile

David opened by talking about our need to have a narrative about what the future will be – if we can agree the future vision, then we can work backwards to create it. You can read his full opening here: http://www.chyp.com/media/blog-entry/story-time.  

So it became a night of questions, examples, experiences and wish lists:

The Questions
* Is it about the “Cashless Society” – a concept first referenced in the 1880s – will we ever be totally cashless?  Some people will always want to deal in cash.
* Are we solving a problem that doesn’t exist – credit cards are ubiquitous – so where is the ROI for retail to comply?
* For retail, doesn’t it need to be more about marketing, creating relationships with customers with some smattering of “social”? Retailers need a simple solution to be handed to them or they won’t bother.  As Ben from Masabi said - retailers are nervous of getting it wrong and really need one system that supports different types of payment.
* Are retail payments just as a utility a bit boring? Do they need to be consolidated with other financial things?
* What form will mobile payments take?  Is one mobile payment platform enough?
* How will people behave – will they have fewer or more banking relationships?
* Are we just waiting to clear the logjams before Apple tells us what to do?
* Surely, our narrative needs to look bigger than just replicating credit cards and buying a coffee?
* Is it really just a squabble about who owns the customer?
* What about risk? Are mobile payments more, or less secure?  If they are more secure, they should be cheaper to process – perhaps we should be rewarded for making a mobile payment?

Worldwide Cases
* Japan – research has shown 1/3 of users with the capability on their phone have used mobile payments in convenience stores (73%), vending machines (48%), transit (37%), fast food 34%. These electronic money systems are all prepaid and 51% of people load them from payment cards, while 39% load them in-store by handing over cash.
* US - research showed that only 15% of the customers said it was somewhat or very important to them to be able to pay with their smartphones – note that hardly anyone in the US has ever used mobile payment in a shop
* Turkey have 10-12 merchant accounts for each merchant — they choose which to use – note that in Turkey, terminals are provided by the banks for free so this is possible
* Kenya is a good user case, but not comparable to the UK.
* South Africa – banks and mobile operators have been working together for the past 15 years

Audience Experiences of purchasing on a phone

* SMS used to buy a local currency (Brixton pounds) – the context was of a strong community narrative of building sustainable local communities.  This was considered a big motivator with supporters happily using mobile as the fulfilment route. Some argued that this would be a key driver for adoption.
* Retail examples used included Starbucks app, NFC on iPhone at Starbucks, Pizza Express payment app that allows users to book a table and pay their bill and were all considered to be easy to use.
* Examples of where poor service and check out queues have resulted in using Amazon to buy direct – however, this example was fulfilled via website on PC and was also about “showrooming” a new term for price comparison via mobile whilst in a store.
* Do we even need to get our phone out of our pocket? Is it better just to walk around and have things credited to our account automatically?  Paypal talked about a system where the POS terminal knows you have walked in to the store and you can pay by walking up to the till and talking – obvious loyalty schemes are built in.
* PayPal Here and Square were also mentioned as offering innovative mobile payment solutions for both end consumers and merchants.

Wish Lists
* Can we have payments that automatically go through to my expenses account?  Many accounts departments won’t accept electronic receipts at the moment.
* Can the systems help me budget and track my spend?
* Can mobile payments be identifiable on my bank statements?
* Risk - mobile payments should be more secure, and therefore cheaper?
* Why can’t I take the phone round a supermarket, scan as I go and then pay by mobile? (02 wallet does include a bar-code scanner)
* German stores are asking for QR Codes in window displays so that people can still make purchases on a Sunday, when stores are closed.
* When will Facebook do it?
* I want the right to make an anonymous payment

In conclusion – something about the narrative has to take in a bigger story – one of the reasons why it is hard to come up with the story is that we are thinking about how can I take my card and stick it in my phone. There are other bigger social changes at work for example, around community that we should look to.

Thanks again to partner ICT KTN, our panellists and to David Birch for a lively debate.

You may also like to check out Adam Cohen-Rose’s blog: http://blog.cohen-rose.org/2012/07/momolondon-mobile-payments.html