Archive for February, 2009

This year, Indonesia is honored to have BioLocate shortlisted as Top 20 Finalist and invited to present in MobileMonday Peer Awards 2009 in Barcelona. The team from BioLocate unable to make it to Barcelona due to the short notice, but they are managed to make a short video presentation and was playbacked in front  of the jury in Barcelona. Although BioLocate did not win, I am happy that we are the only representative from South East Asia to make it to the final.

BioLocate at Peer Awards 2009

The Mobile Peer Awards is a wonderful event, attended by estimated 1000 audience and was opened by keynote from Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Markets at Nokia and Member of the Nokia Group Executive Board. We have audience from all over the world, including developers, startups, venture capitals, media, and government officials. I met a big team from Malaysian MDEC, but unable to find anyone else from Indonesia (or Indonesia government … well, maybe next year we’ll send official invitation).

For those of you who would like to know how the finalists “wow” the jury during Peer Awards, I would like to share a video of Unkasoft, one of the audience favorite doing all the tricks (including “Tiger Jump”) to visualize their solution within the strict 3 minutes pitch. Enjoy!

Recap from last night’s exciting MoMo event. The main topic around the presentation was about new innovations in the mobile industry: examples from the winners of Mobile Peer Awards 2009 and ideas from a number of creative friends of MoMo.

Andy opened the session — well, actually the dinner opened yesterday’s MoMo — with stories from Peer Awards. We took a flashback to 2006 winner – Plazes which is bought by Nokia eventually and 2007 winner – buzzd – bought by RIM (BlackBerry). Then our own 2008 winners: More and Sandy’s Virtual Tribe.

Then he highlighted 5 winners of 2009:

• Babajob, is an Indian website + mobile portal combined with simple SMS & USSD-based job hunting/offering services – kind of jobsdb.com for the phone
• Orbster, a German company, offers a gaming platform with LBS and GPS functionality
• Unkasoft, a Spanish company, designs an advergaming platform which can address the growing trend of advertising-supported games
• Popcatcher from Sweden is a music saving application for phones – kind of tivo for mobile phone
• Fring, which is very well known – an open chat and VoIP client, supporting multiple IM protocols

I think the point here is that innovation doesn’t have to be always a quantum leap of stellar technology breakthrough which requires years of research and planning and millions man-hour development effort. Simple things like babajob.com are fine – as long as it is timely, useful for its target market, and adding value.

Next, Dien Kwik from bioLocate – the only Peer Awards finalist from South East Asia, shared his story about the inspiration of FireAnts. FireAnts is an innovative service that can provide real-time traffic data on the roads of jammed Jakarta – bebas macet!

Dien mentioned several important points about entrepreneurship: follow your passion, just start, conserve cash, and a bit of luck…

Concluding the session is Saiful Hidayat (namakuiful.com). He almost didn’t make it to MoMo because of the traffic jam… But thankfully, he arrived just in time. His presentation is titled “Surfing the Digital Broadband — Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the 2.0 Era.”

You have to hear it yourself to understand the beautiful concept, here are a few short pointers…

First we have to understand that we’re in the conceptual era that demands new creative aptitute (Dan Pink’s The Whole New Mind) – design, story, symphony, emphaty, play, meaning.

This era is driven by a serious growth of broadband and Internet everywhere. And we’d better be ready because this is real in Indonesia! Broadband grows by >200% recently, and so does Internet (we’re #5 Internet users in Asia with >25mio users).

Another shift of change is the users that we should address. Admit it that the future belongs to the digital natives who thinks, acts, and behaves differently than the previous generations. They are redefining the future of business – and the future of content.

Then Mas Iful offered a very practical advice for those willing to innovate: use Google. There are plenty of resources in the Internet that can support you. (You can also talk to us MoMo if you are looking for ideas…). Having mentioned Google… observe carefully what they are doing…

Finally, Indigo – Telkom business incubator – is mentioned. This is an open platform, where innovators-wanna-be can use as a great launchpad. A couple of new services have been and will be launched – pasarkreasi.com, speedytrek Indie Band, etc.

Actually Mas Iful has already post his story on his blog: here.

That’s all for now. Hope to see you on the next MoMo, tentatively 16 March.

You can download the slides from: the MoMo site.

PS: Wanted… hosting space in IIX, with fast int’l bandwidth as well and generous space, pls contact us… thanks for your generousity in advance.

We’re baaack….!

Coming this February 23rd is the MobileMonday Networking event, with the topic of Innovation in this Mobile era. This is not a technical subject, but still packed with insights and information.

Joining us this upcoming Monday are:

• Saiful Hidayat - blogger (www.namakuiful.com) and a Telco industry veteran in Indonesia. Mas Saiful will share his insights about entreprenuership, innovation, and creativity in Mobile & Internet
• Dien Kwik – founder of bioLocate, an innovative mobile application aiming to ease traffic jam problem and also the only Asian finalist of Mobile Peer Awards 2009 in Barcelona. Dien will share “the making of bioLocate” his aspirations and dreams.
• I Gusti Ngurah Panca – Telkomsel Business Incubation – sharing his thoughts on innovation potentials and collaboration opportunities in mobile industry.

Event details:

• Date: Monday, 23 February 2009
• Time: 18.00 – end
• Place: Amigos Restaurant, Bellagio Boutique Mall GF, Kawasan Mega Kuningan Jakarta
• Agenda: presentation with Q&A opportunities + networking + FREE dinner

The first in 2009 series, be sure not to miss it!! Registration is open at our website: registration page.

See you Monday!