Are you starting out in mobile? Here are some useful resources for you.

Don't know where to start when it comes to getting yourself up to speed with what's going on in our industry?

I get asked this *a lot* so I thought I'd write a blog post about recommended useful resources and also get your contributions in as well to help newbies to our industry become fully-fledged mobilists.

Blogs

Well, if you're here, you've made a good start already by checking out some mobile blogs. This, of course, isn't the only one and there's a rather good list over at WIPwiki. If you only read two blogs, then make it http://www.mobhappy.com/ and http://www.smstextnews.com/

Free Reports

If you're specific interest is Mobile Marketing and Advertising, then the free Tanla Guide to Mobile Marketing and Advertising is worth downloading [disclaimer: I wrote most of it with a little help from my friends]. It's a comprehensive, hands-on look at the world of mobile marketing and includes essays from leading industry experts on different aspects of the mobile marketing and advertising sector.

If you're after a more generic take on the mobile industry, then The Netsize Guide is well worth a look too and includes market information for many countries around the globe. It's also a free download or paid-for print version.

If you're interested in the mobile consumer, then the Carphone Warehouse takes an annual look at this under the Mobile Life moniker. It contains data from both the UK and the US.

For a UK-centric view of the communications world, then OFCOM's annual review is a must-read. The report from August 2007 is available and so it will only be a couple of months before we have this year's edition.

Networking and events

The Mobile Mondays community is very active in many cities around the world. I help to run the London chapter and we have a membership of several thousand, an active discussion list and run events on the first or second Monday of the month for 10 months of the year. It's free to join the yahoo group (where you can participate in discussions and find out about upcoming events) and the facebook group for Mobile Monday London. Each city chapter runs in slightly different ways so I recommend you look for your nearest one and get involved. If nothing else, you should learn something and meet at least a handful of interesting people!

Swedish Beers is a long-standing, ad-hoc networking event I run with some pals in London, Barcelona and now Sydney for folks who have a passing interest in things mobile so we cover all areas of media, marketing, mobile network operators, content creators and more besides. London events happen 2 or 3 times a year (I'm currently looking for a sponsor for our next event if you or someone you know is interested). The Barcelona event happens every February to coincide with Mobile World Congress (again, I'm looking for sponsors for this to see if we can make it even better than this year's). There are no presentations, no sales pitches, just drinks, good company, a friendly atmosphere and lots of chat. Events are announced via the Swedish Beers blog and the facebook group.

For the women amongst you, there's the Women in Mobile Data Association and we have events coming up in September and December in London and February 2009 in Barcelona. Updates appear on the facebook group and our email list (contact me to join the email list - it's free).

And for the London mobile geeks amongst you, then there's Mobile Geeks of London which is happening next Thursday evening, headed up by the lovely James Whatley from Spinvox.

And if that's not enough, the wonderful Ewan at SMSTextNews also runs events from time to time all over the world. Keep an eye on his blog to find out when they're on.

So that's my initial suggestions for useful mobile resources. Please feel free to add any of your own as I realise this is a rather limited and networking-wise UK-centric list.

Mobile Internet for Dummies

No, I'm not suggesting you're a dummy, dear reader. I'm just writing a short post about the new book in the 'Dummies' range from Wiley. And it's all about the mobile internet, a subject close to my heart.

Industry stalwarts and good pals, Daniel Appelquist and Russell Buckley, have contributed to the book alongside respected authors and industry experts to help normobs get their heads round and make the best use of the mobile internet.

Mobile Internet For Dummies explains how the Mobile Internet differs from the garden-variety Internet, and shows you how to:

• Find your mobile phone browser
• Use the Mobile Internet to surf, shop, blog, watch movies, and more — on the go
• Send and receive e-mail from your mobile device
• Locate other mobile applications
• Watch TV on your mobile phone
• Manage your kids’ access to the Mobile Internet
• Secure and name a mobile Internet site and acquire mobile Web development tools
• Build your own made-for-mobile Web site
• Use your Mobile Internet site to promote your business and generate revenue

With the help of Mobile Internet For Dummies, you’ll be able to stay connected wherever you happen to be, and maybe even make it pay off with a bit of income.

Get it at Amazon now in the UK Mobile Internet for Dummies (For Dummies) or in the US you can get it at this link Mobile Internet For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Mastering Social Media

If you're interested in social media but not sure where to start, then I can recommend starting at the Mastering Social Media seminar next week in London at One Alfred Place.

In this masterclass you’ll get to work with Lloyd Davis, who is one of London’s most popular and experienced social media experts (and also organises the rather fabulous Tuttle Club). He'll help you understand what social media’s about without reverting to geekspeak and how to build rich and productive online relationships using simple tools. You'll also gain some practical experience of creating some social media and get help with applying what you’ve learned to your personal business context.

The day is designed for marketing and communications professionals who want to understand better just how social media and online social networking can work for them. With no more than 9 participants, you’ll be assured of individual attention. Most participants will already have some experience of at least one aspect of social media, but will want to become more comfortable and confident with a wider range of tools. You should bring along an example of a business issue that may be solved by using social media.

It costs £495 + VAT to attend the day and you can book it online right now. Lloyd really knows his stuff so if you want to learn about this stuff too, then go hang out with Lloyd for the day and become your own expert on the topic.

Other stuff I've been up to lately

So apart from the uber-festival that is Glastonbury, I've actually been up to plenty other stuff too in the last month or so...

I chaired MoMo London in June on What Mobile means to Media and Marketing. James Cooper and Ben Matthews did great write-ups of the event too which saves me having to do it!

I spoke at a couple of conferences - namely Stuart Whitaker's EDM08: Search in the Mobile Era (where I shared a panel with Russell Buckley of Admob and Mobhappy fame talking about mobile marketing and advertising and also enjoyed Mike Short's wonderful opening keynote) and Being Digital which was fun. It was good to catch up with some friends old and new like Rummble's Andrew Scott, Singtone's Jeff Bloom, Taptu's Steve Ives, Three's Carl Taylor and Techcrunch UK's Mike Butcher, amongst others. What's more, both of these events were at BAFTA which is a top venue. After Being Digital, I spent the afternoon at the rather wonderful One Alfred Place with the equally wonderful Oli Barrett and then I hung out with a bunch of mobilists at Ewan MacLeod's lovely SMSTextNews Unlimited Drinks event.

And as if that wasn't enough, I participated in an in-depth panel discussion at Fleishman Hillard's Digital Influence Index launch at Interbrand's offices and talked about mobile, blogging, social media, digital marketing, customer trends and more besides with Fleming Madsen and James Whatley. The Digital Influence report is worth a read as are the accompanying slides.

Client stuff fills up most of the rest of my time but I do manage to squeeze in Interesting 2008 which was, indeed, very interesting. Lloyd's singing with ukelele was a welcome highlight and I absolutely adored Jim Le Fevre's zoetrope demo. Lloyd Davis also did a rather good write-up of the day, so again, I don't have to!

When I get back from Glastonbury, I return to find that I'm featured in Mobile Entertainment magazine's Top 50 Women in Mobile list and I'm absolutely chuffed to bits with this news and what they say about me:

"If there’s anyone in the world that knows mobile marketing as well as Keegan, we haven’t met them. Great networker too – she organises the very popular London-based Swedish Beers evenings and is a prominent force in the Mobile Mondays organisation too. She even finds time to blog prodigiously."

And to celebrate, I go hang out with my Women in Mobile Data Association pals at the Playphone sponsored meet-up event at the lovely MyHotel in Bloomsbury.

I missed Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona - it was just one event too far with having had such a busy few weeks and a sleepless Glastonbury, but I'm working my way through the resulting materials which make for a good read. But managed to hang out for a bit with the Tuttler's instead and also go for a mobilists dinner courtesy of Carsonified where we obviously put the mobile world to rights! It was good to spend some quality time with Carl Uminski, Andrew Grill, Mike Stead, Whatleydude, Dan Lane, Vic Keegan (no obvious relation!), Simon Rockman, magician Amardeep Dhanjal and the Carsonified crew - Dominic and Keir. A fun night indeed.

Orange Glastonav review

Yes, I admit it, I'm overly interested in mobile gizmos and when I heard about Orange's Glastonav mobile service, I thought I'd give it a try. The blurb says:

"GlastoNav, the must have mobile application for you and your friends at Glastonbury

• view the complete line-up from The Guardian Guide
• build your own schedule and share it with friends
• find your way around with a detailed festival map
• broadcast your location on the map and send alerts to find friends"

It was promoted heavily before the event via email (neither the URL nor the text in to the shortcod e worked - FAIL) to everyone who was on the Glastonbury ticket database. I finally managed to download it (why I was still trying to do this, I don't know!) and on taking a look, it showed all the bands and which stages they were on which was useful. There was also a map which was handy too I guess.

The option to add your location and the time you'd be there didn't work for me. It wasn't precise enough and there was no interactivity around it to confirm to your mate that you would meet them at that point at x time.

The gig finder was marginally useful, but what would have been more useful would be to set up reminder s so that your phone went off 30 minutes before you needed to be at whichever stage you wanted to be at - either linking in with the calendar/alarm system, or using SMS alerts (provided they could be timely). As it stood, it was confusing so I reverted to using the old skool paper guide. I also spotted typos on times and some bands which didn't exactly inspire me with confidence.

There was a news feature included in the app, but this was dependent on you having the app open at all times and checking it for news. As I only opened it from time to time (it was a real battery drainer), it meant I got the news that Hot Chip were dj'ing up at The Park 2 hours after they finished their set and that Franz Ferdinand were a replacement for Pete Doherty the day after they played. These alerts would have been much better done via SMS and actually, I probably would have paid a nominal amount to be included to get those alerts.

The service was promoted very heavily on site - it seemed to be on everything - the cups, posters and everywhere Orange was, they were promoting the application.

The biggest bugbear about it though was that it was a memory hog and a battery hog. As a memory hog, it meant I couldn't have anything else open at the same time on my T-Mobile Nokia N95. And battery life is critical at a festival the size of Glastonbury for your mobile phone. I took a spare battery with me *and* I got to charge my phone every day at a pal's market stall on site which meant I didn't have to wait around the orange tent for 2 hours every day to charge up. Most people won't bother to charge their phones up unless it's an emergency, and they're certainly not going to use up the battery on an iffy mobile application that drains your battery quickly to boot.

I hear along the grapevine that they got about 15 to 20k downloads which isn't bad going. I wonder how many of those were actually on site rather than armchair viewers? Let's say they did get 20k requests, of which, being generous, 65% successfully downloaded so we're down to 13,000 and of those 40% turned it on more than once which is now down to 5,200. And this is out of a total audience of around 178,000.

It seems we still have a long way to go with this kind of service. Firstly, don't rush a mobile service - do it right or don't bother. Secondly, make it easy and ubiquitous to charge your phone up on site. Thirdly, make data cheap/free so that there's no fear about downloading and using it.

10/10 for concept. 6/10 for implementation. Verdict: Could and should do better.

Technokitten's back from Glastonbury

And it was quite an experience. Arriving earlier was a good thing as it allowed time to settle in, but the lack of sleep really got to me by the end this year at which point I was exhausted. It was good to catch up with some pals from last year and to make some new ones too. And having less mud was a bonus on one level as it made for much easier movement around the place, but on the other hand, I think it made the crowd lazier and I missed the 'Dunkirk Spirit' or was it just that I didn't have an excuse to sip hot cider with a brand in it?!

Verdict on Shangri-La was that it's pretty good and bigger than Lost Vagueness. And The Diner is always guaranteed good fun late at night. Trash City was pretty spectacular. But neither area lived up to it's 'up all night' billing and when the plug was pulled on the power at The Diner at 5am on Monday morning it was a disappointment. Last year, the party went on until after 9am - maybe we got away with it because it was muddy last year or something? Anyway, once the plug was pulled that was it and was the end of the festival.

The music was brilliant and particular highlights for me were Crowded House, Duffy, Spiritualised, Neil Diamond and the awesome awesomeness of The Verve. Richard Ashcroft totally rocked my world that weekend and it was worth the ticket price to see The Verve alone.

On the downside, food and drink seemed more expensive this year (but maybe I just didn't notice the prices last year). Security was much more evident and noticeable and there seemed to be at least 2 security in every tent and they were enforcing the smoking ban pretty vehemently (no bother to me since I've never smoked but their presence was felt). I know they're there for our safety 'n all but not all of them were terribly friendly - although I did spot one girl in the Igloo tent swaying from side to side to the music whilst the rest of us were dancing which made me smile.

I was also unfortunately witness to several folks being stopped and searched for drugs before they got in and saw a couple of men being cuffed on Monday lunchtime. I also heard along the grapevine that there was a drugs bust at the Stone Circle on Friday night/Saturday morning. Maybe it was a rumour as I can't find anything online about it. I also saw a girl being carried off in an ambulance after falling unconscious in The Diner in the early hours of Monday morning. Tent crime was up significantly which was a great shame and maybe a reflection of the fact that it wasn't hard to get a ticket this year - in fact you could get a ticket right up until the event itself. And drugs arrests were up too apparently but that's no big surprise when police and security presence is so much greater.

Overall, there was good music, plenty to eat and drink, lots of folks having a good time and places to play after dark. Glastonbury, you did it again!