I’m really pleased to announce that AIMIA will be holding their Mobile Industry Group meeting in Melbourne this month. We miss out on a bit down here, and it’s great to have a chance to be involved in mobile industry activity without having to jump on a plane!

Any Melbournites with an interest in our local mobile industry, this is your chance to get involved. Non-members are welcome to come along and check things out, and I highly recommend it. The more enthusiastic, active participants we can encourage to join this kind of industry group, the better for us all.

The meeting will be held at Tress Cox offices in both Melbourne and Sydney on July 14^th (3pm – 5pm) with a video hook up to the Sydney folk.

Sydney:        Level 20, 135 King St, Sydney
Melbourne:    Level 9, 469 La Trobe St, Melbourne

MIG’s recent newsletter reminder included an overview of some of the projects the group has been working on lately – and (with apologies to Jennifer Wilson) I’ve reproduced large chunks of it below verbatim!

QR Codes

We’ve been talking about the need for education around QR codes. There is some interest from AMTA in considering stricter regulation of these (including the potential of mediating these through linking to the carrier for confirmation rather than directly to the content. MIG’s view is that we are opposed to mediation and want to retain direct access). We are setting up an education site (scanme.com.au) to provide information and access to a QR code reader for consumers.

MMA Council

We’ve also talked about whether we need a separate MMA Council in Australia outside of MIG, and our general view is that we strongly support stronger links with MMA (we already have good relations) but we really don’t want to fragment the industry so we’d rather MIG took this role.

Wholesale Data rates for advertisers

We talked about a few carrier related issues, including whether we can get agreement on wholesale data rates (for advertising, notably where delivered off-deck); how we can extend mCommerce (including WAP billing); and getting more GPS information (such as the location of a specific handset or a list of all the handsets in a particular area). As work on this is already being done by Comms Alliance, we’ve met with them and are talking to the Mobile Content and Services committee to see if we can coordinate agendas on this.

Intern Program

We have an Intern program, which may have already taken advantage of. There are several great candidates available at the moment and Julia will be able to update us and take any requests from companies who are interested in taking on an intern.

Mobile Newsletter & You Can On a Mobile

We also have the monthly AIMIA Mobile Newsletter (edited by Eduardo Chavez). Please send any new launched, articles, ideas or sites you like to Eduardo.

Additionally, we are revamping the education site (You Can on a Mobile) and will be listing sites that we like (self promotion is strongly encouraged) so do send through sites that you’ve built that you would like featured or talked about.

Mobile Ad Guidelines, Mobile Measurement & AMPLI

We launched the Mobile Advertising Guidelines earlier this month; have a new Mobile Traffic Measurement Index due out fairly soon (covering the quarter to March) and have just launched the data gather exercise which underpins the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle index Survey (AMPLIS) – which will be launched around September.

If there’s anything you’d like to raise for discussion at the next meeting, don’t hesitate to send agenda items through to MIG Chair, Jennifer Wilson

I’ll be helping to coordinate the meeting here in Melbourne on July 14^th, so feel free to get in touch with any questions.