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The Mobile Jam Session event - focused on developers - I’m organizing with Caroline Lewko of the Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP) during the Mobile World Congress, is taking its’ final shape. Hosted by MyStrands in their new MyStrands offices, the event takes place on Tuesday, February 12, 2008. It is a day to inspire new ideas and innovate solutions to existing challenges.

The event is free of charge for all participants, coffee breaks, lunch and networking cocktail included. Check the attendants list, we’re quite surprised and happy with the enthusiastic reactions and feedback we got so far!

Attendants include developers from companies like Admob, Accenture, Access, Bango, Vodafone Betavine, Bebo, Kyte.tv, Dell Mobile, Facebook , Future Platforms, GetJar, Google Inc., Idean, Intrinsyc, Kimia, LemonQuest, mBricks, Mippin, Mobile Complete, Mobile Distillery, MyStrands, Nokia, OpenID, Peperoni, PixSense Inc, Qualcomm, Reuters, scanR , Seesmic, Six Apart, Shozu , Skyhook Wireless, Sun Microsystems, Telecom Italia, Telefonica I+D, Truphone, Trutap, UIQ Technology, Vertu, Vodafone, W3C, Wavefront, WURFL and Yahoo! to name the most prominent. It’s a great combination of big and small companies; carriers/operators, device manufacturers, content aggregators, platform and developer programs reps and some great start-up companies with a lot of experience in mobile and web convergence.

You can still sign up here if you’d like to attend the morning and/or afternoon sessions or want to join us for our closing networking cocktail.

Check out the Speakers and Topics designed on feedback we received by participants:

• OPENING PANEL
• IMPROV SESSIONS
• CLOSING ENCORE PANEL

Check out the Topics and Speakers:

1. Open ID
2. Mobile Web Development Frameworks – Widgets/Ajax etc
3. Mobile OS / Platforms
4. Usability / UI / Localization / Mobile Interfaces
5. Mobile media / Web Convergence
6. Open Source in Handsets

10:30am – 12:00 noon
Pre-Session for Developers Only

Come early to grab some talk time, croissant and coffee with your peers about what you are developing and your important issues. These will then be brought forward for the rest of the day.

12:00 Noon – 1:00pm
Registration, Lunch, Networking

OPENING PANEL – 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
We have a complete line-up of players to open up our Mobile Jam session. A great combination of big and small companies; a carrier, a device manufacturer, an aggregator, a platform, reps from developer programs and two great small companies with BIG experience. What a great way to get started – don’t miss this one!

The Players:

• Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist at Vodafone Group
• Carl Uminski, CTO, Trutap and formerly of Yahoo!
• Souheil Gallouzi, CTO, Intrinsyc and formerly of Qualcomm
• Terrence Barr, Technical Evangelist, SUN Microsystems
• Tom Libretto, VP of Forum Nokia
• Ray Anderson, CEO, Bango

IMPROV SESSIONS 2:30pm – 4:30 pm

The Six (6) Improv discussions are designed for more one-on-one discussions and a deeper dive on topics. Also a better way for you to meet the speakers and your fellow participants.

Note: As this is about improv and flexilbity, so the speaker list still has room for some last minute additions!

1. OpenID
Discussion Leaders:

TBC

2. Mobile Web Development Frameworks – Widgets/Ajax
Discussion Leaders:

• Representative from Forum Nokia
• Dominique Hazael-Massieux, W3C

3. Mobile OS / Platforms
Discussion Leaders:

• Vincent Berge, Co-Founder & General Manager, Mobile Distillery
• Rich Killmer, Sr. Sales Director, Mobile Complete
• Oscar Gutierrez, Vodafone Betavine
• Terrence Barr, Technical Evangelist, SUN Microsystems

About this topic:
From Mobile Java to other platforms like Symbian, BREW, FlashLite, Android, PalmOS, Access Garnet and Windows Mobile.

4. Usability / UI / Localization / Mobile Interfaces
Discussion Leaders:

• Mikko-Pekka Hanski, Idean
• David Mery, Editor - Developer Program, UIQ Technology
• Morten Hjerde, Senior Interaction Designer at mBricks

5. Mobile Media / Web Convergence
Discussion Leaders:

• Carmen Sales - Product Development Coordinator, Kimia
• Jakub Danilewicz - Alembik project architect

About this topic:
Return of Prometheus: bringing the web to mobile devices. Giving the power of free media transcoding and web rendering to the mortals.

6. Open Source in Handsets
Discussion Leaders:

• Bill Lee, Developer Relations, ACCESS
• Luca Pasani, Admob and founder of WURFL

CLOSING PANEL: MOBILE JAM SESSION - ENCORE 4:45pm – 5:30pm
We’ll start off with some closing remarks from our panelists and then add in other players from the audience to ‘jam’ with them.

The Players:

• Fabio Ricciato, Mobile Handset Evolution, Telecom Italia, Mobile (TIM) Access and Terminals in Technology Division
• Bill Lee, Developer Relations, ACCESS
• Karel De Beule - co-Founder, Kimia
• Open seats to rotate audience members.

Jam - gather and play without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements.

5:30pm – 7:30pm
Reception
Let’s end the day raising a toast – Salut! Other player’s will join us.

Rudy and Caroline will choose their favorite Jazz picks for a perfect cocktail mood.

Two weeks before the opening of the Mobile World Congress, the third annual Mobile Sunday Barcelona - an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums - has already over 100 people subscribed to the wiki!

Here’s your chance to meet some of the key mobilist bloggers, key industry people from carriers/operators, device manufacturers, mobile applications and service providers companies. This is also an occasion to hear about the exciting stuff happening during the congress and learn about start-ups and interesting projects and launches, the evening before the big show. If you’re not on the list yet and would like to attend, just add your name + info to the wiki.

There’s also a Mobile Sunday Facebook group for picture and video uploads of the evening. FYI: it’s recommended to add your name to the wiki to make sure you’ll get in in case it gets too crowded! Thanks to our friends at MyStrands, who will generously provide some ‘more’ free beer this time.

List of current attendants:

Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at Torre Mapfre in Barcelona.

Infused with the spirit of the early days of Jazz, the Mobile Jam Session is a day to inspire new ideas and innovate solutions to existing challenges. The purpose is focused, but the agenda is improvised along the way.

Caroline Lewko of the Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP) and myself are ‘jazzed’ about working together to bring you the first of - hopefully - many Mobile Jam Sessions. The idea emerged to open up the mobile ecosystem and connect experienced and talented developers, with industry experts and decision makers.

Most importantly we want this event to be driven by developers – what they want to hear, who they want to talk to, what they want to say… Any mobile developer can propose a hot topic he would like to to discuss with other mobile value chain players in a workshop and productive environment, simply add your name and topic to invitation list. Be prepared to be an active participant in the sessions.

The event is free of charge for all participants, coffee breaks, lunch and networking cocktail included. We’re looking for passionate, exciting and talented developers. We have confirmed participations from Telefonica, Vodafone Group, Telecom Italia, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo!, Mystrands, Mobile Distillery, Trutap, Kimia, …

The event is hosted in the new MyStrands Barcelona offices in the Torre Mapfre at the Villa Olympica. MyStrands generously offers us the superb 350 square meter space on the 20th Floor of the building with a breathtaking view on all Barcelona, the city, the Olympic port and its beaches.

New tunes often come from unlikely associations, so… Jam on!

MyStrands has secured $24 million in its Series B2 round of funding. Spanish bank BBVA led the funding along with existing investor Debaeque. The last round of funding closed in June at $25 million, bringing the total capital raised to date to $55 million. You can read the full details of the anouncement at MyStrands blog.

In the past four years, MyStrands has developed a scalable Personalized Discovery Platform and a Social Recommender Engine. The Social Recommender Engine provides real-time personalized recommendations of products and services through computers, mobile phones, and other Internet-connected devices; and takes into account that taste is context-sensitive and evolves over time. These developments have already resulted in sales of $12 million during 2007. The company will use the new funds to go to the next level of product development. MyStrands recently launched MyStrands.tv, a personalised music tv channel and MyStrands Social Player was featured in the recent Nokia marketing campaign.

MyStrands recently hired some great new people and is busy building a great global team of developers. The company is headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon, and opened offices in San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Washington DC in the US; Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza in Spain; Helsinki in Finland or Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Here’s my presentation on the Mobile 2.0 Start-Up Ecosystem I did last week in London at the Mobile Web 2.0 Conference. Many people in the audience seemed to like the presentation, including Jeff Barr from Amazon. I decided to share the presentation with you here on my blog, comments more then welcome of course.