D M

D M

Mobile Internet product evangelist

  • Peterborough, GB

Dave has over 13 years experience covering online technology and online commercial strategy. More recently Dave has been an evangelist keynote speaker focusing on rapid growth of Mobile Internet. Expert experience and knowledge spans across social media, online recruitment, mobile applications, mobile market, mobile business, web business models, strategic delivery, project management, product development, product launch and business development. Dave recognises the shape of the Internet in the future and cares about products supporting individuals and companies in a hybrid online world of mobile and desktop. He is a leading mobile Internet expert with the strategic and hands on project experience to drive online business forwards into the next decade of media consumption. Dave has less time to commit to speaking at events, but is proud to be part of mRecCamp 2012 - http://mrecruitingcamp.com/ in Atlanta 14 Sep 2012

13 Followers 8 Following 25 Organizations 13 Topics
Most recent

  • D M in Mobi In Action

    This week in episode 5 #MobileInAction talked to Torgil Lenning, CEO, Potentialpark. Torgil shares his companies findings around candidate multi… Read morescreen behaviour and their desire to track applications via mobile. Potentialpark focus research effort on candidate behaviour and employer branding through mobile, resulting in a league table showing off those firms doing this well. In this interview Torgil tells us the top 3 focus areas for your mobile recruiting strategy, which is based on in depth research. Instead of reading, just watch it now. The Potentialpark findings illustrate the potential for increased employer branding and maximising social recruiting reach."Job seekers are still miles ahead of employers in embracing mobile trends. Out of 473 employers, only 20% offer a mobile career website.", source Potentialpark Study 2013In September 2012 I carried out a survey of mobile support by employers which you can read in the Mobile Recruiting Guide 2012, the growth since then has been around double. The momentum of employers going mobile is growing fast.During the interview, Torgil shares what the key focus should be for employers to get to the top of the league table and deliver valuable employer branding via mobile. "If you have a well thought out career site, the content to get going is ready" says Torgil, while highlighting that companies should focus on getting something mobile optimised sooner than later. He feels the quicker employers get their brand on mobile, the faster they will gather learnings and results. The results will help the internal discussions surrounding budget and the learnings will help shape employers mobile strategy. I agree with such an experimental approach, or lean approach. Sitting back ignoring mobile or thinking about it will not illustrate the value and importance that mobile already plays to candidates.Potentialpark research which is available now was gathered towards the end of last year, one of their biggest suprises is how rapidly employers are embracing mobile in 2013. There has been a lot of activity in Q1, one example that Torgil refers to is Goldman Sachs. I am very interested to learn of employers activities, please do contact me when you launch new mobile sites so I can feature them, or maybe it can feature in a future MobileInAction.I will be blogging soon on the Potentialpark research and advice given in this Interview.
    • Episode 5: Listening to candidates #MobileInAction

      This week in episode 5 #­M­o­b­i­l­e­I­n­A­c­t­i­o­n­ talked to Torgil Lenning, CEO, Potentialpark . Torgil shares his companies findings around candidate multi screen behaviour and their desire to track applications via mobile. Potentialpark focus research effort on candidate behaviour and employer branding through mobile, resulting in a league table showing off those firms doing this well.

    • D M in Mobile

      Last week Apple dropped £13m to acquire Wifislam, an indoor mapping specialist. Nokia already has Destination Maps that boasts indoor mapping and… Read moretheir are a few Finnish companies focused on in door mapping.The technology Apple now owns can pinpoint a device with 2.5 metres of accuracy inside a building. With the outdoor pretty well mapped, it makes sense that the next step is inside. But what could you use it for? As indoor mapping becomes mainstream and empowers mobile developers, what enterprise applications will we see? Large enterprises could have meeting room finders, or maybe desk finders to go and drop by the guy you email but have no idea where he sits? Such simple problems would definitely help those newbies on boarding. It could help IT support locating workstations to fix.What if it was used at the office to track employees? Not outside the building but in the building - you need to speak to someone urgently but can't find them? If they have their phone now you could locate them to the nearest 2.5 metres. Would this be big brother? Could it infringe your privacy? Could management view reports on which staff spend the most time wandering around the building potentially doing nothing? Yahoo recently made the headlines using data from VPN reports showing who was using their computer from home. I wonder if the same data usage report was ran against their internal network? Now Yahoo have given everyone iOS devices its only time before they have the potential to view 'away from your desk reports'Outside of the workplace, it would make navigating the shopping centre, museum, library and well any big building with a new found ease. So what is next? Maybe the web of things can take this to the next level - with everything tagged with a digital id we could locate anything. Whats for sure is large web companies such as Google or Facebook will want to suck up all this data to learn more about individuals in order to deliver new information services and generate new revenues. The Google Now service already is to some level of accuracy. I expect there is already a shout out about privacy concerns. Personally, I am not bothers - track away!
      • Sorry, but you wander about doing nothing!

        Last week Apple dropped £13m to acquire Wifislam, an indoor mapping specialist. Nokia already has Destination Maps that boasts indoor mapping and their are a few Finnish companies focused on in door mapping. The technology Apple now owns can pinpoint a device with 2.5 metres of accuracy inside a building.

      • D M in Recruitment

        Have your heard of BYOD? Its CIO / CTO speak, standing for Bring Your Own Device, meaning let enterprise employees use their own hardware for business… Read moretasks. The most popular trend in BYOD is letting employees use their own smartphone or tablet for business use. Typically this means email, accessing the intranet and accessing enterprise file servers.There are various security techniques that let even highly regulated financial institutes safely engage with with a BYOD scheme. But why, its not free, the enterprise has to invest in security infrastructure to set this up. The ROI argument made by vendors such as Cisco cover a range of enterprise factors, mostly focused around overall reduced costs per staff member, by as much as 25%. But cost saving is not the only ROI in the BYOD pitch, it includes productivity boosts, increased job satisfaction and increased employee retention. Research from Aberdeen Grop found that 61% of companies that embrace BYOD experience higher employee satisfaction. Cisco go as far as placing a specific annual value of $300 per headcount due to employee retention. Cisco highlight that 40% of employees want an any device work anywhere style.As Gen Y hires increase do they expect to BYOD in place? Will employee retention through BYOD become a bigger factor? Any device, really I doubt that is really wanted, do employees want to use their own laptops? But I do believe that forcing employees to carry two mobile phones is a pain and people would prefer to simply use their own. The choice of mobile is quite personally, boarding on religious. Some of the mobile BYOD technology I saw demonstrated at GigaOM Mobilize, specifically on Android, effectively runs two phones on one device. This enables work calls to be billed to work and the employee can switch off work.I have read a lot of material about the suggestion of BYOD increasing employee retention. Even though I am a mobile fan boy, I just do not buy it! I have never met anyone who said "Damn my firm, they force me to use this mobile, I am quitting". It just is not a factor that is up there with management style, travel, lack of training, task variety, career potential and pay.One of our Mobile In Action friends, Elaina Farnsworth CEO of Mobile Comply has had hands on experience of deploying BYOD strategies, I shall be inviting her back to do a video interview on this topic. Her challenge - convince me that mobile can impact retention. What are your thoughts, please comment and let me know!Here is a link to the Cisco study.
        • Can mobile increase employee retention

          Have your heard of BYOD? Its CIO / CTO speak, standing for Bring Your Own Device, meaning let enterprise employees use their own hardware for business tasks. The most popular trend in BYOD is letting employees use their own smartphone or tablet for business use.

        • D M in Mobile, Recruitment, Social

          Mobile is a personal device. Do you share your smartphone? Would you let a stranger or even a colleague dig around your phone? Probably not.… Read moreTake a look at the latest direction from the big players like Google, they are focused on making that device 'know' you better. It is going to get more personal!Google Now (not currently available for iOS) is an early attempt at the device (well the cloud) knowing what information you need. It tells you of your next appointment, it suggests how long it will take for you to get their, it alerts you of traffic, it shows you the route, it tells you about sports teams you follow, friends & families birthdays, stock change you might care about, news items you might want to read and thats just the start. There is a good chance that Google Now is a beta of the kind of features to expect in Google Glass. Google know a LOT about you from your browsing, they track everything. Yesterday, I attended a Google Hangout arranged by Chris Hoyt, it was full - 10 people video conferencing at once. There was no agenda, it was a lunch time chat. One area of discussion touched on was personalisation of the job seeking experience. Since the call, I can not stop thinking about it! This topic is not bound to mobile alone, but spread across all devices.What information could you know about someone who lands on a career page of your company? How could you use that information to personalise the job seeking experience? Is it possible to have unique 1:1 landing pages for that person?I have reached the conclusion that some degree of personalisation is possible, it may have to based on less data than Google carries, but there are data points we can use to assist candidates find what they are looking for with a proactive approach. Recruitment has spent that last 5 years focused on social media, what have we learnt from this? Probably what we already knew - engagement and conversation builds relationships and trust. Social campaigns target specific talent communities and people with specific skills. The discussion on social media come close to one to one. But do you continue this on our career web pages or mobile sites / apps?No. Shame. But could you?
          • This time its personal
            This time its personal

            Mobile is a personal device. Do you share your smartphone? Would you let a stranger or even a colleague dig around your phone? Probably not. Take a look at the latest direction from the big players like Google, they are focused on making that device 'know' you better.

          • D M in Mobi In Action

            This week MobileInAction talks to Elaina Farnsworth, CEO, Mobile Comply and considers how the smartphone has infiltrated consumer lifestyle… Read moreand work habits. Mobile Comply provides strategic consultancy and training for companies wanting to increase their ROI and productivity via a mobile strategy.The smartphone took off in 2007, which Elaina reminded me is not that long ago. I live at the leading edge of the technology space, where 2007 is many generations of software and hardware ago.  The iPhone was the catalyst that drove the smartphone to mainstream adoption. Today there are more smartphones in the USA than traditional "feature" phones. The smartphone is now mainstream. Consumers, candidates, recruiters, business owners are now online via their smartphone. The device is an extension of the person carrying their photos, music, email and work. To engage with people we need to embrace their communication / web device of choice - the smartphone and tablet. Mobile is a personal device, more valuable to many than their wallet. Mobiles is one to one with people, few share a device, this positions the smartphone very well for recruitment. Elaina suggests, "You want to recruit the newest and brightest talent... if you have an appropriate BYOD strategy talent will know they are in the best environment". While I agree that there is research illustrating a BYOD strategy can increase talent retention I have not seen anything that suggests it will support talent attraction. It is very clear that the best talent who research companies are doing do from their mobile device. Mobile job seeking is rapidly growing, despite the industries lack of overall support. What difference will it make if companies made it easy for talent to learn and find their next career via smartphone - the migration from desktop job seeking to mobile will be accelerated! Those smarter companies who embrace mobile in their recruiting strategy will benefit by supporting what is fast becoming the primary Internet device for the world.
            • Episode 4 Mobile Comply

              This week MobileInAction talks to Elaina Farnsworth , CEO, Mobile Comply and considers how the smartphone has infiltrated consumer lifestyle and work habits. Mobile Comply provides strategic consultancy and training for companies wanting to increase their ROI and productivity via a mobile strategy.

            • D M in Mobi In Action

              As a follow up Episode 3: Bye Bye Job Description is really part two to @JimStroud earlier MobileInAction video where he spoke of jobseeker mobile… Read morestats that stated 55% of jobseekers want mobile alerts.uJim shares his distaste for job descriptions and shares his dream of candidate authored job descriptions and super matching algorithms. Watch it now and let us know your thoughts! BTW - dont miss the crazy zombie trailer at the end! Kind of an Easter Egg :)
              • Bye Bye Job Description: #MobileInAction Episode 3

                As a follow up Episode 3: Bye Bye Job Description is really part two to @JimStroud earlier MobileInAction video where he spoke of jobseeker mobile stats that stated 55% of jobseekers want mobile alerts.u Jim shares his distaste for job descriptions and shares his dream of candidate authored job descriptions and super matching algorithms. Watch it now and let us know your thoughts!

              • D M in Social, Recruitment

                When looking to optimise candidate conversion from social media the question you need to ask is "Why are potential candidates not applying?" -… Read morei.e why do you have drop off in your process. Before anyone shouts out, lets make things real, unlike retail, in recruitment we do want an amount of drop off it is candidates self filtering themselves for roles.I am not a social recruiting expert, but I am used to analysing conversion funnels. If your conversion experience can not be completed on a mobile I can say for certain that you are suffering enormous drop off just because you have not provided your candidates a mobile option. Given the high intensity of social media and email consumption on mobile devices, which is growing every day, this should be a priority for you.The mobile application will take time to get right for your back office process. It might require some changes if you want to maximize the potential talent in your audience, or some investment with solutions such as Jibe or Mobolt. The traffic the numbers make it worthwhile. Support mobile properly and you will significantly increase the ROI you get from social media campaigns.There are various ways to approach improving your process and perfecting your application funnel (conversion funnel). In various projects I have worked on the typical approach is to A/B test. This is a tactic where a % of your Internet traffic randomly is direction to the original user experience (version A) and the rest is directed to your new experience (version B). Using this approach and careful small changes it is possible to learn (and prove) exactly what changes deliver increased value. Many of the major .coms use this approach.The ins and outs of recruiting have many details parameters that could impact your tests. It takes a lot of effort to plan solid A/B tests and knowledge, plus experience to correctly interpet the results. For the majority of recruiters I would suggest a different approach where by you use mobile optimise various recruiting campaigns. Your experience in recruiting will instinctually give you a feel as for the impact. Observing social conversions for the mobile campaign compared to none mobile campaigns will provide you data to back up your instincts. Adopting mobile campaigns coupled with your social campaigns enables you to have a strategy to develop the perfect mobile engagement for your companies and candidates needs. You will be able to experiment with campaigns using high levels of graphics or video compared to text only. You can learn if supporting content on your mobile campaign increases conversion or if pure job adverts is the way forwards. What ever your plans - supporting your campaigns with mobile targeted sites will expose you to more candidates and deliver increased conversions, hence return you value.
                • Optimise your social recruiting
                  Optimise your social recruiting

                  When looking to optimise candidate conversion from social media the question you need to ask is "Why are potential candidates not applying?" - i.e why do you have drop off in your process. Before anyone shouts out, lets make things real, unlike retail, in recruitment we do want an amount of drop off it is candidates self filtering themselves for roles.

                • D M in Mobi In Action

                  I caught up with @JimStroud who put together a really fun video to share some great stats from SimpleHired mobile outlook - download. Watch and… Read morelearn why mobile matters to job seekers!
                  • Episode 2: Jobseekers use Mobile!

                    I caught up with @JimStroud who put together a really fun video to share some great stats from SimpleHired mobile outlook - download . Watch and learn why mobile matters to job seekers!

                  • D M in Design, Mobile

                    I have implemented various projects with responsive design techniques. In its purest form responsive allows the CSS (styles) to change what content is… Read moreshown or styles / layout, based on screen dimensions or screen resolution. This initially sounds like the winning ticket, however I feel alone, in its pure form its is typically only suitable for MVP (minimal viable product) or for a prototype.Unfortunately its really tough to deliver great mobile experience across the wide landscape of operating systems (Android, iOS, BlackBerry, WinPhone, etc) and the even wider landscape of devices with manufacture tweaks to the browser or OS (typically on Android). To achieve the best experience It requires more than just swapping styles based on screen size. It requires responsive's big brother - Adaptive.So what is different between devices that causes issues with a pure responsive approach?Retina image support, swapping images that are not background images is not possible in CSS. To achieve this involves either the HTML used has to be badly formed to use background images, download both images to the device (extra bandwidth and causes performance issues), or use javascript on the client.Pure responsive fails, as the older device ignore the instructions to resize the web page. Viewing a responsive site on a BlackBerry Curve will show the 'default' version of the site which in many cases is actually the desktop version, not good.Different devices require tweaks and work arounds to achieve the desired design, it can be highly complex to include these in one code base. The alternative frequently taken is to simply ignore the differences, not my preference beyond proof of concept.Devices with smaller screens or slower processors will not deliver satisfatory user experience with some designs. For example designs using lots of images or lots of javascript. It would be a shame to deprive users with more powerful devices from the cool experinces, but equally it is not great to ignore an audience. The solutions are all hacks and work arounds that either impact download speed or make the 'one size fits all' code base much more complex.Javascript - even using Jquery or Zepto different devices behave with different issues. I witnessed a project where the HTC One needed a code tweaks for a specific javascript implementation to work but the fix broke other Android phones. Responsive does NOT detect devices so there is no way to solve this issue - it had to device specific. I have seen many similar such issues.I hear some non-techy folk say - so what, make the codebase more complex. Thats what we pay engineers for. The problem with more complex code is making changes or adding new features becomes more complex too. Complexity = time, and we all know that time = money. If you want to save money in the long term then you will need a strategy that handles responsive and device specific.In my company we use responsive, but coupled with device detection - an adaptive approach. To put it simply, where we need to we will target specific code to specific devices. This is used to achieve backwards compatibility  or deliver an older HTML version or even a text only version to the lower end of the mobile devices - there is no other solution apart from ignore them. User experience and site performance (speed) matters more than having one code base for all devices.This area is going to get more complex with the arrival of new open source OS such as FireFox OS which manufactures will tweak. Its not just open source, iOS 6 changed how code was cached and required tweaks which earlier devices did not require. To conclude go for it and maximize responsive technology, but as you add complexity  and hacks to support more devices be very aware of the risks. Constantly ask, is now the time when we have to be Adaptive and have device recognition as well as responsive. If you care about experience and recognise that conversion (income) is impacted by experience you will make that jump to Adaptive sooner.I will write more about the goals of Adaptive and alternative approaches.
                    • Responsive design grows up to Adaptive.
                      Responsive design grows up to Adaptive.

                      I have implemented various projects with responsive design techniques. In its purest form responsive allows the CSS (styles) to change what content is shown or styles / layout, based on screen dimensions or screen resolution. This initially sounds like the winning ticket, however I feel alone, in its pure form its is typically only suitable for MVP (minimal viable product) or for a prototype.

                    • D M

                      Mobile device detection can be a challenge. Responsive web techniques achieves detection based just on screen sizes. While this is a nice idea, I see… Read moremany responsive sites where the designer has created for different screen sizes not for mobile. A common device detection mechanism is carried out server side - analysing the user agent string. The user agent frequently provides information around what device is being used. There are web services available which can pin point thousands of devices based on the user agent and provide device capability information - such as http://www.handsetdetection.com. Typically it is not needed to know the exact device, often we only need to know what browser version and OS in order to target the right code to the right device. While this is a simple task, the recent Kindle Fire HD sold in the UK includes some confusing messaging in its user agent string. Here is a sample UK Kindle Fire user agent string Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.3; <locale>; KFOT Build/IML74K) AppleWebKit/<webkit> (KHTML, like Gecko) Silk/<version> Mobile Safari/<safari> Silk-Accelerated=<state>Some device detection scripts have got confused by the inclusion of 'AppleWebKit' and 'Mobile Safari' coupled with Android. So those using basic detection, beware!If your vendor deals with this techy stuff for you the question you need to ask is 'Have you tested on a Kindle Fire HD? Did the device detection work?'
                      • Device detection and Kindle Fire HD
                        Device detection and Kindle Fire HD

                        Mobile device detection can be a challenge. Responsive web techniques achieves detection based just on screen sizes. While this is a nice idea, I see many responsive sites where the designer has created for different screen sizes not for mobile. A common device detection mechanism is carried out server side - analysing the user agent string.

                      • CompareTheMarket.com, Senior Project Manager, Peterborough

                        March 2012 to present

                        Driving the product planning and development to connect talent and employers around the topic of skills.

                      • Comparethemarket.com, Senior Project Manager

                        March 2012 to present

                      • Mobile Dave, Mobile Evangelist

                        January 2007 to present

                        As a mobile visionary Dave has helped educate others on the topic and share his experience. His supporting roles includes informal networking to board level advisory.

                        Dave works hard to evangelise the adoption of Mobile Web, specifically in recruitment, using social media, blogging, authoring for publications (eg ere.net), publishing white papers and speaking at events all over the world.

                        Dave is always open to discuss mobile.

                        Dave spoke at the first European conference on mobile recruiting in 2010 - Mobile & Video in Recruitment - and again in 2011. He spoke at the first USA mobile recruiting conference in San Francisco mRecruitingCamp 2011 and was invited back in 2012.

                        Previous public speaking includes OnRec (London), SRConf (London), The Firm (London), Online Recruitment Enhance Media (London), CJEX (Johannesburg), World Association of Newspapers (Copenhagen), mRec (USA), MVIR (London) and more.

                      • BraveNewTalent, Interim Director of Product

                        November 2011 to March 2012

                        Working with the executive team Dave provided a clear strategic product direction to take the company to the next level.

                        Dave implemented an agile product development approach across the business. He owned the change management process which successfully supported 4 development teams to adopted agile. The results where visible in the speed to delivery and the focus on adding product value to the business.

                        The firms focus on community was demystified through Dave's product conversation strategy that will significantly change the user adoption and user engagement rates for the product.

                        Throughout the role Dave supported strategic development and networked closely with experts from around the world but specifically Silicon Valley.

                      • BraveNewTalent, Head of Mobile and Product Strategy, London

                        July 2011 to December 2011

                        Driving talent community for skills development and recruitment via the mobile channel.

                      • BraveNewTalent, Head of Product and Mobile Strategy

                        July 2011 to November 2011

                        After joining the company Dave worked closely with the CEO and the product team to improve operation efficiencies from concept to live features.

                        Dave invested time in Silicon Valley visiting leading web based and mobile firms. The findings helped shape the Mobile Strategy and refocus the overall platform feature strategy.

                        Dave put together a mobile team and lead the high definition specification for the mobile development.

                      • Allthetopbananas.com, MD, Peterborough

                        January 2007 to July 2011

                      • Allthetopbananas.com LTD, Founder

                        January 2007 to July 2011

                        Since launch Dave has inspired the company and driven user and customer centric innovation.

                        Dave's project management skills mixed with business accumen and strong technical know how delivered one of the UKs major job search engines.

                        During the ecconomic turn down, Dave lead the business to develop new markets within the recruitment online industry, resulting in 2009 an industry first service - FreeMyCV.com. Soon this service was generating significant revenues and attracting copy cat services.

                        When the iPhone was released, Dave saw the future of the Internet and recognised that a revolution within online consumption was about to take place.

                        A focused effort building on existing staff skills saw the company launch the UKs first job seeker iPhone app. Following a evangellic promotional campaign on a restricted bugdet Dave lead the 8 man company to work on mobile solutions with Monster, TotalJobs, CV Library, The Ladders and many more.

                        In 2010 q4 developent started on a world first mobile solution aimed at giving corporate talent acquisition teams the power of mobile web. After 3 months organic development the company powered PepsiCo US launch their mobile career app at the famous South East by South West social technology event.

                        In the couple of months following the company has successfully secured business with many leading global brands including Nestle, Autodesk, Research In Motion (Blackberry) and many more.

                      • Johnston Press, Group Technical Internet Development Manager

                        January 2000 to January 2006

                        Over the 6 years in the role, Dave managed a development team responsible for 300+ UK local newspaper site, JobsToday, PropertyToday and MotorsToday.
                        Dave worked at a senior level, frequently presenting to the PLC Board of Directors. His input was sought out not only in digital commercial and technical strategy but in the companies over all IT strategy leading to the a new group IT department and Director.

                        His intensive efforts and passion surrounding the Digital Strategy supporting the group developing online advertising revenues from £0.5m when he joined to £12m+ when he left.

                        Operating a lean central team which grew over the years from 5 staff to close to 40 staff Dave illustrated creative product development skills, company wide communication skills, stakeholder management skills, project management skills and leadership skills.

                        Leaving the company was a tough decision for Dave, he remained involved on a consultancy basis.

                      • CitiBank, Systems Architect

                        January 1999 to January 2000

                        Pilot Technology projects across multiple platforms and distributed system.

                      • Apmy Automation, Software Engineer

                        January 1998 to January 1999

                      • Thomas Cook, System Analyst

                        January 1997 to January 1999

                        Business process analysis and systems development with 24/7 international speaking call centre.

                      • Computer Science, The University of Northampton

                        1998