Swedish Beers–Barcelona Edition 2011

I can hardly believe it. It’s that time of year again and it’s all systems go for Mobile World Congress. And as part of that, your favourite networking party of the week is back to bring you more beer and more chat. We’re in danger of this year being better than ever thanks to our generous sponsors. I know for a fact there’ll be even more beer for starters. So let me introduce our generous sponsors to you…

Mesaplexx – the spectrum optimisation specialists. You’ll meet the team, including Peter Young and CEO, Mark Bole, who is an old friend of Swedish Beers from his Shozu days, so we’re very pleased to welcome Mesaplexx as sponsors this year. They are doing some very cool things to help MNOs get more out of their network. This is a good thing in my book. You can’t have too many shoes, handbags or bandwidth! When they’re not at Swedish Beers, you’ll find them at Congress in meeting room 4.OEMR07 – ground floor, opposite the VIP area. Contact Peter Young if you’d like a meeting.

Next up is AQL. Headed up by Adam Beaumont, the team will be on fine form and ready to chat to you about all things voice and messaging. Cos, that’s what they do. AQL are specialists in integrating mobile messaging and voice communications into client business processes – in fact they’ve won awards for doing precisely this. So whether you’re a carrier or SME, if you’re interested in messaging, then these are the guys to speak to. Messaging makes the world go round, right?

mxData are our third sponsor. And they’re doing very interesting things with rich and dynamic local content on mobile. Whether it’s adverts with a local angle, localised search, or a travel app – if it has a location data element to it, then this team may just have the right answer for you. I’ve been using one of their travel apps, and it’s really rather impressive. They’re also exhibiting at congress up in App Planet at Stand 7E44 so do go and say hello. And of course you know they’re going to have a stack of beer tokens to give away too.

Adfonic is our fourth sponsor. Europe’s only global advertising marketplace, they enable advertisers to bid for display advertising space on mobile sites and applications to extend their reach and optimise results and publishers to maximise the earning potential of their mobile traffic. Monetising mobile traffic is always a good thing in my book. And this team work with some long-standing Swedish Beers friends too. So if you want to talk advertising and making money, I reckon it’s worth searching the Adfonic team out.

And last, but by no means least we have Amobee. Ben and Harry have been Swedish Beers regulars for many years from their RingRing Media days and before, so it’s great to welcome them as sponsors this year. There’s not much that these guys don’t know when it comes to mobile advertising. Whether it’s planning and buying you need or a platform to manage your advertising, they’ll have something for you. When they say that Amobee powers mobile advertising, they’re not being facetious!

I really can’t thank our sponsors enough for their support, both moral and financial, for Swedish Beers. We couldn’t do this without them so please do make sure you say hello to them at the party. They’ve been really wonderful. So now you’ve met the sponsors, here’s the lowdown for the party…

Our venue for the evening is Dostrece which is a two floor bar and restaurant – a ground floor and a chillout basement.

The venue holds about 300 or so folks at any one time so there’s plenty space for everyone. There will be bars upstairs and downstairs so please make full use of both floors so that more people can enjoy the fun.

Doors will be opening at 7pm on Wednesday 16th 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 so you’ll have to look for the Swedish Beers crew and the lovely folks from Adfonic, Mesaplexx, Amobee, AQL and mxData. If facebook is your thing, then you’ll find us on facebook with a group and an event posting. And we’re on twitter too so do follow us there. The more the merrier I say.

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 see friends old and new, talk nonsense, enjoy a drink or five and have yourself a good time. Oh, and leave the ties, the corporate personas and the sales spiel at the door please. The Swedish Beers crew will be on hand – Cait, Anna, myself, Nik, Shafiq - and the friendliest bar staff in town at Dos Trece are all waiting to welcome you.

It is likely to get a bit busy at times. But don't worry, people will be coming in and out all evening. That’s kind of the point as we know there’s always a lot going on and you might want to check out more than one party. 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 frantic.

We don't have a cloakroom so we don't recommend you bring your laptops with you - it's a liability in Barcelona I'm afraid – especially at this time of year. You won't need them anyway what with this new fangled thing called the mobile phone ;)

So just to recap:

What: Swedish Beers Mobile Networking
When: Wednesday 16th February 2011 - 7pm until we run out of steam
Where: Dostrece, Calle Carme 40, 08001 Barcelona

Dostrece is 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 want to demo your latest phone app.)

See you on Wednesday 16th!

Skål

Helen and the SB crew

MoMoLo Goes to Barcelona–and we’re talking about mobile advertising

Yes, that’s right, Mobile Monday London is in Barcelona next week for Mobile World Congress and we have a great panel session lined up for you at 4pm on Tuesday 15th February in the UKTI’s seminar room which is Sala Principe in Hall 8 at La Fira itself. You must have an exhibition ticket in order to be able to attend this event.

You've heard about speed dating, maybe even speed networking, but have you heard of speed panels? Well that's what Mobile Monday London and UKTI and BSkyB have in store for you. You'll be hearing from a variety of practitioners and pundits talking about all things mobile marketing and advertising and the session will be ably chaired by the Godfather of Mobile Marketing, Russell Buckley, Admob Evangelist at Google and Global Chairman Emeritus of the Mobile Marketing Association. He also blogs at Mobhappy.com. The session will be hosted by me. (It should be noted that both Russell and I started our mobile careers at the turn of the 21st Century at mobile marketing pioneer, ZagMe.)

You'll also hear from:

Pamir Gelenbe, formerly founder and VP Sales/Strategy at Flytxt and now Venture Partner at BBV

Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic

Harry Dewhirst, VP at Amobee

Sylvie Barak, Editor of RCR Unplugged, RCR Silicon Valley and a contributing editor on RCR Wireless

George Nimeh, aka iboy, formerly MD at Iris Digital and now consulting on all things digital

Nick Hynes, former CEO of The Search Works, now co-founder at mobile media agency, Somo

Steve Jarrett, Founder and CEO of MePlease, a social and mobile marketing service for retailers.
John Roberts, co-founder, permission-based mobile marketing company, Qustodian

Kerstin Trikalitis, CEO and founder, mobile advertising firm Out There Media

Daniella Alpher, Head of Advertising, fring

Lisa Ciangiulli, Director of Marketing, Global Advertising Solutions, Alcatel Lucent

Rogier van den Heuvel, VP Global Sales for web and mobile messaging company, eBuddy

The registration desk will be open at 15:45 at Sala Principe in Hall 8. The panel session will last about an hour or so with another hour for networking and mingling. We're still on the lookout for a sponsor for the drinks so please get in touch if that sounds like you.

If you're like to attend, please RSVP at http://momolo.org/. Registration for this event will close on Friday 11 February at midday, or when we’re full – whichever comes first.

Agenda:

Doors open: 15:45

Panel session starts: 16:00

Panel session ends and networking begins: 17:00

Doors close: 18:00

Sponsors:

BSkyB is kindly sponsoring the drinks for this session and will be sponsoring our upcoming session in March where we'll be talking about tablets. Watch this space as we hear they have big plans...

The venue for the session has been kindly provided by our friends at the UKTI. If you're interested in finding out more about the UK technology companies who are exhibiting or are present at this year's Mobile World Congress, please go to the dedicated website at UK Technology Live. We also recommend you sign up there so that you can network with other attendees and find out about the other events that are happening (all free to attend)

Please note that all registration information given to attend this panel session will be shared with the UKTI. It may also be necessary to register at the UK Technology Live site as well - we'll let you know if that's the case.

Ladies-only informal lunch at Mobile World Congress–Tuesday 15 February

Yes, it's that time of year again when we all descend on Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. And this lunch is a chance for us ladies to get together for an hour or so over a relaxed lunch and chew the fat with our peers away from the main drag. Priority will be given to ladies to attend. If there's room, then we'll be able to have some gentlemen join us too. However we are limited in space.

We have the upstairs of a local tapas restaurant all to ourselves. It's the same one as last year - Restaurant Aranega. And it's about 5 minutes walk from the entrance of La Fira on Avenida Paral-lel. http://www.aranega.es/ They looked after us well last year so I’m sure they’ll look after us well this year too.

If you're interested in joining us, please let me know by RSVP'ing on Facebook (or you can search on facebook for ‘MWC11: Ladies-only lunch’. I’ll be taking payment in advance and it will be 20 Euro per head (or thereabouts). That's because we need to pay for the food in advance as the restaurant will be busy so we’re pre-ordering. I'll be able to take payment by PayPal. The lunch will be a range of tapas to share with soft drinks provided. Wine and additional dishes can be ordered on the day and paid for separately.

Of course, if we get a sponsor, then we won't need to worry about payment... so if anyone is up for that, or knows someone who is, please get in touch with me by email.

The Lowdown:

Date: Tuesday 15th February at 12.30 until 14.00

Venue: We have the upstairs room booked at the lovely Aranega - just like last year - http://www.aranega.es which is on Avenida Paral-lel 188. Come out of La Fira, walk down Avenida Paral-lel, and it's on the * left* hand side at number 188 -just over the road from Congress and less than 10 minutes walk.

Agenda and timings: 12.30 Doors will open at for drinks and mingling.  We’ll be closing around 14:00 and going back to Congress.

Cost: 20 Euros – or thereabouts

Do tell your friends and look forward to seeing old friends and new.

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