Carnival of the Mobilists

There’s always a lot happening in mobile, but I try to keep the focus of Mobilista on Australian happenings as there are plenty of places to go for global mobile news.  If you’re keen to tap into some of these global blogs and discussions, you might want to check out the Carnival of the Mobilists,  a weekly wrap up of blog posts talking about mobile.   The Carnival has a global focus so the news isn’t always relevant in Australia, but it’s a great backgrounder.  Each week the Carnival is hosted by a different mobile blogger, so everyone benefits from the traffic & exposure.  The host researches and selects the best articles from the week, and provides a quick summary and links.   This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted by Caroline Lewko from wipJAM.

MMA Mobile Marketing Forum, Berlin

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is holding their Mobile Marketing Forum in Berlin this week. Aussie mobilist Oliver Palmer from Tigerspike is there and has been live tweeting from the event.   You can follow Oliver on Twitter to keep up with what’s happening, or use Twitter Search for the hashtag #mmf09 to see everybody’s tweets from the event.  Several of the presentations are already live on the MMF website and general feeling from the event is that it is a very exciting time for mobile marketing and advertising (OMG did someone say  THIS is the year of mobile??)

mNet to merge with Mercury Mobility

In more local news, Australian business mNet Corporation announced yesterday that they will be merging with mobile content & personalisation company Mercury Mobility. According to the press release, the combined business will produce ”a new generation of mobile expertise and capabilities, targeting global mobile carriers, media companies and content and brand owners”.  This article in Computerworld provides a good overview of the merger details, and you can follow mNet CEO Horden Wiltshire on Twitter.

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