Category: Tokyo Events

Here we go into the New Year of the Dragon – Welcome 2012! – with passionate hopes for a balanced reset from the tragic events of last March. Many thanks to all for your continued and considerate support during our most challenging times, we are bravely looking forward to exciting opportunities ahead.

 

While the last year was ‘difficult’ we still managed to run 5 events and continue to enjoy the buzz generated at these gatherings. Your ‘Friends of MoMo’ Ambassadors will have a well-deserved Shinennkai in January to brain-storm our agenda for this year – as always we welcome your suggestions as we suspect 2012 will be a total rush.. 😎

Meanwhile, the global MoMo community continues to grow rather well and suggest you join the central platform to connect with members from around the world. Finally, quick Congrats to the door prize winners – 10 in all – from our Dec. 14th event, we’ll be sure to get the news out for our first gig this year asap.. Yoroshiku!

— MoMo Tokyo Team..

What a year.. for those of you who have been here, and to many friends from overseas, our most sincere and humble thanks for your continued kind support during these difficult times. The Bonenkai season is upon us, but we’d suggest all the vodka in Russia – plus all the tequila in Mexico – would still not be nearly enough for us to ever forget 2011.

That said.. we have a super gathering planned, details below, and are looking forward to welcome you on Weds. Dec. 14th. There will be Plenty of food, more than enough ‘spirits’ and some great door prizes too, awaiting everyone at our year-end event. Special Thanks here to NAVTEQ for sponsoring and to our good friends at Bievanna for hosting this gig.

Date: Wednesday, December 14th from 7pm – 11pm
Venue: BierVana :: GMAP
Fee: 2,000 JPY – Registration Required – a serious deal, even at twice the price.. 😎

We have two local rising stars confirmed to give ‘lighting talks’ followed by hands-on demo action. The team from remembAR.me, winners at Tokyo Startup Weekend earlier this year, and Kabata-san from AdLib, aka @Kabayan of Bar Android fame, showing his ToneConnect application that just won Silicon Valley Award at A3 Together competition.

We’re also thrilled to welcome Ashish Bedekar, APAC Partner Relationship Manager, at NAVTEQ who will share details on the NAVTEQ Network for Developers which empowers application developers with the knowledge and resources needed to create the hottest, most differentiated location-based products. Access technical resources, support and business development services to build and market location apps for Web, mobile, automotive, GIS and enterprise markets worldwide. Join for free via www.NN4D.com.

— MoMo Tokyo Team.. Yoroshiku!

That’s right folks, since it has been a most difficult year for many we thought it best to close out the final 6-weeks with a couple of great back to back events! Mark these dates on those hectic calendars and we look forward to see you all together again real soon.

November 28th – The Canadians Are Coming.. 😎

An energetic delegation, led by MoMo Vancouver supporting team at WaveFront, will be in-town to attend MCPC Mobile Solutions Fair and meet various local players. See the links for in-bound group below and join us – ‘come as your are & pay as you go’ – for a friendly few frosty pints and optional yummy hot buffet at friends and family rate.

Absolute Software – absolutesoftware.com
AirG – www.airG.com
C-Com – c-comsat.com
ConceptWave – conceptwave.com
Fixmo – fixmo.com
Netweeper – netsweeper.com
Pravala – pravala.com
Vivity Labs – xtremelabs.com
Wavefront – wavefrontac.com
Xtreme labs Inc. – xtremelabs.com

Note: All MoBros in Japan are Most Welcome = 1 MooseHead for each ‘stauche!

Date: Monday, November 28th
Open: 7 – 11pm
Venue: BierVana :: GMAP
Fee: 1,000 JPY – includes 1 drink ticket, optional buffet and Super People!

Please Register in Advance – Or pay 2,000 JPY at the door

December 14th – MoMo Tokyo Welcomes Navteq

Thanks to the kind support from Navteq we’re planning a Special Event on Dec. 14th, Yes.. that’s a Wednesday, and will be thrilled to have everyone there for a fantastic bonenkai gig. We’ve nailed down the final niggly details and suggest this event will be an epic gathering – will most certainly be over subscribed – You Better Register Soon!

Welcome back, trust you’ve had a break from the sweltering season and look forward to another fantastic MoMo Tokyo event: Ready, Set.. Show!

No Presentations = All Hands-on Action.. 😎

We have decided to run an Exhibition Mixer on our 7th anniversary, with an open invite for energetic App Developers to demo their ‘warz face-to-face via huge table-top pods in the downtown coolness of Super-Deluxe. We have a few teams confirmed and estimate space for another 10 more talented players to jump into the mix. Should be Good Fun..

Calling All App Developers.. Step Right This Way!

Update: Final list of confirmed companies on demo pods as per below

— DeNA (Mobage Developers)

— Dolphin Browser (shipping on Sharp for SoftBank)

— FriendApp (by Milog – running cool summer contest)

— Gilt Groupe (iPhone App)

— GREE (Marketing and International developer relations)

— Longweekend Mobile (Hirameki – Flash Demo video – for iOS)

— Putter King (Design Contest)

— nViso (Face Recognition ala Lie-to-Me!)

— Qlive (Winner – Startup Weekend Tokyo)

— Visionare (Android Magic)

So, if you are looking for where the action is now, and where it’s going, Register Below and head down to see the best product on offer and meet with the bright folks who are making that future happen. We’ll be thrilled to see you all there.. party hats optional!

Date: Monday, 12 Sept. 2011
Running Time: 19:00 – 23:00
Venue: Super Deluxe :: GMAP
Fee: 1,000 JPY with Advance Registration above – OR – 2,000 JPY at the door
Includes: 1-drink and plenty of hands-on fun with occasional bling potential.. 😎

  

It was great to bring everyone together for a few friendly pints and hear some really interesting presentations, see .pdfs below, about what folks are doing in the post 311 Japan quake crisis. While we didn’t pull a huge crowd, due in part to the schedule conflict with Startup Dating Vol. 9 running at the same time, but it was a super keen group of 100+ people who made the effort to attend = Many Thanks to you all.

Garin Dart: Foreign Volunteers of Japan .PDF
Nhat Vuong: i-Kifu.org .PDF
Michael Kato: Re-Cycle Project .PDF
Akira Sasaki: Hack4Japan .PDF

While the room was certainly buzzing, with plenty of very sharp folks and passion for the cause, this was not a round-table meeting with secretary recording the minutes. Perhaps not surprising then we are left wondering – now what? – how do we harness all of that positive goodwill energy into a few valuable outputs.

As fate would have it, our original FaceBook Group has been scheduled to be archived, So, we have just created a new Mobile Monday Tokyo Page. That space would be the most simple way to get some good discussions going with regards to potential next steps. We will add a few suggestions collected already, setup a poll or two to get your feedback, and let things run there for July to see what the community members think.

Meanwhile, we are still very much hoping to have Tokyo Tech Tribes related project and are now planning to get back into the usual event routine by mid-Sept. with a major app. developer focused theme running on our 7th birthday! As always, Contact Us anytime.

日本語版

As you know it’s been a most difficult and challenging time for so many people in Japan, our thoughts and prayers continue for those in the most affected areas. Sincere thanks to all, here and abroad, who have reached out with kind words and offers of support during this crisis. We were prepared to announce our April event on March 14th, clearly a delay required on that plan. We are now calling all tribes for get together on June 13th.

There are countless efforts underway here the last few months, and plenty of important work still lays ahead. After a fair amount of internal discussion, to consider how best to proceed in this extraordinary situation, we’ve decided to begin with an open-mic platform for ‘flash-talk’ styled presentations by those with related projects to raise awareness and support for their on-going contributions. Here are a couple of quick examples:

The Foreign Volunteers of Japan was created to engage with the energetic international network in Japan to do volunteer work in the wake of this tragedy. They are an open charity group and have been very active with aid delivery, and humanitarian relief efforts during the post-tsunami recovery of the Tohoku region. They have also kindly arranged for a Free 1st round of Murphy’s in exchange for your most considerate donation. We therefore now declare that a New Murphys Law is in order!

We also note the Hack For Japan network has a super range of industry partners and do hope to have some of that team attending in order for the community to connect with. Meanwhile, there is plenty of info online for their activities to-date. We look forward to welcome Nhat Vuong from i-Kifu & Michael Kato at Re-Cycle Project.

Looking at the calendar; July 11th is a Monday night and 4-month anniversary of the disaster. With this date in mind, it’s our sincere hope that we can – working together – plan a significant event for that evening. So, consider this an Open Call for all able and interested parties who would like to step forward to participate in any way possible. 😎

Date: Monday, 13 June 2011
Running Time: 19:00 – 23:00
Open Mic. Talks: 19:30 – 20:00
Networking: 20:00 – Close
Venue: BierVana :: GMAP
Admission: Cash Donations for CCCJ as per below

 

The Central Community Chest of Japan, part of the United Way worldwide network, is a fund-raising organization authorized by the Japanese government. It has been active for 64 years. The Disaster Relief Fund for Victims is a fund that delivers all the donations directly to the victims. The full amount of your donation will be delivered to the local government in each of the devastated areas. At this very moment, a large number of volunteers and NPOs are desperately supporting the victims who are trying to recover from this terrible tragedy. And, many people all over the world are supporting these victims, volunteers and NPOs. These disaster relief and recovery activities will continue for a very long time. Your support will give Japan strength. “ARIGATO” from Japan.

We are back and Hopping for 2011 with our first event scheduled to explore the latest voice tools for apps – complete with fantastic food & beverages – full details below. Mark your calendar for Feb. 7th and be sure to Register in Advance – space is limited.

Meanwhile, your faithful organizers are planning a private little Shinnenkai on Jan. 31st to hoist a few pints set our schedule for the upcoming season. We are always open to welcome new ‘Ambassadors’ so Contact Us if you’d like the become a Friend of MoMo!

As recently announced, the Mobile Developer Program and SDK is now available for devs to integrate voice action on their iOS and Android apps [PDF]. Here’s the official blurb:

Have a cool app? Looking for a way to make it even more dynamic and appealing to a broad user base? Or, are you a developer looking for a way to speech-enable your app but haven’t found a proven speech platform that meets your needs?

Open to all developers, the Nuance Mobile Developer Program (NMDP) creates a unique opportunity in the mobile developer ecosystem to power any application with Nuance’s proven, best-in-class Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition technology. A first for the speech industry, NMDP provides access to our commercially renowned and proven speech platform via the Dragon Mobile SDK – for free. So any developer, anywhere in the world can tap into the power of the Dragon Mobile SDK and literally speech-enable their app within minutes!

In joining NMDP, developers have access, free-of-charge, to easy-to-integrate pre-packaged wrappers and widgets for simple application customization, all through a self-service website that is customized to meet the needs of developers big and small. Developers also have access to an on-line community forum for support, a variety of code samples and full documentation. And, once an NMDP developer has integrated the SDK into their application, Nuance provides 90 days of free access to the cloud-based speech services to validate the power of speech recognition on their application.

Aaron Masih – Director, Global Business Development, Mobile – Nuance
Aaron Masih leads business development efforts worldwide for Nuance’s Mobile connected solutions, including the Nuance Mobile Developer Program (“NMDP”). During his tenure, he has been responsible for creating broad-reaching solution strategies around customer care using Nuance’s hosted services. His primary focus is identifying opportunities for integrating voice recognition technologies into both existing and emerging mobile applications. Masih received his Masters of Business Administration in Finance at Georgia State University in 1997, and hold a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from Clemson University.

We are thrilled to have Aaron visiting here from the US to present in person and interact with the MoMo Tokyo community.. Cya there.. 😎

Date: Monday, 7 Feb. 2011
Open Hours: 19:00 – 23:00
Presentations: 19:30 – 20:00
Networking: 20:00 – Close
Venue: BierVana :: GMAP
Fee: 1,000 JPY with Advance Registration – OR – 2,000 JPY at the door
Includes: 2-drinks + 1-plate of Great Food, Big Screen and Super People!

Update: What a fantastic evening we had with all of the tribes coming together for our annual TechXmas event, aka: Tokyo’s Biggest Tech Party Ever. We had an Awesome Venue for the 2010 gig with a great collection of participating groups and some 400 very cool folks on hand for the massive mixer. We raised enough cash to fund some 1,250 books for Room to Read, and gave away a handful of groovy prizes, another big shout out to everyone involved who made this whole thing possible.. You-All-Rock!

A super way to close 2010 which saw us run 6 gatherings, including our 6th birthday and 50th event in Japan on Sept. 13th along with the 10th Anniversary celebration in Helsinki!

Otherwise, we look forward to another super agenda in 2011 and always open to your topic requests and kind offers for continued support. Meanwhile, we wish you and yours a safe and happy holiday season. As always, do feel free to drop us a note here anytime and we’ll see you all again real soon.

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日本語版

It’s time once again to bring all of the tribes together for our annual TechXmas event, aka: Tokyo’s Biggest Tech Party Ever. We have nailed an Awesome Venue for the 2010 gig with a larger collection of participating groups and are expecting an even bigger crowd than the 400+ very cool folks who attended our epic mixer last year!

So mark your holiday calendar for December 6th – make sure you Register Here – and use Twitter, FaceBook, PlanCast to help share the good word. See Full Details below.

Charity Benefit:
All net proceeds will go to ‘Beers for Bytes’, an offshoot of the acclaimed Beers for Books event. The funds will be donated to tech infrastructure for Room to Read, whose focus is on childhood literacy and gender equality in education in developing countries.

Sponsorship Opportunities:
We will also be offering the opportunity for sponsors to donate door prizes or small cash envelopes, so please do drop us a note asap to make arrangements.

Event Details:
Date: Monday December 6th, from 7-10pm
Location: Modapolitica – Map
Fee: ¥2,000 with Advance Registration or ¥3,000 At The Door**
Menu: Advance registration comes with a super tasty buffet – while all drinks, including beer, standard mixed or non-alcohol and wine selection, will be cash bar at 500jpy each.
**Note: ‘At The Door’ attendees will receive two-drink tickets instead of a food coupon as we need to confirm an accurate buffet estimate in advance.

Participating Groups:
AppleCert, Asiajin, Digital Eve Japan, GreenITers, ICA Japan, Mobile in Japan, Mobile Monday Tokyo, Ninjava, Open Network Lab, Poken Japan, Ringo MUG, StartupWeekend Tokyo, TLUG, Tokyo 2.0, Tokyo Beer and Blog, Tokyo HackerSpace, Tokyo PC Users Group and a Big Shout-Out to the BierVana crew who have really stepped forward to help organize this event.

Many thanks for another fantastic year — We look forward to see you all again soon. Meanwhile, noted the good folks at MCPC are running their annual Solutions Fair all day Nov. 26th = See You There!

日本語版
  

Please pardon the short notice, we are just back from the MoMo Summit – Fantastic – finally we can confirm that our rumored October 18th event is a GO with the dedicated theme of Location (Location, Location) Based Services!

We have great speakers on-tap with a killer venue, so be sure to register in advance for a fantastic offer even at twice the price! A big Shout-out to the SkyHook Wireless team for their support, by all means do feel free to ping Maggie Taylor if you’d like to connect.

Also, we wanted to point-out the Ad:Tech Tokyo event is coming up at the end of October and MoMo’ers are entitled to a 20% discount – use DMJSHGU4 code – Check it Out!

Finally, a quick reminder our all-new Mobile Monday Global platform is live! Do take a look at the site and be sure to register and start connecting with members from other MoMo chapters worldwide. Otherwise, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Linkedin and get the latest from MoMo global via The Mob Rulz flash e’Zine.

Marc Einstein, Industry Manager, Mobile & Wireless APAC, Frost & Sullivan .PDF
Marc has over six years of experience in the telecommunications research industry, largely focusing on the Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa regions. Currently he leads a team of analysts responsible for all research and consulting in the mobile & wireless space covering twenty markets in the Asia Pacific region. Key research areas include 3G & 4G strategies, Mobile WiMAX, Mobile Devices, Mobile Capex, Mobile Content and Location-Based Services.

Takeshi Mitsutani, Owner/Managing Partner, Hcapnet .PDF
deCarta is the leading provider of advanced and comprehensive geospatial software platforms for today’s cutting-edge Internet, mobile, personal navigation and enterprise location-based service (LBS) applications. deCarta’s technology is a crucial link in the LBS value chain, providing the core functionality for mapping, navigation and local search and connecting base map data and content to the applications, service provider and ultimately the end-user.

Hiroaki Kando, Deputy General Manager, ZENRIN DataCom Co., LTD .PDF
ZENRIN DataCom aims to be the leading service provider for location data and map content via an easy-to-use real-time interface, empowering users to lead a richer, fuller life. Founded by ZENRIN in 2000 in order to provide Internet based Car-Navigation services. ZENRIN DataCom has developed a fleet of software and service products under the “itsmo NAVI” brand that provide vector and raster mapping, driving and pedestrian navigation, public transit guidance, and local search functionality to both consumer and enterprise clients.

Maggie Taylor, Marketing Manager, Skyhook Wireless .PDF
Skyhook developed the Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS). Taking advantage of the hundreds of millions of Wi-Fi access points throughout populated areas, WPS consistently provides accurate location information indoors and in urban areas. Skyhook also provides XPS, the world’s first true hybrid positioning system. Taking advantage of the relative strengths of several location technologies, WPS, GPS, cellular tower triangulation, XPS is the fastest, most accurate, most reliable and most flexible location system on the market today. Skyhook’s patented XPS technology is positioned to location-enable hundreds of millions of applications and mobile devices, including smartphones, netbooks, laptops, and gaming devices.

Date: Monday, 18 Oct. 2010
Open Hours: 19:00 – 23:00
Presentations: 19:30 – 20:30
Networking: 20:30 – Close
Venue: BierVana :: GMAP
Admission: 1,000 JPY with Advance Registration – OR – 2,000 JPY at the door
Includes: 2-drinks plus 1-plate, Outdoor Patio, a Huge Screen and Great People!
Please Register in Advance

Update: Wow..!!! We had almost 250 people crash the doors for a huge Kanpai followed by a great line-up of speakers and merry mixer for the Start-Up Dating segment, a super time by all accounts, hat-tip to Jim for the Flickr set! We have uploaded the presentations – see .PPT links beside each speakers title below – and thought best to post reminders for mentioned upcoming events with Venturehacks and Angel.co on Sept. 15th as well as This Week in Startups – Tokyo on the 22nd. Congrats to our Tesla joy-ride winners too..!!

Thanks to all who made the effort to attend, a big shout-out to the many EU GateWay Programme folks visiting this week, also for the energetic support from all our “Friends of MoMo Tokyo” and of course to the entire community who continue to make running this show a true pleasure. A fantastic way to celebrate our 50th event in Japan!

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Mavericks Competition — Creative Commons — 日本語版
  

Thrilled to invite you to join the 6th anniversary of MoMo Tokyo!

To MoMo members, along with Tokyo 2.0 & Startup Dating groups, we look forward to a fantastic nite with you at SuperDeluxe Sept. 13th. We have presenters from Glam Media, PayPal and Intellectual Ventures, under the theme of “Commercializing Innovation”, along with visiting intl. delegates and a hyper-networking plan, it will be a total scene. Mark your calendar and bring along a few friends for beer & birthday cake!

We also want to remind you that our all-new Mobile Monday Global platform is live! Do take a look at the site and be sure to register your own profile to start connecting with members from other MoMo chapters worldwide. Remember: We’re gearing up for the 10th Anniversary Summit in Helsinki in late September, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Linkedin and get the latest from MoMo global via The Mob Rulz flash e’Zine.

Masato (Bud) Uesu, CTO Glam Media Japan, CTO Intl. Glam Media, Inc. – .PPT
Glam Media is the pioneer and global leader of Vertical Media, a revolutionary new media model that combines our flagship properties with curated publisher sites and their passionate, engaged audiences. By pairing our 1400+ publishers worldwide with our own large and growing properties: Glam.com for women; Brash.com for men; and Tinker.com for real-time conversations on social media sites across the Web, our vertical media model enables premium brands to connect with millions of passionate audiences online.

Takeshi Amano, Integration Manager, PayPal Japan – .PPT
PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send payments without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances or credit cards. With more than 87 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce. The company’s open payment platform, PayPal X, allows developers to build innovative payment applications on multiple platforms and devices.

Nicholas Gibson, Director of Product Development, Intellectual Ventures – N/A
Founded in 2000, Intellectual Ventures (IV) is the global leader in the business of invention. IV collaborates with leading inventors, partners with pioneering companies, and invests both expertise and capital in the process of invention. IV’s mission is to energize and streamline an invention economy that will drive innovation around the world. http://www.intellectualventures.com

Update: A couple of late additions for the so-called ‘lightning talks’ agenda as well. We’re thrilled to welcome delegates from Global Entrepreneur Week for a quick pitch and the good folks from Tesla Motors will be in the house to take the lucky few for a serious spin.. looking forward to see you all again soon.. 🙂

Date: Monday, 13 Sept. 2010
Open Hours: 19:00 – 23:00
Presentations: 19:30 – 20:30
Networking: 20:30 – Close
Venue: Super Deluxe :: GMAP
Fee: 2,000jpy includes two drink tickets
Please Register in Advance