Danish company Zyb, one of three SIME Innovation Award Winners at the SIME Innovation Day in February, has aquired another Danish company in the mobile phone sector - Imity, who makes a social network for mobile phones based on bluetooth proximity. Imity functionality will be integrated in the new social phonebook application Zyb is releasing soon.
We are still waiting for a truly successful mobile social network. Basing it on the actual numbers in the phone is probably the strongest proposition so far, and it will be very interesting to follow Zyb and their release of a social phonebook.
Archive for April, 2008
The DNA of Change - SIME 08 in Stockholm, Nov 12-13
In the deepest mines and (minds) of Silicon Valhalla the SIME team is crafting this year’s SIME event in Stockholm November 12-13 and it is our ambition to make this years SIME the perfect mix of business, inspiration, knowledge and fun.
When the world is changing around us at warp speed the pressure on individuals, organizations and even countries to change is becoming stronger. We want to bring the best change makers and learn how our digital world is changing and how we and our companies shall change and evolve to stay ahead in the game. This year’s SIME will focus on these change makers, the art of adapting to change and what happens if you don´t.
The underlying theme for this year is the DNA of Change.
This means that everything can change this year except one thing…the fact that you are cordially invited to join us
November 12-13 in Stockholm.
Stay radiant,
Ola Ahlvarsson, Christoffer Granfelt and the SIME Crew
The Nustart gang of exchange students from Singapore are at it again with a one day conference in Stockholm. They have a number of successful events behind them, like Hej! 2007, Hubbub and Stockholm Facebook Garage, where entrepreneurs have met in a laid back style to discuss a hot topic and listen to some insightful people talk about it. This time the focus is the business opportunities and future of virtual worlds, and the conference is called Hej Världen!.
From the coference website:
Hej Världen! is a technology cum entrepreneurial conference revolving around virtual reality (VR) and virtual worlds. This interactive event aims to expose current and future innovations in VR, examine the revolution of contemporary technologies with VR, and explore business opportunities within virtual worlds.
There is no date officially announced yet, but a comment on the Facebook group wall says it’s May 23 from 13.00 to 18.00.
Online video clips, blogging and social networking use are all on the rise. This report from Universal McCann contains usage statistics on social media from a survey of 17 000 people. Found via the exellent blog Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen.
Disrutuptive Media is a one-day conference in Stockholm about new media trends. SIME friend Beata Wickbom is the moderator for the conference, and the SIME blog will be there to pick up on interesting themes and people.
A few web tips for a nice sunday:
Phorecast has a new podcast out with an interview with Evan Malone who is pioneering work on 3D printers. Listen to it here:
Phorecast Podcast No 05 – Evan Malone, Fab@Home.
Alltop.com is a website with quick, custom newspapers based on different topics. Each sub-site collects headlines from a number of top blogs and other sources in one place. Examples: Venture Capital, Startups, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and World News.
Fokus has a big feature in Swedish about what the always-connected cloud computing Internet means, written by blogger and journalist Fredrik Wass. Read it here: Molnet förändrar allt.
Swedish entrepreneurs are finding their way to new startup social network Swedish Startups created by Mattias Swensson of bloggkoll.com. The network has over 300 members and gives you an interesting view of what’s up in the Swedish startup landscape.
SIME has a Facebook group, join it to find out about SIME events and keep in touch with other SIME people.
This is a panel discussion from the Google Zeitgeist event last year. Three friends of SIME – Loic Le Meur, Martin Varsavsky and Marc Samwer – talk about entrepreneurship and their companies. They also manage to tell a few good war stories from their life in the startup world.
The afternoon at Medieteknik Branschdag brought some thoughts from people working with traditional media companies who want to reinvent themselves for a networked world.
Sara Öhrvall took the audience through 24 hours of media consumption. As more and more people live in urban areas, habits and dreams change and concepts like the morning newspaper or morning tv have to change and adapt. Bonnier has launched an idea lab called B.Vision to spur and channel innovation around new media.
Joakim Jardenberg from Mindpark talked about how transparency can be used to test ideas, drive conversations and attract the best minds out there. By giving data and insights to the community instead of keeping them secret you get invaluable feedback and another type of business advantage than you could get by holding on to your information.
Both Mindpark and Bonnier are trying to think about how their traditional media companies can evolve and survive in a changing media landscape. But from all the talks today about these changes it’s apparent that radical change is the exception. Passionate individuals seem to drive the discussion about change in somewhat hostile environments used to old production models and economic logic. Just from the topics these speakers touch upon, we can deduce that themes like the semantic web and the power of transparency, blogging and software are far from mainstream knowledge in the media world. This means that there are a multitude of opportunities for both knowledge creation and business in the shifting borderland between old media and new.
A common theme on the Medieteknik Branschdag event is the changing nature of the mediascape. Björn Jeffrey from Good Old talks about a technical divide between those who understand the disruptive force of software and those who don’t, and suggestst that any business touched by Internet technologies should also view themselves as being in the technology business. Swedish Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask talks about how the juridical system can cope with how people consume media today, about how business and law can keep up with the fast paced movement towards free. Pontus Schultz talks about how media needs to realise that their old business models based on distribution monopolies will not work in the new economy.
You can follow the event live by a Bambuser stream from Björn Falkevik of Stockholm Social Media Club:
Students of the Media Technology programme at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm will host a one-day conference for students and alumni about the media business this wednesday, the 9th of April. Speakers include Björn Jeffrey from Good Old, Sara Öhrvall from Bonnier, Joakim Jardenberg from Mindpark and Swedish Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask. The event also features an exhibition where companies, unions, magazines and incubators present themselves. The exhibition features exciting student projects as well. See the full programme at the event website.
The SIME blog will post updates from the conference, collecting and summarizing the highlights and buzz of the event.
