2012/08/08

Sell Out With Me Tonight

Yet another fantastic technology conference fills up in record or near record time. Today it was Build 2012, Microsoft's annual developer conference (it kind of took the place of PDC a couple years ago). I don't know how many tickets were made available but you can't get one if you don't already have one. They sold out in 80 minutes at $2095 USD each.


Other notable conferences include:

Stir Trek
1000 tickets; 10 minutes
Code Mash
1200 tickets; 20 minutes
Apple WWDC
roughly 5000 tickets; 12 hours
Google I/O
roughly 5000 tickets; 28 minutes

So what does all this mean?

Well, I'm not really sure. Either it's still really good to be in technology; it is really, really good to be in event planning; we are reaching critical mass on folks wanting to learn more about tech; or all the above. Whatever the case, if you want to get any of the latest info first-hand, you better hope they stream it or you're going to be left in the dust.



The above image is property of Reel Big Fish. Go to their website, buy their album, etc. Please, don't sue me.

2012/04/10

It's only blasphemy if I'm wrong, right?

Mobile. That's it. Just, mobile. We've all been kind of ignoring it.

This year is starting to look like the mobile space is reaching critical mass. And here's the blasphemy part:
Bigger than Jesus.

Yeah, I said it.

According to our friends at Wikipedia, Christianity worldwide touts about 2.2 billion followers. About 242 million of these are in the United States. Now, I'm not going to make any kind of claims to the validity or how devoted to their beliefs a certain percentage are. We're going to take these numbers and say, they're about right or at least close enough.

Now we check the latest market shares in another theological debate. Mobile OSes and we see something interesting ComScore - February 2012 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share

Android is leading the way, with iOS not far behind. RIM still falling and Microsoft struggling to get any traction. But, here's the bit that I found interesting.
For the three-month average period ending in February, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices
More than 104 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in February, up 14 percent versus November.
So though they may not be at epic fan-boy level, some 234 million Americans prayed at the alter of consumer web-enabled electronics with over 100 million being, effectively, the mobile evangelicals. And these numbers are continuing to grow. The tide isn't slowing, more it is gaining momentum.

Mobile is quickly becoming the elephant in the room the way the internet was in the late 1990s to early 2000s. You can no longer avoid it as a "fad". If you aren't looking to spark interactions with your customers in the mobile space, you are losing out. More importantly, if you break your users mobile experience, you may lose them for good.

Sure, we all get geeked out at the announcements of what carrier is getting 4G coverage in what towns or iPhone 5, or Jelly Bean, or maybe even Windows Phone 8 (just me?). But, its all moot unless we're actively looking to make mobile experience part of the overall web experience.

2012/01/18

Fill the Internet

Grant Fritchey wrote a great summary on SOPA and PIPA and what is boils down to. You can go read it here... I'll wait.

So I'm not sure if my comment there has come through yet but here is the main point:

Blacking out the pages does nothing unless you’re a Google/Reddit/Wikipedia level site. Instead, make more posts. Scream it on Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc. Take the time to call, email, whatever your elected officials and post to them through all the channels they are going to close. Don’t black it out. Fill it up!

So there's your call to action. Don't black it out and hope they get the point. The media holders want you to stop posting. Your Congress is trying to take away your Internet (and, yes, it is yours). They are trying to take away many of our livelihoods. Don't be passive. Don't stop sharing information. Don't sit back and take it.

Take the fight to them. Call your Senators and Representatives. Fill their voicemail boxes. Email them and fill their servers. Blog. Post to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, FARK, Wikipedia. Any place you can leave feedback for your elected officials to see that we will not tolerate censorship, fill it up.

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