Blond Mobile

Below are all the interesting events – at least the ones I find interesting. If you think I forget something, please feel free to email or tweet me.

Yesterday I attended TheMarker annual web convention, Com.vention09. when I arrived, a girl approached me and informed me that Pelephone are giving away the Palm. As I’ve been awaiting for the Palm Pre, and knowing that it will distributed via Pelephone, I got super excited and even ready to buy it! When I got to Pelephones stand I asked about it, and after taking a good look at the phone  I said; This is not the Palm Pre!

Well, it seems that Pre and Pro sound rather similar. After explaining to the sales person why this phone is not the Pre, he said, “Yes, the Pre will only be available in September”  and explained how good is the Palm Pro. Since I was there already, I played a game. I was impressed that Pelephone had such a big stand, and thought to myself that its probably due to the new technology they are marketing : High Speed GSM, which is actually HSDPA (where did they get that name!?!).

At the end of the convention, I went up to meet a friend near the Pelephone stand, One of the girls told me I can play as much as I’d like (woohoo). surprisingly enough, I had won! I was shocked, I have never won before. I went to get my prize, and found out that in order to get my prize I need to sign up to Pelephone for 36 months and pay 70 NIS per month!!!, which is 2520 NIS!!!, doesn’t sound like a prize to me!. After talking a bit with the sales guy he said the problem is that I have a different operators phone and that I need to have a Pelephone subscription in order to be legible for the prize. sounds fair enough. As Pelephone charges me for some unknown reason for the past two years, I was actually happy.  I have two numbers subscribed to Pelephone, which I haven’t been using for periods of three and five years yet they’ve been charging me 60 NIS per two months. As me being one of those costumers that don’t want to wait 2 hours on the phone, I just let them charge me 30 NIS a month. finally I thought it was worth it. I could get the phone for 30 NIS a month, and still keep my Orange number. But it seemed that the ONLY package I could get in order to receive my **FREE* phone was the  70 NIS or up packages. It was to expensive to get the free mobile phone. I would actually prefer not to win a FREE phone and get all disappointed. After this incident, I’m going to wait on the phone how ever much it takes and cancel my 2 subscriptions to Pelephone. Although it does say on the small print that you need to subscribe to Pelephone, it does make you feel stupid that they make you pay a big amount and change your subscription package to a more expensive package. Shame on Pelephon!

a crazy week of events is ahead of us.  even if you are not going to CTIA, there are allot of hi tech related events this week! (if you are going to CTIA, look below for my recommendations)  I don’t know if its because the Kinnernet camp or because the upcoming holidays. anyway, below you may find a list of upcoming events so it will be much more easier to track and not miss on something you would like to attend:

 24/3:  GarageGeeks hosting Allen Hurff from MySpace: although this event was yesterday, its worth mentioning it in the list, Allen gave a great lecture about Open Platform, Open Social and Open ID and got me thinking….

25/3 Pre-Kinnernet Get Together: a get together with the Kinnernet participants from Israel and overseas. the event will take place in Uptown (formerly Galina Beach Club), from 20:00 to 22:00 and is hosted by Genesis Partners & 013Netvision. first free drinks are free. to RSVP: http://prekinnernet2009.eventbrite.com/

26/3-28/3 The annual Kinnernet camp: Will take place at  the see of Galilee. for more info: http://2009.kinnernet.com/

29/9 COM.Vention09: The annual Internet convention of TheMarker. the convention will have two tracks; International track which will be in English and include speakers from the Kinnernet Camp, and an Israeli track, which will focus Israeli scene. For more info and registration: http://conventions.themarker.com/article.asp?rId=138

29/3 Entrepreneur  Day: The first day (out of two) of the Entrepreneur Day, by MIT forum.  You will be able to hear about new strategies for Starting Up, Using IP for converting ideas into businesses and much more. For more details: http://www.mit-forum.org.il/events/event.aspx?id=72

29/3 Post Kinnernet Party, hosted by the GarageGeeks. the event will start at 19:30 in the Geek Garage (40 Hapeled St, Holon)

30/3 Tel Aviv branch of the Startups and Societal Ventures Network. Speakers are not yet published. The events will start at 18:00 and will take place at HP Offices, Raanana: http://www.meetup.com/SSVNetworkISRAEL/calendar/9904102/?a=ce1p_grp

30/3 GarageGeeks Sessions: Creative Commons Think Alike. The garage is busy this week! for info about this session: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=65575522591

31/3 Breakfast with Jeff Pulver: The breakfast is from 8:30 to 10:30, and will is held at ZOA House – 1 Daniel Frisch Tel-Aviv

31/3 Techonomy: Right after Jeff’s breakfast and in the same place! comfortable! The event will showcase new innovative startups that are aiming to change the way we think about Web2.0. The event is free but you need to RSVP at: http://techonomy.eventbrite.com/

31/3 Yahoo! Developer Session: The session is hosted by the.co.il’s and will discuss Yahoo! Developer Network and Open Strategy. The events starts at 19:00 and is at IDC.

1/4 Entrepreneur Day: The second day of the Entrepreneur Day, in this day there will be a highlight on getting Investments. for more info: http://www.mit-forum.org.il/events/event.aspx?id=74

1/4 The Annual Morrison & Foerster IP Seminar: at this event you will be able to learn about he emerging marketplace for Intellectual Property. The event will take place the Hilton Hotel and is from 9:00 to 14:00. Registration: http://snurl.com/cfc79

1/4 IMA’s Knowledge Cafe: The topic is: “Cybercrime Threats: From Internet to Mobile”. the event will take place at Sun’s offices, from 13:30- 17:30. for agenda: http://www.imaworld.org/?CategoryID=520 for registration: http://www.imaworld.org/?CategoryID=521

Let me know if I forgot something.

If you are planing on going to CTIA I recommend going to:

MobileMonday @ CTIA Wireless 2009:http://www.facebook.com//event.php?eid=68414518125

The Mobile Mashup: The Glitterati After Party at CTIA hosted my MobileMonday New York: http://mashupctia09-fbnews.eventbrite.com/

Caroline’s WIP Jam: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148397450064, I attended twice and was super inspiring!

WIP Jam After Party:  http://wipjam.com/2009/03/wip-jam-after-party-at-ctia-wireless-in-vegas-april-2/

The Mobile Monday Peer Awards where held during the MWC 2009. Different MobileMonday chapters from all over the world sent their chosen startup. Each startup had 3 minutes to introduce themselves. My favorite presentation was by Jaime Lanchares, Unkasoft CEO.  In his presentation he “talked” to his application and demonstrated what the application can do…  I recommend you have a look at his presentation . The Tel Aviv chapter sent Fring, which started as a mobile VoIP client, and enhanced to a mobile clients that allows various ways of interactions with your contacts. There were three award categories; jury award, audience award and the chapter award. PopCatcher won the jury award,  Unkasoft won the audience award, as I said before the presentation was amazing! Fring won the chapter award and also got second place in the jury awards.

following the presentations there was a cocktail party, where I got the opportunity to meet some very interesting  people…

Next week, there are three mobile events. the first is the September Mobile Monday Tel Aviv (MoMo Tlv) event, and the theme is "Global mobile Partnership". for this event we have some special guest from abroad; Bill Gajda, Chief Commercial Officer, GSM Association, Stephane Gantchev, Head of Orange Trial Factory, Orange-France and Gian-Luca Cioletti, Head of BizDev EMEA,  Forum Nokia. the event will be on September 15th in Tel Aviv and as always will include free drinks and refreshments. for more info and registration visit http://momotlv.eventsbot.com/

The second event, is a technical workshop that IMA are organizing with Forum Nokia. it’s on September 16th morning. it will include Nokia’s tools and SDK’s, development platforms such as J2me, Symbian, flash, widgest etc. The latest on S60 Platform, location API’s and much more. all sessions will be presented by Eero Bragge, from Forum Nokia. for more info please visit: http://www.imaworld.org/?CategoryID=459

The third mobile event for next week is the GSMA Global Competition, where the winner of the competition will be announced. this event is with Carmel Ventures and is on September 16th, after the forum Nokia session, so if your quick you can make them both…. for more info please visit http://www.carmelventures.com/Event.asp?Pid=0.51.543&id=539

Yesterday we held the 3rd MoMo TLV event. It was at Mandy’s, on the Yarkon and the topic was mobile content. 130 guest came and orange handed out gifts. I spotted 3 blond women other than me, next event I promise to take a photo of blonds…,

We had a speed lecture session; each person talked 15 min. we had a special guest from China – Ori Elraviv, Dragon ports Co-Founder, that talked about the mobile scene in china, and mostly answered question. Aviv Revach, Mominis Co-Founder, gave a short intro about mobile gaming. Guy Ami-Ad from Mobi, talked about mobile advertising and was charming as always, Aviad Rabinovich, Oranges Music Manager talked in addition to the regular "listening to music on your handset" about using your mobile for getting to know more music, music campaigns and song recognition, which I liked the most. It works by sending a part of a song recording to some server, and receiving the name of the band, song name and the album in a few seconds from the server. I was impressed, even more than seeing 3 other blonds in a mobile event.  I already know some sites that do something similar, such as WatZatSong, but in those sites you need to wait for users to recognize the song and say what it is. I don’t know what was the application that Aviad was using, but I liked it very much and Ill will find out…

As always we had an open bar, thanks to our sponsors Orange, BlueRun Amdocs and Eurocom.

More pictures from the event can be found here.

Last Monday was the second event of Mobile Monday Tel Aviv. The theme was mobile VoIp, a theme close to me. Although sceduled to start the lectures at 19:30, we started at 20:00, half an hour late, due to guests that were still arriving. I think that for the next MoMo event we should allow more time till the lectures start….:) on the bar were cool blue shot glasses courtesy of Sun.

We started with a lecture of Yossi Cohen from DSP-IP, that talked about Mobile VoIP technology and Mobile VoIP business models (lecture can be found here). After the lecture we had a panel with Tzahi Efrat from Jajah, Roy Timor-Rousso from Fring and Oded Goldenberg from Skuku that presented the VoIP companies and Yossi Hasson from BlueRun that presented a venture capital company. Having Jajah and Fring at the same table, makes you feel that Truphone are missing. although Truphone wanted to be at this Mobile Monday VoIP event, they could not make it. lucky us, James Tagg and James Body from Truphone were in Israel prior to the Mobile VoIP MoMo Event, and James Tagg answered the same questions on video. The video was filmed by James Body with my home camera at Jajah’s offices and I was asking the questions. I apologize for the bad quality

James Tagg,Truphone

We had an interesting discussion on how mobile VoIP companies make their revenue, relations with operators and the future of mobile VoIP. It was intersting to know, that JAJAH, Skuku and Truphone make money, but Fring do not make money AND do not intended of making money. they have money from their VC. We had Yossi from BlueRun answer what is the reason for investing in a company that does not have any revenue. Does this mean that Fring will keep on receiving more and more founding from investors or at some point they will finish all their money and will have to close?

We had fun, interest, new acquaintances, drinks and blue shot glasses!

We are planing the next MoMo TLV event and looking for the next air conditioned location…if you have any suggestions, please email me!

See you in the next MoMo TLV event!

The F5 – Refreshing women venture’s First meeting was on Thursday. it was organized by Liat Vardi and sponsored by Sun.

I arrived late, due to a major traffic jam  (2 hours from Raanna to Tel Aviv), but just in time to hear Miriam’s Schwab’s lecture on – "Using Blogs and SEO to Promote your Business". the lecture was general. The interesting part was samples of different blogs on the net and what to do to improve them.

After the lecture dessert was served and us girls had a chance to chat some more. other than business, technology and sharing goals we could say things like " bad hair day" and understand each other perfectly! The atmosphere was nice and relaxing.  I got to meet some very interesting women,  and learned allot. I’m waiting for the next events….

Nowadays, the hitech industry is having more and more women, especially in Israel. I guess it’s something to do with the Multitasking and passionate features that women have.

Usually, when going to some technology event, most of the attendees are men. Of course, in some cases there are allot of blond girls which are called Nokia or Samsung girls, but I’m not referring to them.

My first women event was held in a beautiful hotel in Barcelona, drinking Cava and very women-like.  it was organized by the Women in Mobile Data Association group, or should I say   Helen Keegen and Gillian Kennedy, which are also organizing another event for women in the mobile industry, on the first of July, in London. Unfortunately I cannot attend that one- after all it’s in London. Happily enough, we have Liat Vardi who is organizing a women event only, for hitech & web entrepreneur women. The group is called F5- Refreshing Women Ventures, and its goal is to inspire women, help get professional advice and support, as well as networking, so events will include lectures and will take place at the end of every month. I think this is a huge step for women in the Hitech industry in Israel – Thank you Liat, I’m so excited!

The first meeting will take place on June 26^th, in Tel Aviv.

Facebook Event link: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=644146628#/event.php?eid=20239202620

Meeting’s Schedule:

19:30-20:00 Mingling+ dinner

20:00-20:30 Networking

20:30-21:15 Ms. Miriam Schwab-" Using Blogs and SEO to Promote your Business"

21:15-21:30 Q+ A

There are only 5 places left! If you want to come please email Liat Vardi at LiatVardi [at] gmail[dot] com  as soon as possible with the following details:

Full name
Occupation – where do you work/what is your venture about?
Your blog/website
Cell no.
Mail address
City

I’m there!!

* I would personally like to thank Edward Resnick from Sun, that helped make this happen and also helped MoMo TLV

Yesterday, Monday 12th of May, was our first event. it was held in a bar in Hertzelya Pituach.

The event was a big success. Much more people than we expected arrived. It was mostly a networking event, with an open bar and food such as sushi,  cheese and other good things. Orange, our annual sponsor also handed out gifts. Sorry for those who came late, and missed out…

As all the events (to come) of Mobile Monday Tel Aviv, the event had lectures. This time, since it was our opening event and we wanted to make it interesting to all participants, we had 2 general lectures; Ofir Yaffe, From Orange which talked about mobile product development and Yoav Lorch from Zlango, who talked about courtship, mating and reproduction with mobile operators. I hope these two lectures interested everyone, and if not, there was enough alcohol to make things happier .

I was happy to meet allot of new people and even more happy to see old friends. It was very nice to see Michael Poppler from Gips come to our event, while he is here in Israel.

Oren Todoros from Modu came with his small toy, which was a hit. I guess in our industry, The smaller, the better.

Our next events will have a theme and will target different aspects of the mobile industry. If you would like to lecture or interested in a specific theme, let us know! you can email me or tell us on our facebook group.

Hope you had fun like I did!

See you in the next MobileMonday Tel Aviv Event!