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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.

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.

I wanted to give you a short debrief on the excellent MobileMonday Barcelona sesssion we had on Mobile Gaming and Beyond. Despite Semana Santa (a lot of locals out of town) and the pouring rain, we had the auditorium nearly filled with mobile enthusiasts not wanting to miss a word from this months’ interesting line-up of speakers.

Nicolas Nova kicked-off straight with his presentation, titled “Sinking one’s teeth into new metaphors for mobile gaming” and was basically a critique of the current state of mobile gaming. Instead of describing 3D on cell phones, location-based gaming or augmented reality, he encourages mobile game designers to consider 3 other avenues to explore, such as the use of motion/mobility instead of immobile situations (see image).

David Camps from Intermón Oxfam presented a mobile game, called Refugee. The videogame has the objective of raising awareness on the lack of security and adequate aid suffered by millions of people trapped in forgotten crises such as Darfur. In it, Assia flees from the drought in her country and she must face up to violence and the lack of water and food. These are skill challenges, as in other games, but inspired from the real life of more than eight million refugees and close to 25 million displaced persons all over the world, of which 80 percent are women and children. The game ends giving you the opportunity to request more attention from the Spanish government to these crises. The funds raised with the downloads of the videogame – which costs 2.40 Euros – will go to humanitarian aid programs of Intermon Oxfam in the southeast of Sudan, concretely to the refugee camps of Djabal and Goz Amer.

Ignacio Cavero gave us a chronological overview of LemonQuest and its sucessful portfolio including the Ronaldinho Gaucho Street Soccer game. LemonQuest recently announced the acquisition of the Chinese company i4Game, an innovative developer of mobile games and is looking at other emerging mobile markets such as India.

Marta Vieira from the Portugese YDreams explained us about their experience and do’s and don’t of LocationBased-Gaming. Check out their stuff, it’s really cool!

The audience q&a participation was weaker then the MyMobileTV session we had last month, some issues like interoperability of games on other portable devices and the coming of web advergaming players into the mobile market space remained unanswered, as for now.

You can download most presentations of the Mobile Gaming and other sessions at the MobileMonday Barcelona website, you just need to register to the community and logon to the documents section to download the presentations.

Next months’ topic is on Mobile Search and promises another great sessions with confirmed speakers from JumpTap, Taptu, Yahoo! Mobile and Nokia Mobile Search.

The next MobileMonday Barcelona event on Monday, April 2, focuses on the current state of the mobile gaming industry.

Speakers include Nicolas Nova (Switzerland) - researcher at EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne), Maarten Noyons (France) - Managing Director, International Mobile Gaming Awards, Ignacio Cavero (Spain) - President and CEO, LemonQuest and a speaker from YDreams, Spain/Portugal.

(introduction below by Fabien Girardin from the Interactive Technologies Group, UPF University)

Currently, the mobile game market is highly dominated by games that have an easy gameplay, few simple rules and do not require special skills to enjoy. These games are mostly clones of successful casual games such as Minesweeper or Tetris.

However, the future of mobile gaming seems to rely on new types of gameplays that embed the new capabilities of mobile phones to sense their context. Like the newly released and successful Wiimote, mobile devices become sensitive to movements (e.g. Nokia N5500), engaging players to physically move as part of the gameplay. In addition, the emergence near-field communication (RFID, Bluetooth, QR codes) and location-aware technologies enable new types of scenarios that link virtual worlds with the players’ physical surroundings. For example, multi-player location-based games played out on city streets and built up urban environments.

The increasing contextual and proximity awareness of mobile devices provide new opportunities for players to engage in collaborative or competitive game settings. In contrast to this pretty picture, many issues such as the operators walled gardens, the size of the screens, network quality and coverage as well as the processing power of the mobile phone challenge the development and deployment of these new types of games. Finally, the Economic future: who is going to pick up the fragmentation and the distribution challenge? Where is the 8 bn mobile gaming market?

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.

More details at MobileMonday Barcelona website.

MobileMonday created a Global Peer Award miniwebsite where you can find all the related info to participate to the Global Peer Awards 2007 in Barcelona on February 12. Information on the program, the awards, how to subscribe, how to mominate a company, how to become a sponsor, venue, etc. This is your chance to witness 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.

The offical nomination registration is now open for companies to become a nominee and make it to the final. Each MobileMonday chapter will choose their favourite mobile startup company on January 31st to present it’s project to the jury of experts at the event in Barcelona.

Also on the menu: The Carnival of Mobilists will select their ‘Host of the Year’ and win a complimentary trip to Helsinki for the MobileMonday Global Summit in May.

Note that some chapters have chosen already their winner, and some MobileMonday’s are still helding pre-selections to name their winner. Some interesting events happening still this month:

MobileMonday Ukraine is holding it’s pre-selection on January 22 to announce the company-finalist of the Ukrainian selection for the Global Peer Awards 2007.

MoMo London has published a short-list that comprises UK based start-ups that have demoed to London MoMo since the last MoMo Global Peer Awards in May 06 in Helsinki. Voting on the short list will take place after the event on Monday 15th Jan and will remain open till Friday 19th Jan.

Check also the MobileMonday New York on Monday January 29th at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. In collaboration with Antoine Quint of SVG.org, Dan Appelquist of Vodafone and MobileMonday-London, and Scott Weiss of Usable Products cordially invite you to join for this month’s event titled “Rich Mobile Experiences with SVG”. This half-day event will run from 3:00pm to 8:00pm followed by a networking reception.

Do not hesitate to register your attendance for the Global Peer Awards 2007 in Barcelona, the event is heading rapidly for a +500 event so seats might become limited after next week.

MobileMonday will start releasing some participating finalist companies next week!

The MobileMonday Global Peer Awards 2007 during the 3GSM World Congress 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.

Check MobileMonday webiste for a full list of chapters and new chapters to be opening soon. You may want to consult the Mobile Events calendar at upcoming.org for more MobileMondays around and other interesting events in mobility.

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 for companies applying 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.

You can register at the MobileMonday Barcelona website 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.

MobileMonday staff just anounced a new Global Peer Awards 2007 during 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. If you’re planning to atttend the conference, keep your agenda free on Monday, February 12th starting at 3PM.

From the mobilemonday.net website:

“This is your chance to try 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 a secret location in Barcelona, this is the perfect 3GSM appetizer.

The price for this dish? Nada — it’s free! But you must register in advance and the 1500 tickets will go quickly. So keep in touch with MobileMonday over the next few weeks as registration opens and more details are announced.”

Last MobileMonday Global Peer Awards were were held during the Global Summit in Helsinki in May this year. The Peer Award winners then were Opera 8 Mobile Browser for BREW, the business-to-consumer Award went to Canadian ComVu’s Pocket Caster.

More details will be released soon on mobilemonday.net website.

Alberto just mailed me with the news that The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) today announced that Mobile Dreams Factory received an award for the Best Use of Mobile Marketing, Cross-Media Integration with Vodafone Videogoals (see video below)

and a second award for Innovation for Creativity in Technology with FIFA WorldCup Videoblog (see video below)

The award was presented last night during the MMA’s Annual Mobile Marketing Awards dinner, which recognizes leaders and innovators driving development of the mobile channel. This is great news for Mobile Dreams Factory who have been doing great and innovating work in this field during last years here in Spain, it’s also a stimulation for the entire Spanish mobile business.

Alberto Benbunan Garzón, founder and Business Development Director of Mobile Dreams Factory will introduce their new social networking and dating platform called Moviligo at the next MobileMonday Barcelona, together with Felix Petersen from Plazes.com (GE) and Alex Kummerman from Clicmobile (FR). Reserve your seat here now, few places left!

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)

Carles Fereiro from Barcelona Media did a great job while I was checking out Villes 2.0, an excellent initiative launched by FING, also founders of Mobile Monday Paris. I liked a lot the speakers’ box concept they introduced at BETC Euro RSCG, you can view some of this Paris trip picture here. Thanks to Marie, Daniel, Stephane and especially Véronique of the MoMoParis team for just being so wonderful

Fabien Girardin took some pictures of the MobileMonday Barcelona evening. Check out his blog used for his Ph.D. thesis on collaborative work in the context of mobile and ubiquitous environments.

From Fabien’s 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 MobileMonday Barcelona users can download the presentations of that evening in the subscribers profile page. There is a very interesting video demo available from Media Contacts bluetooth campaign with VolksWagen-EOS.

Next MoMoBCN event on December 4 has topic Mobile Social Networks. Head over for more details at MobileMonday Barcelona website.