Happy 10th Birthday to Us!

In case you didn’t know, I organise the Swedish Beers parties and there was a bash last week. And what a lovely time we all had celebrating Swedish Beers 10th anniversary – yes, that’s right, 10 whole years of mobile networking events in London, Barcelona and, until Jenny moved back to London, Sydney. We celebrated in style with a little help from our lovely friends and supporters at Somo and Inspiring Interns, who generously bought all the beers, my friends and cohorts, Jenny, Gabriel, James (who took all the photos) and Catherine, the Nordic Bar for looking after us, and of course to everyone who came.

As ever, there was an eclectic mix of people covering everything from Art to Science with some marketing, brands, media and entrepreneurship in between. For me, it was particularly fun to hear stories about Swedish Beers past where friendships, business partnerships, sales, and investments have been made. It warms the cockles of my heart to hear these and to know that networking at Swedish Beers works! And it wasn’t just the old-timers who turned up in force, there were lots of lovely new faces too to welcome to the Swedish Beers family proving that we’re in a vibrant, growing sector.

Well, not much more for me to say, except thank you to everyone and hope to see a lot of you in Barcelona on Wednesday 29 February for our annual Barcelona bash (get in touch if you’d like to be a co-sponsor – two spots left at the time of writing). In the meantime, enjoy the photos from the party last week.

Created with flickr slideshow.

Skål

Helen, Jenny, Gabriel, James and Catherine

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

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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CHECK US OUT ON FACEBOOK TOO
Join the group - you'll be in good company and can keep up to date with Swedish Beers events in London, Sydney and Barcelona.
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Mobile Monday & Swedish Beers celebrate together on 10th November

Yes, it's true. Both Swedish Beers and Mobile Monday London have their birthdays round about now - 7 years and 3 years respectively. And to celebrate, we're joining forces and having a big bash combining the best of both events in one big night out on Monday 10th November.

So the format's going to be a little bit different, but we hope you will still enjoy it immensely. So what's in store then...?

The Mobile Monday bit:

Well we have Tim Green, editor of Mobile Entertainment Magazine who is going to be our host with the most on the evening. And he's going to be interviewing four mobile industry celebrities for our delectation, talking about the year just gone and the year ahead and the odd anecdote or three in a chat show stylee. Our esteemed guests are Dr Mike Short from O2, Russell Buckley from Admob, Bill Thompson, a regular from the BBC's Digital Planet plus a mystery guest. There will be time for questions from the audience too.

We will have the MIReview Show joining us too and in the spirit of the evening, they will be presenting and filming some of their show LIVE on stage. (If you don't know them already, think Top Gear but about mobile technology instead of cars.). And we're still hopeful for a surprise or two.

This will all be happening at the CBI at Centrepoint (Tottenham Court Road tube) - Doors opening at 6pm for a 6.30pm start. Don't be late, otherwise you'll miss the Mobile Monday Chat Show as it will only be on for about an hour to an hour and half.

The Swedish Beers bit

Then once the show's a wrap as they say in TV land, we'll move on straight away to Bar 101 (it's underneath Centrepoint at the back) to join the Swedish Beers crew and enjoy some free beer, random chat and general good cheer courtesy of our very generous sponsors - The Future of Mobile and MX Telecom.



There's no formality at Swedish Beers, just turn up, be friendly, drink beer (or soft drinks), chew the fat, talk about mobile stuff (or not) and generally enjoy the vibe. To claim your free drink, you'll need to find one of the generous sponsors, one of the Swedish Beers crew or one of the Mobile Monday organisers to claim your beer token. Without the token, it's a pay bar. But it's open until late, so we can talk mobile nonsense until the wee hours if you like.

RSVP

If you'd like to come to the Mobile Monday Chat Show, please RSVP here by 'adding record' with your name and company details. No RSVP required for Swedish Beers. You don't have to come to both parts of the evening, but it would be fun if you did. The more the merrier as they say and both venues can hold a lot of us mobile types. So spread the word!

See you Monday 10th November in celebratory mode.
Skal

Are you starting out in mobile? Here are some useful resources for you.

Don't know where to start when it comes to getting yourself up to speed with what's going on in our industry?

I get asked this *a lot* so I thought I'd write a blog post about recommended useful resources and also get your contributions in as well to help newbies to our industry become fully-fledged mobilists.

Blogs

Well, if you're here, you've made a good start already by checking out some mobile blogs. This, of course, isn't the only one and there's a rather good list over at WIPwiki. If you only read two blogs, then make it http://www.mobhappy.com/ and http://www.smstextnews.com/

Free Reports

If you're specific interest is Mobile Marketing and Advertising, then the free Tanla Guide to Mobile Marketing and Advertising is worth downloading [disclaimer: I wrote most of it with a little help from my friends]. It's a comprehensive, hands-on look at the world of mobile marketing and includes essays from leading industry experts on different aspects of the mobile marketing and advertising sector.

If you're after a more generic take on the mobile industry, then The Netsize Guide is well worth a look too and includes market information for many countries around the globe. It's also a free download or paid-for print version.

If you're interested in the mobile consumer, then the Carphone Warehouse takes an annual look at this under the Mobile Life moniker. It contains data from both the UK and the US.

For a UK-centric view of the communications world, then OFCOM's annual review is a must-read. The report from August 2007 is available and so it will only be a couple of months before we have this year's edition.

Networking and events

The Mobile Mondays community is very active in many cities around the world. I help to run the London chapter and we have a membership of several thousand, an active discussion list and run events on the first or second Monday of the month for 10 months of the year. It's free to join the yahoo group (where you can participate in discussions and find out about upcoming events) and the facebook group for Mobile Monday London. Each city chapter runs in slightly different ways so I recommend you look for your nearest one and get involved. If nothing else, you should learn something and meet at least a handful of interesting people!

Swedish Beers is a long-standing, ad-hoc networking event I run with some pals in London, Barcelona and now Sydney for folks who have a passing interest in things mobile so we cover all areas of media, marketing, mobile network operators, content creators and more besides. London events happen 2 or 3 times a year (I'm currently looking for a sponsor for our next event if you or someone you know is interested). The Barcelona event happens every February to coincide with Mobile World Congress (again, I'm looking for sponsors for this to see if we can make it even better than this year's). There are no presentations, no sales pitches, just drinks, good company, a friendly atmosphere and lots of chat. Events are announced via the Swedish Beers blog and the facebook group.

For the women amongst you, there's the Women in Mobile Data Association and we have events coming up in September and December in London and February 2009 in Barcelona. Updates appear on the facebook group and our email list (contact me to join the email list - it's free).

And for the London mobile geeks amongst you, then there's Mobile Geeks of London which is happening next Thursday evening, headed up by the lovely James Whatley from Spinvox.

And if that's not enough, the wonderful Ewan at SMSTextNews also runs events from time to time all over the world. Keep an eye on his blog to find out when they're on.

So that's my initial suggestions for useful mobile resources. Please feel free to add any of your own as I realise this is a rather limited and networking-wise UK-centric list.

Swedish Beers in Spain in a Belgian Bar on Tuesday 12th February

Just in case you haven't heard, Swedish Beers is coming to Barcelona for MWC. Yes, it's that time of year again and everyone who is lucky enough to be heading to the sunshine and frolics in Barcelona is organising their MWC social life. The Swedish Beers crew *will* be in town as many of you already know and we'll be living it up at Belchica courtesy of our very generous sponsors Trutap - David and Carl, PINoptic - Colin and Jenny, MyMart - Adam and Ben, and Admob - Russell and Andy. So the first few beers will be on them. The proceedings kick off at 7pm and will go on until late (the bar's open very late so we won't get kicked out) so feel free to drop by and say hello, or should I say hola, during the evening.

Like last year's Swedish Beers in Spain in a Belgian Bar, on the night the very generous sponsors (this year's are David, Carl, Colin, Jenny, Russell, Andy, Adam and Ben) and the Swedish Beers crew (that's me, Steve, Anton and Gillian) will be the ones armed with the beer tokens. So come and search us out to claim your free beers.

It'll be the usual eclectic mix of media, marketing and mobile types but since we're in Barcelona for the night, it's a chance for our friends from outside the UK to join the fun too. There's sure to be lots of familiar faces as many of the London regulars will be there, but we're looking forward to welcoming new folks too. So if you fancy a drink and a chat and a mingle with the nice Swedish Beers folks, then come along and join in. You don't have to talk about mobile and you don't even have to drink beer if you don't want to, but it would be nice if you were friendly and enjoyed hanging out with other friendly folk who happen to have a passing interest in things mobile. There's no RSVP required unless you'd like to. If we're full when you arrive, don't panic, just come back a bit later. Folks will be coming and going all evening I expect.

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THE LOWDOWN:

Where: Belchica, Villarroel 60, 08011 Barcelona. Entrance on Gran Via de Deputacion. Metro L1 Urguell (so very near Congress).

When: Tuesday 12th February 2008 19:00h onwards

What: Swedish Beers Mobile Networking Drinks

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ABOUT OUR LOVELY SPONSORS without whom the night wouldn't be possible

*Trutap* is an easy-to-use free mobile service that for the first time, globally, combines all the elements of a young person's social life into one application. With trutap users can easily connect and converse with friends and family, wherever they are, whenever they want. trutap currently operates in over 200 countries across the world and will operate in more shortly. Carl and David will be with us and if you want to know what they look like, their pictures can be found here! I'm quite sure David and Carl will keep you amused as well being Swedish Beers old-timers.

*PINoptic* applies its Visual Probabilistic One Time Password (VPOTP) next-generation software to high security authentication applications. This delivers an easy to implement yet innovative, universal security solution with the strength required by even financial institutions. PINoptic maintains user simplicity through the use of pictures and symbols which appeals to a global market with differing literacy levels. Applications range from financial through to internet, mobile telecoms, corporate IT and access control. PINoptic's vision is to become a defacto security standard and replace 99% of existing pin and password systems by 2012. Jenny and Colin will be on hand to explain all and it's pretty cool. Oh, and they'll have tokens for free beer.

*MyMart* is leading the way in mobile retail by providing mobile shop technology and services for operators, agencies and retailers. Adam and Ben are looking forward to building strategic relationships at the mobile world congress. They're also interested to chat about wheree mobile retail may be heading. Adam and Ben will have beer tokens in hand and are generally fun to hang out with too. And no, they won't try and sell you anything on the spot via one of their mobile shops... Well, I don't think they will anyway ;)

*Admob* Founded in 2006 (on my birthday as it happens! Ed), AdMob is the world's largest and highest quality mobile advertising marketplace, serving more than 2 billion mobile banner and text ads per month. Founded in January 2006, 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.

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CHECK US OUT ON FACEBOOK TOO
Join the group - you'll be in good company and get more details about this event
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Skål

The Swedish Beers crew: Helen, Steve, Anton and Gillian