Super Mobility Week: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Screen ‘Em

Give CTIA: The Wireless Association some credit: It knows its audience.

Faced with the challenge of having its Super Mobility Week take place at the same time as Apple’s highly anticipated keynote earlier this week, the association set up the Las Vegas event around the week’s big tech story.

“When you think about it, the 40,000 people in the industry who will be affected most by this announcement will not be in Silicon Valley, they’re going to be in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo,” CTIA Vice President Rob Mesirow said to WirelessWeek prior to the event  (opens in a new tab).

The association, which didn’t have any insider information about what Apple was going to offer, screened the two-hour keynote, then had analysts on hand to offer their takes on Tim Cook’s big reveals—the iPhone 6, Apple Pay, and Apple Watch.

“The payment system Apple announced will be exciting and transformational,” Joe Basili, the Telecom Expense Management Industry Association’s managing director, said at the event, according to ComputerWorld  (opens in a new tab). “Apple’s taking the existing ecosystem they’ve built and pushing it out [to payments].”

That said, people in the audience weren’t automatically fanboys. Basili, for example, admitted that while he liked what he saw, he’s “not wildly Apple.”

And, oh yeah, Samsung was there.

Set Your Goals First

Content strategy. You keep using those words. http://t.co/UU6plpesD7  (opens in a new tab) <smart thoughts from @helenmosher  (opens in a new tab) and good follow-up to #assnchat  (opens in a new tab)>

— maggielmcg (@maggielmcg) September 11, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

It’s a term we all use, but do we actually understand what we’re trying to do with it, anyway?

On her personal blog, online communications pro Helen Mosher tries her hand at the difficult task of explaining what content strategy is. She highlights the difference between content architecture, analytics, and production. Mosher says all are important parts of the whole that is content strategy.

“Start with your goals,” she suggests  (opens in a new tab). “What do you want to achieve with your stakeholders? Once you know that, it’s about understanding the needed messaging on all channels to accomplish it, what to leverage where, how to do so effectively, and how to measure the effort and adjust as need be.”

Good advice, huh? (ht @maggielmcg  (opens in a new tab))

Other Links of Note

Trying to drive donations to your nonprofit? Make things really simple, Qgiv’s Abby Jarvis argues on Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog  (opens in a new tab).

You may think you learn from experience, but you don’t. Instead, you learn from reflecting on that experience, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting’s Jeff Hurt writes  (opens in a new tab).

Struggling to get a room at the hotel you want? LifeHacker highlights a tip on how to get a room at the last second  (opens in a new tab).

Panelists at Super Mobility Week react to Apple’s announcement. (CTIA handout photo)