Conference Program

The topics and sessions listed below represent examples of what we’re planning to cover at this fall’s first Mobile Content & Marketing Expo. The inaugural conference will feature two tracks over two days:

1) MOBILE MEDIA TRACK:

TV shows, movie trailers, made-for-mobile programming, music, games, user-created content, social networking, pictures. Like in the heyday of the Internet, nary a day goes by without some new form of entertainment cropping up for mobile devices. The sessions will let you know what’s real, what’s hype and what the future holds. Some samples of the sessions you'll see:

TV on Mobile: Consumers have a variety of choices for mobile television content, but those options are severely limited by what their carrier offers. Some services offer “live” streams to match traditional television broadcasts. Others offer special mobile channels with snippets of network programming either streamed or on-demand. And still there are others that provide access to your home live or recorded TV content. Will any or all of these models succeed? What do consumers want and how does that compare with what the services/carriers/networks do are willing to provide?

Business models: Content providers, carriers and everyone else in the value chain want to make money on mobile content. Consumers see mobile as an extension of the Internet, where they wanted everything for free. This mindset is carrying over into the mobile world, but mobile content can be expensive to produce, especially with the need to adapt it to work on seemingly countless handset and network combinations. What’s the right business model: Pay-per-download? Subscription? Ad-based? Totally free? Is there room for all of them? Which are better? Which are winning? How will the competition play out?

Feature-length video on mobile: Fact or fiction? Do consumers really want to watch a movie, a sporting event or an hour-long TV drama on a two- or three-inch screen? Kids are willing to watch cartoons for hours on the screens built into the back of minivan seats or those portable DVD players that were popular a few years ago, so they might be a viable audience. But what would it take to sell the idea to adults?

Mobile Games: People of all ages are playing games on their phones. It's been one of the most popular mobile apps since before there were even color screens. What are they playing? Do they buy the games outright or pay a monthly subscription fee? Or, as companies such as Greystripe are betting, would they rather get them for free in exchange for sitting through a couple of ads? Do they want sophisticated, adventure games or casual games that can be played in a few minutes of downtime?

The Future of Mobile Music: The battle rages on - subscription vs a la carte; sideloading vs over-the-air. The major labels and most independents have come to see mobile as a worthwhile distribution avenue. Handset makers, record labels and other content providers are starting to go off-portal with their services, circumventing the carriers. What does the future hold?

Social Networking: It's considered a key application, particularly because of its popularity with young consumers. What’s the difference between ports of PC-based services like MySpace and Facebook and made-for-mobile services like Bluepulse and itsmy.com? Is one better than the other? Photo sharing, video sharing, location-based services. They all work to make the mobile phone the center of the consumer’s social scene. And LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network, has also gone mobile. Why is this so wildly popular?

2) MOBILE BUSINESS/MARKETING TRACK:

How to make sense of mobile advertising and marketing promotions, location-based services mobile commerce, the mobile device as a business tool and open access. Some samples of the sessions you'll see:

Mobile Marketing: Successes and pitfalls. Different approaches.

Location, location, location: Location-based services hold the promise of everything from keeping track of the kids and telling you which friends are nearby to helping find restaurants and offering discounts to local businesses. What’s the current state of these and other applications?

Mobile Advertising: A discussion of the different approaches to mobile advertising. What’s the right approach for your business? Should you work with an ad network or go it alone?

The Business Case for M-Commerce: In the late 1990s with the birth of e-commerce, retailers were disintermediated as brands started selling direct-to-consumer over the web and Internet-only upstarts like Amazon.com took the world by storm – and took over the retail space as we knew it. A decade later, mobile is setting up to be the new retail experience, one that’s always with you. It’s convenient, sometimes secure and perfect for those impulse buys when you have a few spare minutes. Rather than rebel against mobile commerce as they did with online shopping, retailers are starting to look at the mobile Internet as a way to take back the power they lost to the fixed Internet. Mobile can be a bridge between bricks-and-mortar and clicks-and-mortar.

Productivity Tools: The BlackBerry has always been a business tool and feature phones have been more for entertainment. Those lines are blurring thanks to a plethora of phones coming to market with QWERTY keyboards and touch-screens that make it easy to use business applications beyond e-mail and schedulers. There are even business apps for the iPhone. How are feature phones being used as business tools. Or are they?

Open Access: What does it really mean for content/application providers and end-users?