Training at Adobe

Fresh back from training at Adobe. It was great having an opportunity to sit back and focus on learning instead of learning by virtue of meeting some ambitious deadline. Scott was an effective instructor, managed our time effectively, and guided us through a large body of work in a relatively short amount of time. Met an interesting mix of folks. Some from large companies, some from educational institutions, and some from Canada. It was interesting to share ideas and viewpoints and even argue a bit about best practice.

In terms of Flash Lite, CS3 has really made some great steps in terms of making mobile development more accessible to the every day designer/developer. With Flash Lite 3 on the horizon and it’s expanded video capabilities. I look forward to see how the product evolves.

Another thing, I never saw so many Nokia N95’s in one place. I admit I was green with envy, though for the moment, I’ll stick with more affordable Nokia 5700.

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Mobile Marketing: Monopolizing Customer Downtime

So here’s the obvious. Not all your customers (believe it or not) are going to have computers. Of those that do have them, a lot will seldom use them. Of those who use them, a lot of them won’t read your company’s latest newsletter sent via email or visit your site. But most of your customers WILL have a mobile phone that they will carry with them as often as they carry their car keys. And many of them will have downtime while commuting, waiting for a table at a resturaunt, or ignoring their family members :). Mobile marketing provides companies with an effective way of targeting a highly desirable demographic of consumers when they are most open to receiving the message – during their downtime.

According to a report just released by EJL Wireless Research titled ‘Global Mobile Advertising Market Analysis 2006-2011, 1st Edition’, the US mobile advertising market is expected to reach $2.3 billion, roughly 25% of the overall market by 2011. The largest segment is expected to be mobile couponing, which is forecast to reach almost $4 billion, or 42% of the overall market, by 2011. That’s an amazing amount of growth in a relatvely short amount of time.

Then there’s mobile games, something that hasn’t taken off nearly as well here in the US as it has here in the UK. Research firm GfK M² estimates the mobile gaming market in Europe is worth nearly four times the current value of music downloads and eight times the video download market. People want to be entertained not just by listenting or watching, but by interacting.

This data shows we’re really taking our first steps into a seachange of how companies will communicate with their customers. I think that Adobe’s Flash Lite are positioning themselves well to take on this transformation and with exciting products such as Apple’s iPhone about to be released, marketers should take note if they want to keep their customers ear.

Thanks to Jostiq.com and Mobile Marketing Magazine for the data.

Early Retirement

Working at Fidelity, I think about retirement a lot. In fact I’m invloved in Fidelity’s marketing effort to essentially own retirement as a huge population of baby boomers start to hang their hats up and relax. So this article here intrigued me quite a bit. I always wanted to retire early but according to this I may have missed the boat.

So if you’re 20 with no debt (can’t imagine you went to college in America for that to be the case) and if you save 20% of your salary, you can retire at age 43. Of course this doesn’t account for all the little curveballs life can toss you (kids, accidents, hardships), or the Herculean amount of discipline you would need to adhere to. I also wonder how long the writer assumes you’re going to live since it seems to me you’ll outlive your assets if you make it past 90. That’s fifty years of retirement without hitting the lottery or having some other financial windfall.

With pension programs starting to really fall by the wayside, I do agree though with the writers advice to save early and often. I’m doing all right as far as contributions but have a long way to go. I do have to disagree on the fund and would recommend Fidelity’s Freedom Fund over the Vangaurd 500. Of course I’m biased but it’s has performed great for me over the years. In the meantime I’m hoping for retirement at age 60. I doubt I could sit around for 50 years being old and grumpy anyway. 🙂