Blond Mobile

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:

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:

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:

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

Caroline’s WIP Jam: , 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 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…

    

last week we  had the 4th MoMo TLV event. it was in Tel Aviv, at the Mandy’s.

The event included special guest from abroad and was full. this was the first time that we actually had a waiting list. Orange handed out some very cool beer glasses and books (beer and books go great together). There where allot of women. This time I counted 14 women, which 4 of them, not including me were blond.  I was very happy to know, that the blond women where not only smart but in a high managing position. for example  Nurit Roth, Co-Founder and Director at 3DVU and Tami Bronner, CEO of Cellerium . girl power! or even better, blond girl power!

 

Michal Carmi, Tripletec CEO - another smart blond

In addition to the speakers, Eero Bragge, Senior technical consultant, from forum Nokia attended and was nice enough to let me ask him allot of technical Symbian related question, even though a day after the MoMo TLV event he was the key lecturer of the IMA technical session. as always we had refreshments and a fun atmosphere..

for more pictures please visit

 

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 .

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 ). 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

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!

At the beginning of the week I attended the IMA’s Mobile Advertising event that took place in Tel Aviv. the event was very well planed, and on schedule, every lecture started and ended on time! that was so surprising. I think that was the first event I have been to in Israel that corresponded to the time table! the place was full, it looked that there where allot of women, compared to other mobile events I have been to. I was proud…

The lectures where interesting. Most of them demonstrated the extra creativity needed for mobile advertisement. TurkCell showed some very interesting ways to advertise, which involves users consent to get advertisements. They talked about coupons that users receive from their favorite brands which are discounts only available for mobile users, and that way making users want to receive the advertisement. The most interesting thing they talked about was commercial ring tones, the user sends a SMS with a short code and then he "subscribes" to a ringtone of some brand. Every time the rington is played (i.e  the user has an incoming call), the user gets credit-his phone bill is reduced. the number of times the ringtone is played is monitored. The technology used is called RBT (Ring Back Tone).  This is the song we hear when calling a friend. Turkcell uses a company called TonlaKazan (meaning Tone&Win) to achieve this.

Guy Ami-Ad,from Mobi, gave a rememberable lecture with allot of examples of innovated advertisements. a basic idea is that with a mobile, you can get to the user any time and any place, in the bed before he sleeps, or even in the bathroom…. he talked about having loyal users, and doing it by billing them only "after a few clicks".. and how important is it to make the users involved in the brands advertisements.  there were many more interesting lectures and talks.

I think there are many advantages for mobile advertising. from the advertiser side, the user is available at any time and any place, tracking and monitoring the result are very easy and there is no better way of knowing your target client by his  profile and interests whereas just having an advertisement on TV.

From the developer and business side, I think there is a barrier of where the technology in the mobile industry can develop and this is just because every thing in mobile cost money. Having advertisement to cover various charges on the mobile will increase demand in mobile technology.

Disadvantages? none, or am I  grafted? the only issue I see is spamming users with advertisements, but in the case of mobile advertisement the user needs to consent getting advertisement or coupons…

Our next event is taking place on the first Monday of July - July 7th. there are 2 exciting things about this event - well actually 3: the first is that its in Tel Aviv (yes! we are called MoMo TLV but the first event was in Herzeliya) the second is that the theme is VoIP, which is a theme close to me - after all I work at JAJAH, and the third- well that’s a secret - you will have to come and see, its a very nice surprise…

Joining us for this event are Fring and JAJAH that represent Mobile VoIP companies, Orange that represents the Mobile Operators and Blue run the represent the Venture capital side. It should be interesting…

In addition to the above goodies, Yossi Cohen from DSP-IP will give an intro lecture about trends in Mobile VoIP and Modules. We will be serving drinks snacks, appetizers and more drinks to make things happy and fun.

I will be moderating the panel - very exciting!

Wish me luck!

More info about the event can be found on the Facebook event (we love the Facebook event application!)  the event is free, and there is free parking but you need to register on Facebook. if you do not have a Facebook account email me to jasmine_aha[at]hotmail[dot]com

See you there!!   .

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 or tell us on our .

Hope you had fun like I did!

See you in the next MobileMonday Tel Aviv Event!

This was my first time at the Mobile World Congress (also known as 3GSM), which was held in Barcelona. I arrived straight to a mobile developer session called Mobile Jam Session. The event was hosted by Rudy de Waele of Dotopen/mTrends and Caroline Lewko of WIP, which did a wonderful job with her great humor, and was located on the 20th floor with a great view of Barcelona. The event was targeted to developers and discussed hot issues and problems. never the less it was very inspiring. I have met some great people in this event, the same people that I have spent most of my time with, and made the World Mobile Congress totally fun!

After the Jam session we went to the Swedish beer Mobile Networking Event, Organized by the lovely Helen Keegen, probably  now called the Beer fairy, which indeed she was…The party was packed with happy people, mostly men… (is it a mans world out there???) one of the highlights of the party (for me), was meeting James Body from Truphone…

In order  for us to be well prepared for the Swedish hardcore event, we first had to have a proper tapas dinner

I woke up early in the morning ready for my next day (yes morning, not afternoon!).my day included walking around, seeing interesting technologies and devices (more about this in my next post) and attended the meeting, organized by Helen Keegen (yes, she’s done it again) and Gillian Kennedy. This time, Helen was more of a Cava fairy. It was a ladies event, which I’m sure all of you men would have loved to attend. well, there was one brave man that wasn’t threatened by smart and beautiful women The event included a variety of women in the mobile industry, starting from marketing and development to a business owner of a company for mobile porn content.

It was very surprising, but I, an energetic and a person that can always keep on talking could not talk or walk anymore. I had to have a quiet evening with chicken soup, and relax for my last day of the conference…