Grassroots professionals from the mobile sector in the Republic and NI finally met together on Monday 19th September 2011 in Dublin for an afternoon of networking and inspiring success and survival stories by Irish companies.

MobileMonday Belfast and MobileMonday Dublin chapters of the global voluntary organisation had set up this event to allow the 150+ audience to discover what their peers across the border were doing, how they could exchange smart ideas and even maybe cooperate together to improve and export successfully. Keynote speaker Nokia presented together with Microsoft for the first time in Ireland, articulating the vision and reality of the Nokia Windows Phone, while Aepona explained how they progressed from a technology to a product to a business solution-centric company.

Then motivational speaker Alex Duncan, CEO of Openmind talked through what the community could do to get Ireland moving and exporting electrons over the Internet and making money again.

Remote company (Co. Kerry) Altobridge showed how they do great and noble things for other small remote communities in Asia, Africa and the Americas, connecting them to their mobile operators. TR2 showed how the betting industry can be the best bet for a company to survive in the disruptive mobile industry, and that getting customers early and proving that your idea works helps a lot.

DRG's Kevin Foley was still shaking his head after his company's acquisition three weeks prior to the event by a large US group and reflecting on how this happened only two years after setting up the mobile marketing services company. Colm Healy impressed everyone in explaining how after only four years in existence, his company XIAM was acquired by no less than giant Qualcomm for $32 million in the midst of the credit crunch crisis in 2008!

The last word was given for three minutes each to eight up-and-coming Irish app companies, whose targets were tourists, building surveyors, children, conference call frequent users, and people who just want to build their own mobile app but without the skills for it. Winners were Talk2Group by Ammeon for Dublin and TheAppBuilder by Jampot Technologies for Belfast. They each got the audience vote and a Nokia smartphone. Not a bad thing to finish!

Presentations are available at www.MobileMondayBelfast.org and the MobileMonday mobile app MoMo in Ireland is downloadable from the Android Market and soon on the Apple AppStore, the BlackBerry AppWorld, the Amazon Android Store, the Mac Store and Intel AppUp.