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• MobileMonday Vancouver official chapter. Mission accomplished.
• GSMA Mobile World Congress: Scale Up!
• $133 million in the next two years...
• BDC sponsored presentation
• Do you have a pitch for investment?
• About MoMoVan
• About Our Sponsors

This time we're meeting in the beautiful offices of Fasken Martineau to talk about where BC wireless and new media companies can find the investment they need to grow and reach out to world markets. We're also putting a panel together to review the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – which had some interesting messages for our local wireless cluster (see below for more).

Fasken Martineau's offices are in downtown Vancouver at Bentall 5 Tower (2900- 550 Burrard Street).

	Date:	Monday, March 3, 2008
	Time:	6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
	Location:	Fasken Martineau LLC, 2900 - 550 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC
	Tickets:	FREE to WINBC Members
		FREE to WINBC Sponsors and Partners
		FREE to Students
		$20 to Non-members of WINBC and at the door
	Space:	Limited to 75 people
		Registration deadline: Friday, February 29, 2008

One key reason why your Executive Director went to the largest mobile show in the world in Barcelona on Feb. 11-14, 2008 was to put Vancouver back on the MobileMonday map. We achieved that.

Monday, February 11 Barcelona, Spain - I participated in the MobileMonday Peer Awards at Espacio Movistar (see picture on right), which is located about 20 minutes away from Montejuic, where the MWC was held. More than 700 peers from all over the world attended the ceremonies. It was basically an opportunity to vote for one of the 14 finalists in the Early Stage Start-Ups and 13 finalists in the Emerging Start-Ups from Barcelona, Amsterdam, Bangalore, Boston, New York, Taipei, etc. and a unique opportunity to network with peers from all over the world.

While there, I met with Jari Tammisto (thank you, Igor, for the intro), CEO of Mobile Monday International. He welcomed us back to the official MoMo fold, after our short time as a MoMo maverick. We agreed that in the future we need to connect even more with MobileMonday chapters from Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco, and around the world.

So, we'll be working over the months ahead to build closer ties to the international MoMo community, to improve our local MoMo experience.

Besides me, Igor Faletski from Handi Mobility, Nigel Malkin from Brand2hand Media, and Caroline Lewko from WIP were at the awards, representing BC.

"Buzzd from New York, a provider of local real-time search information for bars, clubs and restaurants on the mobile device, cleaned the table by winning jury, audience and community awards under the early stage category at the MobileMondy Peer Awards in Barcelona.

In the Emerging Community category, Taptu a search and sharing engine from London won the award with Funambol, an open source email and messaging company, while local favorite Kimia, a rich media content provider, clinched the audience choice." (Source: MobileMonday.net)

For those of you interested MobileMonday is planning a MobileMonday Global Summit in conjunction with the World Congress on IT in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 18-22, 2008. More info here: www.mobilemonday.net

We had no sooner finished up our Pacific Northwest Wireless Summit than we found ourselves whisked off to Barcelona for the world's largest wireless industry event: the GSMA Mobile World Congress. How big was it? Nearly 60,000 delegates and more than 1,400 exhibitors. And what an eye-opener it was.

The clear signal to our wireless cluster is that it is time to wake up to the realities of the world. The wireless industry is unimaginably huge, sophisticated and competitive. But you get the feeling that our cluster, isolated out on the West Coast, sometimes acts as though it was operating inside a protective bubble. Not so. If you want to compete globally here are two words of advice: Scale Up! Part of the theme of this MoMoVan is how to find the financing needed to scale up for world markets.

NOTE: We invited some of the people who attended MWC to share their opinions and perspectives of the show with you in a 45 minutes panel discussion.

According to the recently released BC Wireless Industry Survey that's how much our BC wireless companies expected they need in the next two years to grow and expand beyond BC and the US. The same survey suggests that 46% of our companies need capital for growth and expansion in the $1 mil. – $5 mil. range.

Is $133 million enough money to compete globally? What are the hot areas to invest in? Wireless enterprise? LBS? Entertainment? New media? Where can we find that kind of money? In Vancouver? In Seattle? In San Francisco? Elsewhere? Is the local VC community ready to invest? How can IRAP help? How can SRED help? Does our tax environment help? When can we see a ROI?

All these questions and more will be covered during what promises to be a very insightful and opinionated panel.

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is a financial institution focused on accelerating the successful development of Small to Medium size Canadian companies and helping Canadian entrepreneurs grow and prosper.

BDC has generously supported the entire MobileMonday Vancouver series and on March 3rd will make a brief presentation of their key services designed to meet the needs of local entrepreneurs at every stage of their business development.

If you have an early stage start-up, an emerging start-up or an established business looking for $500,000, $1 million or $5 million please let us know by emailing to michael@winbc.org by Friday, February 29.

You have 3 minutes to do your pitch for financing (8-10 slides) and 2 minutes for questions and answers from the audience. A laptop and a screen will be available. Please send your presentation to WINBC by Friday, February 29.

Good luck!

About WINBC
Wireless Innovation Network of BC is promoting the fast growth and sustainability of British Columbia, Canada as one of the world's best wireless technology clusters and communities. We are the industry association representing more than 250 BC wireless technology companies generating in excess of $1B in revenues.

About BDC
The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is a financial institution wholly owned by the government of Canada. BDC plays a leadership role in delivering financial, investment and consulting services to Canadian small and medium-sized businesses. These services complement those of private sector financial institutions. More info at: www.bdc.ca.

About wavefront
wavefront is the commercialization bridge between the wireless developer community in British Columbia and the mobile operators, government and large enterprises that are deploying new wireless products and services. In collaboration with its established partners, wavefront provides the developer community with neutral, independent test services and the market knowledge to enable rapid commercialization. More info at: www.wavefrontac.com.

About Fasken Martineau
Fasken Martineau is one of the world's leading international business law and litigation firms with more than 650 lawyers with offices in Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States. Their practice includes every sector of business, industry and government. More info at: www.fasken.com.

Hear from a global leader in digital map data – NAVTEQ on March 11, 2008 in Vancouver, BC.

Local application developers considering incorporating LBS or digital mapping into their platforms are invited to the first NAVTEQ workshop, hosted by wavefront at the 2010 Commerce Centre, Suite 1600 - 800 Robson Street.

Participation is free but space is limited.

For more information, contact: workshops@wavefrontac.com

MobileMonday Vancouver is an open forum held for the global community of wireless industry professionals. It fosters cooperation and networking among interest groups, industry people and their companies by providing the logistics and opportunities for personal and virtual contacts.

Everyone is welcome!

• Visionaries, entrepreneurs, innovators, developers, designers, investors
• Students, Ph.Ds, professors from UBC, SFU, UVIC and BCIT and elsewhere
• WINBC members and Non-members with an interest in wireless technology
• Members of other technology associations and government agencies
• Members of local media, new media, Web 2.0 and blogging community

Because together we can do more.

• We hope to open a long-lasting conversation that is relevant to the wireless and Web 2.0 community in Vancouver, BC and the world.
• We want to increase opportunities for casual networking, for identifying quality local talent, accessing early stage companies, building strategic partnerships and developing more business and businesses.
• We want to continue promoting local innovation and collaboration in the wireless and Web 2.0 industry, from small start-ups, to large companies, to research labs.