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At the end of a decade during which the internet revolutionized our lives and organizations, the network is now moving beyond the browser, invading objects, cities, toys, cars or medical devices. Where will the next big changes happen? What are the world’s most innovative people working on right now?

LIFT Asia is a three-day event taking place in Korea on September 4, 5 and 6 to answer these questions with a global community of doers and thinkers, featuring an innovative format made of scheduled talks, open sessions, and artists creating a special atmosphere to facilitate inspiration and networking.

LIFT Asia will take place at the international Convention Center ICC on the beautiful Jeju Island in Korea (located in the center of Northeast Asia and lies equidistant between South Korea, China and Japan).

The event will feature:

• Talks covering topics like urban technologies, online worlds, virtual money, new lifestyles and robots, featuring speakers like Joonmo Kwon (CEO of Nexon, the world’s largest online games company), networked cities visionaries Jeffrey Huang (EPFL), Yang Soo Yin (The Living) and Adam Greenfield (Nokia design), I-mode inventor Takeshi Nastuno, Takeshi Natsuno who works on the robots of the future, Gadget loving and Emmy award winning American guru Dan Dubno, and legendary LIFT speakers like Bruce Sterling, Bruno Bonnell, Frédéric Kaplan or Jan Chipchase.

• Community speeches where participants can freely present their works and ideas inside one of the open rooms.

• Interactive art installations curated by the Nabi Art Center, creating a unique experience based on inspiring and engaging activities to explore the new reality of social interactions in the digital world.

The full program is available here:
http://www.liftconference.com/lift-asia-08/program

Kudos to the organizers for putting such a neat line-up and program together.

Somehow unnoticed was the anouncement yesterday of the strategic partnership between MobileMonday, the global community of over 70,000 mobile industry visionaries and developers, and the GSM Association, the global trade association for mobile phone operators.

The two organizations have entered into a strategic partnership to stimulate, accelerate and showcase innovation in the mobile sector, more specifically related to the Mobile Innovation Programme, created to help the thousands of small and medium-sized companies developing innovative mobile products and services to rapidly reach mobile operators and bring their innovations to end-users.

“I can truly say that this partnership is what the MobileMonday community members have been looking for – how to streamline the process from innovation into beneficial products and services. These innovations occur all over the world today, and MobileMonday’s and GSMA’s partnership will now showcase them to GSMA members in a new way” said Jari Tammisto, CEO, Mobile Monday Ltd.

“This partnership brings together the thousands of innovative small companies that belong to MobileMonday community, and the 700 mobile operator members of the GSMA, enabling these two key constituencies to better work together to create exciting new mobile products and services that will appeal to consumers and business users,” said Bill Gajda, Chief Commercial Officer of the GSMA. “The Mobile Innovation Programme is a completely new approach that enables promising ideas to be identified and commercialized across the globe much faster than has been possible in the past.”

September 27th is the extended deadline for award submissions from companies aiming to be recognized at the first Mobile Innovation Summit in Macau at the Mobile Asia Congress in November 2007.

The categories are:

• Most Innovative Consumer Application or Service
• Most Innovative Wireless Device-Centric Technology
• Most Innovative Carrier Infrastructure or Platform
• Most Innovative Mobile Application in a Vertical Market

From the four category winners above, one overall Mobile Innovation Award winner will be selected.

Check the Innovator Showcase page, some start-ups you might know are already listed like muvee Technologies, PixSense, Shozu, AdMob, Refresh Mobile, Mozes and MobileMonday 2007 Global Peer Award winner Realeyes3d and a lot of others.

I’m happy to see such partnerships, I think this is a great opportunity to bring both member communities closer together for the benefit of the start-ups and the whole mobile value chain in general.

The 3GSM Association released its dates for the 3GSM World Congress 2008 in Barcelona: 11 - 14 February 2008. Make sure you book your accomodation and preparals ahead!

Other Forthcoming GSMA Events you might want to add to your agenda:

3GSM Mobile Entertainment Advertising Summit
New York
30 March 2007
www.gsmworld.com/meas

3GSM World Congress Asia
Macau
12 - 14 November 2007
www.3gsmasia.com

You can read my 3GSM 2007 complete wrap-up here.