Mobile Monday Barcelona

The 2008 MobileMondy Peer Awards recognized 27 companies from 18 countries at its annual awards event held at Telefonica’s fashionable Espacio Movistar facility during this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Buzzd from New York, a provider of local real-time search information for bars, clubs and restaurants on the mobile device, cleaned the table by winning jury, audience and community awards under the early stage category.

In the Emerging Community category, Taptu a search and sharing engine from London won the award with jury award Funambol, an open source email and messaging company, while local favorite Kimia, a rich media content provider, clinched the audience choice.

Three awards in each category: jury, audience, and community were judged by an expert jury including representatives from Telefónica, Mobile Marketing Association, Vodafone Group, Google, Nexit Ventures, eXtract, Acision, MobHappy, GoMoNews, the MobileMonday global chapter founders and audience SMS voting.

We have created two downloadable PDF documents including slides from all participating companies within each category. The Early-Stage and Emerging Start-Ups presentation slides are currently available for download here. If you are not registered yet, please enter the subscription section to access the documents.

(NOTE: some of the embedded animation’s or video’s have been lost or could not been transferred for PDF document creation).

This year’s winners at the MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona will be invited to participate in the MobileMonday Global Summit in conjunction with the World Congress on IT (WCIT) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 18-22, 2008.

We created a MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona Flickr Group with event pictures (http://www.flickr.com/groups/peerawardsbarcelona/); anyone who has pictures of that evening, feel free to join and post your pictures in the group to share with us.

MobileMonday has announced its Peer Award nominees. 25 chapters from around the world have chosen companies that have demonstrated exceptionally innovative mobile technologies, products, services and concepts.

The event will be held at Espacio Movistar. Luis Jorge Romero, Director of Standards and Innovation in Telefónica España, will be a keynote speaker together with Pekka Ala-Pietilä, CEO and Co-Founder, Blyk. Mr. Romero will speak about the future of the mobile market and his experience driving innovation in Telefónica España, whose Open Innovation strategy encourages innovation and value creation by partnering with new start-ups.

This year’s nominees are:

Amsterdam - Movels
Bangalore - Mobisy
Barcelona - skuair
Berlin - ViiF
Boston - SnapMyLife
Brussels - Mobixx
Chennai - Mobile-worx
Dusseldorf - Cellity
Helsinki - Fromdistance
Istanbul - Mobinex
London - The 3G Dating Agency / Taptu
Madrid - Kimia
Milan - Waymedia
Mumbai - Ziva Technologies
Munich - hiClip
New York - BuzzD
Oslo - Adactus
Paris - WebWag
Rome - Nanology
Shanghai - DuoGuo
Silicon Valley - Funambol
Singapore - mBit.tv
St. Petersburg - 4Mobi.TV
Stockholm - Momail
Taipei - Toro

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.

The event is also going to showcase for the first time the new barcelona.mobi mobile urban guide.

Our thanks to our partners Telefónica Movistar, Ajuntament de Barcelona, Nokia, dotMobi, Xtract, Acision, Nexit Ventures, Mippin, 22@Barcelona and Barcelona Media for their invaluable support to this event organised by dotopen.

Additional information is available at http://www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/peerawards/

June is here and the flocks of tourists announce the coming of summer, the perfect time to present our own local entrepreneurial talent. Next MobileMonday on June 11 is about Barcelona Mobile Startups!

In the last months we have had previous presentations by local startups such as MyStrands, Lemonquest, Mobile Dreams Factory, Mobuzz, Futurlink and Daem Interactive. This time we have a dedicated event: it’s time to present our next wave of talented, young and ambitious companies active in the different fields in Mobile.

Speakers:

* Vadim Tarasov, Founder & CEO of bmat - http://bmat.com

BMAT enables computers and devices to understand music like humans do to provide musical search services, enhances the experience by selecting music that suits the user’s mood, can remove the vocal track from your favorite tune so that you sing along, even change your own voice so you can sound like your favorite artist. BMAT’s solutions convert a mobile phone from just a communication device into a full-blown multimedia entertainment center.

* Lluís Carreras, General Manager of Mobifriends - http://mobifriends.com

Founded in October 2005, Mobifirends aims to develop a new concept in dating and social networking. Being mobile focused, without forgetting the web, Mobifriends users can look for people to share hobbies, interests, make friends, flirt, or find a new love. They can contact each other through an integrated anonymous communication system (SMS, Chat and videochat). Still in testing the Alpha version, this is a unique chance to get to know Mobifriends before their launch later this year.

* Ghatim Kabbara, CEO of Safira Solutions - http://www.safirasolutions.com

Safira Solutions is a key player in the development of the Mobile Internet and is a leading provider of Mobile Commerce solutions worldwide. Founded in 2003 and with headquarters in Barcelona (Spain), Safira Solutions has helped individuals, organizations and brands in over 15 countries to effectively position themselves on the Mobile Internet and to monetize their presence. Safira Solutions lowers the barriers of entry and facilitates the process of getting on the Mobile Internet by providing turnkey technology solutions to help build mobile sites, generate mobile user traffic and bill consumers directly on their mobile device.

* Eve Goldman, Business Development Manager of Acquamedia Technologies - http://www.acquamedia.com

Founded in 2003 in Barcelona, Acquamedia is a world-leading retailer of digital content with traffic to conversion rates 3 times higher than its closest competitor anywhere in the world. The company specializes in the management of WAP portals and selling music and entertainment focused content through mobile platforms. Acquamedia has recently expanded and signed deals in over 10 countries in Europe and Latin America. The upcoming entrance into the US market will position the company to become the world’s largest mobile digital content provider.

Please join us to find out more about this homegrown initiatives. However, in Barcelona at this time of year we all want some entertainment:

Alberto Tognazzi will present the winning “mobile movie clips” of the MovilFilmFest, also “Made in Barcelona” - http://www.movilfilmfest.es/

Networking
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 for this event at www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/subscribe/ to reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out!

• 19h00 Registration and Pre-Networking
• 19h30 Barcelona Mobile Startups speaker sessions & discussion
• 20h30 Cocktail and Networking Party
• 21h30 End

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

Location and Directions here at Google Maps.

MobileMonday is a community of mobile professionals organised around local networking events in almost 40 cities around the world. This open community promotes the mobile industry and fosters cooperation and networking among industry people and their companies by providing opportunities for personal and virtual contacts.

MobileMonday Barcelona is organised by Rudy De Waele, Carles Ferreiro and Barcelona Media.

Our Partners
Our thanks to our partners Telefónica Movistar, 22@Barcelona, Alcatel-Lucent, Ajuntament de Barcelona, CIDEM (Centre d’Innovació i Desenvolupament Empresarial of the Generalitat de Catalunya) and Agora 22@ for their invaluable support.

MobileMonday Global Peer Awards winners were decided last Monday in Barcelona at the Espacio Movistar. The awards were handed out to two European applications and one from the US, MobileMonday previously anounced.

The Audience Award went to a Swiss LBS application called Plazes. The Plazes service adds physical presence to the web. The Plazes website automatically detects your location and connects you to people and places nearby.

The jury’s favorite was a French 3D application that can scan and manipulate real life hand written text. The winner, RealEyes3D, operates at two levels: It runs a mobile copy service for camera phone users, www.qipit.com and sells “handwritten messaging” applications to handset vendors.

Community Award went to an American company Mobile Complete. It offers solutions to manage the user experience throughout the life-cycle of mobile applications, services, and handsets.

This was the third year MobileMonday’s Peer Award winners have been chosen. The competiton presentations were held in the Espacio Movistar mobile entertainment center in Barcelona.

Twenty-two of the most talented, creative, and innovative companies presented 3-minute “elevator pitch” style presentations to a panel jury, the audience, and MobileMonday chapter heads.

All finalists were best-of-breed companies who have demonstrated exceptionally innovative mobile technologies, services and concepts. Micah Gland, head of MobileMonday International Development, described the MobileMonday Global Peer Award finalists as “the foam that rises to the top of the café called 3GSM.”The Carnival of the Mobilists - ‘Host of the Year‘ award went to Rudy De Waele with his blog m-trends.org on Mobile Media Lifestyle.

Congratulations to all winners and finalists! A great networking party followed the event for all attendants.

More pictures of the event can be found on Flickr by Josep Ganyet, Martin Sauter, and Rudy De Waele, or by using a combination of various tags suchs as mobilemonday, peerawards, 3gsm, barcelona or other related.

UPDATE: we created a Global Peer Awards Flickr Group so anyone who has pictures of the events can upload them to the group to be shared by everyone.

The MobileMonday Barcelona team and Barcelona Media would like to thank Telefónica Movistar for hosting the event and to 22@Barcelona and Reitek for their fantastic support as a Premium Sponsor and Nexit Ventures as Silver sponsor. Big thanks also to Ajuntament de Barcelona and CIDEM — Generalitat de Catalunya, for their invaluable additional support.

The MobileMonday Global Peer Awards 2007 in Barcelona is being organized collaboratively by the MobileMonday community. Hosted by MoMo Barcelona, MoMo Italy, MoMo Helsinki, MoMo London and MoMo New York have also taken active roles. Many thanks to the everyone who helped building this great event, especially the whole MobileMonday community, participants, the jury (!), MC Caroline (wonderful job!) and Jari and Micah, without their initial and invaluable support it would not have been possible to make such event happen. Hope to see all of you again next year!

(and now back to normal preparing next months’ MobileMonday, stay tuned!)

All pictures © by 22@Barcelona.