“We typically thought there was great innovation in Scandinavia, Israel and the USA but since MobileMonday’s founding … we discovered it also in Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan, India, Brazil, France and all over the world,” says Jari Tammisto, founder of Mobile Monday. OnSip, Karachi Cafe Headlion’s Neil Christy, Michael Bowen (a running sports writer for New Orleans newspaper Times Picayune, Carlos Pinedas Alaniz of Cambridge Group in Florida, USA ask Jari some thought-provoking questions and Jari responds in unexpected ways regarding MoMo’s founding, its manifesto, mobile trends, where will mobile converge in the future, the annual Gitex conference, DIDX Desert Safari and Dinner and where is the mobile innovation?

Listen to DIDX Vice President Suzanne Bowen interview Jari Tammisto and read the transcript below.)

Suzanne Bowen: We have with us today the CEO of Mobile Monday Jari Tammisto.

Jari Tammisto: Thanks so much, Suzanne. Good morning and good evening to the listeners.

Suzanne Bowen: I was first introduced to Mobile Mondays at a session during CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas. I felt this electricity in the air, ideas, business, innovations, friendship everywhere. Would you give us a short history on Mobile Monday and Jari Tammisto?

Jari Tammisto: Pleased to do so. The essence of Mobile Monday is releasing the power of people… where they take their corporate hats off when they are meeting with their peers.

I just read the invitations to a Mobile Monday meetings from ten years ago. It was fun to read the ideas of what brought Mobile Monday community together back ten years ago. It is about releasing that corporate way of thinking, sharing visions and targets to be reached. Meeting with colleagues, sharing ideas,  debating the issues, in an informal manner. I think that is the passion of Mobile Monday that brought the Finnish community together ten years ago.

We started the first chapter out of Finland six years ago roughly also in Tokyo where the Tokyo Mobile passionate people wanted to connect with the Finns and about the same time in Silicon Valley, so … this informal gathering has exploded around the world for the last few years and now we are meeting with the fellow-minded people and in eight regions around the world every Monday..

Suzanne Bowen: That is amazing and thank you for sharing that with us. What is the process to start a Mobile Monday chapter and what are the expectations?

Jari Tammisto: Well, typically, we have local people that connect with us that have heard about Mobile Monday in a  region other than their own around the world. They want to build that kind of community within their own city or town, inviting the relevant people to join them. We have a very easy process to start a chapter. If you feel you can prove that you have the same code of conduct for operations which means basically you’re doing it for the community, by the community, and you’re not doing it for direct business reasons!

You want to connect, bring all the participants, the developers, operators, vendors, users together and you have a team to gather, typically 3 to 5, very active,  passionate people that wants to get a certain local community together. We’ll actually sign the contract where we hand out all the rights for Mobile Monday operations for the local team.

That’s quite unique because, we don’t restrict the activities in the local scene. For example, in India, people meet on Saturdays because the traffic jams are just enormous on week days. They also have a very unique way of operating where they come together, like one hour before the event. They already open the registration for the events a few weeks before the actual event date. They will decide the theme of the event, only one hour before the start time.

It is very unique because when the people start coming in, they don’t actually know if they’re going to be presenting or will be part of the audience. If they have a subject matter expertise, it is dicussed that they that could be invited to present. I think I was laughing because in Finland, I would never get anybody to attend my events, if they would not know before hand, whether they might be presenting or they might be part of the audience, but the Indians love it.

Suzanne Bowen: Wow.

Jari Tammisto: So it’s very local, it’s very sort of a .. looking at the issues, what’s needed in local environment… and I think that’s the unique that makes the ownership of Mobile Monday global. Everybody participates, everybody volunteers their time and effort to organize Mobile Monday. They (everyone involved) actually own their own community themselves.

Suzanne Bowen: That is very cool. In fact, the first part of your answer is basically the answer to the question someone asked just now in an instant message to us. A gentleman name Michael Bowen, who is a sports (running and races) writer for a New Orleans newspaper, asks, “What is the manifesto for Mobile Monday?”

I think you’ve just answered that, on how to start a Mobile Monday chapter … the expectations. I think that is so cool, how India is doing it. How interactive can you get? That is excellent.

Jari Tammisto: Yeah, they started even more exciting. They gave every body soft balls (styrofoam), so basically even if you didn’t prepare yourself to present, iif you were boring or off the subject, they started throwing balls at you. Pretty amazing that they actually filled up at every event with people. They called it an unconference, and I think that was the way they wanted to operate, but these practices have not spread outside of India.

Suzanne Bowen: Mobile Monday basically has fans and in other words, the fans are very intrigued with the idea of it. When I posted on Facebook and Twitter that I was going to be interviewing you today, I received more responses instant messages with some questions. You have mentioned the following that you would rather the Mobile Monday community to answer them, but I just wanted to make sure what the questions are.

Neil Christie in Karachi, Pakistan is CEO of a popular mobile Cafe Headlion and marketing library, which may also be the site of some of the Mobile Monday Karachi meetings, asks, “Where and how will technology converge eventually?”

In addition another gentleman named Carlos Pinedas Alaniz of the USA Cambridge Group LLC asks, “Does the world need another mobile platform?”

He mentions RIM, Android, Apple, Windows 7, and then I said, “Oops you forgot Symbian. That’s an important one, so I really liked your answer while ago, so do you want to say anything else about this?”

Jari Tammisto: You know my involvement with the industry for the first fifteen years from 1989 until the 2004 was really to look into the future and try to invest in the future. But I was so much off the radar every time. Even if I had one of the closest, right answers I was way off. Basically, I love MoMo because I don’t need to know the future. I don’t need to post my personal views on it. I just live with it and if I have an urgent question, I have two thousand MoMo activists who actually are volunteering to respond back to those questions.

I would really love to post the issues anywhere, and I think I would like to use the community power of Mobile Monday to bring those messages back to those companies, who are actually building those OS systems. This gives many opportunities for the developers. They also make our lives very challenging because we need to focus on one certain OS platform of development and perhaps delete some of the other ones. Definitely, of course, the clear answer is that we need less than more, but I think it’s also great that the community can actually add their vote with the developers regarding which OS platforms are going to survive and how they will develop..

Suzanne Bowen: There is another question we will post for mobile Monday community to answer. OnSip, who anyone can find at twitter.com/onsip, asks, “What’s the forecast for mobile devices and its role in Unified Communications and VoIP and how will service providers cope?”

Now recently, the MoMo Peer Awards 2010, were very exciting. They bought to the public great innovation and practical applications from every corner of the world from Kenya, Uganda, Israel, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Finland, Estonia, Norway, France. Will you share a little bit more with us about that?

Jari Tammisto: That’s the cool part of Mobile Monday, that mobility is not technology.  We talk a lot about the OS system, the vendors, the operators, but I think mobile is changing the ecosystem. We live in a mobile society, and I think the purest words would be what mobile can do for the environment. Many of these new start-ups were solely products that are innovative in the use of mobility. This means really transparency.

We have new services that validate for Africa their elections. Many elections are coming up in different parts of Africa. If you can actually use the mobile to verify that every election post is operating as they should. I think that’s very unique and came out of Kenya a few years back. It’s now used in different parts of the world for catastrophe recoveries like in Haiti, after earthquakes in different parts of the world or like in Pakistan during the floods. I think that’s very important.

I think the unique ways of using mobility was really the significance of Mobile Monday Peer awards that was showcased. This opens a lot of eyes that those ideas could actually can come from all parts of the world than what any particular person is familiar with.

We used to think that mobile innovations came ONLY from Scandinavia, USA, or Israel. Many of these companies and the new startups are focused on totally new markets which we call created markets. They’re not undeveloped markets or developing markets but  they had really the created markets, where mobility changes lives of mothers, children and the entire countries.

Suzanne Bowen: You’re definitely part of change-making in a good way for people and organizations in all parts of the world and which brings me to another question. Obviously anything you would like to discuss, that in addition after listening to this, people wanted to know, what are the best ways to learn from you, Mobile Monday, contact information, website log, where we can find you?

Jari Tammisto: Yeah, of course the Mobile Monday website, www.mobilemonday.net just recently developed. I think we will start using that for the community to raise questions, to have a kind of trend posting. What’s happening in the different parts of the world and bring transparency in our industry.

It is one of the few “over one trillion dollar industries” in the world. Nobody is really leading it. It’s dominated by the operators, but the operators have more or less outsourced innovation to developers. It’s very challenging for very small startups to actually know what’s happening in different parts of the world.

The issues are the same, the challenges and the opportunities are the same, so if we can bring transparency to what’s happening in Africa, what’s happening in life in America, in Asia, in Europe … let those startups use the community power together. I think that’s the MobileMonday’s future. It’s really to collect information and share information which is unbiased because we do no favors to any part of the ecoystem. We don’t represent vendors or operators or even developers. We just raise the issues, bring transparency and hope that everybody will take advantage of it.

Suzanne Bowen: Excellent and  I know many from my company, will be at Titex in Dubai next week. I just heard that some of you guys will be there. I know that this will be a blast. The date for Gitex is something like October 17th or 18th to 21st and I’m really looking forward to meeting you there.

Jari Tammisto: Thanks so much. The Gitex came as a surprise to us as well because we didn’t plan to participate but when we heard about it, we realized that we have a lot of  MoMo fans in Middle East and northern Africa who can meet us there. Let’s have a Mobile Monday feast and celebration and desert safari event in Dubai. It’s really going to be fun.

Suzanne Bowen: I agree, it will be a thrilling experience, the desert safari,, just like the experience that many people have with MobileMonday meetups, so I would like to thank you for giving us your time. This was absolutely wonderful. Thank you, Jari.

Jari Tammisto: Thank you very much, Suzanne. It was pleasure.

If there is not a MobileMonday chapter in your area, contact MobileMonday.net about founding one. You read on Techistan the criteria! The podcast was transcribed by  Alishba Joseph.