Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 about Mobile on Monday 14th March

"Japan" "Mobile" "Social Media" - what do you see when you have these words together? Cyber utopia? Shrinking Galapagos? Ninjas with high-tech swords? It's about time we know what the real scenes are in Japan. With the leaders of the mobile social media in Japan, we will discuss what the Japanese mobile social media world looks like, where they are headed, and how the "outer world" will affect / or be affected. Needless to give examples like the explosive rise of Twitter in Japan, the question is not whether the country is the "land of the rising sun" in mobile social media or not - it's how high has the sun risen, and why.

LEVEL: Intermediate

Art, education, economics, propaganda. Games are arriving at the forefront of media to become an important way to engage entire generations of people. What's different from before? Five billion people are replacing the most common communication device, the simple cell phone, with a full-fledged gaming system in their pocket. There are multiple ways to publish and distribute games over the Internet and to the masses. For many, game creation is becoming a regular activity, as tools become both easier to use and more powerful for people without programming knowledge. This panel will cover unique perspectives on how games are becoming more meaningful forms of expression and a significant tool for communicating ideas.

LEVEL: Beginner

Clearly more and more consumers and small businesses are making the move to mobile to help manage their day to day lives. With that migration comes the demand – and expectation – for seamless utility between their Web and mobile experiences. Rather than having services live separate lives via their desktop or Web applications, customers are looking for instant gratification in an end to end experience independent of what device they’re using to access their information. The problem? No one is providing this seamless experience yet – and if they are, it is not meeting customer expectations. We will explore the ways that companies can and are making the successful translation of Web to mobile and how that will result in customer delight and uptake of new mobile services across the market.

LEVEL: Intermediate

The days of consumers sitting at a full-sized monitor browsing a website populated with your content alone are quickly evaporating. In order to succeed you need to take your experience and your brand to where your users are – mobile devices, collaborative applications and mashups, gaming consoles and third-party platforms. Branded websites as we know them are fast being replaced by mashups of content from multiple sources layered together or targeted experiences that take advantage of the immediacy, location awareness and ubiquity of mobile apps.
This change is no cause for panic. In fact, for those that remain innovative, nimble, and open to new ways of developing business it can be one of the best opportunities to come along since the web itself.

This session presents how to engage end users with your brand when designing online experiences means placing your data or functionality on others’ web properties (ones you don’t control) and vice versa.

We’ll explore how others have been able to build their brand while embracing the concept of platform and how you can redefine partnerships and engage developers creating the apps that define the next wave of digital engagement. The session will cover concepts critical to online success like web services, platform development and APIs including a tour of some of the best examples of brands and pervasive experiences proliferating the digital network.

LEVEL: Intermediate

How Near Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) will change the wireless industry, user experiences, marketing, and shopping. Mobile phones a now being looked as a ubiquitous device that plays an increasingly important role in our lives. The mobile phone started as a tool to talk to people while away from a landline. Apps began to emerge on legacy phones, with the networks controlling content. Smart phones and most importantly the Iphone changed this stranglehold on content by creating an open developer ecosystem. Now the mobile phone is more akin to a computer than a phone. As the mobile phone increases in importance and new features are integrated such as RFID and NFC technologies the functions the mobile phone is used for will likewise increase.

Today we use the mobile phone to use apps and surf the net. Tomorrow we will use the mobile phone to open doors (literally), pay for our purchases, earn loyalty rewards, redeem coupons and much more. The introduction of NFC and RFID into the mobile phone, which is a certainty, will not only change how we as users engage with our environment but also how retailers and marketers as well as network operators do business. Network operators will begin to look more like credit card companies, marketers and retailers will now be able to track purchases and redemption of coupons, in turn rewarding these behaviors with loyalty reward points.

LEVEL: Intermediate

LEVEL: Intermediate

Take a look at how the complexity of design has increased exponentially with the web moving onto today’s mobile devices. There are so many more considerations when thinking about a design or a campaign that go beyond the basic, “who is my target audience....how do I reach them?” Now it’s also, “what devices do they use...what browsers.....do I use Flash in my designs....what about HTML5?” Hear from a panel of industry experts about how they are dealing with these questions and what winning strategies they have found to be most successful for them.

LEVEL: Intermediate

New opportunities for sophisticated in-store and digital interactive experiences are fundamentally changing the way retail stores connect with their customers. These changes – from interactive kiosks, sophisticated mobile devices, digital & interactive vending machines, and the wireless delivery of software - are creating opportunities for brands and marketers to connect and interact with their customers more richly. We will share how are clients are leveraging these tools, and our vision of where it is all going.

LEVEL: Intermediate

LEVEL: Intermediate

LEVEL: Intermediate

LEVEL: Intermediate

This panel will discuss how companies can create best mobile mobile user interfaces, avoiding many of the pitfalls of poor design. Mobile user interfaces are not just squished down to fit the small screen, but require an understanding and application of technologies, users, and contexts of use to create the best possible interaction. Core principles for designing mobile interfaces will be discussed, as well as design patterns for use in mobile web sites and applications.

LEVEL: Intermediate

Developing across different mobile platforms has long been a pain point for mobile developers, but what about designing for the same apps and services to run across multiple types of device form factors? New form factors don't just offer bigger screens or keyboards over mobile phones; users also interact differently with them.

The most prevalent example of this is with iPhone apps moving to the iPad: creating a app for the tablet isn't simply about adapting it to a bigger screen, but utilizing the differences in hardware to offer users a better experience. This scenario is just the tip of the iceberg, though: Android is making its way into all types of devices, like Google TV, which will allow developers to create apps for both phones and televisions. GPS maker TomTom has announced that its future devices will run a version of WebKit and support third-party apps. Nokia's Terminal Mode and Continental's AutolinQ projects look to extend the app experience into automobiles.

This panel seeks to build a high-level understanding of what successful cross-form-factor development entails, beyond simply adapting content for different display types. Attendees will learn best practices -- and educational failures! -- from leading designers and developers, and how they can incorporate emerging form factors into their apps and services to create an enhanced user experience.

LEVEL: Intermediate

LEVEL: Intermediate

LEVEL: Intermediate