Mobile Monday

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MobileMonday (MoMo) is an open networking organisation for mobile industry professionals fostering cooperation and cross-border business development through virtual and live networking events to share ideas, best practices and trends from global markets. Founded in autumn 2000 in Helsinki, Finland, MobileMonday now has 63 chapters worldwide^[1], which host meetings on a selected Monday evening each month.

1 The Early History
2 History of Internalization
3 See also
4 External links
5 References

[edit] The Early History

The seed of MobileMonday was sown during the Night of Arts of Helsinki in August 2000. That evening numerous members of the Finnish mobile scene gathered together in a party hosted by a fresh local mobile start-up Add2Phone. After that evening Vesa-Matti 'Vesku' Paananen^[2] started to plan and organize the first MobileMonday gathering and sent an invitation email to more than hundred of his contacts. The "MobileMonday" name was an original idea of Peter Veterbacka, a Finnish mobile enthusiastic. Finally the first gathering was held in Molly Malone’s an Irish pub on the first Monday of September in 2000. The number of participants in the first gathering was 57. About ten of them formed a MobileMonday board.

The original concept by Vesku Paananen was very simple to meet and discuss about mobility from different perspectives in an open, neutral and relaxed environment. A gathering contained three presentations in English. Typically one presentation was about business and non-technical, one more technical and one start-up company presentation. All presentations were 15 minutes long and after that was time for discussion. Vesku Paananen was the master of the one and half hour ceremony, but presentations of the evening were decided in the Mobile Monday board to make the venue as open as possible. Quickly the gatherings started to have a general topic that tied the presentations together like for example location based services. The presentations were distributed afterwards on MobileMonday.net website.

The gatherings started to be more and more popular and typically 80-150 people visited MobileMonday during the evening. In 2001 Vesku Paananen asked help from one of the biggest Finnish IT online media DigiToday to be the MobileMonday media partner. That increased the popularity in Finland. Peter Vesterbacka had an important role with his contacts to grow the MobileMonday network and expand it outside Finland. Peter, with the help of his employer HP Mobile E-Service Bazaar, organized the first international MobileMonday gathering during the 3GSM World congress in Cannes, France in February 2001. That was the beginning of infrequent international gatherings during various mobile events around the world in cities like Singapore, Cape Town, Beijing and Cannes in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

[edit] History of Internalization

Mobile Monday Oy company was formed in 15th of April, 2004 and it holds all rights to MobileMonday name. The year 2004 was also the beginning of the global spread of MobileMonday. First chapter outside Helsinki was Tokyo, then Silicon Valley and Italy. In March 2008, MoMo has 64 active chapters and 14 in pipeline. Next launches will be Estonia, Argentina, Philippines, Malta, aso. In February 2008, Mobile Monday community was selected as the Winner of 2007 Internationalization Award handed by the President of the Republic of Finland.