Behind the Curtain: Secrets of Mobile Application Wizardry (talk by Paul Gelb, 12/03 @ 3:30PM)
Perhaps inevitably, I had to attend a session that just wasn’t all that. Unfortunately for Paul Gelb of Razorfish, that dubious honour was his. His talk sounded promising and I had visions of being told how to build the killer app I dream of, while at the same time conquering the embarrassing risk of only having three people download the damn thing.
Gelb broke out some interesting (if unsourced) statistics:
- 95% of mobile apps are failures (in terms of active user reach)
- more people text than use a toothbrush
- more people have access to mobile apps than have access to fresh water
- people look at their phones 150 times per day
Stats aside, there were grumbles afoot on Twitter as Gelb spoke mainly to the projection screen (and thus away from his collar mic), not to his audience. He began to highlight some of his own company’s products, again leading to complaints on Twitter that he was plugging his own business. It did feel hard to concentrate on his presentation as it tended to take the form of “my company did this” and “our agency made this” rather than more concrete ideas and tactics for the rest of us.
A few interesting parts came up: app development should be a continuous process, and they should be scalable and adaptable across platforms. Contrast this against the fairly controversial suggestion that “there are no best practices in app design” at the current time, and you have a talk that was half interesting, half business pitch.
Gelb ended earlier than anybody I’ve seen speak yet, with another 20 minutes or so of his allotted time left. While this did leave time for questions, half the room had already left at this point, so I took the hint and headed off myself.
- Matt Andrews
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