Minibar is a great event just off Brick Lane in London and this time it was all about Mobile. Apparently it was the highest attendance ever. This is a quick write up, was going to be accompanied by some truly badly taken photos but for some reason Shozu isn't playing ball with my N95. Minibar is held in a bar so it can be quite hard to hear the presenters but here is what went down more or less.
At the start, for some reason, this random fellow, from a company that has nothing to do with mobile, (Fav.or.it) was made to do a rather extensive powerpoint presentation about why Sun Microsystems was good for startups. Not really sure about this as it went on for quite a long time and people were getting restless as it had nothing to do with mobile. Still bills have to be paid ...
Vodafone Betavine were also sponsoring the event in that they paid for 200 beers I suppose it's my fault for getting there late and not getting one. They are now getting carrier placement for betavine apps to encourage people to upload to them.
First up to demo was a guy from Locomatrix which we've covered before here. He explained all about their GPS gaming service and that they now have an API so you can build on the platform. Great to see something really innovative out there. Someone in the audience thought that consumers weren't ready for this kind of service and he should focus on licensing it to brands and so on.
Mippin is a great mobile service which we use to mobilise this blog. There's was probably the best presention as they just did a quick demo of how to make your blog or site mobile using their tool. They did a site for the minibar blog which you can find here. It was brilliant to see people from mippin there as they are one of the most interesting mobile startups in London and probably dont get the publicity they deserve.
Next2Friends is a bit like Qik but apparently better. There was a powerpoint and we found out they raised money from a trade investor who is worth $60 bn (anyone know who this is?). They did a bit of a demo of the service streaming live from minibar. To be honest, the presentation would have been better without the company spiel and a bit more on demoing and explaining the service which could well be interesting.
Flirtomatic is another brilliant UK mobile startup I don't really remember much about the presentation as the crowd was getting quite boisterous by this time and the presenter had to basically shout a few things out above the din. There was a good page of stats about the service that flashed up at one point ... 1m wap messages sent daily, 30k uniques a day, average user logs in 7 or 8 times a day on mobile.
By this time I was feeling a bit restless and missed the 3GDating presentation which may well have been good.
There was a lively crowd outside drinking including Spinvox, Moblog and other crew - brilliant to see a lot of the London mobile 2.0 people out and about. Anyway - Mobile Monday London is on Monday June 2nd so look out for a write up of that coming soon.
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