Russell Beattie

Mike just posted about this, I figured I would join in as well. It looks like we're heading out to Finland next Sunday for Mobile Monday's Global Summit! Jari Tammisto from MobileMonday.net extended the invitation, so we're going to be joining Japan, Italy and others in Helsinki for a couple days of mobile brainstorming.

I have to admit I was particularly "American" in the way I went about having us become part of Mobile Monday - without talking to anyone I assumed the name for our group and bought the .us domain and eventually paid a domain squatter for the .com (becoming, in essence a squatter myself). I actually didn't do any of that with bad intent, I just didn't realize that Mobile Monday was a real and ongoing global organization (with actual sponsors, etc.). Happily, the guys in Finland have gladly adopted us after coming to a meetup a few months ago and seeing that we were in fact holding meetings very much in the spirit of the original and are sponsoring us to come out to the global event as well.

As mobility becomes more popular in the U.S. and in the rest of the world, I can see MoMo named meetups becoming more commonplace. I've gotten more than several requests from people asking how they can start their own MoMo meetings in their area. I'd like to work with the .net guys to convert the .com domain into a coordination center for these meetups (and then I'd move the Silicon Valley blog back to the .us domain). I'm not a huge fan of their current .net site, so we'll have to talk a bit before I hand over the reigns, but I'm willing to do that to help the organization move forward. We'll see how it works out.

So now I have to email the few people I know in Finland and tell them I'm coming over for a visit... Hmmm. How far away is Helsinki from Espoo? :-)

-Russ