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A couple of days before the event, some 150 companies registered to attend MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE event, including startups, investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, mobile application and service providers, bloggers, press and web technologists. If you want to attend the event to connect to industry leadership and broaden your C-level relationships, you can still buy tickets here.

NOTE there’s also a Mobile 2.0 Europe TechCrunch Party at the Shôko Lounge Club in front of the beach, all details about this after event meetup here.

Here’s the list of the companies attending the MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference in alphabetical order:

24 Access Solutions
7 Syntax
Acquamedia Technologies
AdMob
Ajuntament de Barcelona
aka-aki networks GmbH
Alcatel-Lucent
AlpinaSearch
Altaide Valley
Alumnus Software
AMF ventures
antrak capital
Atlas Venture
Atos Origin
Avui
AZ Interactive
Balderton Capital
Bango
Barcelona Digital
Barcelona Media
Beabloo
BeepMarketing
Between Brackets
bluenove
Blyk
Bullnet Gestion
CanalPDA
cellity AG
Centro Español de Servicios Telematicos
Channer Medianet
cirici new media
Clicmobile
CommonSensus
Comunicano
Coreobjects Ltd
DD&H
Debaeque Venture Capital
Dial2Do
dotopen
Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
eBuddy
Economic Promotion - Barcelona City Council
Eden Ventures
El Paìs
Ericsson
Esade
European Commission - Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)
Facoria de Canales
Five minutes
Fjord
France Telecom
Futurlink
GeoMe Communications
Getjar
GoodmintonPartners
Google
GSM Association
Halmstad University
Hewlett-Packard
Hiwave GmbH
Ideal Interfaces
Interactive McCann
IT University of Copenhagen
Itinerarium
itsmy.com (Gofresh)
Jaeson Associates
Jupidi GmbH
Kalerion Computing
Kimia
kooaba AG
La Vanguardia
Longreach Mobile
Lorem Ipsum
M:Metrics
Materna GmbH
mikamai
Mobiclip SL
Mobifriends
Mobile Distillery
Mobile Economy GmbH
MobileContact Software
MobileMonday PL
MobileMonday Ltd.
MobiLuck
Motorola
Motricity
mSearchGroove
my247.mobi
MyFrame Inc.
MyVocal
Nauta Tech Invest II SCR
NextWell
Nimbuzz
Nokia
Nova Ventus Consulting
Onetomarket
Orange
Oxynade
Ozmota
Palringo
PBS MediaShift
Peperoni Software GmbH
Plugg
Qelp
Qualcomm
Quodis
Refresh Mobile
Route Forward Ltd
Rummble
Safiratec
Samtel Consultores
Service Innovation and Interaction Design
SFR
Simba Technologies
SMS Text News
Some Bazaar
Spinverse Ltd
SPRXmobile
Stanford HCI Group
Stradbroke Advisors
Sun Microsystems
Sydes nv / Arkafund nv
Ta with you
Taptu
TAT AB
TechCrunch
Telecom Italia
Telefonica I+D
Telefonica Moviles
Telgraph Hill Group
Tertius Advisory Services
T-Mobile International AG
Tooio Mobile
Treasuremytext
Trutap
Trutap Ltd
Uniteddogs and Cats OY
Universal McCann
University of Salzburg
University of VIC
Unkasoft
Valoris
ViaMobility
ViiF Mobile Video GmbH
Vodafone
Webwag
Worldwide Rights Management Ltd
Yahoo!
Yiibu
YouLynx
Zipipop
ZYB

2.0, Announcements, attendants, Barcelona, companies, convergence, Conversations, dotopen, europe, events, Experience Design, innovation, lbs, location based, mobile, mobile 2.0, mobile 2.0 europe, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Events, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile tv, mobile video, mobile web, mobile2, mtrends, nokia, Operators, participants, Proximity Marketing, QR codes, social media, spanish startups, startups, techcrunch, Trends, ubiquitous marketing, Urban, usability, user experience

The Mobile 2.0 Organizing Committee announced the selection of the presenting start-ups at Mobile 2.0 Europe on July 4 in Barcelona. Some 70 mobile start-up companies applied to present at Mobile 2.0 Europe conference. The committee was delightfully surprised with the quality of the ideas and technology of the start-ups coming from many different corners of Europe and the world.

Here are the selected start-up companies.

PRE SERIES A companies

kooaba (Switzerland) - Mobile Image Search
Mobiluck (France) - Mobile Location-based IM, Chat and Social Networking
Secufone (Netherlands) - Mobility and Safety
Unkasoft (Spain) - Mobile Advergaming
ViiF (Germany) - Mobile Entertainment Community

POST SERIES A companies

Futurlink (Spain) - Proximity Marketing
Nimbuzz (Netherlands) - Mobile IM and Text Message Service
Mippin (UK) - Mobilizing the Web
Palringo (UK) - Vocal Instant Messaging
Taptu (UK) - Mobile Social Search

Early-Stage companies

The presenters in this category will be announced the day of the event as to maintain the suspense.

During the event, all panel participants and organizers will vote their best Start-up in each category; the winner in each category receives an invitation to present at the Mobile 2.0 Event in San Francisco on November 3, 2008.

Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President, Suites Management and Marketing, Services and Software at Nokia will introduce the conference with a keynote.

Participants will enjoy C-Level speaker and panelist participations from other mobile industry players, such as AdMob, AMF Ventures, Atlas Venture, Bango, Blyk, Debaeque Capital, Fjord, Getjar, Google, itsmy.com (Gofresh), Nokia, M:Metrics, Orange, Stradbroke Advisors, T-Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Trutap, Vodafone, Yahoo!, and ZYB. The sessions will be moderated by some of Europe’s finest bloggers including Mike Butcher (TechCrunch UK), Peggy Anne Saltz (MSearchGroove) and Raimo van der Klein (SPRX Mobile).

Check the full speaker list and program agenda here.

There is a lot of interest from the industry to attend this event. Early-Bird tickets at €99 and Standard tickets at €149 are already sold out. Currently, there are some 20 tickets left at €199 (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included), after which tickets will be on sale at €299 (prices all excl. VAT). Attendants can purchase their ticket online at Amiando Mobile 2.0 Europe.

We are also organising a meetup with our media partner TechCrunch, the evening after the event; please contact Mike Butcher or info@dotopen.eu for more information on this event.

Our Partners
Our thanks to our partners Nokia, Palringo, Taptu, Telefónica Movistar, Vodafone, Yahoo!, Bango, eBuddy and Mippin for their invaluable support.

2.0, Announcements, Barcelona, convergence, dotopen, europe, events, Experience Design, futurlink, innovation, kooaba, location based, Mashup, mippin, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Events, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile Monday, mobile music, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile tv, mobile video, mobile web, mobile2, mobilemonday, Mobiluck, mtrends, nimbuzz, nokia, palringo, Proximity Marketing, QR codes, Read/WriteWeb, rfid, secufone, social media, spanish startups, startups, taptu, Trends, unkasoft, usability, user experience, viif, web 2.0

Four weeks to go for the MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference and the program gets more and more exciting. Last week, Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President, Suites Management and Marketing, Services and Software at Nokia was added as a keynote and Charlie Schick, Editor-in-Chief for Nokia Conversations will talk about Social Media as the fusion of mobile and internet, exploring the ties into the Mobile Semantic Web.

More than 70 startups registered to participate to the event. The Mobile 2.0 Europe selected start-ups in 3 Categories (Seed Capital Stage, Pre Series A and Post Series A) will be announced next week.

The Open Platforms and New Application Areas Panel is also confirmed and will be moderated by Peggy Anne Salz, chief analyst and founder of MSearchGroove

Panelists include:

• Ray Anderson, CEO and founder, Bango
• Javier Pérez Dolset,CEO, Zed
• Alex Romero, Director Partnerships, Yahoo! Connected Life Europe
• Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist at Vodafone Group
• Peter Vesterbacka, Founder Some Bazaar

You can view complete speaker profiles here.

The Early-Bird tickets at € 99 and Standard tickets at € 149 are already Sold out. The next 50 tickets (Standard 2) are available at € 199 (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included). Late tickets will go at € 299 (prices all excl. VAT). So, don’t wait any longer to reserve your ticket if you’d like to attend. You can purchase tickets online here at Amiando Mobile 2.0 Europe.

Some free tickets will still be distributed on the Mobile 2.0 on Twitter channel, also handy to stay updated on latest news and updates on the event

Together with media partner TechCrunch, we’re organising a meetup the evening after the event; if your company would like to sponsor this meetup, please contact Mike Butcher or myself for more details. I can’t tell much more as of now, I’ll leave that for Mike to announce, but it’s going to be outside and near the beach

2.0, Announcements, Barcelona, convergence, dotopen, europe, events, Experience Design, innovation, location based, Mashup, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Events, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile Monday, mobile music, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile tv, mobile video, mobile web, mobile2, mobilemonday, mtrends, nokia, Proximity Marketing, QR codes, Read/WriteWeb, rfid, social media, spanish startups, startups, Trends, usability, user experience, web 2.0

The MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference is heating up! More than 50 startups have already registered to participate to the event. The Mobile 2.0 Europe presenting start-ups will be selected in 3 Categories (Seed Capital Stage, Pre Series A and Post Series A) - any start-up with a mobile application can apply. If you haven’t done so yet, you can still apply by filling in the online application form, deadline for submission is June 6, 2008 at midnight CET.

Taptu, Telefónica Movistar, Vodafone, Yahoo!, Bango, and Mippin joined us as sponsors to support the event and we’re going to announce some more high-level speakers the coming days.

Please take note that the Early Bird registration closes on May 31 (tickets at € 99,- only!), after that date tickets will cost €149,- (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included).

If you’re a blogger or press and you’d like to attend, please contact me directly.

Follow Mobile 2.0 on Twitter for news and updates on the event.

2.0, Announcements, Barcelona, convergence, dotopen, europe, events, Experience Design, innovation, location based, Mashup, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Events, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile Monday, mobile music, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile tv, mobile video, mobile web, mobile2, mobilemonday, mtrends, nokia, Proximity Marketing, QR codes, Read/WriteWeb, rfid, social media, spanish startups, startups, Trends, usability, user experience, web 2.0

The Mobile 2.0 Conference is spreading its wings to Europe and will land on July 4 in Barcelona, Spain. This one-day event focusing on the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation, is brought to you by dotopen and the Mobile 2.0 Organizing Committee: Daniel Appelquist, Gregory Gorman, Mike Rowehl, Peter Vesterbacka and myself in partnership with ESADE.

The MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference brings together experts and thought leaders from all aspects of the mobile ecosystem, including startups, investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and mobile application developers and web technologists.

The MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference is an opportunity for companies to connect to industry leadership and startup innovation and broaden your C-level relationships.

The event will be held at the Espacio ESADE FORUM, Barcelona and will run from 9:00am to 6:00pm with a reception at the Espacio ESADE FORUM afterward.

So, what can you expect? Two industry keynotes, four panels and three series of innovative startups presenting live-demos.

Panel speakers as of today include:

• Tony Fish, AMF Ventures
• Dr. Maximilian Niederhofer, Associate, Atlas Venture
• Inma Martinez, Director and Principal Advisor, Stradbroke Advisor
• Anil Hansjee, Head of Corporate Development - EMEA, Google Inc.
• Mike Butcher, editor TechCrunch UK & Ireland
• Chris Liu, Managing Director, Fjord
• Leif Fågelstedt, COO, Blyk
• Ilja Laurs, Founder & CEO of GetJar
• Antonio Vince Staybl, CEO GoFresh
• Raimo van der Klein, Co-founder SPRXmobile
• Martin Duval, CEO bluenove / Director of the Orange Start-Up Program
• Carlos Domingo, General Director of Telefonica R+D labs
• Unai Iturburu, Head of Vodafone Spain R&D

Check the full speaker list here.

The Mobile 2.0 Europe presenting start-ups will be selected in 3 Categories (Seed Capital Stage, Pre Series A and Post Series A). Any start-up company with a mobile application can participate. To apply and present your company and your application, you need to fill in the online application form. Deadline for submission is June 6, 2008 at midnight CET.

Seed Capital Stage and Pre Series A Start-ups will be selected by dotopen and the Mobile 2.0 organizing committee. Post Series A Start-ups will be selected in collaboration with the VC Panel. During the event, all panel participants and organizers will vote their best Start-up in each category; the winner in each category receives an invitation to present at the Mobile 2.0 Event in San Francisco on November 3, 2008.

Early Bird registration for this event is only € 99,- till May 31, after that date, tickets will cost €199,-Stay tuned! More goodies to be announced soon.

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The Art Center College of Design in partnership with ESADE Business School is presenting on March 7 in Palau de la Música in Barcelona a global event featuring notable creative leaders and influential media discussing issues of critical importance to society.

The Art Center Global Dialogues: Disruptive Thinking is a series of on-stage conversations with internationally renowned thinkers in many fields whose “disruptive” ideas and actions challenge convention, break current paradigms, and inspire positive changes in the larger world. Unlike traditional conferences, the Art Center Global Dialogues will pair these speakers with influential media figures—including highly regarded editors, publishers, and reporters—in vital exchanges that encourage the development of new ideas.

The Dialogues will focus on four areas particularly relevant to society today:

• Urbanism and architecture
• Communications and media
• Transportation
• Economic and social development

The Art Center Global Dialogues: Disruptive Thinking is open to the public, and will spur a larger dialogue on current and future issues of concern to all of society. The international audience will include scientists, architects, designers, artists, entrepreneurs, institutional and business executives, and all those looking to be a part of this public forum, sharing their experience and questions.

Distinguished international journalist Richard Addis serves as the event’s Guest Program Director and Moderator. An international lineup of radical thinkers and provocateurs, all disruptive thinkers alike, will explore the six influential areas of our daily lives. Moderators and speakers to date include:

• Climate Change: Harry Eyres (columnist, poet, writer, and naturalist) will discuss one of the most powerful disruptive phenomena of our age with such experts as Sara Wheeler (biographer, traveler, and expert on the Artic and Antarctica).

• Geopolitics: Richard Addis (newspaper editor, designer, and writer) will explore whether political ideas provide solutions with Ron Haviv (award-winning photojournalist and co-founder of VII Photo Agency), Bernard Tabaire (Ugandan newspaper editor currently on bail for sedition) and Ram (Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu).

• Business: Lynda Sale (Partner, Sale Owen, marketing consultant, and artist) will discuss with Blaise Agüera y Arcas (software designer at Microsoft Live labs) and others whether business can be redesigned to reflect its deeper reality as one of the most disruptive, free and creative forces of the modern world.

• Science: Robert Matthews (academic, writer, and journalist) will be joined by David Hughes (astronomer, professor, and researcher), David Orrell (systems biologist and mathematician), and Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara (theoretical physicist) as they explore how science is running into the ultimate disruption – the unknown – and what new ideas will bridge the gaps in our understanding of life, the Earth and the cosmos.

• Belief: Bigna Pfenninger (founding editor, The Drawbridge, a quarterly literary project) will lead a discussion with Charles Pasternak (academic, scientist, and author) and Joann Fletcher (academic and archeologist) that questions what happens when our deepest beliefs are overturned.

• Design: Stephan Bayley (author, cultural critic, and founder of the Design Museum) will discuss major disruptions that could be on the horizon in architecture, planning and industrial design and how they will improve our lives with Thom Mayne (Pritzker Prize-winning architect, currently building the tallest building in Europe), Peter Head (Director of Arup and head of Planning and Integrated Urbanism) and Chris Lefteri (materials expert and product designer).

Richard Addis and other Dialogues participants have initiated early conversations on a blog developed specifically for the Dialogues (blog.globaldialogues.eu). Those interested in sharing their own perspectives on these critical issues are encouraged to take part in the Dialogues and post their comments on the blog.

The event is limited to 500 seats. You can register to attend the event here.

Art Center College of Design
Since its founding in 1930, Art Center College of Design has been a global leader in art and design education. Located in Pasadena, California, Art Center offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in all visual disciplines, and public programs for all ages and levels of experience. Named the #1 U.S. industrial design school by Design Intelligence, Art Center has exerted a profound impact on society and culture. Art Center alumni hold the top designer positions at BMW, SEAT, Audi, and Nissan, and are internationally prominent in industrial design, communication design, film and photography, and media design as well. With its long-standing service to the United Nations and other nonprofit agencies, Art Center is also the first design school to receive Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status.

The Art Center-Barcelona Project, initiated at the invitation of the Barcelona and Catalonia governments, revitalizes Art Center’s long-standing European presence and makes Barcelona—with its peerless design history and dynamism—the focal point for a series of highly innovative programs in advanced design education and research. In partnership with the renowned ESADE Business School, the Project will include executive education courses for designers and corporate managers, as well as R&D industry collaborations, postgraduate training, and faculty exchanges. In addition, the Project will produce a series of public forums on the larger role of design and innovation, beginning with the Art Center Global Dialogues in March 2008.

ESADE
Founded in 1958, ESADE is a leader in two areas: the ESADE Business School and the ESADE University Faculties. Ranked the #1 business school by The Wall Street Journal for the past two years, ESADE has campuses in Barcelona, Madrid, and Buenos Aires, and collaborates with over 100 universities and business schools worldwide. Each year, more than 6,000 students participate in ESADE’s Executive Education and MBA programs, as well as undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. programs in law and business administration. With its network of 28,000 alumni occupying positions of responsibility in enterprises around the globe, and through its historical links with the corporate world and society, ESADE is a lively platform for innovation, debate, and social involvement.

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iNNOVATE!europe is one of these rare conferences bringing together talented European tech startups, analysts, business angels and VC’s. It’s the first time I attented this conference and I’m definately going to put it on my agenda for next year, not only because the conference was impeccablement organised by Chris and Cathy from the Guidewire Group but most of all, it’s an event to catch up with some of the most relevant startups active in the next generation internet and mobile technology/services and to meet lots of professionals working in the ecosystems surrounding these startup innovations.

iNNOVATE!europe’07 presentations and demo’s are presented in the charming Theatro Principal in the city of Zaragoza, who is hosting also the EXPO 2008 World’s Fair. The iNNOVATE!europe’07 Innovators can demo in the halls and mezzanine surrounding the theatre in a very relaxed and intimate athmosphere, ideally for entrepreneurs to catch up with the angels and VC’s and press to demo and explain their products/services more in detail; the food served between the breaks was excellent, so kudos to the whole organzation who did a great job creating comfort in a nice environment, ideally to stimulate business relations and conversations.

Some in-depth interviews done by Chris Shipley with Martin Varsavsky, Founder and CEO of FON; Tariq Krim, Founder & CEO of Netvibes and some interesting panel discussions on topics ranging from Open Source to Open Innovation, the importance of R&D, A New Breed of Investors, Mobile Technology at an Economic Crossroad and Building Business Playing Games.

Below a wrapup of my impressions on the presentations and demo’s given by Fring, Mobiluck, Yoono, Plum, Wisher, Smaato, sMeet, G.ho.st, CoolIris, hiClip, IMinent, Trampoline Systems, Webwag, and many others, all mainly focused on next generation web and mobile services. No worries if you haven’t heard from these companies yet, their names are going to resonant a lot the coming months in the blogosphere. I’m not only focusing on the mobile companies who presented in Zaragosa but also on the next generation Web services since I believe the next wave of mobile ‘connected’ services will mainly come from existing web services going mobile, and the existing and new ones coming on mobile only will need to integrate and synchronize easily with web services… think one ID, one login to access all your communities and services from your mobile, I won’t be able to manage my multiple logins/passwords and services from my mobile phone as long as this process isn’t made easy.

The first presentation was done by seasoned entrepreneur Zyn Schreiber who founded G.ho.st (Global Hosted Operated SysTem), a completely new, Web-based operating system which interoperates with the Web’s leading software applications to deliver fully functional Virtual Computer with which you can make your personal computing environment accessible from any browser - single desktop, single sign-in and single file system, in one word, the desktop replacement system we all are waiting for. To me projects like G.ho.st. make a lot of sense, I’m managing I don’t know how many accounts, community services and hosted services, it’s getting harder and harder to keep track of all the elements one need to manage online. Some of the benefits of G.ho.st. are upload everything that is on your desktop to the g.ho.st virtual desktop and organise everything through a virtual file system, change languages in seconds - ever tried that in Windows, huh? Technology is still in alpha, public beta release soon.

VoxIQ presented a new speech recognition technology using artificial intelligence to overcome current limitations in this domain, sounds great but I think we’re pretty far away still from using efficient speech solutions in especially mobile technology - I can’t help it but I always get a vision of a civilization of people talking to their devices while the real people are walking next to them, imagine a meeting room where everyone starts to talk to his device to activate silent mode for example, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me as of now…

Berlin-Based startup sMeet had a great presentation introducing a new communications paradigm called ’social reality communications’: live communications in a kind of Second Life kind of environment, imagine real video chat and phone conversations within Second Life, connect though mobile, instant messaging, VoIP in virtual tv shows , virtual trade fairs, etc. TV 2.0 here I come! Screenagers - as Douglas Rushkoff calls them - will love this, living in virtual worlds, connecting to real people! Developed over a period of 4 years by a small team in stealth mode, several patents have been filed. I LOVE this one, sMeet guys R.O.C.K.!

“Investor of the Year” Dr. Hermann Hauser, Cofounder of Amadeus Capital, interviewed by Chris Shipley made some good points on many companies do mainly software: what about hardware innovation and investment? He believes in the future of machine-to-machine interactions and flexible displays as one of the major innovations in ICT the coming years. BTW: did you know that 60% of internet traffic coming from P2P video?

Some interesting views were explored during the panel discussion with Martin Duval from Orange, Maria Marced (!) former senior executive at Intel and Hans Van Grieken, VP at Capgemini on the role of R&D in the innovation process. Maria Marced expressed that innovation is all about excitement in the first place but also about lowering the entry part, enabling the ecosystems around your product/service, cost-efficiency, developing the right partnerships. Above all, brands need a focus, she demonstrated with the vision from ‘intel inside’ to a ‘leap ahead’: Intel thinks it really can improve people’s life through technology, a brand like Philips focused on Sense & Simplicity. Interesting view expressed by Martin Duval from Orange Next on Orange going convergent as a thread on their core business but at the same time a challenge as to improve their core business and discover new area’s; he explained what media and network convergence for a Telco is about: some partners becoming competitors, the need to build new and different partnerships, creation of new groups of innovation (satellites) in different area’s but he mentioned also that the stronger the brand is, the more difficult it gets for them to get into the participative media business culture (!)

More presentations on Rich Media getting Richer with BT’s spin-off Real Time Content explaining their patented technology called Adaptive Media, real time content intelligently customised to different profiles to fit the needs of the audience, publisher or contetn owner. Have a look at their demo at realtimecontent.com.

I twitterred the term ‘cinematic browsing‘ when CoolIris introduced their ‘Think Outside of the Browser’ mantra. Soujanya Bhumkar and his team of talented Indian developers presented PicLens, a widget/plugin/extension for the ones like Google/Firefox/Flickr to enable full screen advertising and image viewing, cinematic media discovery for the Web, quite impressive!

hiClip presented a solution to enhanced video integration for social networks of all sizes, check it out at gethiclip.com

After lunch break more demo’s focused on personalising the web, starting with IMinent, a French startup launching EMOVIDS, lets users choose their own videos as a source of self-expression, replacing smileys and winks. It’s basically a set of tools and a community of Instant Messaging users willing to expand the IM experience.

I believe this is a really interesting take, considering there are 750 million instant messaging users on the Web - Microsoft & Yahoo together take 80% of that market share, that’s twice as much as MySpace users (!)

One of my favorite presentations came from Paris-based Webwag with their WOD (Widget On Demand). Led by Franck Poisson (ex-Google France MD), he presented how easily you can cut, drag & drop articles & sections from your webpage to your personalised web page. My notes from the demo tell = impressive! Franck and his team understood a lot about next generation web & mobile: “it’s not about browsing, it’s all about synchronisation”. Webwag was one of the only companies presenting a live demo on the mobile phone showing their Mobidget solution - still in alpha, it looked really cool and easy; choosing a wallpaper from flickr on your phone, switching between feeds, etc. this is quite a powerfull widget environment.

Criteo provides predictive tools based on users’ tastes and behaviours, also called collaborative filtering (pushing the right product to the right person), an interesting technology indeed, but to me Criteo lacked some maturity in technology, I have seen more impressive real-time personalised recommendation solutions by the team from MyStrands for example. Interesting to note here is that recommendation is all about discovery, two different types of behavioural desision are differentiated here: search using keywords (rational decision) and the discovery process through recommendations (impulsive decision).

Mixed feelings of positivism and negativism in the Power Angels panel, composed of:

* Klaus Hommels, Venture Partner, Benchmark Capital
* Oliver Jung, Investment Manager, Adinvest
* Saul Klein, Venture Partner, Index Ventures
* Simon Levene, Partner, Accel
* Mark Tluszcz, Managing Partner, Mangrove Capital Partners

Here my rough notes from that session:

- 20 relevant vc’s and 20 angels in europe
- 30 investments last year, diversification (oliver)
- a lot less opportunities in EU then elsewhere
- just less deals in EU
- too much advertising as biz model for tech startups, Oliver likes to see more real pure business models build on revenues
- 50% funded seed companies will not survive
- too many companies on to few opportunities
- more people starting companies then people joining companies
- great talent pool in europe
- great examples serve as role model
- first 50 people building a team are fundamental!
- need more people joining teams than starting companies

Conclusion: it’s all about smart entrepreneurs and passionate people

Another of my favorite demo’s came from UK-based Trampoline Systems, led by reformed anthropologist Charles Armstrong. Charles showed us some of the most impressive to come in business applications using social networks, a lot of relevance and impressive visualisation technologies. Get a peek at trampolinesystems.com

Telepark showed us their personal web application solution telepark.wiki, using ajax-based wiki’s to improve collaboration. I see a lot of this kind of collaborative knowledge stores coming to market for the entreprise and small business.

Final presentation of Day 1 came from Andrew Grill of Seeker Wireless introducing their Seeker Zone, a Fixed Mobile Substitution Solution utilising available measurements on existing, unmodified mobile handsets, coupled with a understanding of the radio environment to provide low-cost, high accurancy, mass market mobile location without GPS. One application of their technology can support location-based billing, also called HomeZone as well as location search and mobile advertising. Andrew claimed their solution to be 50 times more accurate than cell-ID location solutions (in some cases). A paragraph to read twice to understand but do ask a demo when you meet Andrew, this is definately interesting and very different of what I have seen in this area before. If you haven’t noticed: location is a complex thing and remember GPS doesn’t work inside buildings

The evening all participants were invited to a nice cocktail and dinner in the Gran Hotel, ideal for all to improve their PRM - Personal Relationship Management, always handy in the days of Open Innovation business culture.

Eduardo Sciammarella from ProtoMobl kicked off day two with Fidg’t, unifying your online identities across multiple social networks. Fidg’t then provides updates from your network of friends… a kind of social networking adress book accessible across the Web, on the desktop, and from your mobile. Eduardo’s team brings more than 15 years of combined consumer product and software experience from Sony. Another company that understood it’s not about browsing, it’s about synchronisation! The demo was very simple & stupid straightforward integrating flickr & last.fm to see friends, pictures and know what they’re listening to. A web 2.0 unified platform, integrator of mutliple web 2.0 tools like blog/calendar/flickr/myspace/amazon/music/maps/etc, everything looked very easy on the phone demo (still in beta).

Webjam presented another solution of how to remix the web, the way you want, but more interesting was the interview with one of the key figures of the remixable web culture: Tariq Krim, Founder & CEO of Netvibes. I do not need to introduce you to Netvibes - if you don’t know about them, check it out yourself; below some scratches of my notes of the interview:

- needed better tool for himself - too many feeds, something to tie all gadgets together
- inspired by Rafat Ali in Wired on paidcontent.org (!)
- most popular link on del.icio.us on Day 1 of release (15.000 users)
- some days later 50.000 users, now reaching 10 million users
- netvibes created wiki through wikia to refine the product
- live translation tool, translations through communities
- work with 126 brands worldwide in 1,5 month
- everybody will need a syndication strategy for RSS feeds
- netvibes upto 10% of feedburner traffic (!)
- it’s all about personalisation
- interesting to see that google & others copy netvibes widgets, it grows the pie
- 400 million user potential, need quick and neat execution, available on every browser, keep the interface simple
- need a standard, open-source the technology
- it’s the widget economy, everybody ads value to everybody, give more sources out to the community
- spending zero on marketing 1st year, work through bloggers
- next generation of early adopters want simplicity

Tariq and Netvibes came right on time, it’s what users were waiting for, he and his team provided a simple and neat solution for a real need, a bright future ahead - chapeau!

More demo’s:

Yoono is an innovative Firefox add-on that instantly suggests similar sites, related blogs and people sharing the same interests while you are surfing - a bit similar to Stumble Upon. Facts: 700.000 people using Yoono in very short time!

Ekaabo develops social communities for special interest groups, one login to “jump” from one social community to the next with one content input module… With web 2.0 creating more then 10 “catch all” communities per day, no sincecure at all I would say. It’s called Communipedia, check it out here.

Another of my favorite presentatons and demo’s was done by Hans Peter Brondmo from Plum. Plum plans to become the way you collect and share all of the cool, interesting, and important stuff in your digital life, in a compliment of all the services you already use like Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Flickr, iTunes, etc. Very impressive marked in my notes: one click to collect and share in your plum collection, goal oriented collaboration, all about fun and self expression, exactly what I need! Still in private beta but opening soon to public, stay tuned here.

Moderated by the illuminated Thomas Crampton, another interesting panel on Mobile technology followed after the break with Scott Cooper, VP Mobility Solutions at Nokia; Augustín Núñez Castaín, Handsets & Services Innovation Director at Telefónica Móvilés España and Avi Shechter, CEO of Fring. Some notes on that panel:

- big intersection between web 2.0 conversations and being present in a network/community, this model comes now to mobility
- next generation mobile services will be monetised in different ways
- roaming call from Helsinki to NYC and back: roaming cost 2, 45 $ while through wi-fi 0,04$ (!)
- UGC (User Generated Content) is really changing the face of society
- it’s all about the value created around the ecosystem
- remember Google & Yahoo are not FREE, it’s a different way of paying, of collecting money from users
- new ways to collect money will arise, like targeted advertising, personal profiling, added-value services
- rich presence services - it’s the blend of technology and individual content creation
- right time to open up and have the right tarification plans for early adopters
- people want to pay for a good mobile service
- upload of personal content will become the next wave (personalisation, tuning of music, uploading your life with pictures, video…
- as for the operator: it’s a matter of where to put and manage the bandwith and how to garantuee a seamless integration for our users…
- sharing personal content, user-generated content
- adapted TV programs, still a need to find the right broadcast solution
- explosion of new buisness models will come, the opportunity for the operator is that it has the user’s trust
- there will be low-cost carrier and low quality but also room for high quality servcies, connectivvity, device managemenent, storage for contents, handset replacement, entreprise applications, etc…
- related to mobile 2.0 startups in need to connect to operators: operators have the experience, the support and the billing experience

And more startups in mobile!

Spanish startup Whisher provides a software application that you install on your computer and helps you get free WiFi access all around the world. Additionally it offers a range of tools and services that will take your wireless experience to a new level. AS FON, the Whisher network is powered by users sharing their WiFi. I’m a firm believer in urban wi-fi solutions just because I use my mobile phone about 80 % of my time near a wi-fi network (at home, office, friends’ places) - what needs to be done here is unifying wifi networks and create a seamless switching inbetween different networks such as 3G. I couldn’t really make out of the presentation how fast their netwok is deployed but Wisher is definately on my radar.

One of the most promising VoIP and Messaging applications for the mobile is definately Fring. The ease of use - try it here - and how they integrate Skype, Google Talk, IM, Twitter and SIP other clients in one application is really cool. Since Avi sended me an invitation from his phone to download Fring straight from the wap url , I have been using it regularly and it works really well. The only problem today with VoIP apps on the phone is that you never know who’s calling you, real time presence, ok I’m all for it but I would like to know who’s calling me, I just get too many unknown calls now, if you can’t judge their origin, urgency or importancy right away, it’s still a bit of a downer… that’s where the operators will come in soon I guess. I will be writing more on Fring here, all in all, it’s without a doubt one of THE next generation services that matters on mobile today.

Another real cool service comes from Paris-based Mobiluck, seeded by Flemish Big Bang Ventures, Olivier Chouraki showed me one of the sweetest mobile web apps I have seen lately. He send me an invitation by Bluetooth to connect to their community (asking gently my permission before , I created my profile in 2 minutes and could immediately see the other 64 people in my neighborhood - which showed how easy a good application can go viral It’s a mobile messaging and social networking service that just works and will be available on mobile and PC. I’m really interested how they will develop.

Last demo I saw was from Harald Neidhardt from Smaato, presenting a mobile advertising platform for the delivery of targeted in-application mobile advertising to Smartphones, an interesting niche in the lately crowded mobile advertising space. Harald had a real good presentation and showed that a good idea just works when it’s well executed, he anounced current 1 to 10M page impressions per month. Check it out!

The last interview was with “Entrepreneur of the Year” Martin Varsavsky, Founder and CEO of FON, I covered more on this interview already here and more on his projects here… I had to travel back early and missed the last panel. Sorry if I left anyone out, must be I really didn’t notice or that I will write about more in detail soon This was a really interesting event for me, I hope my notes are usefull for my readers too. Thanks to Chris and Cathy from Guidewire and Lucie-Anne from Ballou PR for inviting me!

Here’s my complete Flickr set of the event. Gosh, I realise this is a really long post, kudos to you if you got until here, you must be an analyst

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