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The Mobile World Congress is coming near, so I’m starting to announce some side events I’m involved in.

The third annual MobileSunday - an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums - will be taking place in Barcelona on the eve of this year’s Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM).

Last year’s event, which was also organized by myself with the much appreciated help from blog pal Stuart Mudie, and was attended by over seventy people (check who attended last year here). This time round, there’s going to be some more free Belgian beer, generously provided again by the good people at MyStrands.

I you would like to catch up with some mobile passionates, Mobilists and MobileMonday founders, mixed with some healthy dose of ususal suspect bar-hangers, this is your spot to be. What possible reason can you have not to join us? To confirm your attendance, simply add your name and URL to the Mobile Sunday Barcelona wiki.

This gathering will be held at the BelChica bar (10 minutes walk from the Congress).

More cool event announcements coming here any day soon now, so stay tuned!

I wanted to thank my readers, collegues, online buddies and friends for sharing some great moments with me this year. Some of you I just met but already left an impression, and others I enjoyed working together on innovative projects and events, or just exchanged opinion on the mobile phone and its interaction between people and objects.

One of the main drivers in my work is to innovate through collaboration, meet wonderful and diverse people that keep things interesting, dashed with spirit and surprise and truly unique… it really enriches my life.

From the Peer Awards in Barcelona, ¡nnovate!Europe in Zaragoza, TechTalk in Menorca, the Global Summit in Helsinki & St. Petersburg, Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco, Under The Radar in Mountain View and LeWeb3 in Paris, there were man great moments and events, not to forget the many MobileMonday events we organised this year in Barcelona and launched in Madrid … I enjoyed every bit of 2007.

I’m already looking forward to some new projects starting in 2008 and events like DLD Munich, Lift 08 in Geneva and another Peer Awards in Barcelona, stay tuned on mTrends!

Special kudos to Kelly and Lisa at gotomedia, Russell and Carlo at MobHappy, Caroline, Carles, Francesco and Gabriel, Jari and all MobileMonday chapter organizers, Carlos and his team, Debbie and her team, Peter and his team, Markus, Barcelona Media, IE Business School, Gregory, Mike, Peter and Daniel from Mobile 2.0 Conference, Steve and his team at Taptu, Prash, Raimo and last but not least my collegue bloggers and anyone working on innovative mobile technology.

I wish you all a very happy new year and a prosperous and successful 2008.

Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!

Many readers have been contacting me regarding interesting side events during the Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM) from February 11-15 here in Barcelona. There’s too much happening in too few days - as usual - I’m working on a couple of networking parties involving many blogger friends and mobile value chain industry people, developers, VCs, and press. Anyone interesting in sponsoring such events, please contact me directly (email in sidebar).

The next MobileMonday Barcelona event on November 5 covers Mobile Web Applications. The last 2 months the action and debate on web & mobile convergence has been intenser than ever. We’ll have a closer look on popular mobile web applications such as WidSets and the recentlly launched Mippin and we’ll have a discussion on the challenges of innovative interfaces for mobile applications.

Invited speakers this time are Andrés Lozano Sañudo (Nokia) who will present the latest on WidSets, Prashant Agarwal (Refresh Mobile) who will introduce their new service called Mippin; and Raquel Navarro from Barcelona Media - Innovation Centre will talk about the challenges of innovative interfaces for mobile applications. I will do an introduction and overview on the topic.

More details at MobileMonday Barcelona website.

(on 2D-Barcodes and Image Recognition)

After a long summer break, the MobileMonday Global Summit and the Mercè festivities, MobileMonday Barcelona is back for a new and exciting season of 1st Monday of the month regulars on mobile innovation. Starting next Monday, October 1st on “Next Generation Mobile Marketing” (2D-Barcodes / Image Recognition).

The first event of the new 2007-2008 season brings together an explosive cocktail of some of the hottest start-ups in Europe on the Next Generation Mobile Marketing topic, including Dennis Hettema from Shotcode (Sweden), Roger Fisher from Kaywa (Switzerland) and Ignacio Mondine from Daem Interactive (Spain). The topic will be introduced and moderated by Raimo van der Klein coming over from Amsterdam.

Raimo will talk about the the two worlds of Mobile Phones (The Wand and The Crystal Ball) and the way information (content) is provisioned to the mobile phone and the change from Push Marketing to Pull Marketing (Marketing as a service) and will share various examples of innovate ways how information can be delivered to the mobile phone. A perfect start for a new season it looks to me. If you feel the same, please subscribe and confirm your event participation, seats are limited as always, don’t wait last minute to confirm!

All details on speakers, timing and location at MobileMonday Barcelona website.

NOTE: picture by Leonard Low under Creative Common license.

Gregory just pinged me that the Mobile 2.0 Event, scheduled for October 15 in San Francisco is nearly sold.out - only a few seats left. Don’t be left out and register now. Full program details and speakers list on the event website. There are still sponsor opportunities open. If you’re interested, you can contact me directly.

On October 15th, in San Francisco, Mobile Monday’s Barcelona, London, and Silicon Valley together with the Open Group and SomeBazaar will present the 2nd Mobile 2.0 conference. This will be a one-day event, held at the Grand Hyatt in Union Square, covering the latest in mobile innovation and disruption.

Next to Tomi Ahonen’s keynote on Social Networking and Communities, there are four panels with topics on User Experience, Usability, and Design, Disruptive or New Business Models, Emerging Technologies and a look on Mobile 2.0 from the VC Perspective. Two series of great new Mobile 2.0 startups will be presented in the Mobile Launch Pad.

The conference is bringing together some real mobile industry thought leaders from around the world, such as:

• Tomi Ahonen, 3G Author & Mobile Blogger
• Brian Fling, Blue Flavor
• Kelly Goto, gotomedia
• Risto Lahdesmaki, Idean Enterprises
• Carlos Domingo, Telefonica
• Christian Lindholm
• Tony Fish, AMF Ventures
• Ozzie Diaz, HP
• Jean Marc Frangos, BT Group
• Patrick McVeigh, Warburg Pincus & SoonR
• Stephan Noll, T-Venture
• Voytek Siewierski, Mitsui & Co, Venture Partners
• Olaf Groth, Qualcomm
• Rich Wong, Accel Partners
• Russell Beattie, Mowser
• Marc Davis, Yahoo!
• Ron Mandel, Adobe
• C. Enrique Ortiz, eZee inc.
• Kaj “HeGe” Haggman, Nokia
• James Pearce, dotMobi
• Peter Stark, Sony Ericsson
• Daniel Graf, Kyte.TV

Daniel, Gregory, Mike and Peter asked me after the Global Peer Awards to join the organizing committee, something I didn’t had to think twice on. I like the spirit of the team and the global reach of this event. There has been a lot of reflexion and discussion on what to cover and who to invite, to me it’s a rather unusual but original event that tries to capture what’s going on in mobile and focuses on the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation… I can’t wait until October 15

Check out the agenda on full details of speakers, timings, topics, etc. Last years’ (first ever!) Mobile 2.0 conference was sold out in 1 week, so don’t wait too long to register, seats are limited. Registrations are now open at the Mobile 2.0 Conference website. Early Bird Special $145 if you registered before October 1, 2007. Regular Price $185.

Stay tuned for more news on the conference here at mTrends!

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.

Interesting rebranding… from 3GSM to Mobile World Congress - check the new domain: mobileworldcongress.com, a sign that we’re finally entering a new and different global mobile space? I believe so looking at all the new players coming in this space, definately a good choice!

(source: a tweet from Kelly)

My apologies for the use of another “2.0 meme” but after my participation in a debate on the Future of Mobile Music at the Digital Music 2.0 Conference in Barcelona this week I felt I needed to update you briefly on some new thoughts on the subject. Since my writings during the MuLiMob project, my piece on “Connecting Cultures through Music“, and “DRM, free at last!” I haven’t been writing on the issue anymore.

Last Tuesday, in a Lab on Media and Human Experience, a filosophical flow excercise in between media, technology and philospophy, we discussed about ‘connected and un-connected spaces’ … media convergence is happening but the media industry is still pretty much off-line as of now, so the question is: where’s the bridge? And where is it happening?

I must admit I was pretty amazed that during the Digital Music 2.0 Conference comments and questions coming from the audience were still of the type such as “CD’s are still the major part of the business, digital music distribution only 9% of the market”, and - a couple of times - “How can you become so big without spending budget on marketing, I mean really “0″ on marketing?” and my favourite “Will mobile phones replace MP3 players one day?”… Us speakers had a though job to bridge our message of the indepth changes that are currently happening the way we consume music and the business surrounding it.

Trying to stay humble, I realized one more time there is still a lot to do to bridge the digital connected (internet connected tools, things, people and services) with the more unconnected world of tradional TV, CD’s, DVD’s formats.

When Edgar, the organizer, asked me in November to participate to this conference, I was quite sceptical since I had my made my conclusions on music 2.0 a couple of years ago while finalizing the MuLiMob project, it would only need some time for the industry to realize the curve of the long tail and that something profoundly was changing the music industry due to the innovations happening in web technologies and the way communities were influencing the way we consume music. Communities like last.fm were adding new ways to discover and listen to music opening opportunities for people to meet others with similar music tastes. This community has now grown to 15 million users and Claire Levy had the pleasure to anounce CBS bought last.fm for $280 million, real good news for recommendation technologies and online communities involving music in general

Mobile Web 2.0 or Mobile 2.0, Music 2.0 or Mobile Music 2.0, people say these are all hype terms, in a way they are but there are some real changes and differences to be finetuned, so why this title?

In my panel with operators Telefonica and Orange, it seemed as I was coming from another planet with my presentation on the current state of Mobile 2.0 and the the next generation data services for connected devices. Understandable knowing it took them (the operators) a couple of years to outcompete the SMS Service Providers (selling ringtones and wallpapers), and the same operators have been positioning (= investing) the last couple of years as music retailers to start selling realtunes… meanwhile another range of competitors are coming in their field.

While the new generation of phones and devices - Nokia Nseries up front - a new set of opportunities to consume music is arising, with the possibility to sideload or download music directly to your phone, whatever connection is it that you use (3G, wifi, bluetooth, usb, etc). At the conference, the operators were still defending the classic model - a song downloaded on the mobile has much more value and has thus a defendable value of 3€ including restricted DRM (!), adding the argument that NSeries and iPhones as the high-end range phones that are too expensive for the masses anyway.

My argument was that those phones might be more expensive but a simple calculation of my personal consumption learns that I buy average some 3 albums online/month (approx. 30 songs). So, on iTunes at 0,99€/song makes 356,4 € a year spend on digital music… while downloading over an operators retailer shop at a 3€/song rate, the same amount of content would costs me 1.080€ + additional download costs… the difference in 1 year would pay me a new phone, think about!

Also I would like to emphasize one more time that DRM has to be free - buy once, use everywhere - as it used to be with LP’s and CD’s. Amazon.com announcing it’s latest deal with EMI and 12.000 labels to sell DRM-free that plays on any device is another major step into Digital Consumer Enablement

I think that’s another reason why Apple is going to surprise a lot of people soon again… If I can connect my iPhone over a WLAN or to my computer to buy my music, it’s another great advantage for the iPhone users, from there I can carry it with me everywhere…