I had a few good reasons to be leery of participating.

The IT Business Group had agreed to take part in the Wireless Live! sideshow at last week’s ExpoComm conference in Toronto. Apparently, some months ago, I’d volunteered my services for one of the panel discussions, which only goes to show that I should be paying more attention to what’s actually being said at editors’ meetings.

It didn’t help my preparation that while other ITB participants were being briefed on their roles by the veteran focus-groupers running the show -- Alan Kay of The Glasgow Group and Rick Wolfe of PostStone -- I was on vacation, defiling the fairways of sundry public golf courses in the Toronto area. Nor did the fact that on my return, none of my colleagues seemed to be able to articulate what that nebulous role was. Nor the fact that there was an exclamation point in the name, which makes me edgy -- I feel like I’m being yelled at.

But as a very patient and assured Wolfe explained, the format was "a kitchen table discussion," something people have been doing since, well, since there have been kitchen tables. While there were panelists at a table in the centre of the room, most of the discussion was among the 60-or-so participants at the surrounding tables. And like most kitchen-table debaters throughout history, we never met a tangent we didn’t like.

The focus of the discussion was branding through wireless technology and the user experience. With a balance of marketing and technical participants weighted toward the former, discussion was wide-ranging and informative -- brands emerging as services, Richard Branson bringing Virgin to the Canadian market, differentiation among cell phone companies. But things got really interesting when the organizers invited a panel of half a dozen young consumers to take the centre table and discuss the impact of wireless technology on their lives.

It was a cross-section of under-30s -- a fundraiser, a business analyst, a singer-songwriter -- who didn’t seem to mind the whole scientists-peering-in-a-petrie-dish air. They were clear about what they wanted from wireless services as opposed to what they were actually getting, and were absolutely unapologetic about saying so.

A couple useful lessons learned:

-- To the surprise of other participants, every consumer panelist had a gas station micropayment card, either an Esso Speedpass or a Shell EasyPay tag. And in terms of customer behaviour, it’s probably the application that has the most influence, especially when it’s 30 below outside. Panelists agreed they go out of their way for a Shell or Esso station, just for the convenience factor. One seemed to yearn for a world in which it was the only way to pay: "If everyone used it," he said, "life would be much simpler."

At the same time, nobody looked forward to the idea of a dozen micropayment tags dangling from their key rings. Aggregation of micropayment services was high on the wish list.

-- Again surprisingly, panelists didn’t seem to be terribly worried about the amount of data being collected on them through wireless transactions with regard to spending and travel patterns. "As long as it doesn’t interfere with my life," remarked one -- which means no spam or junk mail. I’m loath to say it, but in the trade-off between privacy and convenience, there may be a little more wiggle room than we think.

-- Cellular providers, brace yourself: They really don’t like you. Your customer service is inadequate. Your billing is inaccurate. Calls get dropped. The single factor that makes them stick to the carrier they’re with now is the ability to keep their existing phone numbers. "That’s not loyalty," remarked one, "that’s a trap."

-- They expect a lot for the money they’re paying. Would they pay a five per cent premium to have a personal customer representative assigned to their mobile phone accounts? No. One WiFi coffee shop devotee shot me down abruptly when I asked about alternative payment methods for wireless access at hotspots. "It’s the cost of doing business," he said.

-- A point clearly made repeatedly: Loyalty is not in their vocabulary. At least, so they say. Asked for a brand to which she felt loyal, one panelist came up with Toyota, for most of the standard brand loyalty reasons: product, price and service. And the coffee shop devotee sticks to Second Cup not just for the WiFi, but because he likes the coffee.

If there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there are 1,000 ways to piss off a customer. Add to that the fact that in the context of wireless applications, they really don’t give a rat’s who’s supplying the service, and you face a remarkable challenge extending your brand through wireless technology. But the loose consensus among the business participants at the session was that the emphasis should be put on managing opportunity more than risk.

Ask today how you can earn free adverbs and conjunctions through our loyalty program by reading Dave Webb’s column!

dwebb@itbusiness.ca