Happy Holidays folks!

We had thought we’d have one more Mobile Tulsa meeting in late November but the stars didn’t quite align.  And we figure everyone is going to be busy with the holidays between now and the first of the year so we decided to hibernate until then. We’re planning on meeting in mid-to-late January though so check back with us next year, or better yet signup on our website and we’ll send you an email when we get a firm date.

Until then, enjoy family and friends over the holidays and we hope you find a shiny new mobile gizmo under your tree.

Our next Mobile Tulsa meeting is Tuesday night, October 18th from 6:00pm to 7:30pm at the Hardesty Regional Library (8316 E. 93rd St., Tulsa, OK 74133). The meeting is free to anyone who would like to attend. We’ll be meeting in one of the meeting rooms immediately to the right after you enter the main entrance.

We’re sorry for the super short notice but this week’s speaker will be a special (trick or) treat: the amazing Bill Handy.

Bill Handy is well known in our community for being a master of a great many things. He’s a lover of dogs and, along with his wife and business partner Shelly Holland Handy, champions lots of pro-pet causes.  He’s the consummate strategic communications professional and is a thought leader in the practical integration of emergiing technologies into communications strategy. He’s a hell of a tap dancer and he can juggle…while riding a unicycle. You can read all about him here: http://www.billhandy.com/about/

…but none of those things are why’s he speaking at Mobile Tulsa. During the Fall Semester of 2010, Bill Handy, then visiting assistant professor in the School of Media and Strategic Communications, and Tracy Suter, Ph.D. associate professor of marketing in the Spears School of Business, lead an iPad pilot program at Oklahoma State University.  iPads were given to students in five classes and integrated into the curriculum. Bill will be speaking about the experience and the results of the pilot project.

If you’d like a little preview you can head on over to Bill’s blog http://www.billhandy.com/oklahoma-state-university-ipad-pilot-findings/

It’s sure to be an informative and entertaining presentation.  If you know any educators who are considering iPad programs, please invite them!

Our next Mobile Tulsa meeting is next Tuesday night, September 20th from 6:00pm to 7:30pm at the Hardesty Regional Library (8316 E. 93rd St., Tulsa, OK 74133). We’ll be meeting in one of the meeting rooms immediately to the right after you enter the main entrance.

This month’s speakers are Jimmy Hart and Matt Galloway.

Jimmy Hart serves as interim director of public relations at Rogers State University and technology correspondent with the Tulsa Business Journal.

Jimmy will be sharing his experience with using QR Codes on campus at Rogers State University. During the fall of 2010, Rogers Sate launched an initiative to include QR Codes on a variety of printed materials reaching out to students, prospective students and alumni. The initiative began with a campaign to educate RSU’s audience on QR Codes, their applications and how to use them. To promote this campaign, RSU created Qwerty Rogers, a personified QR Code, to serve as a mascot.

A year later, RSU continues to use QR Codes and has seen adoption of technology spread across campus. The University’s efforts with QR Codes have been recognized by academia and the media, such as the Tulsa World and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Our technical topic speaker this month is Matt Galloway. Matt is a contract cross platform mobile developer and the founder of Tulsa based startup Architactile which develops mobile applications for the architecture, engineering and construction industry. He specializes in business centric mobile application design, development and implementation. Matt is also a co-founding member of the user group Mobile Tulsa.

Matt will be speaking about the hows and whys of developing wire frames during the mobile application design process. He’ll be showing some different wire framing tools and discussing the difference type of wireframes, best practices, etc.

We look forward to seeing you there!  We depend on word of mouth to grow the group so please invite friends and coworkers who are interested in mobile to the meeting!

Our next Mobile Tulsa meeting is Tuesday night, August 23rd from 6:00pm to 7:30pm at the Hardesty Regional Library (8316 E. 93rd St., Tulsa, OK 74133). We’ll be meeting in one of the meeting rooms immediately to the right after you enter the main entrance.

This month’s speakers are Mozilla’s Luke Crouch and Taylor King.

Luke Crouch is a web developer for Mozilla where he works on the developer.mozilla.org site. Prior to Mozilla, he worked for SourceForge.net on a number of site features including Search and API. He’s an open source contributor and advocate, an organizing member of Tulsa Web Devs, and a brewer of beer.

Luke is going to be talking about what the kids over at Mozilla think about mobile web development  and how they approach it including some discussion of the jQuery Mobile Framework.  Luke is also organizing a Hack-a-Thon event following the upcoming Tulsa Tech Fest to benefit some worthy Tulsa non-profits and hopefully he’ll tell us a little about that event too.

Taylor King is a Tulsa based architect with a 17 year history of working in small, medium, and large firms as well as founding and owning his own firm for over five years. Over the last year and half Taylor has been transitioning form the typical architecture firm office model to a virtual team model where he leverages mobile technologies to lead a team of freelancers and consultants to provide higher value and more individualized service to today’s demanding clients. Taylor collaborated with Architactile in the design and development of Architactile Inception, an app for Apple iPad that helps architects rapidly develop preliminary scopes and conceptual budgets for architectural projects.

Taylor will be speaking about identifying the need for a mobile app, his experiences during the collaboration of the design of Architactile Inception, and his use and success of applying mobile technologies in his business.

We hope to see you there!  Please invite other folks who might be interested in mobile to come too. The more the merrier!

Our next meeting of Tulsa Mobile is once again at the Hardesty Regional Library (8316 E. 93rd St., Tulsa, OK 74133), and will be held 6:00-7:30pm on July 19th. The meeting room for this month’s meeting is the Pecan room, which is the same as last month’s meeting room. This is just to the right as you enter the main entrance of the library. We are fortunate to have two  speakers who will be covering great topics.

Our business oriented speaker for the evening is Jeff Rhoton. Jeff is with imobilize media, and focuses on the use of SMS/Text for marketing and advertising. He will be discussing what SMS Marketing is and how it can positively affect a small business. He’ll pay particular attention to Hyperlocal concepts, the SMS Marketplace, and facts related to texting.

Our technical speaker will be Dan Fisher. Dan is a professor at the University of Central Arkansas and it also one of the founders of Gitwit Creative here in Tulsa. Dan will be discussing relevant concepts around User Experience and how this factors into the design of mobile apps.

We are looking forward to hearing about both topics and hope you will attend and invite others to attend as well.

Our next meeting of Tulsa Mobile is once again at the Hardesty Regional Library (8316 E. 93rd St., Tulsa, OK 74133), and will be held 6:00-7:30pm on June 21st. The meeting room for this month’s meeting is the Pecan room. This is just to the right as you enter the main entrance of the library. Two speakers have graciously agreed to share their knowledge with us.

Our business oriented speaker for the evening is Judd Wheeler. Judd is with Comm Arts (www.comm-arts.com) here in Tulsa where he is Director of Digital Media, and he will discuss marketing approaches and concepts specific to the mobile environment.

Our technical speaker will be Ted Ward. Ted is on the faculty of OSU Institute of Technology (www.osuit.edu) in Okmulgee where he teaches mobile application development, as well as other IT related topics. Ted will be sharing information on native application development for the Android operating system using Java.

Should be another great meeting. Please invite others you feel would benefit.

We’re getting lots of calls, emails, and tweets about tonight’s meeting and the weather.  After some discussion we have decided NOT to cancel tonights meeting due to weather.

As of 4pm today, the National Weather Service shows Tulsa County under a Flash Flood Watch but NOT a Tornado Watch.  There is lots of bad weather west and south of us and it’s possible that it’s coming our way, but most of the reports we’re seeing indicate that the storms will head north of Tulsa.

We’ve talked to the good folks at the Hardesty Regional Library and they have confirmed that they will be there until closing time. In the event that the tornado sirens do go off, they have a procedure in place to herd everyone into a protected interior corridor.

We have also confirmed that BOTH of our speakers, Mike Ishmael of Red Dirt Mobile and Brandon Pollet of Illume Mobile will be there ready and excited to present.

Please don’t feel pressured to attend and use your best judgement for your own safety, but if you decide to brave the storm well see you there.  Be safe.

-M.

Based on feedback from numerous interested parties in the Tulsa metropolitan area, we will be launching a Mobile Tulsa (mobiletulsa.org), a new mobile user group on April 19th. This group will focus on topics of interest for both developers and business people in the world of mobility, with a specific focus on business applications as opposed to games or other consumer applications. In the beginning we will meet as a combined group, but we plan to arrange for independent meetings covering technical and topics depending on the number of participants and the specific areas/items of interest.

There are over 61 million smartphones in the US today, and it is projected there will be 24 million tablets sold in the US for 2011. Combine this large number devices with the availability of well over 500,000 applications for Apple and Android alone, and it’s easy to see why developers and businesses are so interested in mobility.

As a group we plan to cover industry trends, development issues, app store experiences, etc. Anyone interested in mobility is welcome to attend, including developers, marketing people, and entrepreneurs to name a few.

The first meeting will be at:

The Maple Room
Hardesty Regional Library

Tuesday, April 19th from 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Hardesty Regional Library is located at 8316 E. 93rd St. Tulsa, OK 74133. The Maple Room is just to the right when you enter the front doors of the library.

Our first speaker will be Matt Galloway, Chief Technologist and Founder of Architactile (www.architactile.com). Matt has developed multiple iPhone apps for architects. He recently launched his newest iPad app called Inception. Matt will be discussing his experiences both with development and with the Apple approval process as he built and deployed Inception.