Tag Archives: analytics

IBM’s 5 in 5 and Future Technological Disruptions Effecting Mobile Ministry

It is that time of the year when predictions, resolutions, and trends-spotting makes the headline news. At the time of writing, I’m not sure that we’ll do too much (more) prophecying about mobile in ministry, but we will jump in with some of those putting forth some credible commentary towards activities, challenges, and advancements to come.

In this set of predictions, IBM looks at some technologies which are (definitely in development/testing now) which may play major roles in a majority of areas of society as we move foward in the next five years. This series, 5 in 5 has been done previously, and certainly deserves a look backward to see how accurate these proponents of a smarter planet have been in their views:

View all of the 5 in 5 videos on the IBM YouTube Channel

There are five aspects of technological/cultural change being talked about with 5 in 5:

  • Energy: People power will come to life
  • Security: You will never need a password again
  • Mind reading: Not just science fiction any more
  • Analytics: Junk mail will become priority mail
  • Access: Mobile is closing the Digital Divide

Read about these through the press release and blog posts from IBM which explain each of these in detail.

I’ve got my debates about the closing of the digital divide (it does, and then it doesn’t when actual costs are looked at), and think that we are well entrenched towards an analytical-driven future where recommendation engines and security becomes a more accepted norm of being in digital-enhanced spaced. The mind-reading is happening in kit projects now, that part will get fun (especially as AI and adaptive computing models become the norm).

I do wonder about the lack of seeing anything in these in respect to language and literacy, as I do think that we are getting into a time when language is no longer a barrier if connectivity is addressed (real-time, passive, and active translation protocols between service points). That’s just me though. I’m all aboard the energy idea (see my thoughts on kinetic energy for mobile accessories at Nokia’s Ideas Project). We definitely need to ditch the personal dependence on grid energy infrastructure, and make it more economical and environmentally sustainable in industrial applications. These are all addressable tennants of any mobile ministry efforts, and it would be nice to see this alongside other goals for mobile ministry.

What about you? Got thoughts on 5 in 5? You can also join in the global conversation about 5 in 5 via the following channels:

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, and seeing just how you see internet/mobile ministry efforts going forward around and through these changes.

How to Determine Your Audience for a Mobile App, Website, or Service

Ok, so you have decided that you will take the jump and build a mobile application or website. And in your analysis, you’ve pretty much established that you already know what kind of content it is that you will serve. So what’s left? Well, deciding who exactly to target your mobile efforts towards is one item. Take a look at this graphic recently produced by Asymco which speaks to the published information about global shipments of mobiles

From this graphic (not to mention the data that went into it) we can get an idea of some potential targets for an application or a website on a global scale. For example, we can see from the blue in the graphic that there’s a considerably larger percentage of persons who don’t use smartphones, though this number seems to be getting smaller on a consistent basis (you won’t hear doomsday analysis of the feature phone market here, the numbers bear this as standing strong for the foreseeable mobile futur – i.e., 3yrs easily).

Coming Down from a Global View to A Regional One

Now, this graphic only helps if you are thinking of rolling out something on a mobile global-reaching basis. For many of you, the reach is considerably more regional, and so information like that which Asymco has provided looks best when put against other data, for example, this information from the IDC:

…In Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ), feature phones recovered in the third quarter on the back of Nokia’s resolved inventory channel issues in China combined with the strong showing of its dual-SIM handsets across emerging markets like India and Southeast Asia. With Nokia fighting back at the Chinese low-end competitors, the proliferation of these smaller brands has slowed as margins hit razor-thin levels. APeJ smartphone growth last quarter was driven primarily by Samsung and HTC, as well as ZTE in China. In Japan,the market rebounded sharply after two quarters of either low single-digit growth or outright market decline following the natural disasters of this spring.

The Western European phone market declined as a result of lower demand for both feature phones and smartphones. The smartphone device type growth was mainly driven by mid-tier Android devices. High-end smartphone growth was negatively impacted by Apple’s fourth-quarter iPhone 4S launch, which caused consumers to delay purchases. Meanwhile, Nokia’s transition from the Symbian to the Windows Phone operating system as its primary smartphone platform led to a transition. Feature phones declined as consumers that replaced their devices upgraded to smartphones while others held on to their devices for longer periods of time. Overall the Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMA) markets showed strong growth due in large part to Nokia’s rebound in the regions. Bucking its global troubles, Nokia had a very strong 3Q11 due to feature phone growth. Its smartphone decline continued, however, but it remained the market leader in the region. Among the niche smartphone brands, HTC did particularly well in some markets, including Russia. RIM continues to make progress in the Middle East and Africa, but fared less well in Central and Eastern Europe…

Read the entire Q3 2011 IDC Press release

Now, this information from the IDC is a snapshot of what’s happening with the entire mobile industry (like Asymco’s data), however gives a more detailed snapshot of what’s happening in Q3 of this year compared to next year, and also considering regional and manufacturer differences. This is solid information, and allows an effort to craft a mobile website or application to center onto cultural and distribution details that are a bit easier to manage (languages, platform focusing, etc).

Identifying Opportunities, Tools, and Your Users

What’s left after this is to look a bit more into what it will take to actually build the mobile application or website. For that information, we have to take a look at a few facts: (a) where are the opportunities, (b) where are the tools, and (c) where are the users.

What are some of the opportunities for faith-based mobile apps, websites, and services?

  • Games
  • Funding (not just fundraising)
  • Group Communication
  • Education
  • Health and Wellness
  • News and Information

Or, what are the categories that see the most application downloads (this information is hard to come by, for example just Apple App Store data here; pulling this together requires some effort)?

Where then can we find some of the tools to take advantage of those opportunities?

Specifically Design for Your Specific User

And finally, we’ve got to define where the users are for our application. Not the mythical user. Not the “if we put an app out there, it will be used because they have a mobile” user. The hard numbers. Who in your communities, areas of influence, have expressed such interest in a mobile solution from you that it has effected the ability of your current media offerings to grow? Or, how has the success of mobile for your competitors/partners driven your customers and stakeholders to question your mobile strategy?

It is here that you will want to start researching your user base (or prospective user base) towards whatever mobile experience it is that you intend to craft. That doesn’t mean that you are designing something to please them (part of the effect of mobile is that you surprise and delight because you offer something people didn’t know they wanted), but it does mean that you have a pulse on what they use, what works, what doesn’t work, and where potential consumers of your mobile lie.

Analyzing your user base might mean digging into information that you already have (website visitor data, attendance data, response data from polls/surveys, etc.). And it also might mean that you need to generate means to learn more about your community (surveys, focus groups, feedback forms for events, etc.). But, you have to identify exactly who it is that will be using your applicaiton. Try creating personas for these specific users and then (before developing anything) testing the ideas that you have against them. Then, when you get to the point of testing and looking for feedback to your application, you have some benchmark against which to determine where you proceed with your mobile activity.

Of course, you don’t have to do this work of figuring out your audience. You could very well be the next Steve Jobs and literally have a intuition towards what will work. You also have to have the discipline to make sure that it does work.

Resources, Encouragement
We have some resources that should help you through this process here. But, as we noted above with looking at your users, much of what you need to know about making a successful mobile applicaiton, website, or service is already within the people you serve. Know them, and you know what works.

Pulling In Some Perspective on Mobile Apps

Wikitude AR Web Browser - Share on OviOne – and probably the most popular – method of utilizing mobile a a channel for ministry is that of the mobile app. I’m working on a future piece that talks some about the return on investment question in regards to mobile ministry. But until that posts, I’d like to point to an excellent perspective on mobile apps from the marketing side of the mobile conversation from the folks at MobiThinking. Here’s a snippet:

…“When I saw the mobile winners at Cannes Lions, I immediately tweeted how the majority of the advertising festivals tend to think of mobile marketing only in terms of iPhone apps,” comments Leo Xavier, CEO, Pontomobi, the Brazilian mobile agency that built the official Cannes Lions mobile apps. “Obviously, it is a disappointing to see that four Gold mobile winners are nothing but an iPhone app. I really like the Heineken Starplayer app, though, because it is based on the new concept of co-viewing. And, yes, the best option to deliver that experience is an app. The problem here is that it is only for iPhone.” (Apple devices were about 3.5 percent of handset sales in 2010, so focusing on iPhone-only will exclude the vast majority of the client’s customers)…

Read the rest of Why Ad Agencies Like Mobile Apps at MobiThinking.

We do have some understanding of what works for mobile apps, but not necessarily what always works with those apps when “ministry” is envoked as part of the platter. Effective mobile ministry apps are few and far in between – at least if we have some common measure for what makes an effective mobile ministry app. So that approach is quite important. Probably mores than the app itself.

And now for a question to consider, if you are thinking of a mobile application as the/one of the methods that you will use for mobile ministry, what aspects of investing in that approach are you most unprepared for?

Mobile Ministry is More Than Devices (Part 2)

This is continued from Part 1, posted previously.

Nokia Astound at Caribou Coffee - Share on OviI mentioned earlier that the services layer is where we’ve seen the most work happen in mobile ministry. Part of that is because of the maturity of that layer, the accessibility of that layer due to (simply) the existence of the Internet, and the (usually) generous offering of compatible APIs between services and some families of devices. This allows the ministry/organization/individual developer to focus on making sure things plug together neatly, and they can put more energy towards the experience that is to be gained from using their application.

But what if you want to focus on the device layer? What are you in for? Let’s just look at a few device platforms that you could support:

  • iOS (Apple)
  • RIM (BlackBerry 5, 6, and 7)
  • Android (1.6, 2.1, 2.2, 3 (Honeycomb), and now Ice Cream Sandwich which has no version number and spans several device form factors both mobile and not)
  • Windows (WM 6, 6.5, Phone 7, and Phone 7.5)
  • Nokia (S40, S60 Feature Pack 2, Symbian^1, Symbian 3, Qt 4.5)
  • Brew (incompatibilities across carriers)
  • HP (WebOS 2, 2.1)
  • Samsung (Bada, Bada 2)
  • And several mobile devices which use proprietary OSes that cannot be developed for directly, but are sometimes enabled on the carrier-level for some services (see the graphic in this Vision Mobile article for details)

And that’s just what I could name off the top of my head.

You can’t focus on the “mobile = devices” meme. You can’t even let that maintain more than 1/3 of your thoughts on mobile. When you do, what happens is that you start to make smaller the addressable persons who would be able to successfully utilize produced content, or even enable them to produce content for themselves.

Let’s say that you want to focus on the services layer. What are you in for here? A small list again:

  • WAP
  • HTML (4 and 5; devices support different and mismatching pieces of these)
  • SMS (MMS, shortcodes, carrier-specific rules, analytics that matter, etc.)
  • APIs to default applications (requires platform-specific SDK)
  • APIs to web services such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. (read the terms of service for what you are able to access and what compromises you or consumers might have with these).
  • Content Management Systems

Again, just a few pieces. But you can’t just say “go SMS” and not also be cognizant of the fact that SMS broadcasting rules are different in various countries/carriers. You also need to be able to scope carefully what your entire workflow will be for that communication from the creation of the message, to what happens with the data about that consumer, to expectations for them and your organization.

I’d go into experiences, but you might be getting it now – you can’t just think about mobile as some isolated channel. It isn’t isolated, and the entire mobile definition is predicated on the synergy of devices, services, and experiences.

The potential of mobile is that there are 5.3 billion accessible persons who can be touched in some way by a carrier of the Gospel. The realistic assessment is a lot smaller, and requires more than just a passion for the theological command. Our passions also have to account for the ability to get to the message in an accessible manner. That’s more than a device. And ultimately, it requires us getting on a deeper level than the channel itself.

The Casualty of Symbian Bible Apps

In a lot of respects, its rare to talk about Bible apps for one specific platform – there so many – the causality of Bible apps for the Symbian platform has been one of those questions that has gnawed at me a bit. Not so much even for the lack of applications, but the missed opportunities because of where the Symbian platform has been represented.

What is Symbian?

Symbian is a mobile operating system and platform that’s been used by Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Fujitsu, and LG for mobile phones. To date, there have been over 600 million devices shipped and sold with the Symbian operating system, making it one of the most prolific  in use.

Nokia has been quite adept at making Symbian fit its needs. It has pretty much been selling Symbian devices longer than people have given credence to there even being a category called smartphones. To that end, Symbian has been deployed with more carriers and in more world  regions than all but the most basic of Java handsets.

Unfortunately, it is also considered an older platform that while stable and optimized for mobile devices, falls quite far behind some of the newer entrants in respect to ease-of-use, developer tools, and ease of finding applications. And so Symbian recently befell Nokia’s reorganization efforts (first spun into an open source platform, and now to be greatly minimized  over the next years  to be replaced by Windows Phone).

Symbian and Bibles

By accident of niche, Biblical software usually is a fairly easy one to fill. Find a publisher that has the languages that you want to address, write the application to deliver it, and then make it available. The issue with Symbian is that its actually a pretty difficult platform to build on. Without getting too technical, its just plain to say that developers have needed to had a certain type of older technical knowledge (previously) or invest in toolsets (Qt, Java, etc.) which required a good amount of patience before progress.

When I moved to the Symbian platform in 2008, there wasn’t much to find for Bible apps. Laridian, Olive Tree, Symbian Bible, and Go-Bible were pretty much your only options. And for a while, this was just fine and covered most of the Symbian devices that were in existence. When Symbian went to a touch-based user interface (UI), things got a lot fragmented, and Symbian Bible pretty much became the only option (Best eBible came on the scene later). Which was good and not good – a free application, using Bibles formatted for the Palm Bible+ application, and had no support for newer translations. Newer platforms ended up with a very easy “in” for adoption, they had what people could read, and could find.

A Missed Opportunity…

In light of all of that history, its easy to say that Symbian (and the companies associated with that platform) might have missed an opportunity to take a platform that has already made considerable inroads even further. But, it had a good bit going against it, and so it is now in the position it is in.

But does that mean that all potential opportunity for this platform have been lost? I’d say no, if technical aptitude is seen as a gift that can benefit the Body. When I say technical aptitude, a platform (like Symbian, but all qualify here) benefits by such knowledge as developer tools, device interfaces, language mapping, usage analytics, etc. A person who is skilled in any of these areas would be a suitable team member for a larger project creating an application, service, or refining a digital faith experience. These persons have to be looked for in “not normal places” as their gift isn’t something you’d find in Exodus on the way to creating a mobile altar (Exodus 25-27).

There’s also the benefit of much of Symbian’s assets being made available in open forums (for example Forum Nokia), through some open source technologies (for example Qt), and through the continued ownership of Symbian devices (installed-based analysis by Vision Mobile). In effect, there’s a lot of folks out there who can still benefit from a Bible solution on this platform.

The Lesson for Other Mobile Platforms

It is easy for the market, and popular (loud) opinion to state where you should place your development resources. Certainly, making plans for mobile software you’ve got to take into account devices, services, and experiences (the entire frame of mobile) and what is currently and what will be in the years to come.

When it comes to religious software, you also have the opportunity to always tap into the installed base of current users. Many times, your frequent fans and users of digital faith items will not splurge on the latest devices or services, though they will want to receive some of the same experiences that newer devices offer. It is in this that the opportunity lies, and where its possible to not just make a product, but help drive older platforms to a friendlier sunset.

Currently, there are several mobile platforms that have come and gone (Epoc, PalmOS, Windows Mobile), and some that are pretty much on their last legs (Symbian, older versions of Android and iOS, RIM’s BB OS 6 and earlier). Developers looking to cut their teeth on a mobile platform to learn and to provide experiences should not forget these platforms. And at the same time, you should go into any project with a clear (and simple) goal and definitive timeline. You  will not be able to support those devices for very long when the official support has faded.

Lastly, when you are a platform that has cultured a community of content, but you are no longer able to support that platform, utilize the open code and support communities of Code.Google, Forum Nokia, SourceForge, GitHub, and others as places to put your code and release notes. There might be someone willing to take up the project, or at least help you migrate your project’s contents into a newer platform. For example, MMM participated in an effort to update the Rapier Bible application for Maemo 5 devices, fixing some linger bugs, but that also set the stage to develop (and later release into widespread testing) a Bible application written in Qt from the ground up called Katana. The rewritten application leans on lessons of the former, but has a much longer viable life because of decisions made early on to support certain content and programming hooks.

For Symbian, it may very well be the case that the sun is setting for it as a leading mobile platform. It is also the case that there are some years and various regions of users that still haven’t been served with digital faith content though having a platform capable of supporting it. Do keep that in mind as you consider your mobile strategies, and remember to study the past platforms for what is probably going to happen to many others in a nearer-than-you-can-expect future.

Challenges in Measuring Mobile

Hybrd mobile measurement flowchart, via Monday NoteIn some recent conversations around mobile ministry, one of the more pressing concerns was how to measure the impact of mobile. Frankly speaking, metrics/analytics for mobile aren’t as mature and usually content providers need to be more creative in collecting and more descriptive in interpreting mobile data. Monday Note goes into some great detail towards the challenges here:

…One example of the measurement challenge: a news related application. The first measure of an app’s success is its downloads count. In theory, pretty simple. Each time an app is downloaded, the store (Apple’s or any other) records the transaction. Then, things gets fuzzier as the application lives on and gets regular updates. Sometimes, updates are upgrades, with new features. At which point should the app be considered new — especially when it’s free, like most of the news-related ones? Second difficulty: a growing number of apps will be preloaded into smartphones and tablets. Rightly or wrongly, Apple nixes such meddling with its devices. But, outside of the iOS world, cellphone carriers do strike deals with content providers and preload apps on Android devices. That’s another hard to get number…

Read the rest of Measuing the Nomads at Monday Note.

In those conversations about mobile data and analytics, it has been made very clear to me that this is a major hurdle for some of the larger groups which use these measurements in order to determine how to better support – or even adjust how they are supporting mobile ministry activities. What have been some of the methods that you are finding successful?

Or, if you’ve got a case study towards a mobile ministry initiative and have described some of these measures of success, would you consider submitting that to be posted on our Mobile Case Studies/Research page? There’s still much to be learned from one another and grounds to be plowed in this space. And until we can start seeing consistency in actions/successes/failures, the challenge to collecting and understanding mobile data in the ministry context will go unanswered.

Info-Graphics and Visualizing Mobile Contextually

This past summer saw MMM participating in several conversations and sessions around opportunities and issues for mobile developers (with WIP Connector). More often than not, its isn’t the clearest of pictures for development when you start diving into niche arenas such as religious content. The market is indeed different, and the challenges can be pretty looming. Nevertheless, there are some consistent themes, especially in terms of getting apps to market and monetization.

This graphic, produced by Vision Mobile, makes it pretty clear the prospects for developers on the major mobile platforms. Especially as it relates to mobile software in the religious domain, paying attention to the installed base of users is just as important as just getting something developed – and you don’t want to spin your wheels learning how to develop for every platform.

The Mobile Developer Journey

Another site that offers several info-graphics towards understanding opportunities within mobile can be found at Asymco. Asymco has a ton of data and usually packs in some solid commentary around his methodologies used. Here’s one graphic that some in the Bible software industry might find interesting:
Info-Graphic: Visualizing iPad vs Mac, via Asycmo
Graphic from Visualizing iPad vs Mac, via Asycmo

Now, you can find info-graphics on a ton of areas within mobile, but you will want to make sure that you are viewing it through the appropriate lens. The data shown in this post is great, but you will need to combine it with data on (world/local) religions, tech adoption (economics), and probably media (text/publishing, audio/music, and video) in order for it to make the most sense contextually.

Myths and Misconceptions of Mobile

One of the (longer) readings that has come from the mobile blogsphere has been a piece called Everything You Wanted to Ask About Mobile But Were Afraid To Ask by Tomi Ahonen (Communities Dominate Brands, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media, etc.). This piece is an excellent primer towards mobile from a high (and probably nearly mid-)level perspective, and yet is about the right kind of perspective that’s needed for such a field. Here’s a snippet of that piece:

…And do remember, that is global numbers. Two thirds of the planet means we now cover people who are refugees from wars, living in poverty etc. On the planet there are 800 million people of reading age who are illiterate, 1.6 billion people live beyond the reach of electricity, and 900 million are children under the age of 7. There are more people with mobile phones than have access to running water. More mobile phone subscribers on the planet than use a toothbrush (its true!). Yet even across all these hardships, the mobile has spread so rapidly that there was a mobile phone for two thirds of the planet at the start of this year, and will be 75% of planet Earth’s population by the end of this year…

It is no longer an issue of whether mobile is here, now it’s time to address our perceptions and possibilities because it is.

Update: Read more about MMM’s coverage of SMS in mobile.

Mobile Benchmarks 2010: SMS w/Non-Profits

Given the rise in the understanding how how to use SMS for fund raising, many organizations are now looking at what the impact of SMS activities for non-profits looks like. Thankfully, we’ve got access to the metrics put together in the first-ever Nonprofit Text Messaging Benchmark Study (sponsored by Mobile Commons and mGive). Composed by Michael Amoruso and Jessica Bosanko of M+R Strategic Services and Katrin Verclas ofMobileActive.org, the report “provides benchmarks and metrics by which nonprofit organizations can measure their success with text messaging and illustrate the various ways in which organizations are using text messages.” For example:

…According to the Mobile Benchmark study, there are currently over 276 million wireless users in the U.S. and during the first half of 2009, users sent about 740 billion text messages. The report breaks down not only how non-profits can use SMS to interact with supporters, but also releases statistics on how specific organizations fared with their SMS campaigns..

Download the Mobile Benchmarks 2010 and learn more at the Mobile Benchmarks website.

Via Mobile Active