Mobile Portland

August's Mobile Portland meeting was a smashing success. We counted 96 people in attendance. (Is that close enough to call it 100?) The panelists were excellent and the audience was engaged and asked great questions.

Corey Pressman and Joe Morelock have posted their slides and various materials. Thanks to them and Trina Marmarelli for making Mobile Portland a wonderful and informative evening.

A special thanks to Thor Prichard who organized the panel and was an exceptional moderator. Thor was the driving force behind making this panel happen.

Corey's Slides

Joe's Slides and Information

I'm copying and pasting the following directly from Joe's email.

Thanks again for hosting and inviting me into your venue last night. I really enjoyed engaging with your crowd. Here is a link to the data slides and to the wiki that hosts all of our stuff about the projects:

• Main iPod touch/iPad wiki page
• Teacher projects
• Data slides and such from which I culled last night's slides
• Our 3rd grade project resources and stories, starting with the project launch tomorrow
• And this year's Innovation Grant awards, with several more uses of iPod touch and iPad in the classroom

Mobile phones in our schools are already controversial. Many fear distracted teenagers texting their friends instead of paying attention to their teachers.

Others educators are looking at mobile devices differently. George Fox University has offered incoming students the option of a traditional laptop or an iPad. Canby School district is currently implementing a 1:1 iPod touch mobility program for all Canby 3rd Grade students.

At Mobile Portland this month we're pleased to have a prestigious panel of educators who are on the cutting edge of using mobile technology in the classroom. The panelists will cover topics like:

• What role do mobile devices have in the classroom?
• When are mobile phones useful and when are they distracting?
• Do mobile devices need to be issued by the school or are there ways to take advantage of devices that students own?
• What are the challenges to effectively using mobile devices in education?

Join us for a spirited and engaging conversation on how mobile technology is changing curriculum and classrooms.

About the Panelists

Russ DeVore, George Fox University

Russ works as the Director of Academic Computing at George Fox University. He leads a team of seven full-time employees and around 35 part-time student employees in the I.T. Department. Russ has lead several programs promoting technology use in higher education. One very successful program is Computers Across the Curriculum . This program's goal is to place a laptop computer into the hands of every new undergraduate student coming to George Fox University.

George Fox University was the first university to offer incoming students the choice of an iPad instead of a more traditional laptop for this coming school year.

Trina Marmarelli, Reed College

Trina Marmarelli is an instructional technologist at Reed College. She worked closely with students and faculty to evaluate the academic potential of the Kindle DX last fall and is currently gearing up for an iPad pilot. Trina's background is in literary studies, so she spends a lot of time thinking about how mobile devices--and electronic texts in general--affect our interactions with and expectations of the printed word. She also enjoys running, tiling, and bringing her dog to work.

Joe Morelock, Canby School District

Joe Morelock is the Director of Technology and Innovation for the Canby School District, serving approximately 5,000 K-12 students. He is a former high school Spanish teacher, Librarian and assessment coordinator. Joe currently leads the district’s innovative technology projects.

Joe is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and has developed and delivered mobile content and training on the use of the iPod for Argentina’s Ministry of Education. He regularly consults with state departments of education, as well as local school districts in the U.S. and Canada, and has presented to and worked with educators at conferences and events on three continents. He also co-authored reading and language acquisition, iPod touch, and podcasting professional development courses for Apple, Inc. Joe is currently implementing a 1:1 iPod touch mobility program for all Canby 3rd Grade students.

Corey Pressmen, Exprima Media

Corey taught Anthropology for 12 years before deciding to enter the software universe. As a professional educator, Corey was always interested in, yet disappointed with, the educational technology that textbook publisher sales reps were peddling. Convinced that more could be done to create effective computer-based educational experiences, Corey started Exprima Media, a software company dedicated to creating robust and engaging educational experiences for the web and native mobile platforms. Exprima is currently working with Pearson Education, W.W. Norton, John Wiley & Sons, and McGraw Hill to build the future of educational media.

Thor Prichard, Clarity Innovations — Panel Moderator

Thor Prichard is President & CEO of Clarity Innovations, a professional services firm that specializes in helping corporations and learning organizations improve the practice and process of teaching and learning with technology. Recent clients include Intel Education, Math Learning Center, Bellingham Schools, ScholarCentric, and Learning.com.

Thor’s focus is on finding promising technologies that match the needs of the education industry 3-5 years from now. Over the last two decades, he’s worn many hats on both sides of the equation, including as executive director of a regional consortium in charge of software licensing for schools. Thor holds a BA in cognitive psychology from Reed College in Oregon.

Mobile Technology in Education

Monday, August 23th, 6 pm
Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE)
1227 NW Davis St
Portland, Oregon 97209
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Photo Credit

Photo of iPad in classroom graciously provided by Motion Blur Studios. Used under Creative Commons license.

With HP's recent purchase of Palm, not only has Palm been revitalized, but the Pacific Northwest has gained new connections to Palm. HP has campus in Vancouver, WA. And one of Palm's own developer advocates, Joshua Marinacci, lives in Eugene.

Joshua is in town to attend OSCON and will be joining us to talk about Palm's webOS and mobile web technology. Here is a brief description of what Joshua will be talking about:

The core of the great smartphones by Palm Inc. is a brand new operating system called webOS. Built from pieces of the web, webOS is designed with the core features of the web in mind: sharing, linking, and easily developing applications with open standards like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. In this session you'll learn an overview of webOS, the devices which run it, and an introduction to quickly programming webOS apps with web standards.

In addition, Joshua will touch on where Palm is headed and what opportunities there are for applications and services on webOS devices.

About Joshua Marinacci

Josh Marinacci is a blogger and co-author of Swing Hacks for O’Reilly. He is currently a Developer Advocate for the webOS at Palm, Inc. He previously worked on JavaFX, Swing, NetBeans, and client lead for the Java Store at Sun Microsystems.

Josh lives in Eugene, Oregon and is passionate about open source technology & great user interfaces. He uses a Palm Pre, MacBook Pro, and Nikon D50 SLR to spread understanding of great design in software.

Palm webOS: A mobile operating system built on the web

Monday, July 26th, 6 pm
Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE)
1227 NW Davis St
Portland, Oregon 97209
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John Battelle recently wrote, "Mobile. It's on everyone's lips, but no one knows what the hell to do about it." You don't have to look very far to find examples that prove his point.

Over the last year, Jason Grigsby has been collecting examples of where companies are making mistakes when it comes to their mobile strategies and desperately seeking examples of those who get it.

In this presentation, Jason will talk about the DOs and DONTs of mobile strategy.

Learn from both the outstanding success and cringe-worthy failures of others as you begin to formulate your plans for navigating the mobile landscape.

Finally, we’ll look at methods for evaluating mobile strategies based on demographics, mobile context, and the unique characteristics of mobile devices.

About Jason

Jason Grigsby was one of the project leads on the Obama iPhone Application and helped design the user inferface for the Wall Street Journal’s Blackberry application. He founded and organizes Mobile Portland, a local mobile group.

Jason is a co-founder of Cloud Four, a small start-up focused on mobile and web development. He blogs at http://CloudFour.com/blog and provides a frequent updates about mobile as @grigs on Twitter.

Get Me a Mobile Strategy or You're Fired!

Monday, June 25th, 6 pm
Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE)
1227 NW Davis St
Portland, Oregon 97209
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We all know Flash isn't going to be allowed on the iPhone. Adobe has moved on and still has big plans for Flash and AIR on mobile devices starting with Android.

The next version of Android will ship with Flash support and early previews of the technology, as shown in the video below, look great. Adobe AIR is also ready to go as a platform for Android development.

Come hear, and see demos, about the latest technology Adobe's provides for developing your applications targeted for devices.

The upcoming Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 runtime releases provide new features geared specifically for non-PC devices. Adobe's technologies provide adaptable code development for ease of deploying your application to various devices.

Speaker Bio

Renaun Erickson

Renaun Erickson is a Flash Platform Evangelist at Adobe Systems. Renaun has a wide range of experience with the Flash Platform. Renaun has worked on projects using technologies including ActionScript, Flex, AIR, PHP, ColdFusion, video, audio, logging, SIP/VoIP, casual games, and mobile.

Renaun can be found at his blog http://renaun.com/blog and at twitter @renaun. When he's not programming, Renaun enjoys playing games, the outdoors, archeology, driving a Jeep, and spending time with his family.

Adobe's Plans for Devices - Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0

Monday, May 24th, 6 pm
Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE)
1227 NW Davis St
Portland, Oregon 97209
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Before the iPad launched, we convened a panel of experts to help examine what the iPad would mean for businesses, entrepreneurs and developers. The panel was a hit and the conversation continued into the evening.

By popular demand, we're bringing James Keller, one of the panelists, back to talk about what we got right and what we got wrong when it comes to the iPad. Accompanying James will be Darin Richardson from Refresh Media.

Together, they will focus on the most compelling and interesting aspect of the iPad: the way we interact with the device.

We'll examine how the iPad's user interface design works, what we've learned from Apple's own applications, and how other applications are taking advantage of the form factor.

About James and Darin

James Keller, Small Society

James Keller is a digital communications strategist and user experience evangelist at Small Society, a small agency based in Portland with a passion for the iPhone™ platform, dedicated to helping organizations bring great ideas to life. Before joining the Small Society team, James was at Wieden+Kennedy helping the Portland office align client business goals and brand experiences with emerging technologies.

Leveraging her extensive knowledge of interaction design, business analysis, campaign analytics, and integrated marketing communications, she has led multiple teams in creating efficient and effective online strategies for top brands such as Coca-Cola, NIKE, Procter & Gamble, Levi’s, LAIKA Studio, Zipcar, and the MTV Networks.

She can frequently be seen at conferences speaking on topics such as information architecture, social media, and convergent culture.

Darin Richardson, Refresh Media

Darin Richardson is a partner in Refresh Media, a small studio that focuses marrying beautiful interface design with smart technology. He concentrates on information architecture, interaction design, and front-end coding to make his clients' projects shine. Before Refresh, Darin earned his chops at software and design firms in California.

Darin is obsessive about the details, refrains from talking endlessly about CSS 3 properties (unless you ask), and always enjoys a good hike in the Cascades armed with his trusty Nikon D90.

iPad Design and User Experience

Monday, April 26th, 6 pm
Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE)
1227 NW Davis St
Portland, Oregon 97209
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We're moving to a new location for this month's meeting. See below for details.

Portland's own Urban Airship recently celebrated some rather big milestones for a company that was started less than a year ago:

• Announced that they have delivered over 100 million push notifications
• Expanded support for push notifications to Android and Blackberry
• Secured $1.1 million in venture capital funding
• Released a new, innovative product, AirMail, at CTIA

Co-founder Scott Kveton will come to Mobile Portland to talk about what Urban Airship is doing and the challenges they've faced. In particular, Scott will talk about:

• Building a company selling pickaxes during a gold rush.
• The challenges of building a cross platform service for mobile.
• How Urban Airship customers are using push notification and in app purchases to increase app loyalty and revenue.
• Why Urban Airship built AirMail, how they hope it helps customers, and what they hope to learn about the app usage as their customers start using the product.

About Scott

Scott brings 12 years of experience building technology, developing business strategy and leading engineering teams with companies like Amazon.com, Rulespace, JanRain and now Urban Airship. Urban Airship builds messaging and content delivery solutions for mobile publishers. Scott was the co-founder of the Open Source Lab helping open source projects like Mozilla, Linux, Apache, Drupal grow into mainstream usage. Scott was an active supporter of open web standards having co-founded the OpenID and Open Web Foundations.

Urban Airship: Pickaxes, Push Notifications, and Air Mail

Monday, March 29th, 6 pm
Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE)
1227 NW Davis St
Portland, Oregon 97209
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We had a packed house at February's meeting to learn about the iPad and what opportunities it presents. Great presenters and discussion.

Jer Warren wrote up a great summary of the event that's worth a read. Seth Shikora posted a video of the event

(Note: the video is having some issues in some browsers. It works for me in Firefox, but not Safari. Seth is going to post a new version soon.)

Thanks to all of the speakers for making the meeting one of the best we've had. Their presentations are below.

Less than a month has passed since Apple unveiled the iPad and few technology products have spurred more divergent opinions and conversations than this unassuming tablet computer.

Some see the iPad as a tremendous new opportunity for businesses. Others believe the device is doomed to fail. Is it the future of computer human interaction? Or will people find the system too limiting?

To help explore the challenges, opportunities, and pitfalls associated with the iPad, we've put together a panel of experts who will tackle questions like:

• If you currently have an iPhone app, what do you need to consider when making a decision about whether to make an iPad version?
• How will the types of applications on the iPad be different than what we've seen on mobile phones? Will pricing change? Is there more or less opportunity for advertising?
• How does the different form factor change the way applications are designed?
• What does the iPad mean for publishers? Books? Magazines? Newspapers? Does this hint at a way out for the problems media has faced over the last few years?
• How do web sites need to change to support the iPad (or do they)?
• What does the iPad mean for the future of personal computing?

Come join us to learn from the panel and share your own thoughts on this next generation device.

About the Panelists

James Keller, Small Society

James Keller is a digital communications strategist and user experience evangelist at Small Society, a small agency based in Portland with a passion for the iPhone™ platform, dedicated to helping organizations bring great ideas to life. Before joining the Small Society team, James was at Wieden+Kennedy helping the Portland office align client business goals and brand experiences with emerging technologies. Leveraging her extensive knowledge of interaction design, business analysis, campaign analytics, and integrated marketing communications, she has led multiple teams in creating efficient and effective online strategies for top brands such as Coca-Cola, NIKE, Procter & Gamble, Levi’s, LAIKA Studio, Zipcar, and the MTV Networks. She can frequently be seen at conferences speaking on topics such as information architecture, social media, and convergent culture.

Jon Maroney, Handmark

Jon is the Senior Vice President of Mobile Publishing at Handmark where he helps set product direction and works with publishers bring their content to mobile devices. Jon was one of the co-founders of Freerange Communications which was acquired by Handmark in 2009. Jon spent 12 years in the software industry, running marketing and product marketing at Extensis, a maker of software for graphic professionals and publishers (Suitcase and Portfolio), and as Director of Product Marketing and Channel Sales at Dantz Development, maker of backup software Retrospect. Jon is a member of the Board of Directors of Beam Dynamics. He has a BA from Boston University.

Chris Skaggs, Code-Monkeys & Soma Games

Chris Skaggs is the CTO and CCO of both Code-Monkeys and Soma Games. With a long history in web development, Chris created Soma Games in late 2008 when the iPhone started making history and shortly afterwards reformed Code-Monkeys to focus on the suddenly booming mobile market. A graduate of George Fox University and an avid gamer, Chris looks forward to the unique applications mobile development has for the future.

Dave Shanley, CrowdCompass

For ten years and across seven countries, Dave has led development teams in creating and delivering powerful enterprise mobile solutions for large international companies including BP, GM, Vestas, and UPS. Currently, Dave is working on the next generation social mobile event platform at CrowdCompass.

Raven Zachary, Small Society

Raven Zachary is President of Small Society, working with big brands, established companies, investors, and startups on iPhone strategy and product development. Raven directed the Obama '08 for iPhone application for the Obama Campaign, and has worked with companies such as Whole Foods Market, Zipcar, CLIF BAR, and Air New Zealand on iPhone application initiatives. He is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit iPhone developer conference. Raven is also a Contributing Analyst with The 451 Group, an IT industry analyst firm and works closely with O'Reilly Media on iPhone and mobile technology related events and coverage. He is regularly quoted by the press about the iPhone market and is a frequent conference speaker on the topic.

The iPad: An Early Look at Apple's Latest Innovation

Monday, February 22nd, 6 pm
AboutUs offices
107 SE Washington St., Suite 520
Portland, Oregon 97214
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Imagine being able to use your phone to see what that IKEA couch you've been considering will look like in your living room.

A far-fetched science fiction scenario? No, IKEA has already released an application like that in Europe.

Augmented reality is an exciting and emerging technology. Augmented reality take real life information--typically the video display of a phone--and overlays it with computer information. Augmented reality is something that is completely unique to mobile.

This month at Mobile Portland, we're lucky to have two speakers who are early innovators in augmented reality. P. Mark Anderson is the platform architect for Spot Metrix which provides an augmented reality library for iPhone called 3DAR. Tim Sears created Robotvision, one of the first augmented reality applications for iPhone.

Mark and Tim will share how people are using augmented reality, their experiences using augmented reality, and what the future holds for this new technology.

About the Speakers

P. Mark Anderson

P. Mark Anderson has 13 years experience developing interactive applications.  After receiving a degree in Computer Science from University of Colorado in 1999 he started his career as a developer for Sun Microsystems.

In addition to creating several iPhone applications, Mr. Anderson moderates the Helpful iPhone Utilities open source project, as well as My Maps, an augmented reality iPhone app built on top of Google's personalized mapping system.

Mr. Anderson is platform architect for the 3DAR augmented reality SDK.  He enjoys working with both artists and developers, and occupies his spare time with watercolor painting, mountain biking, disc golf and mentoring.

Tim Sears

Tim Sears is a software engineer who works for PR firm Waggener Edstrom by day building web applications, by night creating location-based augmented reality experiences for the iPhone. He created Robotvision, a popular augmented reality browser, for the iPhone in 2009 and currently works with clients to build out mobile geolocation experiences in augmented reality.

His work in augmented reality and social media analytics has been featured in major publications such as ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and CNET, and has won several awards, including the International Business Awards Best New Product/Service of 2009 for twendz, a real-time Twitter sentiment analysis application.

Augmented Reality

Monday, January 25th, 6 pm
AboutUs offices
107 SE Washington St., Suite 520
Portland, Oregon 97214
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