Altimeter Roundtable: Mobile Discussion on “Enrich, Engage, and Entrust”

Altimeter hosted our second roundtable lead with our newest hire, Chris Silva (blog/Twitter) who’s our newest analyst at Altimeter focused on Mobile Strategy. Chris also stems from Forrester, and was an analyst there focused on mobile, he was actually one of the trainers in my new hire orientation.

Above: Mobile Proud! Roundtable attendees show off their personal devices at the Altimeter Hangar.

Attendees consisted of representatives from startups, mobile app vendors, large device manufactures, brands, social web companies, and media creator: Almost Savvy, Appconomy, Ascentium, Avere Group, Box, DoubleDutch, FrontRow Antics, Janrain, LiquidSpace, Logitech, Mekanism, MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, Moxie Software, nvidia, Oracle, Pansonic, Quantinto, Ready to Go Information Technologies, Responsys, Retailigence, Rocket Fuel Inc, SAP, Seesmic, Social Guides, Sony Electronics, SPdL Marketing Strategies, Stanford University Dept. of Athletics, Tagwhat, The Estuary, LLC, and [wire]stone.

I kicked off our roundtable series (our last one was on Gamification) to foster a community discussion so we can all learn from each other, and the key findings will be shared in our Open Research reports. I personally learned a lot from the smart attendees about their visions on the future of the space, and we had a few laughs over a few beers along the way.

Groups were divided into three distinct mobile use cases for discussion:

1. Enrich: I see this as driving leads, sales, and conversion using mobile devices, both for B2C and B2B.
2. Engage: Lifestyle and contextual related content that isn’t only about transacting revenue but instead about providing greater value
3. Entrust: Enabling workforces and business partners to use mobile technology to improve their work in a safe, scalable, and secure manner.

We were tasked to define the challenges in each use case, define current state of maturity, and ideate on future use cases. In nearly all cases, the groups came back indicating a host of challenges in this relatively new(er) medium, often stemming from a lack of understanding. Secondly, most groups believed that maturity was low, often stemming from disparate technology, data, and a focus on shiny. We ideated on the future and the “minority report” vision of contextual content where devices fade into the background was a semi-theme.

Here’s some of the key captures with captions:

Groups were anointed to work the Three Mobile Use Cases: Engage, Enrich, Entrust

State of Enrich: “Terrified CMO”

Future of Engage

Entrust group

The WikiWall, where attendees can leave their thoughts, click to see full size

Altimeter Researcher Jon Cifuentes leads a roundtable discussion

Roundtable 3 takes on Enrich

Community sharing in the round

Discussion stirs with Nvidia and Esther Lim, captures highlights via iPad

In the larger round

Culmination of the larger group, partial view

Mobile discussion in the Cloud Nine lounge.

Susan Etlinger, Altimeter and Shawn Myers, Responsys

There was a series of tweets from the tag #AltimeterMobile, see who was there and what they said.

If you’re interested in attending future events, please follow the Altimeter Group Twitter account, as we’ll have future Pilot Speaker series (more about Altimeter presenting our point of view rather than this interactive roundtable) on the future of media and digital. I’m considering hosting future roundtables on topics of integration, advocacy, and other topics related to my research agenda, leave a comment if you’ve a suggestion. I cross posted on the Altimeter blog, as did Chris Silva.