Dear colleagues and friends,

We are proud to launch the Riyadh Chapter of the global mobile industry networking organization Mobile Monday on September 3rd, Monday at the Hilton Garden Inn at 8:30 PM. Hope you can join us!

Our goal is to provide a casual environment every month to mobile industry enthusiasts where ideas are exchanged, innovation is generated, and businesses are built. Mobile Monday has been achieving these goals around the world for more than a decade across in 150 cities with its 250 thousand members by arranging monthly events.

Our launch event is themed “Future of the Apps Ecosystem” with speaker Sebastien Marteau, VP of Mobile, Intigral and Mobile Monday global VP Martti Ranin. This first event is sponsored by STC and open to all. Attendance is free of charge and dinner will be served. Our events are informal so dress as you wish. If you plan to attend, please visit the event site and register.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or ask a question on the event page to my co-founders. We look forward to building up our community with you by meeting monthly in an informal setting to discuss our industry.

All the best,

Alper
Co-Founder, Mobile Monday Riyadh

To spur local app developer communities to connect and grow, infoDev – with funding from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland – seeded eight Mobile Social Networking Hubs (mHubs) in developing countries, starting in early 2011. Today, the enthusiasm around one event attests to their success.

MobileMonday, or MoMo, has grown from a monthly gathering of innovators in Helsinki in 2000, into a vibrant network of tech thought-leaders with chapters in over 100 locations around the globe, including several young hotbeds of mobile innovation.

Beyond supplying the mHubs with funding and advice, infoDev helped position them as MobileMonday hosts. In the last few months, their local chapters have drawn hundreds of participants, including leading regional entrepreneurs, policymakers, and investors, for evenings of intense debate and discussion on state-of-the-art mobile technologies.

Last month’s MobileMonday Hanoi, which focused on the next media, drew 154 attendees with a high-level panel that included Mr. Huynh Kim Tuoc (Facebook’s Chief Representative in Vietnam), Mr. Le Quang Anh (CEO of e-learning site AiTi Aptech), and Mr. Nguyen Hoang Tu (Deputy Diretor of the International Cooperation Center).

To see the faces of the July 26 MobileMonday event in Hanoi, click here.

In July’s MobileMonday Kampala, which tackled mobile health (mHealth) applications, technology entrepreneurs and enthusiasts found a platform on which to discuss ways to unlock the true potential of tools such as mTrac, which the Ugandan Ministry of Health has used to digitize the country’s health management systems, expanding the reach and efficiency of local doctors.

In their own mHealth-oriented event in April, the folks at MobileMonday Dar-Es-Salaam hosted an overview of mHealth trends in Tanzania from Mr. Marcos Mzeru, from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, as well as cutting-edge talks on reducing maternal mortality through mHealth and the finer business points of mHealth apps.

Click here to view the slideshows and talks from the MobileMonday Dar-Es-Salaam April meeting.

The eight mHubs are located in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Vietnam, and Nepal. mHub Nepal will be one of five sites to host the m2Work Hackathon next month.

We recently started co-op with organizers of an awesome upcoming event in Berlin, running 21-26 August, at the former Tempelhof airport. Campus Party is a global technology event, expecting 10,000 participants, with a strong focus on cutting-edge technologies and full-on networking. We are thrilled to invite and welcome Mobile Monday members from all regional chapters for a massive EU Mobile Monday on the evening of Weds. August 22nd. Check the agenda details here, meanwhile, best get a travel plan asap!

Campus Party is a week-long, 24-hours-a-day technology festival for thousands of “campuseros” – hackers, developers, gamers and geeks. Equipped with computers and other toys, they camp on-site and immerse themselves in a truly unique environment. Since 1997, Campus Party has brought together the best young technical talent across Europe and Latin America to innovate, learn and engage with some of the biggest names in technology and science. Join us August 21 to August 26 at Berlin’s historic Tempelhof Airport to re-type Europe’s source code and immerse yourself in a unique environment where workshops, hackathons, competitions and talks take place simultaneously.

Southeast Asia has been a trade hub for thousands of years, and is a digital crossroads for Internet and mobile innovation now as well, according to our new research released today. The full report was presented to the media at the Mobile Monday Developer Lounge during the annual Communicasia conference and tradeshow. Titled “Crossroads of Innovation,” the 52 page document [PDF] showcases a wealth of detailed features including profiles of mobile markets and startups from across the region.

Overview:

The focus of this report is on overall innovation ecosystems, which include a range of stakeholders: industry, entrepreneurs, government, academia and civil society. The report also addresses the crucial role of innovator networks and incubators, who truly make SE Asia a regional and global crossroads of innovation. These roles are played by global+local networks of mobile startups and professionals, such as MobileMonday.

MobileMonday has been active in Southeast Asia since 2006, with chapters in the capital cities of the six key mobile markets: Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Singapore, Bangkok and Hanoi. “In sum, across the length and breadth of the mobile ecosystem, innovation will be needed in incremental as well as disruptive modes. Sustainability of the innovation ecosystem requires the right blend of bottom up entrepreneurial energy and top-down facilitation of investment policies and infrastructure,” according to Dr. Madanmohan Rao, research projects director for MobileMonday, and editor of the report.

The material in this Mobile Southeast Asia Report is drawn from interviews with over two dozen digital media experts and organisers of the MobileMonday chapters, plus extensive research from books, journals, news, and market reports. This research joins our collection of regional reports, such as the popular Africa series, and we plan to continue these efforts focused on other areas in the future.

Jari Tammisto speaks at the Mobile Summit

Here’s a tip for any Israeli mobile entrepreneur seeking fame and fortune: Look east, not west; look south, not north. And learn some languages other than English.

That tip comes courtesy of Jari Tammisto, perhaps the world’s most knowledgeable expert on the mobile business. With two decades of experience, Tammisto played a key part in turning his native Finland into a major center of mobile phone development. In 2004 he became CEO of MobileMonday, which builds global communities to enhance the sharing of knowledge, contacts, and leadership in the mobile developer community worldwide.

Tammisto was in Israel this week for the Israel Mobile Summit 2012, which featured speakers from some of the world’s biggest mobile and communication companies, Israeli experts, and app developers. The Summit was sponsored by MobileMonday, and featured speakers from companies like Nokia, Paypal, Amdocs. AT&T, and others – along with a start-up competition that pitted eight of Israel’s most promising mobile apps against each other. It’s not just any contest; previous winners at Mobile Summit events have gone on to great things. For example, iOnRoad, last year’s winner, won a top design and engineering award at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

As director of an organization with chapters in more than 140 countries (the Israeli chapter of MoMo was established four years ago), Tammisto has seen it all, and on his first visit to Israel this week, he said he was very impressed by the passion and energy of Israeli entrepreneurs — but that he was most impressed by the willingness of Israeli entrepreneurs to take risks.

“They know about the risks of moving ahead with ideas and the potential for failure, and still they forge ahead,” Tammisto told The Times of Israel. “This willingness to take such risks is unique to Israel.”

With entrepreneurs here willing to take on new challenges and boldly go where few other mobile companies have ever gone before, Tammisto believes that Israeli start-ups would do well partnering with service providers, manufacturers, and app distributors in Asia, South America, and even Africa. See full article via The Times of Israel

The Israel Mobile Summit is MobileMonday Tel Aviv’s annual conference, and simply put, it is the greatest mobile show in town! This event that is a true celebration of the Israeli mobile industry, it features keynotes from top speakers, panels about the hot mobile topics, an innovation showcase and contest of the hottest Israeli mobile startups and plenty of networking opportunities, see Mobility Week Overview.

The Startup Competition will feature 8 finalist companies who get to exhibit their innovative apps and present on stage in front of an expert jury! The event will be held on June 12, 2012 at YesPlanet cinema complex, so we have there a huge screen and dreamy A/V equipment, not to mention the cozy cinema chairs! We’ll have a lot of international speakers and guests, see our Full Agenda, so the summit will be held entirely in English. Entrepreneurs, Executives, Content folks, VCs – every one will find interesting content and peers to network with in this summit.

Check out Israel Mobile Summit 2011 to see all the action last year and note festivities get underway on June 11th with MoMo Tel Aviv celebrating their 4th anniversary, we look forward to see you there!

Updated – June 20th

A Fantastic week in Singapore – we released our Free Debut Southeast Asia Research Report.

We met MoMoista’s from across the region, a few quick pix from our mega-mixer at Molly Malones and the swanky Developers Lounge at MBS – Many Thanks to Nokia and Singapore Exhibition Services..!!

Mobile Monday at CommunicAsia 2012 in Singapore

Mobile Monday is thrilled to confirm our participation again this year at the annual CommunicAsia event, June 19-22, in Singapore. With local and global delegates, including many of our MoMo members and chapter founders from across the APAC region, it’s shaping up to be another fantastic gathering of key mobile industry players. This is where deals get done, if you’re in the game you gotta be there!

We’ve secured dedicated Developer Lounge space within the swanky Marina Bay Sands show venue with open drop-in schedule of MoMoistas from around the world expected to be on-hand for meets. Featuring the release our SE-Asia Research Report, and chapter reps from some 20 countries, this is your friendly grand-central location during the show — with daily mixers getting underway at 15:00!

As usual, we kick-off with our legendary Mobile Monday party at Molly Malones Irish Pub on Boat Quay the evening of June 18th – Register Via FaceBook Here – look forward to see you all again real soon!

SnipSnap founder Ted Mann (left) is named the winner of Mobile Monday’s demo event. Here he poses with Early Stage East founder David Freschman.

SnipSnap emerged victorious from Mobile Monday’s 5th Annual Demo Night at the Cira Center last night. Part of Philly Tech Week for the first time, Mobile Monday is one of the largest networking groups in the city, and drew over 100 people to University City to see demos by SnipSnap, Cloudmine, Interact, OneTwoSee and Communilator.

SnipSnap secured the final Switch Philly presentation slot as well as a free entry to Early Stage East with its demo by founder Ted Mann that demonstrated the product’s coupon clipping and saving technology. Via Technically Philly.