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.