What's the buzz at MWC? A Women in Mobile Data Association event in Barcelona

It's the annual Mobile World Congress a chance for us ladies to get together for an informal meet-up to discuss the buzz at this year's MWC in Barcelona. There'll be wine, women & informal chat. This will be a welcome chance to sit down & escape the bustle of the exhibition & relax for an hour or two, networking with women within this luxurious hotel bar.We have a great sponsor this year, Airwide Solutions who will be providingthe first few drinks. The lovely Brenda Suarez from Airwide Solutions marketing team, will be joining the session so this is a great opportunity to get to know more about them..

What: Women in Mobile Data Association meet-up

Where: Café Viennese bar at the Casa Fuster hotel. Passeig de Gracia 132. Barcelona. +34 932 553 000. The nearest Metro station is Diagonal and it’s just a few stops from Congress or a short taxi ride. Casa Fuster is gorgeous posh hotel. The Cafe bar is on the left as you go in.

When: Wednesday 13th February 2007, 3.30pm to 5.30pmIf you would like to come, please RSVP to Gillian Kennedy putting WiMD in the subject field of your email. This is so we can get a rough idea of how much space we might need to reserve in the bar.

Please feel free to forward this invitation on to your female colleagues and friends who work in mobile data, content and associated sectors – we’d love to meet them too. Men are welcome on the arm of a lady; we like to keep the numbers balanced.

About our sponsor: Airwide Solutions
Airwide Solutions is the global-market-leading provider of next-generation mobile messaging and wireless internet infrastructure, applications and solutions, Airwide Solutions has one focus: To enable your revenue to keep pace with the burgeoning consumer-driven mobile messaging and wireless internet market. Find out more at their website and listen to some podcasts about different aspects of the industry including mobile marketing and mobile messaging.

More about the Women in Mobile Data Association:
Web: http://www.womeninmobiledata.com
Join us on facebook -The WiMD group is live and kicking and find out more about this WiMD event.

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

that was the week that was

Well I arrived safely back from New York last weekend having met up with the wonderful Sophie Stuart from Hearst Magazines (who, incidentally, is doing a terrific job of their mobile strategy and implementation) and done a shedload of Christmas shopping.

Happy Birthday SMS
I'm just about getting back into GMT and the swing of all things British again, kicking off with a very busy day on Tuesday. It was the 15th birthday of SMS and I was invited to Airwide's sumptuous birthday bash at the ICA with birthday cake 'n all. I was ably accompanied by good pal Gillian and we had a good natter with the mobile great and the good...Paul Skeldon, Jonathan and Robert from Incentivated, Jay and team from Airwide, Mike Grenville from 160 Characters, Mike Short from O2 and the MDA (Mobile Data Association), Bea from Spinvox, Anuj Khanna from Tanla Mobile and a fair few others. The event was captured by Lloyd Davis who was doing his social media thang and any links will be added shortly as and when I get them. The highlight of the event was learning about the very first SMS - the story is retold here.


Juno Screening
Straight after the birthday party, it was a mad dash for Lloyd, Gillian and I to get to Soho Square for a preview screening of Juno, the new film by Jason Reitman (Thank you for smoking) and co-produced by John Malkovich, which I have to say was rather good and will be well worth seeing when it hits our screens in early February.

Other news this week

* Trutap hits the headlines at Sky News with a nice bit of coverage in words and video.

A new social networking service, trutap, has been launched. In this exclusive video, Carl Uminski of trutap explains why the service is so new, while top band The Enemy, who have already been using it, give us the lowdown on why they like it.

* Good pal and fellow mobilist, Russell Buckley, MD, Europe, Admob and blogger at Mobhappy, has been unanimously appointed Vice Chairman of the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) for EMEA. Congratulations Russell.

Buckley will be taking an active role in fulfilling the MMA EMEA’s charter to build a sustainable ecosystem for the mobile marketing industry in the EMEA region, while protecting the consumer experience.

* A podcast I did about mobile marketing a few weeks ago for Airwide is now up and available from the Mobile Messaging 2 blog. It has been edited down so you won't be subjected to the hour and a half's conversation on the topic!

* Busting for a pee in Central London? Then the SatLav service is for you!

In a bold move to stop anybody ever being caught short again, Wesminster council, with Incentivated's help, is harnessing the power of mobile phone technology similar to GPS systems to locate the nearest toilets to wherever they text from. If nature calls just text “toilet” to 80097 and you will be texted back the details of your nearest loo within a matter of seconds.

Student Gail Knight came up with the idea for an innovation competition run by Westminster City Council while she was writing her Masters dissertation called 'Public Toilets: a Woman’s Place'. Gail, 26, who lives in Clapham Junction, said, "In London people spend so much time away from their home working, commuting or shopping. When I am out with friends we are always ducking in McDonalds or department stores to use their loos but we feel a bit bad about it. I started remembering where Westminster’s services were and always found them perfectly adequate but lots of people were wary of them or didn’t know about them. I thought a text service would be really useful for people on the move."

I'm in New York City

I arrived safely last night and now happily settled in at my pals' apartment in West Village. I'm here until Sunday, mostly for pleasure, but with a bit of business thrown in for good measure. However, if there are any local New York mobilists who fancy meeting up over a coffee or a cocktail sometime to chew the fat about mobile marketing and media, or whatever, then get in touch and let's see what we can organise.

I plan to go to the Likemind event on Thursday Friday morning from 8am at sNice (not least because it's just a few minutes walk from where I'm staying) so you could always come and say hello to me there too. And I've been tipped off by Sam at Chinwag that this place has the best doughnuts in the world so if anyone fancies treating me to a doughnut whilst I'm here...

Right, off to have breakfast in the City :)

Service is not yet back to normal

There's a lot going on right now in my life and finding time and mindspace to blog is low-ish on the list of priorities I'm afraid. Yes, I'm still here and I will get back to blogging more regularly at some point in the future but not right now. You might find the odd post here and there when the mood takes me but for now, I'm still on a break.

So to keep you going for now, here are some links:

Print Media needs a proper mobile strategy (or so say the panel, me included) at World Telemedia in Prague.

Moblogtech launches CityClickers, a standalone moblogging site.

Shop Scan Save launches mobile couponing to the masses in the UK. This is one that I'm watching. In a world that is going down the road of uber targeting (e.g. Blyk), SSS takes the opposite approach and does no targeting at all. Thoughts?

Women love their phones and can't live without them but only use them for talking and texting. Research at Blyk would concur that 16 to 24s use their phones for talking, texting and the alarm clock, in that order.

Mobile technology organisation kiwanja.net has launched nGOmobile, a free to enter competition to help grassroots NGOs take advantage of text messaging.

UK Media consumption report is worth a read and is reviewed over at NMK.

And finally, the lovely folks over at SMStextnews interviewed me and you can find it here.

ttfn

It's been a while

I've been gallavanting in Ireland at the rather marvellous Electric Picnic, and then had a bout of laryngitis and now I'm kinda back with a few links for you on a Monday. Of course, there's a ton of stuff I still need to catch up on but there's the day job to think about too. So you'll have to do with a few links until I magically find some time to blog more.

Stephanie from Atlantic Records dropped me a line to tell me about the mobile marketing she's doing for Yung Joc, a top-selling US hip-hop artist (no, I hadn't heard of him either, but then I guess I'm the wrong side of 22, much to my chagrin). Stephanie tells me, "to be a hustler, you gotta know how to trade like one. With the rise of the digital age, trading cards are shedding their physical skin and moving to the mobile world, Yung Joc style. Collect, trade, and redeem Yung Joc wallpaper for your cell phone and you could win a grand, or a call from Joc himself. Sign up for Yung Joc trading cards at cards.yungjoc.com or Text JOC to 87233 (TRADE). Get 3 cards straight to your cell for only a $1 a week. Collect all 42 and you just earned yourself street cred and an A in Hustlenomics. Competition is for US residents only.

And while we're talking about gaming and gambling, did you know there's new legislation covering this area in the UK. And as legislation is such a minefield, the nice folks at Million 2-1 (the lottery and games company), have created a lovely free guide to the new regulatory framework covered under the directives and legislation laid out in the new Gambling Act (effective September 1, 2007). Well worth a read if you're looking to do anything using premium rate SMS and telephony.

Got a Nokia N-Series phone? Like Audi? Then you might like this. Nokia users will be able to download one-minute clips from longer Audi Channel programmes such as Anatomy of Fear , which provides a scientific look at the emotion as we take celebrities Lady Isabella Hervey and Oliver Skeete to Dubai for a series of psychological tests to push their limits, and R10 v Harrier, which features the Le Mans winning Audi R10 going headto-head in a sprint race with an RAF harrier jet at RAF Wittering. The service is fully on-demand, so users can download the clips whenever they want using the N-series Plus service (which I've never heard of until now, and I've had a N-Series phone for over 18 months). The Audi Channel - a 24-hour non-subscription service on Sky Digital channel 884 and at www.audi.co.uk - will now also be available free to users of peer-to-peer network Joost, and Nokia N-series mobile phones.