What happened when MoMo Italy went to Finland

MobileMonday Global Summit, Helsinki May 8th 2006

The sunny Monday morning at the Wanha Satama conference center by the Port of Helsinki started with a MoMo Global Hello from Jari Tammisto, the CEO of Mobile Monday Oy. The Executive Morning targeted to a high-end audience was kicked off with a short presentation of each MoMo chapter from about 25 countries: the Italian delegation present in the Global Summit constitued of Gianmauro Calafiore from WizCapital, and Marco Zamperini and Jaana Heikkilä from Etnoteam. Our squad was strenghtened additionally by Andrea Lawendel who writes to Corriere della Sera, as well as the Italian Peer Award Winners representatives: Digital Magic's Executive Vice Chairman Gabriele Gresta, International Marketing Manager Minna Leikas and International Project Manager Andrea Lorenzon from Giunti Labs.


Hansen Yip (Finpro Hong Kong), Marco Zamperini (Etnoteam Milan), Jaana Heikkilä (Etnoteam Milan), Lubna Dajani (Stratemerge, New York), Margarita Zobnina (Prime Consult Moscow), Gianmauro Calafiore (WizCapital Milan)


Gabriele Gresta (Digital Magics Milan), Gianmauro Calafiore (WizCapital Milan)

The first panel discussion of the day was introduced by Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer from Informa Media, who outlined the future challenges of the MNO Business Model. According to Newman, the operators have been slow to answer the challenges that the voice over IP has brought. Operator representatives (Harri Koponen, Watanija; Matti Vilkkula, Elisa; Daniel Appelquist, Vodafone) had challenges in defending their strategies, whenas Jonas Kjellberg from Skype had an easier position to defend. The second panel of the day (Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia; Ted Cohen, EMI; Simon Bureau, Vectis; Peter Vesterbacka, HP) discussed Content with the lead of Dr. Madan Mohad Rao.

During the day, companies were making demonstrations about their solutions on the main stage of the hall. Sponsors, fair audience and MoMo organizers discussed lively with each others at the exhibition stands. We welcomed everybody warmly to make a visit in "Italy" for lunch, and in no time at all, especially Italian-speaking people from all corners of the world were spotted coming and going to "Little Italy", the re-named MoMo Italy stand.


Minna Leikas (Giunti Labs Sestri Levante - Genova), Marco Zamperini (Etnoteam Milan), Fabrizio Capobianco (Funambol Silicon Valley), Andrea Lawendel (Corriere della Sera Milan), Gianmauro Calafiore (WizCapital Milan)

The pauses were perfect moments for networking, and people on the Summit hoovered brochures and business cards, and discussed and tested enthusiasticly the newest discoveries on show. The buzz was occasionally seized by the appealing keynote speeches of the parallel sessions Trends, Profit and Fun, and many participants were doing cherrypicking by rushing from one interesting presentation in one track to another in order to maximise the benefit of the high quality exposition; from Fun to Profit in the speed of light.

Gianmauro Calafiore and Jaana Heikkilä presented the MobbileMonday Italy in the Profit section and told the audience about how one of the oldest MoMos in the world (we started in November 2004) is gaining still growing interest and has consolidated its position as one of the leading wireless forums and mobile data sources of Italy. The mission of MoMo Italy has been to develop business of companies by giving them visibility internationally (e.g. by bringing Italian companies to international estrades, and by bringing international companies to Italy), by facilitating networking, and by providing latest information about the wireless business. Thus far we have been doing well, and that shows in the steadily growing number of persons who participate to the events and who have registered to the MoMo Italy community.


Sailesh Gurubhagavatula, Jaana Heikkilä

Mikael Jungner, Director General of YLE Finnish Broadcasting Company (the RAI or BBC of Finland) closed the Trends section by presenting the latest developments of the mobile TV as well as the statal broadcasting company's vision to the development of their operations. The challenges come from YLE's need to cover the entire population of Finland also in the deep forests of Lapland, and from supporting the digital development of Finland by giving away from some of its traditional revenue sources in order to facilitate also competitors' digital investments. The interest of YLE is to get yet more interactive by looking for ways to give the TV watchers a high quality channel to participate to the programs.

The Global Peer Awards Party started with drinks and buffet at six o'clock in full sunshine. Competitors from Finland, Japan, France, Great Britain, Canada, Italy and Hong Kong had 3 minutes time to present their innovation in front of the judges and audience. Judges, one representative from each Mobile Monday chapter, would announce their scores (1-3) for the best products/ services.


Mark Wächter (Mark Wächter Consulting, Marketing Wireless), Marco Zamperini (Etnoteam Milan)

Marco Zamperini represented the Italian delegation among the judges and turned out to be a natural born talent in lobbying for support for the excited Italian delegation. The "Eurovision song contest" concept made sure that excitement rised, as the competing companies and audience followed the live scoring... "Japan, three points" was heard so often that their representant Opera mobile browser won the B2B category. Giunti Labs was second, and everyone agrees that it's not that bad to be second only to Opera!


Minna Leikas and Andrea Lorenzon (Giunti Labs, Sestri Levante - Genova)

Digital Magics' Gabriele Gresta made the exposition hall explode by the cheering audience like no one else, when he launched his 3 minutes show. Don't miss the VIDEO, there is no other way to describe this phenomenon! Unfortunately the performing art did not open up all the impressive features of Digital Magics' platform, and the Canadians won the B2C Global Award: Canadian ComVu competed neck-to-neck with French Vpod.tv, but pulled away in the end.

After a famous Finnish band Kemopetrol had had their gig, the global posse, who at that point had reached the dimension of about 30 persons, made brave efforts to continue to the famous nightlife of Helsinki. However, the first meeting at 07:30 that morning and previous day's planning meeting, climbing, cable sliding and ATV skill driving in the nearby forests ensured that most of the organizers were happily at sleep by midnight.




Ossi Sariola (MoMo Brazil), Andrea Lawendel (Corriere della Sera Milan)

Our last day of the MoMo Summit ended with visits in HP and Nokia. The HP guys had invited artists from Kemopetrol as well as a couple of amateur filmmakers who are behind the success "open source" movie Star Wreck. The experience was refreshing, since new innovative production and distribution mechanisms for content were presented. The film Star Wreck is available for download for free on a website on the Internet, but anyway, the CD of the movie sells nicely on the same web page. Moreover, people who want to do their own films, are now contacting the filmmakers. Kemopetrol does not make fortunes by giving their music for ringtones, but instead they are doing efficient branding via multimedia, and enabling fans to hear about them via diverse channels. Marco Zamperini noted that it is good to see so much creativity and personal touch in digital media - after all, the digital media does not kill the creativity or personal touch.

Nokia invited us to the Multimedia Center, where we heard about Nokia's new devices and technology that enables listening to all major digital music formats with one portable device - a Nokia cell phone. We watched Mobile TV from the surprisingly representative screen and listened carefully about the experiences of how Adobe's and Nokia's joint forces enable film-making using Nokia's phone and a simple Internet interface. The fusion food that we were offered was as global as was our crowd, and so good that many gadget-happy people did not want to go away ever from that wireless paradise.

Ultimately, however, we ended up catching the direct Finnair flight back to Italy after some shopping at the airport. We arrived in Milan bags full of ruisleipä and salmiakkikossu just to discover that the weather in Italy was 10 Celsius degrees lower than that of Helsinki... Already now it looks likely, that next year we'll come with an exponentially bigger posse from Italy, we met so many cool people and had so much fun!

Last but not least, many thanks to the Finnish organizers Micah Gland, Jari Tammisto, Tuomas Talvio, Timo Poropudas, Ismo, Marcus, Roger, Peter, Vesku... We caught some of you in action:


Timo Poropudas (MoMo organizer, Helsinki)


Jari Tammisto and Micah Gland (MoMo organizers, Helsinki)


Peter Vesterbacka (HP, Finland)



Text by Jaana Heikkila. Photos by Gianmauro Calafiore and Jaana Heikkila.