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.

The AIMIA Mobile Industry Group is launching the updated AIMIA Mobile Advertising Guidelines on June 10, 2009 in Sydney. The launch event is from 9.30 – 12.00 on the 10th at the KPMG Auditorium and includes presentations on Mobile Advertising from Kelly Ajai (Communicator), Kerry Field (Mindshare), Jon Slade (NineMSN) and Angus Beattie (3 Mobile). The morning will be moderated by the inimitable Jennifer Wilson, Chair of the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group.

This will be a good chance to mix it with the local mobile advertising crew, and hear about mobile advertising from the experts. I’ll be there! More info and registration details from AIMIA.

It’s now time to up the stakes and create a new, more professional home on the web.   So welcome to the brand new Mobilista, full of all sorts of mobile industry goodness for Australia!

The centrepiece to this site is my blog about mobile advertising and marketing in Australia, but there’s more to it than that.  I hope to provide a valuable resource to the Australian mobile industry by consolidating links, articles and information that will help businesses work with the mobile channel in Australia.

The launch of this site marks phase 1 in a rebranding of my consulting business as well.   Over time the blog has grown to become core to the business, and so “Mobilist” is in the process of becoming “MobilistA“ as well. No more confusion!

Take a look around and please let me know what you think.  The site and content are a work in progress and I am very keen to hear suggestions on what else to include.

I’m also open to hearing from contributors who have an opinion about our local mobile industry.  If you already write about mobile stuff, please drop me a line with links to your content – I’d love to reference it.  If you’d like to write about something that is relevant to the audience of Mobilista, get in touch and I’d be happy to invite you to write a guest post here.  And finally comments on all posts are very welcome, whether you agree with the opinions or not.  It would be great to get some discussion going on some of the current issues facing us all.

The site also includes  information about the consulting, training, speaking and mobile advertising services that Mobilista offers.

Thanks to everyone I have met over the last few years, and for all your encouragement and support in making Mobilista a viable business.  Getting to this point would not have been possible without the awesomeness of groups like Mobile Monday, the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group and all of the passionate individuals that make up our  strong and vibrant mobile community down under.

I hope to see, speak, tweet, comment, facebook, email, chat or hear from you soon!

Emily

I plan to leave the ‘industry association’ stuff to the experts but I think we can all benefit from an ongoing conversation in a more informal way.

I’m the first to admit Mobilista is pretty low-tech and doesn’t offer the best tools to enable this kind of interaction. For this reason I suggest using a couple of the popular social networking tools to get things moving along.

Facebook

I’ve created a Facebook group called Mobile Advertising in Australia. I realise many of you (myself included) are a little ‘facebook fatigued’ but I don’t know another more widely used platform that provides the same ease of interaction and involvement, with simple tools for establishing a community. Consider it a starting point. Please drop in and make yourself known.

Twitter

I’ve found Twitter to be an invaluable tool when used as a business & information resource. I follow people in the mobile industry globally and locally, and get to hear first hand about the daily experiences they have working on mobile sites, campaigns & products. It would be great to connect with more local operators and start having conversations about our mobile advertising industry.

If you already use Twitter my username is emilyfreeman . If you don’t, why not give it a shot. ‘Follow’ me, and then drop me a line to introduce yourself. I’ll put you in touch with some other people I think are worth following.

From little things big things grow. First, lets start talking.

If we are to work together as a group for the benefit of all, we need to focus on creating Community, Conversation & Cooperation. That’s right “The 3Cs of ultimate enlightenment!”. Yes I just made them up.

Community: We can’t work together if we don’t know each other, so first we need to create a community.

• You can subscribe to the Mobilista blog by RSS or email. If you are interested in being a part of this community, please sign up and we’ll take it from there.

Conversation: We need to talk to each other about our successes, failures & opportunities so that all of us learn & move forwards faster.

• If you have something to share with the community post a reply on this blog, or email me and I’ll write about it.

Co-operation: We should help each other grow. Yes it’s true many of us are competing for the same clients, but with such a small industry, if we keep our customers in the dark about the industry as a whole, we stifle growth and limit the rewards for all of us.

• I am compiling a list of people & companies that ‘get’ mobile and come recommended. Anyone from freelance designers to full service digital agencies, consultants, application developers or copywriters. If you get mobile or you’ve worked with someone who does, drop me a line.

I realise there’s plenty more that can be done, and industry bodies will almost certainly be set up, standards written & memberships called for. Meanwhile, from little things, big things grow.