Mobile Monday Detroit Presents: Mobile Apps in the Marketplace

Dec. 27, 2010 - PRLog -- DETROIT, MI – According to Steve Smith of the Mobile Insider, “If there is a pet peeve of the year in the mobile media and marketing realm, it involves our growing impatience with brands making the consumer jump through hoops for no significant pay-off. The simple act of downloading a branded app that has no apparent function or raison d'etre other than the greater glory of the brand is, in fact, an imposition on the mobile user.” Sarah Kessler from Mashable adds, “At this point, many companies recognize that developing a branded mobile app can be an asset. Unfortunately, fewer of them understand how to best leverage this new channel in order to benefit their brand.”  To help companies and developers gain a clearer understanding of the expectations of the mobile marketplace, Mobile Monday Detroit presents, ‘Mobile Apps in the Marketplace’ on January 10th.

Our featured presenters will be representatives from jacAPPS, a division of Jacobs Media located in Southfield, MI.  jacAPPS will present information on the success they’ve achieved as App Developers resulting from their ability to integrate research, strategy, and development skills into highly useful and effective Mobile Apps.  They will also provide information about how they see the Mobile App market from a development perspective.  Included in this presentation will be highlights from their ‘Goin’ Mobile’ ethnographic study in which they followed 18 SmartPhone owners across the United States and captured their mobile phone usage, activities, and personal interviews on video.

Jacobs Media is a media research, consulting and application development firm that has a special concentration on media and consumer products companies, including National Public Radio, VH1, Sylvan Learning Centers and CBS Radio. Since November of 2010, their development division, jacAPPS, has become one of the world’s largest developers of mobile apps with over 330 apps in the app stores, and over 5 million downloads.

Our speakers from jacAPPS include: Fred Jacobs, President; Paul Jacobs, VP/General Manager of Jacobs Media; and Scott Holiday, Head Developer for jacAPPS.

Fred Jacobs founded Jacobs Media in 1983, and today consults for the leading broadcasting companies in America, including CBS, Entercom, Greater Media, Cox, Journal and Citadel.  The company also conducts research for National Public Radio and Arbitron, while also consulting for VH1 Classic. Mr. Jacobs was named one of the ‘100 Most Influential Broadcasters’ by Album Network, and in 2006, was inducted as a member of the Michigan Association of Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame.  He is a featured speaker at major conferences including the 140 Characters Conference in Detroit, the National Association of Broadcasters Convention, Canadian Music Week and many others.

Paul Jacobs is a leading radio consultant, specializing in generational marketing, sales development and research.  As Vice President/General Manager of Jacobs Media, he has taken his years of experience in generating revenue for traditional radio and applied it to helping the growing client base of the company’s incredibly successful mobile apps division, jacAPPS.

Scott Holliday is one of the leading application developers in the United States.  His intelligence and versatility has enabled jacAPPS to become a leading development company for apps benefitting a wide variety of businesses and organizations.  He has a B.A. in Marketing from Michigan State University, is a Microsoft Certified Professional in Visual Basic .NET development, and is a graduate of Compuware’s Professional Development Program. Scott is an expert in Objective-C and Eclipse/Java and making use of audio byte streams, audio metadata, RSS/LML feeds, Sqlite3, video data, and more.  He also has experience as a Visual Basic/PowerBuilder developer, is a Visual Basic instructor, QA analyst, technical writer, instructional designer, website and database administrator, and an IT manager.

Also presenting at the event will be our Mobile Monday Michigan Co-founder and Mobile Technology Association of Michigan Founder, Linda Daichendt, CEO of Strategic Growth Concepts.  Linda will be presenting information about consumer preferences regarding mobile apps as indicated in a number of national and global studies, provide insight on trends in the mobile technology industry related to mobile apps, as well as several pointers on effectively marketing mobile apps to consumers in today’s marketplace.

Linda’s 20+ years assisting businesses with their marketing strategies, as well as extensive knowledge of the mobile technology industry resulting from previous work as the Director of Corporate and Franchise Marketing for a national wireless retail chain, being an award-winning blogger on ‘Marketing with New Technology’, and the co-producer/co-host of an international mobile marketing podcast series, 'The Mobile Marketing Review', enable her to provide industry information on a national and global scale, along with an in-depth knowledge of the consumer’s perspective regarding mobile.

The Mobile Monday Detroit event will be held on Monday, January 10th from 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at the Compuware Building located at One Campus Martius in Detroit.  

Attendance is Free, though space is limited and registration in advance is required.  Those interested in attending may register at http://meetup.com/Mobile-Monday-Detroit. Parking will be validated for attendees who utilize Compuware’s parking deck.  Sponsors for the event are:  Microsoft Windows Phone 7, Mobile Monday Michigan, Compuware, and the Mobile Technology Association of Michigan.

The networking portion of the meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. with presentations beginning at 6:30 p.m.

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MobileMonday (MoMo) is an open community of mobile industry visionaries, developers, influential individuals, and users fostering cooperation and cross-company business development through virtual and live networking events. The group's programs are designed to facilitate idea sharing, best practices development, trends identification, and Mobile Industry growth locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. The Michigan branch executes on these objectives, thru its Ann Arbor and Detroit chapters, by delivering a balanced approach of business and technical content from within the Michigan business community, as well as beyond our State, in order to insure the Michigan community is made aware of developments taking place outside our area that can aid local businesses. Those interested in learning more about Mobile Monday Detroit can find the group’s website at http://MobileMondayDetroit.org.