Heroes of the Mobile Screen – 7 Dec 09 at the BFI Southbank, London

Some of you may be wondering what I’ve been up to of late. Well, if you have, then I can reveal to you that I’ve been working on a new conference, Heroes of the Mobile Screen, which is on next month on 7 December at the rather wonderful BFI on London’s Southbank. And I’d love for you to spread the word (like our wonderful media partners), buy tickets and join the conversation. And I’m afraid this has taken our attention for the last few weeks which means we’ve had to cancel November’s Swedish Beers London event. Hopefully, this will all make up for it as this will be the *must attend* conference followed by the *must attend* after party. Well you know I like a good party!

The team behind the conference, Isabel Fox, Neil Robertson, Carlo Longino, Dominic Travers and yours truly are also involved in running Mobile Monday London, Swedish Beers Mobile Networking, Future of Mobile, Over The Air, Mobile 2.0 and Tech Media Invest events amongst other things.

The day-long event at BFI Southbank will differ from anything else around (at least that’s what we’re aiming for) and get the stakeholders of mobile involved in discussing the issues affecting them and their customers. Uniquely the event also has teenagers on stage to tell the industry what they want from their mobile, what they expect from their network operators and what’s most important to them in terms of their mobile life.

Heroes of the Mobile Screen is already attracting a number of high calibre ‘heroes’ with speakers and panellists answering the call from around the world, including Kei Shimada, JP Rangaswami and Kevin Marks, Belinda Parmar, Julia Shalet, Doug Richard and Harald Neidhardt are all confirmed. The speakers are listed here and the agenda can be found here.

Heroes of the Mobile Screen opens with a keynote from Kei Shimada sharing his experience of what’s happening in Japan and what we can learn from that here in the West. And continues with four core pillars supporting discussion throughout the day.

The money
What's making money, who's making money and what's being invested in and where the money's going to be in the future? The answers to all the questions we want to ask of successful mobile service providers and VCs.

The impact of social/location
What is the impact of social media and location technology? What do customers want, what are the business models, what are the solutions to privacy issues. Carriers are placing their bets in this area, but will they pay off?

Teenage heroes
Led by digital youth marketing expert Julia Shalet (pictured left), this is a new format where we invite four companies to pitch their product, service or device live on stage to six teenagers and they tell us what they really think.

Real customers, real applications, real marketing
A double session with the first half covering customers and what they really want on mobile with a focus on women in particular with some new research and insight into what women want from Belinda Parmar of Lady Geek. The second half will cover mobile marketing and advertising, what's working, what's not and what's coming next.

I came up with idea around the event because we realised that most of the events I attend throughout the year all talk around the same subjects, with the same people and bring up the same issues, without resolution. It’s time for us to stop talking to ourselves, look out beyond our industry and make some changes for the better. I believe it’s important to engage our colleagues in marketing, web 2.0 and media as well as more of our mobile colleagues from throughout the value chain. The exciting stuff is going to happen when industries cross over – that’s where the innovation is. In putting the agenda together, we believe we have something that will appeal to a wide audience – whether you’re a director of marketing for an FMCG brand or a web developer toying with the idea of developing apps for android or iphone.  And to do that, we need to share real customer insight that we can use to make ours and others mobile lives better.

Tickets are now available online now for £99 (ex VAT and booking fee) at http://mobileheroes.net . We’ve kept the price deliberately low and it’s subsidised by sponsors who we’ll be able to announce shortly.

If you’re interested in sponsoring the event in some way, please get in touch with me via email.

If you’re interested in pitching your gadget, application or service to our teenagers, please email Dominic Travers to put your name forward.

We are keeping a waiting list for potential speakers and panellists. If you’d like to be considered, please contact me.

So get your tickets now and become a fan on Facebook or follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/hotms too.

Technorati Tags: conference,mobile monday,mobile monday london,events,london,mobile media,mobile marketing,mobile applications,mobile network operators,learning,networking

For the record...

Swedish Beers is *not* at Belchica this year and nor is it on the Tuesday night of MWC. We still love Belchica, it's just not quite right for what we wanted this year.

So instead, we are holding it on Wednesday 18th February 2009 from 6.30pm at Dostrece which is just off La Rambla at C/ Carme 40, nearest Metro: Liceu.

Our sponsors are Admob, Palringo, Silverstreet and dotMobi.

If you spot any blogposts like this one saying otherwise, do tell them they've got it wrong.

Thanks and skål

Update: Very pleased to say that the lovely folks at Mobileslate have updated their party list. Hurrah to the power of the interwebz.

Swedish Beers are go!!

Yes it's true. Thanks to the wonderful comments and support from Swedish Beers fans here on the blog and on twitter, I now am proud to announce that we have not only some very generous sponsors for our little party, but also a smashing new venue. Not that we don't like Belchica or anything, because we do, but it wasn't quite big enough for us for what we were after this year. Not least, because we have four super sponsors and their guests and a media partner to boot.

This year's event is proudly sponsored by Admob, Silverstreet, Palringo and dotMobi. More about them later.

And our media partner is the rather wonderful Mobile Industry Review who will be interviewing folks for their video show and blog on the night. Be sure to look out for Ewan, Dan, James and Ben to give them your pitch as to why they should include you in their show.

Our venue for the evening is Dostrece which is a two floor bar and restaurant. Yes, that's right, a restaurant too! This means that they will be serving food from their normal menu all evening so you'll get a chance to eat too. Prices are reasonable and it's a mix of Mexican, Spanish and Turkish flavours. @BCN_unlike reviews it here.

The venue holds up to 300 folks at any one time so it's a little bigger than last year's venue, Belchica, and it can be found behind La Boqueria market and the nearest metro station is Liceu. Just walk up La Rambla, walk past La Boqueria and Teatro Grec, then take a left at Calle Carme (or Carrer del Carme) and Dostrece is at number 40 (Google map here). (They also have free wifi if you're desperate to demo your latest iphone app.)

Doors will be opening at 6.30pm on Wednesday 18th February and we'll be open until late so there's plenty of time to drop by and enjoy the fun, meet interesting people and soak up the Swedish Beers vibe. There is no need to RSVP, but since there's a bar courtesy of our lovely sponsors, we will be distributing beer tokens on the night. There will be *plenty* tokens to go round as we have very generous sponsors this year and each token will entitle you to a glass of beer, glass of house wine or a soft drink. So be sure to seek out those with the tokens on the night (that'll be the Swedish Beers crew and our lovely sponsors).

Like our previous events, this is a relaxed evening, no formalities, no presentations, no business cards thrust in your face as soon as you arrive. Just come with an open mind, be prepared to talk nonsense to strangers, enjoy a drink or five and have yourself a good time. Oh, and leave the ties at the door please.

It is likely to get a bit busy at times. But don't worry, people will be coming in and out all evening. And if it's very busy, there's no need to queue to get in. Just check out one of the other bars nearby and come back a little later when it's a bit less frenetic. And we don't have a cloakroom so I don't recommend you bring your laptops with you - it's a liability in Barcelona I'm afraid. You won't need them anyway.

So just to recap:

What: Swedish Beers Mobile Networking
When: Wednesday 18th February, 6.30pm until we run out of steam
Where: Dostrece, Calle Carme 40, 08001 Barcelona tel: +34 9 3301 7306

And of course, it couldn't happen at all without the generous support of our lovely sponsors:

*Admob* Founded in 2006 (on my birthday as it happens!), AdMob is the world's largest and highest quality mobile advertising marketplace, serving more than a gazillion mobile banner and text ads per month. AdMob allows advertisers to reach their customers on the mobile web and enables publishers to increase the value of their mobile sites. AdMob offers advertisers the ability to target and personalize advertising to their customers in 160 countries. Sample AdMob customers include Coca Cola, Starbucks, MSN, Paramount Pictures, Reuters, MTV and many more. AdMob serves ads for over 3,000 mobile web sites, including ESPN, CBS, Weather Underground, Maxim and Peperonity. Russell (genunine old skool mobilist and blogger), Andy and I expect a few more from their crew will be around to hand out beer tokens and generally chew the fat.

*Silverstreet Active Media* is a Dutch based corporation specialized in high-end as well as mission critical Mobile Messaging (SMS) offering global, verified MT termination options (covering more than 700 GSM & CDMA networks) in addition to its vast Premium SMS (25 countries) and Premium IVR (30 countries / 15 languages) portfolios. Constantly striving to excel within its role as one of the leading messaging companies in the industry, Silverstreet handles each customer case with the focus it required to meet the specific needs that each project presents. Through its competitive offering, professionalism, and customer care the company has achieved numerous successful business relationships with MVNO's, MNO's, large brands, and others. The Silverstreet team is new to Swedish Beers, so be gentle with them and be sure to search out Simon and his team for a chat and of course, your beer tokens.

*Palringo* is a communications channel designed to make Instant Messaging work on the mobile: voice if private, text if somewhere busy and photos where relevant. Vocal IM (walkie-talkie style voice) also makes it easy for users who have difficulty typing, for people on the move when it's not appropriate to text, and for users with complex languages such as Russian, Chinese, Japanese, or Arabic. People can keep in touch with friends on popular IM services and social networks like : AOL's AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Gadu-Gadu, ICQ, Jabber, Microsoft Windows Live Messenger, QQ and Facebook. Palringo works across on the all of the major mobile platforms: Windows Mobile, Symbian S60, Java, RIM Blackberry, iPhone,Android (forthcoming), plus PC's and Mac's. Palringo has been shortlisted by the GSM Association for Best Mobile Internet Service award and will be exhibiting on UK Trade & Investment Stand (AV26 Avenida). Kerry Ritz has set up a Swedish Beers chat group on Palringo if you want to give it a go (it's a free download from your mobile) and will be on hand with beer tokens on the night.

*dotMobi* (the informal name of mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd.) was appointed by ICANN as the official global registry for the .mobi top level domain. It is backed by leading mobile operators, network device manufacturers and Internet content providers including Ericsson, Google, GSMA, Hutchison, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefónica Móviles, TIM, Visa and Vodafone.

dotMobi makes the mobile phone as useful as a PC for websites & services, just a lot more portable and provides the critical link between mobile operators, handset manufacturers, content providers, brands and customers to make phones the tool of choice for the mobile web. The key differentiator for dotMobi is the mobile user experience. This is driven by the dotMobi style guides which contain a mixture of mandatory and recommended best practices for developing mobile content and services. The guides cover a variety of Internet and domain-related issues and are published on our web site for the mobile web developer community, dev.mobi. And if you want to find out more, there'll be a few of the dotMobi crew in tow at Swedish Beers.

So nothing more to add except to say, have a safe journey to Barcelona and we look forward to welcoming you at Swedish Beers.

Skål

Helen (aka technokitten) and Anna

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I want, you want, we all want Swedish Beers!

Update 01/02/10: 2010's event details are here. Same place, same time, same day (Weds). See you there. Skål.

It's that time of year when the Mobile Industry goes to Barcelona and we're now in the final planning stages with our respective companies, clients, colleagues and what have you. And obviously, Swedish Beers, I'm very pleased to say, has become an integral part of the Barcelona experience for many in our mobile community.

Tis true that I haven't organised anything yet because that is very much dependent on sponsors getting involved so I'm putting a shout out to you all to get involved and dig deep and help us make sure we can put on another Swedish Beers event.

To make the party go with a bang, we need about 4,000 Euros and that will keep 500 or so mobile execs merry for several hours. And we're happy to have several sponsors - it doesn't just have to be one. You bring the money, we'll bring the warm bodies, good cheer and random chat.

So if you have some budget for this and would like to get involved, or you know someone who might have budget, then please get in touch via email. And if you don't have money, you can still help by showing your appreciation for Swedish Beers by leaving a comment as to why you think we should have a Swedish Beers party this year in Barcelona... can you believe it, some folks don't know much about Swedish Beers? So your testimonials would be a great help to us. We want to know what Swedish Beers means to you... so over to you my Swedish Beers chums...