City Councilman Bill Green gives the opening address at the 2011 Mobile Apps Forum and Bootcamp

Mobile strategy and penetration are already shaping government, business and content delivery, say a slew of presenters at the 2011 Mobile App Forum and Bootcamp held this afternoon at Temple University.

Organized by Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic in partnership with two Temple Fox School initiatives, the event was opened by at-large City Councilman Bill Green, who focused on his pet issue: IT-focused municipal government efficiencies. Interspersed with networking sessions in the cavernous, sunlit top-floor conference room of the Fox School’s Alter Hall, Green was followed by two panel discussions on the direction of mobile and related roundtables.

[Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a media sponsor.]

“The city is still not seen as a place to do real business, all the shiny towers in Conshohocken are a testament to that,” said Green, hours after news broke that council had approved a part of his co-sponsored tax reform legislation. “We have technology solutions that can cut our costs and increase our productivity.”

“We need new systems that talk to each ,”Green said, noting the city still maintains some 1,400 servers for fewer than 27,000 employees, each of whom costs an average of $100,000 in salary and benefits. “That’s insanity.”

Other points Green made, in reviewing much of his 10 point Open Government Philadelphia plan:

• Offer a two-tiered city government RFP process, in which global companies like IBM can bid to handle all the city IT services, and smaller firms can bid on portions of the work. The Indiana state government found that in many cases, the smaller bids cut costs without a reduction in services, Green said.
• Seize the opportunity of Wireless Philadelphia, the municipal wireless network that never went fully live but had its $27 million in infrastructure purchased by the city for $2 million, said Green, highlighting the opportunity to increase productivity by allowing police officers and other city officials to file paperwork from the field. The network’s operation, which could be open to residents but prioritized for city use, would cost something like $150,000 a month, Green added.
• Share the city’s data in a dependable, secure, real-time way, noting that embracing the open data movement fully would offer real return for the city. “If we give out good data, people are going to give us ideas that will save us money and make us do better work,” he said.
• The lion’s share of the city’s $120 million IT budget should not be used yet, until workplace process evaluations are done to increase efficiencies in moving forward paperless efforts, rather than recreating existing workflow shortcomings, he said, which means real spending shouldn’t happen for another two years.

Immediately following Green was a panel of big brands talking the future of mobile applications.

Bentley Systems real time asset labs director Frank Rabuck moderated the discussion joined by Piers Lingle, the chief product officer of Comcast Interactive Media, Alan Kaplan, the CTO of Drakontas, Marcio Cyrillo, the head of mobile for Ci&T and Peter Clough, a regional director of sales and business development for appMobi.

The panel followed each of the company’s focuses on future mobile development, though weighing the benefits of native applications and more cross platform HTML5 development was common.

“Whatever the platform, we used to tell the marketing world that you first build your internet site and then build a strategy around that. Now, you want to be mobile-centric, because the usage grows hourly,” he said. “But mobile is still where the web was in 1998 or 1999: there’s excitement but you’re running on what feels like a 56 k modem. As that changes, we’ll see the explosion in impact.”

In photo, from left to right: Jack Huston, CEO of VIP Wireless; Aaron Horne, Philadelphia Inspector of Northwest Detectives; Mike Patterson, Philadelphia Eagles; Michael McCloskey, Philadelphia Chief of Police and Edward Williams, COO of VIP Wireless

Boost Mobile opened its first exclusive retail store in Philadelphia on Friday, with all the pageantry of city police middle management and Eagles defensive tackle Mike “PhatPat” Patterson.

The opening came a day after a deadline Boost imposed on itself to correct lingering problems with a delay in its text messaging delivery.

The delays were blamed on the company’s more than three quarters of a million new prepaid customers in the quarter, which beat analyst expectations, according to Sprint’s first quarter financial results.

Boost has led an advertising blitz on the city.

The store near-ish to the Logan neighborhood of North Philadelphia at Broad and Olney is another step in a battle for low-income cell phone users� between Boost, Metro PCS and Cricket, which entered the Philadelphia market in March. Philadelphia is the most populated region with those three largest prepaid mobile carriers.

At Friday’s store opening, Eagles player Patterson, who is still breathing hard after that 98-yard fumble recovery against the 49ers in 2006, presented on behalf of Boost a $10,000 check to the Philadelphia Police Department, benefiting the John Pawlowski Family Memorial Trust Fund.

In February, Pawlowski, who was 25, was shot and killed at the Broad and Olney intersection.

The retail store was developed in partnership with Boost�s national distributor VIP Wireless. The store will sell the company’s complete product line-up, phone accessory items and other merchandise.

There are at least 19 Cricket Wireless-owned stores in Philadelphia, according to regional company spokesman Jeffrey Bodzewski. There are at least 20 Metro PCS locations.

It’s on.

Technically Philly reported Wednesday that Cricket had the world’s largest cell phone outside the the Shops at Liberty Place. Yesterday, Boost crashed the party.

Less than a half hour after Cricket’s promotional team set up its cell phone and surrounding activity for Thursday’s lunch-time crowd, a flatbed truck – depicted above – hauling a Boost Mobile advertisement and playing an endless loop of Boost boosting began circling the Market West corridor.

We can’t confirm that it ever actually drove down the 1600-block of Chestnut Street, crossing Cricket’s path, but the truck’s presence was most certainly known in the dreary drizzle of a Center City afternoon.

Everyone knew this was going to get serious when Cricket announced it was joining the crowded prepaid mobile field in Philly. Now it has.

If anyone sees anymore of this nonsense, let us know. Think Metro PCS will join the fracas?

Expect some more detailed analysis from Technically Philly.

If you see something related to tech happening in the region, e-mail us or send a photo from your mobile device to info@technicallyphilly.com!

Updated: 3/11/09 at 10:18 p.m.

Your choices for cell phone carrier are about to get busier.

According to a company press release, Cricket Communications has entered the scrum to provide cheap mobile phone plans to Philadelphians, joining a growing battle between Boost Mobile, Metro PCS and others. [Full Disclosure: I have a Boost Mobile plan]

Update: Philadelphia is currently the largest market in the country with the three largest prepaid mobile companies, a Boost spokesman said.

“In our current economic landscape, it’s more important than ever for wireless carriers to show that they respect people’s wallets while ultimately providing value,” said Andy Cook, area general manager for Cricket in Philadelphia. “With the launch of Cricket wireless phone and Internet services in Philadelphia, consumers now have a wireless carrier that understands their financial needs and concerns without sacrificing great service and features.”

Cricket is hosting a week’s full of events to promote its market entry — see more here.

The company, a subsidiary of San Diego-based Leap Wireless International, plans to open 20 retail store locations in the Delaware Valley, including 12 stores in Philadelphia. The rest reach out into the suburbs, and from South Jersey to Wilmington, Del. [Full Disclosure: Sean Blanda loves Delaware].

Yesterday, Cricket held opening ceremonies at a new location at 2900 N. Broad Street, near the Allegheny West neighborhood of North Philadelphia – not exactly the “Center City” location it boasted in its press release. The ceremony featured performances by aerialists and acrobats and the presentation of a $20,000 check to Sister Mary Scullion and Project H.O.M.E.

In addition to unlimited mobile phone services, Cricket is also offering Cricket Broadband, giving customers unlimited high-speed Internet access at home or around town anywhere in Cricket’s coverage areas on their desktop or laptop computers. Cricket Broadband service is just $35 per month for customers who also have Cricket’s low-cost unlimited voice plans, and $40 per month as a stand-alone service. …

Cricket’s coverage area expands from Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs, across South Jersey to Atlantic City and down to Wilmington in Northern Delaware. Cricket rate plans also include unlimited use is all Cricket markets across the U.S., including Pittsburgh and Chicago, as well as Premium Extended Coverage, which allows unlimited use in an even broader area stretching from New York and Boston to California and from Wisconsin to Texas. [Source]

Hat tip to the Business Journal.