The good news is that 48 people have signed up to the Facebook group for Mobile Advertising in Australia. That’s a great start and I plan to fulfil my part of the deal in the coming weeks, and share some of the recent mobile advertising activities in our industry.

My head is buzzing with future blog posts and I’ve made a commitment to keep them coming, short and sweet but far more often, as I do have a tendency to write an essay!

Watch this space in the next few days, and if you have any news to share, campaigns you’ve seen or run, products & services launched or companies doing interesting things, please drop me a line at emily@mobilist.com.au

Don’t forget there are many mobile people already ‘micro-blogging’ every day on twitter. My twitter name is emilyfreeman if you’re keen to join the conversation. If you’re already up there, why don’t you pop over to the Facebook group and add your twitter ID on the discussion board so the local community can find you (otherwise I may be forced to ‘out’ a few people on here for the benefit of all!)

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.