When organizations consider how mobile can best help them achieve their goals, it is a good idea to reach out directly to the user community and ask how they think mobile could make them more efficient and effective. Most people use mobile in their daily lives and it is easy for them to imagine how mobile could help them accomplish more.
In my previous post I shared some of the winning applications from the CompFest mobilithon in Indonesia. The winning app, BroomLight, enables people to control electric appliances remotely.
Last week was the conclusion of another mobilithon—the IBM Mobilithon 2013 in Malaysia, a part of the IBM Academic Initiative. In August, some 300 university students were trained on IBM Worklight, a mobile enterprise application platform. Over 100 students from 22 universities submitted entries. 
For example, teams from KBU International College submitted apps to teach ethics and manners to children and provide learning tools for the blind. Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman entered an app for a car park ticketing system.
The winning proposal was submitted by Quest International University Perak (QIUP), which was represented by Kanahavalli Mardamutu, Ryan Anthony Lim Aik Joon, Chun Mun Chung and Ng Wei Kit. Group leader Kanahavalli stated, “We came up with the idea of a campus solution that will integrate main university components. Based from our observation, many universities in Malaysia do not utilize mobile technology to offer better services to students. Our app features a student profile database, lecture scheduling, results and grades, chat, notifications, etc. With this prototype, we hope to get our university’s buy-in to explore its viability.” This is a great example of users having valuable insights about how their organizations could enhance their experience through mobile.
An organization that has done a great job of using mobile to create a more powerful experience for their users is Daegu Health College in Korea. Using IBM Worklight, part of the IBM MobileFirst platform, as an underlying solution, and Financial All Solutions (FAS), a system integrator and business partner of IBM, the college deployed Smart DHC, a suite of mobile apps. Now, its 7,500 students can manage common academic inquiries from their mobile devices including verifying class registration, checking grades, viewing class schedules and searching library materials.
Watch this video to learn more from Daegu Health College:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Please check out more of the student entries from the IBM Mobilithon 2013 in Malaysia. These students are our future, and by using mobile to get more value out of their academic experience they will be well positioned to explain how mobile can be best used in an enterprise to drive more value. They understand how easy it is to implement powerful mobile applications with IBM Worklight, and together they will have a strong impact on the future of business. They will define business in motion.
If you are, or know someone who is, a student in Thailand, please share with them the link to the Thai Mobilithon, which is already in progress. We already have 138 teams registered. IBM Worklight training will be provided to students in four regions in Thailand beginning next week and running through January. The results will be announced at the end of February 2014. Follow @THmobilithon and join the excitement!
Are you a student? Do you fondly remember your school days? Leave a comment below and share with us how you think mobile could make your educational experience more valuable.
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