This is Part 1 of a series proposing a methodology towards implementing and understanding the implications of mobile tool-sets within ministries. It is deliberately shortened, and at the same time, should assist the understanding behind MMM’s specific expertise offerings.

Defining Mobile Strategies
While it is many times helpful to look to other industries to define and implement strategies around new technologies, mobile is one of those clear areas where everyone is still trying to develop a sense of what works and how. MMM is one of many groups at the front of this intersection between faith and mobile, and proposes a framework which might assist many of you towards not just seeing the value of mobile (devices, services, etc.) and discerning the impacts personally, locally, and globally.

Mobile as Content

Mobile can be defined in several different categories. One of the easiest ones to understand – but not necessarily the smallest grouping, is that of understanding mobile as content.

Mobile as Content means that you are seeing just the base elements of mobile as they are, before they are implemented within a specific context. This includes the devices themselves (Nokia, Apple, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, etc.), the software platforms (iOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc.), and elements within these platforms (applications, web browsers, mobile websites, etc.). It will also include the data that passes through these devices/platforms (email, SMS, audio/video, etc.).

Mobile as Content doesn’t deal with the specific application of these items, it merely identifies them and recognizes that all of these are a part of making one’s strategic engagement possible.

Mobile as Content means that you recognize the various layers which can be used within mobile for your endeavors, and then shorten the list of what exists to those specific elements that you’d target for your endeavor. For example, you want to build a biblical text delivery system, then your mobile-specific content areas need to include the devices most prominent to your target group (which includes the hardware and software), the delivery method most likely to be used by that group (this bears in mind actual and used infrastructure, not ideal methods), and the content itself (and most likely to be used data formats).

After this point, you can start building out your contextual understanding of what can be done (see Part 2).