Mobile Monday

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 over 140 chapters worldwide, which host meetings on a selected Monday evening each month.
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 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 Vesterbacka, a Finnish mobile enthusiastic (currently CMO at Rovio). 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.
The purpose from the start was to create a free and open organisation with no one "owning" hte brand except for the community taking care of it.
History of Internalization
Mobile Monday Oy company was formed in 15 April 2004 and it holds all rights to MobileMonday trademark. The CEO is Jari Tammisto. The year 2004 was also the beginning of the global spread of MobileMonday. First chapter outside Helsinki was Tokyo, then Silicon Valley, Italy, and New York. In March 2011, MoMo has over 140 active chapters in over 80 countries and in average four new ones per month in pipeline. In February 2008, Mobile Monday community was selected as the Winner of 2007 Internationalization Award handed by the President of the Republic of Finland. MobileMonday's Jari Tammisto received World Brand Leadership award in 2009 during World Brand congress in Mumbai, India.
Conferences
Mobile Monday organizations independently organize conferences to share ideas, network and discuss the latest advances in the mobile industries. Some of the conferences are referred to as un-conferences for their flexible nature.

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