Greeks brainstorm ideas in unconferences or meetings without structure, as in Momos or Mobile Mondays.

Sujata Dutta Sachdeva I TNN

If you thought everyone hates Mondays, then think again. Hundreds of Mobile enthusiast across the globe now look forward to their Momos or Mobile Mondays, when professionals get together to brainstorm Ideas and network within the mobile Industry.

Held over 38 hotspots across the globe, Momos attract industry influencers, venture capitalists, mobile enthusiasts, entrepreneurs’ etal. They exchange info on trends debate development, foster cross border business development and most importantly network with peers locally and internationally. Similar to MoMo the IT world has its own bar camps where brain storming and sharing of views happens in an informal atmosphere. Such dos are gaining ground around the world in many sectors and the trend has also caught in India.

The first MoMo meet began in Helsinki, Finland, in 2000. It’s organized by a privately held corporation, which operates which operates in conjunction with an advisory board of mobile, telecom and media industry professionals. Each of the 38 chapters worldwide are registered with Momo, Helsinki.

To a layman MoMo may look like a conference with presentations and sessions, but geeks would rather call it as a unconference simply because of its unstructured format. It’s a meet just like an Open Space community. The sessions are created and driven by participants during the course of event. The organization has no say in its sessions, No one is invited to speak, no one presents papers, nor do they have fixed topics for the same, all that is decided on the spot.. What is more, the presentations are not published as monographs later; rather they are put up on wikisite created by enthusiasts for each MoMo event.

Every thing about this meet is informal. So the audience too could be either listening or podcasting or blogging or simply doing their own things on laptops,” says Vineet Tyagi, associate director, engineering, Impetus Infotech.  The event begins with face to face schedule making which allows for emerging developments in technology to be covered. After introduction of participants, topics are invited. The titles of various sessions are then announced. The schedule is then posted on the wall. Each session is an hour long. The day close with a participants gathering for 20-30 Minutes and sharing the day’s highlights. The podcast and presentations are saved on the wiki for later reference.

Interestingly, if a speaker exceeds his time limit, the audience is allowed to throw small soft balls at him to make him stop. Some times they SMS their reactions about the speaker and message can be seen on a large screen behind the speaker.

There are four MoMo chapters in India – Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi.- and more are in pipe lines. Infact Delhi has already hosted two such conferences, the last one on January 20, 2007.Ofcourse they had packed house. Ask Lomesh Dutta COO,