Mobile Monday Barcelona

Coming to Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress? Don’t miss the MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona 2008! Sticking with MobileMonday’s recipe for success, the event will cook up a bunch of fresh innovations mixed with honest feedback and a dash of fun. Served with plenty of juicy networking at the NEW Espacio Movistar in Barcelona on Monday February 11 starting at 2:30PM.

The MobileMonday Peer Awards are recognised by the industry as one of THE interesting events in the mobile industry. Last year’s Barcelona Peer Awards event attracted 23 competitors, the MoMo community award went to Mobile Complete, the audience award to Plazes, and the expert jury award to Realeyes 3D. Check the Peer Awards 2007 Flickr Group pictures and winners’ announcement here.

Mr. Pekka Ala-Pietila, former president at Nokia Corporation and currently chief executive officer of Blyk Corporation, a virtual mobile operator in the UK, will be the keynote speaker.

The event concept is pretty similar as last year: every MobileMonday chapter is invited to nominate one startup to the Peer Awards Barcelona 2008. This year, we’ll divide the start-up finalist presentations in two categories: early-stage start-ups (founded in 2007, early-stage financing) and emerging start-ups (founded in 2005 and after, inbetween Series A & B funding). The organizing committee and jury selects the finalists to present at the awards event. Entrance into the running is free! Check the Peer Awards website for details.

There will be three awards in each category: jury, audience, and community (MoMo chapters). This year’s winners at the MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona will also be invited to participate in the Innovation Pad activities at the MobileMonday Global Summit in conjunction with the World Congress on IT in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 18-22, 2008.

Master of Ceremony is once again Mrs. Caroline Lewko, from the Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP).

The jury consists of some of the most recognized mobile industry experts and thinkers, currently confirmed:

• Carlos Domingo, General Director, Telefonica R&D;
• Ann Mei Chang, Mobile Engineering Director Google;
• Bena Roberts, Founder and Chief Analyst at BKI Media / GoMo News;
• Russell Buckley, Managing Director, AdMob Europe / Vice-Chairman of MMA’s EMEA;
• Carlo Longino, Mobhappy;
• Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist, Vodafone Group;
• Madamohan Rao, Editor, The Asia-Pacific Internet Handbook;
• Jed Rice,VP, Market Development, Skyhook Wireless;
• Peter Vesterbacka, Founder, Some Bazaar;
• Jouko Ahvenainen, Chief Operating Officer, Xtract;
• Michael Wendell, General partner, Nexit Ventures;
• Sirous Kavehercy, Strategist and Consultant, Market Development Director at Acision;

The MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona 2008 are being organized collaboratively by the MobileMonday community and hosted by MobileMonday Barcelona. The event is free but you must register in advance since the 800 places will go quickly.

Coming to Barcelona for the 3GSM World Congress? Then don’t miss the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards 2007 on Monday, February 12th starting at 3PM. This is your chance to meet some of the world’s best mobile innovations. Selected by industry peers, peer award finalists will compete live before the community and a world-class jury.

Sticking with MoMo’s recipe for success, the fiesta will cook up a bunch of fresh innovations mixed with honest feedback and a dash of fun. Served with plenty of juicy networking at one of the hottest new locations in Barcelona, this is the perfect 3GSM appetizer.

Event Concept

15 to 20 global start-ups, previously selected by MobileMonday local chapters, will have a brief time slot to perform at centre stage and present their innovation in front of the audience and expert jury.

Innovation Awards

Among all the finalists at least 3 awards will be given:

• Expert Jury Award (see The Jury below);
• MoMo Community Award: MoMo organizers (from each chapter on site) will choose their winner;
• Audience Award: All participants will vote for their winner via SMS.

The Jury

For the Expert Jury Award, an independent jury of some of the most recognised mobile experts will evaluate the presentations, deliberate and select their winner.

Jury composition (confirmed):

• Oliver Star, MobileCrunch
• Carlo Longino, TechDirt Wireless, Mobhappy
• Kelly Goto, Gotomedia/gotomobile.com
• Russell Buckley, Mobhappy
• Peter Vesterbacka, Some Bazaar
• Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist, Vodafone Group (Dan’s Blog)

After each performance, the jury will provide valuable feedback about the innovation.

Carnival of the Mobilists Award

There will be a voting for the ‘best host of the year’ from the Carnival of the Mobilists. The ‘mobilists’ as they call themselves have had an enormous impact on last years blogging community and have done a lot to bridge, reveal and support latest mobility developments.

The ‘prize’ for the Mobilist blogger of the year is sponsored by MobileMonday Global and consists of a sponsored trip to Helsinki for the Global Summit in May 2007 (including airfare and hotel accommodation).

The Venue – Espacio Movistar

Telefónica Móviles, the mobile arm of the Telefónica Group, opened in September 2006, the Espacio Movistar. This innovative, multidisciplinary, next-generation venue has been conceived to bring people closer to the latest creative trends in technology, music, art, cinema and entertainment, especially the young.

This space is a step further to consolidate Movistar as a reference brand associated to innovation, creativity, entertainment, communication and fun….

Nominations

Next to the MobileMonday chapter organizers, anyone will be able to nominate a mobile app or service for a MobileMonday Global Peer Award at the Peer Award website for this event. Entrance into the running is free. The only criteria we’re looking for are the following:

• Companies willing to show off mobile-related innovations (products, services, technologies, concepts).
• Smaller, lesser-known, unestablished companies. Start-ups.
• Willingness to travel to the event at its own cost.

More news will be revealed here on a regular basis. You can register here (or click the subscribe button in the header menu) if you’d like to attend the forthcoming MobileMonday Global Peer Awards 2007 in Barcelona, or to stay updated with information on MobileMonday events globally.

Mobile Communities, MoSoSo (Mobile Social Software), Mobile User-Generated Content, Mobile IM & Chat, Moblogging, Mobile Friend Finders, Ping your Buddies, … We have heard a lot of these rather new terminologies the last months now. MySpace, YouTube are the obvious web-based examples going mobile soon; and the big companies have been moving in this mobile space lately: Google bought Dodgeball, Microsoft’s Zune has social network capabilities build-in, adding geo-location to this dimension now is obvious to build the next-generation mobile killer apps but what is their current state? Do they have many users? What do they learn form them? How people use the software? When? Where? Is it really useful for mobile users right now? Do the companies behind make money yet? What are the new business models in this field?

MobileMonday Barcelona invites, for our next event on December 4, some of the most interesting European players in this field so if you want to learn more about this topic and hear it from the experts, please register ASAP, this topic promises to be a quick seat-filler.

Date: Monday, December 4, 2006

Topic: Mobile Social Networks

Speakers:

Felix Petersen - Plazes (Germany)
Plazes is the first global location-aware interaction and geo-information system, connecting you with the people and Plazes in your area and all over the world. It is the navigation system for your social life and it’s absolutely free. Plazes is a social location directory with more than 100,000 users that can tag locations to find other users or related places nearby. The service has gathered a lot of media attention on a global scale and is since long the darling of the super-geeks.

Alex Kummerman - Clicmobile (France) presenting areyouhere.net and yootribe.com ( with Swithmod )
Alex has been at the forefront of multimedia development. He now brings over 13 years of mobile telecommunication expertise and successful management to Clicmobile, his third start-up. Alex is also a commentator on the developing Mobile Social Software (MoSoSo) industry. He continues to advise people on LBS-MoSoSo as an editor on the LBS-MOSOSO blog. Alex is now launching a platform for connected communities providing tools for both the PC and the mobile worlds. Clicmobile is a Geneva based start-up company with an operational subsidiary in Paris. Clicmobile provides the open media world with tools to build and run connected communities.

Alberto Benbunan Garzón - Mobile Dreams Factory (Spain)
Alberto Benbunan Garzón, founder and Business Development Director of Mobile Dreams Factory will talk about their social networking and dating platform called Moviligo, their challenges, opportunities and future applications in this area. Moviligo is a mobile dating portal. With just the mobile phone the user can send messages, flirt or chat.

The sessions will be moderated by Fabien Girardin from 7.5th Floor blog who is currently finishing his Ph.D. thesis on collaboration in the context of mobile and ubiquitous environments, expect some vivid discussions!

As usual, a networking party will follow the conference where participants will enjoy a glass of cava while sharing experiences about life and work. Attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence at www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/subscribe/ to reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book early to avoid being left out!

19h30 Registration and Pre-Networking
20h00 Mobile Social Networks
21h05 Cocktail and Networking Party
22h00 End

This event is sponsored by CIDEM (Centre d’Innovació i Desenvolupament Empresarial of the Generalitat de Catalunya), Agora 22@ and Barcelona Media.

Venue: Auditorium University of Pompeu Fabra - França Building (Edifici França)
Passeig de Circumval·lació, 8 - Barcelona 08003

Location and Directions here at Google Maps
Additional reading at m-trends.org – MoSoSo + Wi-Fi

Last weeks’ MobileMonday Barcelona on Proximity Marketing was the occasion to get briefed on the present real-world cases of mobile technologies used in a physical context. FuturLink presented their (rather impressive) content delivery system based on Bluetooth access points; Media Contacts talked about tailoring content; and Nike related on their (mostly) good experience on using proximity marketing; finally Daem Interactive revealed their MMS image recognition solution.

(from left to right: Joan Grau, Media Contacts - David Masó, FuturLink - Miguel Sola, Daem Interactive - Paulino Moraleda, Brand Communications Manage, Nike)

Check out some pictures of that evening, thanks to Fabien Girardin, who we also welcome as MoMoBCN team member; it’s great having him with us with his academic background and his interest in mobility and ubiquitous computing. Check out his blog used for his Ph.D. thesis on collaborative work in the context of mobile and ubiquitous environments.

From his Flickr images (l-to-r): FuturLink’s Bluetooth Access Point, Nike’s proximity experiment on a big Christmas ad in Barcelona, Media Contacts’ new generations of content.

Subscribed users can now download the following presentations of that evening in their subscribers profile page.

Joan Grau, Media Contacts
David Masó, FuturLink
Miguel Sola, Daem Interactive

There is also a very interesting video demo available from Media Contacts bluetooth campaign with VolksWagen-EOS. Thanks for sharing this with us.

You can now reserve your seat for our next event on December 4, topic: Mobile Social Networks. Expect a very interesting line-up of speakers explaining their experiences from abroad. More on this event soon here. Stay tuned!

Continuing with its monthly events, MobileMonday Barcelona announces its next event on “Proximity Marketing” that will take place on November 6. This month MobileMonday Barcelona will bring you some of the most recognised pioneers on Proximity Marketing and they all happen to be local.

For those who need to look it up, Wikipedia says that “Proximity marketing is the localised wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place. (…) Distribution may be via a traditional localised broadcast, or more commonly is specifically targeted to devices known to be in a particular area.” Related this article on this topic at m-trends.org.

David Masó, CEO of Futurlink, one of our most popular and successful local start-ups will explain us about Futurlink’s experiences and future plans on proximity solutions.

Miguel Sola, Director of Daem Interactive, another Barcelona Start-up will present their latest products and services for marketing campaigns using mobile image recognition.

Joan Grau, Director of operations at Media Contacts, will explain us about implementing proximity marketing solutions, the challenges and opportunities from the demand side.

Paulino Moraleda, Brand Communications Manager for Nike, will share with us what a major brand sees in the value and potential of proximity solutions and what they can provide.

As usual, a networking party will follow the conference where participants will enjoy a glass of cava while sharing experiences about life and work. MobileMonday Barcelona “Proximity Marketing” will take place at the Auditorium of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra on November 6, 2006.

Attendance is free; all you need to do is register at www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/subscribe to reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book early to avoid being left out!

19h30 Registration and Pre-Networking
20h00 Proximity Marketing
21h05 Cocktail and Networking Party
22h00 End

This event is sponsored by Media Contacts, CIDEM (Centre d’Innovació i Desenvolupament Empresarial of the Generalitat de Catalunya) and Barcelona Media.

Special thanks to Nacencia Web & Mobile Solutions for developing MoMoBCN web services.