SIME Innovation Day

I had the opportunity to take part in the SIME Innovation Day on the 7th of February.

A day when around 100 innovative companies met with each other and Ericsson, Google and Telenor to present and get new contacts.

The format of the day was quite hectic. Surprisingly enough it all went rather smooth. During the day close to 200 individuals circulated in one room filled with tables.

The agenda was a mixture of:

• Short, on stage, presentatons by a few of the attending companies.
  
• On stage presentatons by the co-hosts (Ericsson, Google and Telenor)
  
• One hour sessions of "table talks" where the participating startups sat together (around seven at each table) with one representative from a co-host and a moderator to meet, present and discuss.


• One-to-one meetings between a startup and a co-host representative, scheduled in parallel with the table talks.

Innovators on stage
A number of the startups had the opportunity to present themself from the stage. The presentations where limited to 6 minutes, so they had to make their point very concise. And I would say they all did, altough some slides used had quite a lot of text and bullets.

Below is a summary of the companies that made a "6 minutes elevator pitch" from stage. Many more where at the SIME Innovation Day, but I will not mention all of the around 100 companies. Simply to many, but they where all interesting!

Whatamap
The first company on stage was Whatamap.com - a Finnish company providing you with the maps that matters to you. Not only the common Google Maps type of maps, but all the site specific maps that might be relevant for you at the moment. They seem to distribute each map as a small Java app. to the phone, interesting approach.

Floobs
Floobs.com provides the means for you to set up your own video channel on the internet and on the mobile. Stream video live from your mobile or use pre-recorded material. A crowded arena where eg. Qik, Bambuser and others are active.

Moviestorm
"A computer game without a game" - Moviestorm creates a virtual world where you can create movies. Think machinima. If the process is smooth enough it might appeal as a way to create content.

Zyb
Zyb is a social address book, focused on the mobile scenario. Partly similiar to Plaxo, but more focused on the mobile user. As I am a great fan of "social address books" I of course have a Zyb profile, connect if you are there!

Mobile Sorcery
Development of mobile applications for the multitude of phones out there is a burden. Will the application work on every phone model? On every revieion of a specific phone? What phone models will be launched next week? How to keep up? Mobile Sorcery claim to have the answer with a number of tools. MoSync is one.

SkyCash
A way to use your mobile phone to pay. Connected to your credit cards. Apparently SkyCash is their new brand name, see Betala.se so far as SkyCash.com does not seem to be live. The feature that you get a bar code on your mobile phone, only valid for a few minutes, that should be scanned at the cashier in the shop was interesting.

Momail
"The worlds smallest mobile email", Momail is an email service for mobile phones. It utilizes the email capabilities in the phone, and makes it really easy to configure. You can direct all your email accounts to your Momail account. Momail also optimizes the data traffic usage by adapting the content. Especially media attachments like pictures are scaled down to a fraction of the original size, which both saves data traffic and download times.

Nexos
Nexos from Summit Tech is an IMS based gaming platform. The Nexos platform makes it easy to develop games that takes advantage of the IMS architecure.

Zkout
Zkout from Wichro is a social network with location information. I am still waiting for my beta invite to have a closer look.

Wuzzon
Wuzzon.nl is a Dutch service where individuals can open their own shop. In the shop users can create and sell mobile content such as ringtones and wallpapers. User Generated Content on the mobile, and a way to make money on what you create. "Fight the ringtone maffia", and take the content back to the users was their message.

Polar Rose
Polar Rose has a way to tag people in public photos on the Internet. In this way they are building a database with people and their photos. Create an account and start tagging people! I joined a while ago (my profile is here), but as the plugin only is available for Firefox (which I don't use that much) I haven't been very active.

RTGI
rtgi.fr is a French company that have a solution for mapping out the social web. See who is blogging about your company and who is referencing to who.

ippi
ippi from InView is a device that you connect to your TV. ippi is actually a phone, and receives MMS, SMS and email. The messages are dispayed on the TV set, and you can reply to the messages. Here is a demonstration video.

TownKings
TownKings, and the sister site TownQueens, is another social network site with a local touch. Also inculding location information of some kind. I signed up for an account, go ahead and find me and connect. As they are from Germany that's where they currently have the majority of users

Adimo
Adimo is active in the field of mobile media. They view the mobiel as a natural extension of old (or current) media channels used by companies.

Mobiento
Mobiento works with marketing through the mobile channel. They have also a mobile ad network called Adiento.

WunderLOOP
WunderLOOP has a solution for harvesting user behaviour across multiple sites and of course do data mining based on that.

Zoomorama
Zoomorama is a way to present photos and videos. You create an album page, just as you would do in a traditional photo album, and the visitor can pan and zoom around. Useful for many things.

Yubico
Yubico has perhaps the smallest USB based keyboard - only one key. It is used for security certification. A press on the button generates a security token. The idea is that all computers have support for USB keyboards, and thus no extra drivers are needed.

The co-hosts
The three co-hosts, including Ericsson, also had a stage presentation to outline both what they are looking for and how they work in this area.

Google
First out was Google. Anil Hansjee presented Google's view of how to work with innovation. He also discussed how working with partnerships and acquisitions drives and extends Google's core business.
Anil had this slide with three books that somewhat defines the whole area of this "new internet".
You have read these three books, haven't you? Otherwise you should. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, The Wisdom of Crowds and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. (I must admit I have not read all three yet. Working on it...)

Telenor

Michael Bergman from Telenor taked about Telenor's service Mobilstart. An easy way to get started with new mobile services, and to target the whole customer base in eg Sweden, not only Telenor's subscribers.

Ericsson
Kurt Sillén talked about how Ericsson puts focus on consumers, and how Ericson works with partners. The changing business enviroment and the more and more complex value chains is a part of this. Kurt also gave a number of examples where Ericsson have worked with partners to create new services and applications.

The awards
At the end of the day three prizes where handed out. A jury had selected three out of the hundred companies. The winners, all mentioned as "number 1" (all the others where "close second"), where Zyb, Polar Rose and Jaycut.

Here is a video from the award cermony. As Jaycut did not present themself from stage earlier they got the opportunity to do so. Watch the video:

Other coverage
The blog disruptive.nu covered the event by liveblogging from the room. See all posts from disruptive here (in Swedish though). It is worth mentioning that I first got to hear about the Sime Innovation Day from a blog post at disruptive.nu

Björn Falkevik from lidne.com captured the event on video. I have not seen the films uploaded yet, but will add a link later.

If you covered the event in your blog, please add a link in the comments.

And what could be more suitable than to upload the rest of the pictures I took to Jaycut? Now you can tag the people using Polar Rose and make sure they are in your Zyb address book...

All in all - a very interesting day. I hope all participants felt the same. My general comment is that "There's no killer app, only a killer attitude" is a very valid quote. All of the applications presented was fun, nice and interesting. Maybe also potential "killer apps".
But having a useful application is not all. Being able to tweak the scope, find new niches and in general adapt to the ever changing playground is crucial.

(Double-D; Disclosure and Disclaimer: I attended SIME Innovation Day on behalf of Ericsson. However I do not blog on behalf of Ericsson; all opinions expressed here are my personal views)