Mobile Monday London

Mobile Entertainment are announcing a special music conference being organised by the trade mag and website Mobile Entertainment next month.

Mobile Music Now takes place on Thursday July 9th at BAFTA.

We conceived this event to be more about networking and fun than most conferences. Therefore, delegate places include a three course dinner, the chance to speak one-on-one with our guest speakers and panellists, take home industry research and late night drinking.

Places should cost £259 plus VAT, but MoMo members pay £199.

The event starts at 4.30pm with three short keynotes and a panel session. Then follows speed networking, dinner and drinks.

Speakers include:

- Morgan Donoghue, head of music for Vodafone Group Services
- Barney Wragg, formerly head of digital at EMI and senior VP at Universal
- Alex Vlassopulos, head of business development (digital), Sony Music
- Antony Douglas, head of content, O2 Telefonica
- Jonathan MacDonald, MD of JMA
- Tim Grimsditch, head of global product marketing (music), Nokia
- Frank Taubert, CEO of 24-7

More details at http://www.mobile-ent.biz/events

email tim.green@intentmedia.co.uk for more info or call 01992 535 647.

If you came along to our MoMoLondon Demo Night in June, Samsung announced their new compeition ...

Samsung Innovation Quest 2009 - Win BIG with widgets

After the Mobile Innovator team teased us with details of Samsung IQ at our June event, the competition is now open. With a first prize of £15,000, it’s all about building Samsung Mobile Widgets for the i8910 HD. The competition is being co-sponsored by the Symbian Foundation and in addition to cash winners will receive distribution through Samsung’s MORE WIDGETS service.

Visit www.samsungiq.com for further information.

Breaking away from all being sat in one room, we moved to the three rooms at IPC Media's offices, and of course the drinks out on the terrace looking out over London.

Also co-sponsors for the evening were Samsung who announced their new Innovation Quest competition with a first prize of £15,000! Go to www.samsungiq.com for further information about the competition and how to join.

Again thanks to all the demoers on the night: Ben Whittaker from Masabi, Dan Phillips from Ookl, Jeff Bloom from Synchro Arts/Singtones, Simon Taylor from Corebridge, Alex Will from Spoonfed, Tanvin Sharif from Vopium, Mun Kong from d2see / Peepr.tv, Simon Maddox from 0870.me, Alex Housley from Total Hotspots, Mark Rock from Best Before TV/ Audioboo, Dave Hodder from Artilium, James Norris from Proxama and Adam Hoyle from Do Tank Studios / Photofit.

As has now become tradition, rather than us talk ourselves up, it is over to our community ...

Blog - James Norris from Proxama
Blog - Adam Cohen-Rose from Kizoom
Blog - Alex Anderson from Masabi
Photos - Jag Minhas from Telefónica

Let us know if you have written any articles on the evening. You can view some of the comments during the event that used the #momolo hash tag.

As always, keep up to date with our upcoming events on www.momolo.org the blog on www.mobilemonday.org.uk the yahoo group mailinglist at tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/momolondon and of course for more up to the minute information make sure you follow us on twitter @momolondon (www.twitter.com/momolondon).

Hope you enjoyed the event, we are currently making plans for the next event in July, more information to come.

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to thank everyone who helped, sponsored, attended or demo'd at last night's Mobile Monday London event. Even though I say it myself, it was a great success. The three room format seemed to work particularly well for a demo session. We also had some lovely feedback on the night which means a lot to us.

But there are some specific thank yous I need to mention to you all...

To our lovely sponsors, IPC Media (such a great space, really helpful staff on site, and great views across London town) http://www.ipcmedia.com and Samsung Mobile Innovator who announced their Samsung Innovation Quest widget making competition last night http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/gtm/siq/samsungiq.do (hard cash prizes for the winners - worth a look) and to the weather fairies who kept it dry for us so we could use the wonderful roof terrace.

A huge thank you to our lovely helpers without whom, we couldn't have run the event so smoothly - Tiffany Mitchell, Julia Shalet, Nik Buckman, Improbulus and Mark Hawkins - you all did a great job :D

To the lovely staff at IPC for looking after us so well - Heidi, Naomi, the bar staff and the very calm and collected Jose for managing the technical stuff.

To our great demo companies who gave us a varied and interesting evening : Ben Whittaker from Masabi showcasing the latest yet simplest in rail ticketing, Dan Phillips from Ookl who showed us how to make cultural and learning venues even more fun, Jeff Bloom from Synchro Arts/ Singtone who proved to us they can make *anyone* sound good when they sing, Simon Taylor from Corebridge who managed to share with us what they’re doing around CRM on the go, Alex Will from Spoonfed who make it easy to find out what’s on in London local to you, Tanvin Sharif from Vopium which is like Skype but better as it’s seamlessly integrated into your mobile phone’s address book, Mun Kong from d2see / Peepr.tv who showed us what fun you can have with a web cam and a mobile phone, Simon Maddox from 0870.me who wants to make it easy for people to ring 0870 and 0845 numbers at local and national rates from your phone and is doing this for love not money, Alex Housley from Total Hotspots who makes it easy for you to find your nearest wifi hotspot with reviews, Mark Rock from Best Before Media who showcased the runaway success that is Audioboo for folks into audio micro-blogging, Dave Hodder from Artilium who work with MNOs to make it easy for them to open up their networks to third parties and also do something rather special around LBS without the need for GPS, James Norris from Proxama who showed us the latest developments in NFC wallets, and Adam Hoyle from Do Tank Studios who showed us how easy it is to create photo mash ups on your phone using their Photofit app.

A thank you to Ben Smith from The Really Mobile Project http://thereallymobileproject.com who covered the event for us and will be posting stuff about the event shortly.

A thank you to my fellow organisers on the night Dan Appelquist and Alex Craxton. Jo Rabin, you were missed!

And a final thank you to all of you who came and participated. Your questions, tweets, feedback and presence made it all worthwhile. If you're interested to see what was said on twitter, search for #momolondon and #momolo which were the hashtags we used last night. You can follow us on twitter too.

If you took photos or are writing up a blog post re last night's event, then please do let us know and share the links with us here. I can see there are already some photos up on flickr.

If you'd like to sponsor or co-sponsor an upcoming event or our website, then please do get in touch with one of us - dan@ alex@ jo@ helen@ mobilemonday.org.uk

And if you'd like to be on our roster of helpers, please contact me and I'll add you to the mailing list for that too.

Till the next time…

Labels: demo, mobile monday, momolondon

Well, it's almost time for Mobile Monday London's demo night and we have now finalised the list of folks who want to show us their wares.

Labels: applications, demo, mobile, mobile monday, momolondon

This Monday sees the return of Demo Night to Mobile Monday London. We are delighted to announce IPC Media are the sponsors and venue hosts for the evening. The format is going to be a little different than usual as we wont all be sharing the same space, we will have a number of rooms where the demoers will rotate around ... will we confirm all of this later in the week.

As always, doors open at 6pm with a 6:30pm start. We are currently finalising the list of demos for the lineup, huge thanks to everyone for putting themselves forward for this event.

Registration is now open at www.momolo.org ... if you haven't already registered on the new site, you will need to do so first and then click on the register button on the event. If you have already signed up, login and click on the register button. If you are unable to attend the event, please go back to the site and unregister yourself and places will be made available for other people.

We will update this information when the demo lineup and sponsors have been fully confirmed.

Breaking News 13 May 09: The deadline for your entry for UK participants is no longer 14th May 2009 and is now Friday 22nd May 2009.
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Yes, it's not long to go now to get your entry in for the Vodafone Mobile Clicks Competition. There's just about a week to go so there's still time. We've tried to keep the application process simple and you can even be pre-start-up and just have a great idea to apply.

We also wanted to reassure you over who owns the IP and any confidentiality concerns so to make things clear...

• Confidentiality is secured. All people involved are informed and committed to this confidentiality.
• The rights of the idea will be with the owner/submitter.
• With your entry, we don't need every single detail - just enough detail to give us a clear picture of the WHAT and the HOW of the mobile service.
• We respect the situations in which the start-ups do not have a patent yet. See our very very strict confidentiality claims. Above and in the Ts & Cs.
• Ideas will NOT be shared with competitors or other companies. Only the jury and the organizing team(s) involved will have ALL the registration data (UK and NL). The Press and Other Startups in this contest will ONLY have RESTRICTED access to only a few Registration Fields (e.g. Name, Contact Details, Short Description of Service).

If you have any further questions, then please refer them to Helen Keegan. Also have a look at our previous blogpost on the competition criteria.

Good luck and let's see what Britain's talented mobile developers have to offer!

p.s. you can follow the competition on twitter and we have set up a facebook event too for it. Oh and Mobile Monday London is also in twitter if you hadn't spotted us already.

Labels: competition, mobile, momolondon, vmc, Vodafone, Vodafone Mobile Clicks

Today sees the launch of a national search for designers to develop new ways of securing mobile phones against thieves and fraudsters, as research shows that 80% of phones contain data which can be used by criminals to access bank accounts, steal identity, or sell on personal data.

The Mobile Phone Security Challenge is offering a total of £400,000 to designers and technology experts to come up with new ways of securing handsets, the data they contain, and their future use as electronic ‘wallets’ when m-commerce technology is introduced in the UK.

The Challenge is part of Design out Crime, an initiative from the Home Office Design & Technology Alliance Against Crime and the Design Council.  The Mobile Phone Security Challenge is supported by the Technology Strategy Board.

Applicants will submit a tender outlining how they will approach the challenge and identifying any relevant experience they may have. Once selected by a panel of experts, the teams will be allocated money for research and development from the £400,000 fund, and spend six months developing designs and working prototypes in one or more of three key areas:

· Making mobile phone handsets harder or less desirable to steal

· Making the data stored on mobile phones harder or less desirable to steal

· Making future m-commerce transactions secure and fraud proof

They will produce market-ready applications which may include hardware and software for handsets, new services and other innovations, which will be showcased and promoted by early 2010, with a view to their widespread and rapid take-up by the market.

A recent survey found that 80% of people carry information on their mobile phone handsets that could be used by criminals to commit fraud - and 16% keep their bank details saved on their phone, yet only 4 in 10 people currently lock their mobiles using a PIN. Such data includes website passwords, bookmarks, emails, personal security data and locations/addresses on map applications.

The deadline for applications is Friday 22^nd May. Short-listed applicants will present to the expert panel on Friday 27^th June, and the four finalists will be announced on Monday 29^th June. The teams will develop prototypes over six months involving a process of review and advice from the expert panel. Four prototypes will be showcased in early 2010. More details of the Challenge can be found at www.designcouncil.org.uk/crime.

Sebastian Conran, chair of the Design & Technology Alliance Against Crime said: “This challenge is the result of work undertaken last year when we engaged young victims of crime, police, mobile industry experts and designers to understand current and future issues regarding mobile phone crime.  The Alliance has prioritised five areas and is working hard to deliver insights that the UK’s design and technology sector can use to deliver innovative solutions to reduce the instances of crime and antisocial behaviour.  This is one of the early results of our work – there’s more to come.”

Previous advances in technology have led to unexpected new forms of crime; email heralded the phenomenon of ‘phishing’, ATMs precipitated the new crime of ‘card catching’ and online banking gave rise to ‘key logging’, used by fraudsters to track the input of secret passwords and account numbers. However, there are also many examples of technology being applied successfully to reduce crime – for example, British Crime Survey figures show theft of vehicles has reduced by 51% since 1997 as a result of improved security being designed into the vehicle, and an evaluation of houses built to the ACPO Secured By Design (SBD) standards showed that these experience 26% less crime than non SBD houses, and residents fear of crime is lower.

The Mobile Phone Security Challenge will be steered by a group of leading specialists:

· CHAIR: Simon Waterfall, Co-founder, POKE

· Steve Babbage, Security Technologies Manager & Group Chief Cryptographer, Vodafone Group R&D

· Mark Delaney, Director, Connect Design, Nokia

· Josh Dhaliwal, Co-founder, Mobile Youth

· Richard Martin, Business Security Consultant, APACS

· Joe McGeehan, Managing Director, Toshiba Research Lab and Professor of Communications and Engineering at the University of Bristol

· Dr Walter Tuttlebee, Executive Director, Mobile VCE

So that’s not bad then, a prize fund of £400k and will be supported to get to prototype and production stage. If this is your area of expertise, then I’d say it could be worth a shot.

Labels: competition, security

Just a quick reminder for you to register for Monday evening's event at the CBI/Centrepoint. Yes, we're back at the CBI but there will be sandwiches to accompany our beers and wine courtesy of the lovely folks at DCKTN.

The evening is a slightly different format than usual so I just wanted to explain it a little bit more here.

We'll open with short presentations from DCKTN and Numeritas and we'll get pitches from Vodafone Mobile Clicks (about the competition and the 150k Euro prize fund) and Pembridge Partners LLP (about the Gateway to Investment programme).

We'll then move on to a panel session. Our line-up is looking good:
Benjamin Ellis, Redcatco is our chair for the evening and a seasoned entrepreneur himself. He's also very charming and will do his utmost to get the best out of our panellists.

And our panellists are:
Pamir Gelenbe, a partner with Newton More Venture Capital and Private Equity and co-founder of mobile marketing company, Flytxt. Pamir knows where the money is and where it’s going, and maybe even how to get it. He might just be worth listening to.
Carl Uminski, co-founder IMW. Carl's been there and done that as an entrepreneur with Overture/Yahoo/AOL and more recently with Trutap. Carl is battle-worn but is fighting the good fight again with a new start-up.
Rose Lewis, Pembridge Partners LLP knows a thing or two about mergers and acquisitions, particularly with media and digital businesses. She also knows how to get your company investment ready so will have a few top tips worth keeping an ear open for.
Chris Padfield who is Investment Manager for London Business Angels & London Seed Capital and can explain to us how London Seed Capital works and what's happening in the angel sector at the moment.

There will also be some other experts in the room from Kemp Little LLP (our lovely legal sponsors), and with a bit of luck, someone from cmypitch.com amongst others. And I know there will be some investors in the room as well as scouts for investors. As well as our usual mix of interesting mobile folks.

Following our panel sessions, we will be having surgery sessions alongside the networking and drinks. This is your chance to have a one to one chat with one of our experts without jostling to get their attention over a glass of wine. Tables and chairs will be laid out for the various surgeries in and around the reception area. Helpers will be on hand (I hope!) to take down details of who wants to chat and give you a time slot if there's a queue. And for those who weren't able to have their one to one or small group session there and then, the various doctors will be able to get hold of you afterwards to chat anyway. We will be having the following surgery sessions:

Vodafone Mobile Clicks - explaining more about the competition and how it worked last year
Pembridge Partners/Gateway to Investment - Rose can explain in more detail how the G2i programme works, what's involved and share some case histories with you to see if you're eligible to apply (I'm told the programme is *fantastic* from more than one trusted source). She can also have a chat to you about Pembridge's work on the M&A and strategic partnering front too.
London Seed Capital - Chris will be on hand to explain what LSC is all about, how it works and how you can get in on the act.
DCKTN - Eddie and Philip are on hand to discuss the various initiatives going on with them and how you can get in on the act to benefit from the options on offer.
Numeritas - Denver is available to talk through how their financial modelling works and discuss its relevance for your business if you're thinking of going for finance and investment. If finance isn't your strong suit, and it isn't mine, then Denver might just be able to help you.

There is room for one or two more surgeries if anyone would like to offer to run one. Please get in touch with Helen if you do.

I'm very much looking forward to Monday evening's event and if you haven't signed up and RSVP'd already, then please do over at http://momolo.org and do tell your friends. If you can't come to the panel session, but want to pop along later to have a surgery session, then please do sign up. This event is also suitable for digital businesses and not just mobile ones. Any problems with registration or website queries - please let Alex know.

Mobile Monday London is proud to be a media partner for this year’s Meffys. I’m also pleased to announce that yours truly, Helen Keegan, will be on the judging panel for the Mobile Advertising Award. Something I’m actually rather excited about.

Anyway, the key point is that the entry deadline for the awards has been extended to the 24th April so you still have another week to get your entry in. The official blurb and details are below for you all. It’s £300 per entry – unfortunately we don’t qualify as a supporting organisation as we’re a media partner only this time. Anyway, don’t let that put you off entering, it’s still worthwhile and I do know that previous MoMoLo members who have entered the awards in previous years have benefitted, so please do consider it. There are a wide range of categories to choose from and think carefully about which ones to enter. I’ve judged other things before and am frustrated when something is submitted into the wrong category and fails when had it been submitted to a more appropriate category, it would have stood a chance of winning. So think on!

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Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), the global association for the mobile media industry, today announces that due to popular demand, the call for entries for the sixth international Meffys Mobile Entertainment Awards has been extended to Friday 24^th April 2009. Companies wishing to enter should visit: www.m-e-f.org.  

MEF is also pleased to announce that Hardeep Singh Kohli, a leading social commentator, BBC presenter and comedian, will host the Meffys ceremony on 23 June in London. As a columnist for The Scotsman and The Guardian, and a great fan of mobile games, Hardeep is passionate about the increasingly important role that mobile entertainment is playing in our everyday lives and says, “I am delighted to be hosting this year’s Meffys awards to help celebrate the leading companies in an industry where creativity and cutting-edge technology collide”.

Entering the Meffys 2009

MEF is accepting entries for the 2009 Meffys awards until 24 April. Entry costs have been frozen from last year and are as follows: £100 per entry for MEF members, £200 for members of supporting organisations and £300 for non-members.

For more details and information on entry categories go to: http://www.m-e-f.org/index.php?id=44

Meffys 2009 Categories:

• Games
• Music Service
• TV & Video Service
• Technology Innovation
• Content
• Social Networking
• Search & Discovery
• Ad Campaign
• Application
• Quality of Experience
• D2C Service
• ‘Mobile First’ Innovation
• Business Intelligence
• Innovative Business Model
• Handset

If you do decide to enter, good luck!

Labels: Awards, MEF, mobile entertainment forum