What is GenMobileC?
GenMobileC = Generation Mobile Community
GenMobileC is a non-profit service community started in July 2009 by Kitty Desjardins and Tomi Ahonen with several young Chinese mobile, web2.0 professionals who share a common belief in international collaboration to innovate for a better future.
With the support of our international experts from Finland, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, China and US. GenMobileC provides a platform for members to collaborate in content knowledge exchange and engage in mobile and social network innovations.
In early 2002, the world’s first book on 3G service was written by Tomi Ahonen and Joe Barrett: Services for UMTS: Creating Killer Applications in 3G. Ahonen’s two later books, m-Profits (2002) and 3G Marketing (2004), describe visionary 3G service and monetization models which became an inspiration for many 3G service providers: MNO’s, MVNO’s and mobile social network businesses. In 2005, Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore co-authored another best seller, Communities Dominate Brands, and introduced the term “Generation C” (C meaning communities). This book analyzed some early successes of engaging communities by global brands. Together, they launched a highly successful blog, Communities Dominate Brands in February 2005.
Today, seven years after Services for UMTS and four years after Communities Dominate Brands, the success of 3G is no longer a question. Social network services (SNS) like Facebook, microblogs like Twitter, and other highly successful businesses such as Cyworld, Habbo Hotel and Kaixin, have been built around communities where web or mobile access is simply a choice by users based on what’s available to them at the moment. Mobile subscriptions have reached four billion plus, whereas PC internet penetration has only slightly passed one billion. Several countries, Japan, Korea, UK and Finland, have seen mobile internet access surpass PC internet access. And in emerging economies such as in Africa, Indonesia, Philippines and China, a significant portion of their populations’ first and only experience with the internet is through mobile phones, not the PC.
With a 7+ billion global population, 4+ billion mobile subscriptions (more than 3+ billion unique users), Generation C introduced in 2005, has entered the era of Generation Mobile Community.
Our Mission
- Promote innovation in mobile apps and services that serves fundamental human needs: fight poverty, improve healthcare, education and the environment
- To inspire and empower students that they can make a difference
- To inspire future entrepreneurs in creating social responsible profits
Founding members
With 20 years of industry experience at Sun Microsystems and other telecom businesses, Kitty returned from Silicon Valley, the hub of technology innovation and venture funding with a desire to contribute to innovation and education in mobile and social media in China and Asia.
Prior to starting the GenMobileC initiative, Kitty was Asia Pacific Managing Director of IP3 Networks and Head of Business Development at Mostyle Pty Ltd. where she still serves as an advisor.
Tomi T Ahonen is a six-time bestselling author of hardcover telecoms/tech books who has also released a series of three eBooks in 2009. An independent consultant and motivational speaker in the converging areas of mobile telecoms, internet, media, advertising, credit and banking, social networking and virtual reality, Tomi is based in Hong Kong. He lectures on these topics at Oxford University for which developed the short courses for 3G services, 3G business, mobile-TV and 7th Mass Media. Mr Ahonen is seen annually at about 20 conferences on six continents.
The father of several of the industry’s most used theories, tools and concepts, and a founding member of several industry groups, as well as being the holder of a telecoms competitiveness world record, Tomi Ahonen has been quoted in hundreds of press articles including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Business Week and the Economist, and is regularly seen on TV. He writes several columns and articles for industry press every year and blogs daily, twitters, and has profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Bollin is senior product manager of Digu, a popular Chinese micro blog service.
Prior to Digu, Bollin was a product manager at Xiaonei. He has extensive experience in China’s SNS and microbloging services. Bollin is our webmaster, advisor on technology, and much more.
Jun is a Peking University alumni.
He looks after the student club campaign acitivities for our PitchIT competition events.
Nini is an artist and designer based in Shanghai, China.
She mainly focuses on oil painting, drawing and illustration and also does sculpture and graphic design. She’s crazy into album artwork and screen-printing poster creation. Nini designed the GenMobileC logo for us and also helps with our website design.
Michael helps us with translation and occasional blog content.He is a blogger, content contributor, and has been working for a top 10 wireless equipment vendor for 10 years in senior position in R&D, presales, marketing, product planning and product design. He now lives and works in Texas, USA. Being a veteran of the wireless industry, Michael’s cross-continent and cross-cultural lifestyle enabled him to see both sides and enjoy the beauties of both societies. Expect refreshing perspectives and insights from him as well as plain funny stuff.
Advisors
Dr. Gang Lu is the co-founder of the OpenWeb Asia Workgroup which is the first independent workgroup focusing on the Asian Internet industry. He is passionate about the Open Web concept and plays a very active role in building efficient channels among Asian local markets as well as between the Asia web and global industry. Gang Lu was the Asia Business Development Director of Netvibes.com, and one of the first to introduce the Widget economy and Open Platform into the Asian market. Prior to joining Netvibes, he was involved with the research and development of Multimedia Messaging Service platform and 3G applications at Dialogue Communications Ltd. a leading mobile messaging service provider in UK. Gang Lu was awarded TOP10 Best Expert of 2008 by iResearch. His blog MOBINODE.com covers the Internet market news in Asia, especially in China, and was also voted as the best China Tech Blog in 2007 and 2008.
Leo Wang is founder of two years old Mobile2.0 Forum with 1000+ professional members from Telecom, Internet and Mobile industry.
He is an expert in China’s mobile industry and passionate about all things mobile. Leo has 8 years experience working in telecommunication value added service, social networking service, mobile application and handset platform industry. He also hosts the China Symbian Foundation salon with the first salon held in Shanghai in August 2009.
CEO, Mostyle Pty Ltd.
Mr. Young has over 10 years experience in designing, developing, launching and managing mobile entertainment services. His industry experiences ranges from roles at Telstra, Nokia, StarHub (Singapore) and the Hong Kong Polytechnic’s Multimedia Innovation Centre. Alex has been working with mobile internet technology beginning with Nokia’s first WAP enabled mobile phone in 2000. He was also involved in the world’s first Mobile Multiplayer Platform developed by Nokia. He has detailed knowledge of mobile portal implementations having been a core member of the Telstra WAP, Telstra 3G, Telstra i-mode and StarHub i-mode launch teams. In 2004 he founded Mostyle which has had success in South East Asia with their white-label mobile community platform and mobile site building tool. Alex is a passionate gamer and social network aficionado who is regularly floating between Melbourne, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Sami is a mobile industry expert with 15 years experience with the Internet and mobile services domains. He has worked in roles ranging from research, strategy and innovation to business development, most recently at Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks. He holds an MSc degree from the University of Helsinki and also several patents. He is currently based in Melbourne, Australia, and enjoys various sports and board games in his free time.
Perey is an evangelist with over 18 years experience in new and emerging multimedia communications markets. She was the publisher and editor of The QuickTime Forum from 1991-1993 and the founder of The QuickTime Movie Festival.
Perey has authored over 100 feature articles on the topic of multimedia communications and is frequently quoted in trade and business media. She is an invited speaker at industry events and serves on panels and committees dedicated to the advancement of rich media experiences in business and consumer markets. Perey co-authored the Personal Mobile Video Communications market research report published by Wainhouse Research in 2006. In 2007 she prepared the Informa Telecoms & Media market research report: Mobile Social Networking: Communities and Content on the Move published by Informa in January 2008. In 2008 Perey co-founded Mobile Monday Switzerland. She also began researching and preparing the Informa Telecoms & Media market research report: Mobile Social Networking: Business, Technology and Mobile Operator Strategies to be published by Informa in February 2009.
Kei is the Founder and CEO of Infinita Inc, a leading mobile research, consulting and development firm based in Tokyo. His company is consisted of a team of multinationals and helps clients across the globe create world-class services on connected devices. Their clients include IBM, AOL, Cybird, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Docomo.com, Itochu, Adobe, Gameloft, Qualcomm, Swisscom, and the Embassies of Canada and Denmark in Japan.
Kei was born and raised in the United States and has now lived a little more than half of his life in Japan. After graduating Waseda University, he has worked for Panasonic, Lucent Technologies and Cybird, all leading companies in their respective industries. His passions aside from work, include tennis, snowboarding, farming, traveling and cooking with his wife. He is a gadget lover by nature and is now hooked on the iPhone 3G.
International Experts
Publisher, lecturer at Oxford University, blogger, consultant
With a unique perspective spanning multiple aspects of Mobile Applications, Ajit is an innovator and a pioneer in the Mobile Data industry. In 1999, Ajit co-founded futuretext, an innovative publishing / consulting company focused around mobility and digital convergence. Ajit speaks at Mobile related conferences – on both strategy and technology. His latest book (Aug 2006) is ‘Mobile web 2.0′
PitchIT 2009 jury
William BaoBean, Partner, Softbank China, India Holdings
Sami Makelaine
Tomi Ahonen
Kitty Desjardins
Leo Wang
Gang Lu