SIME Barcelona was beautiful. I use the word beautiful in particular since it packed the best of SIME, combined with the perfect weather in a beautiful city. For me personally, SIME is the ray of hope in the dark winters in Scandinavia, and it adding to the energy in a sunny external was just beautiful. Probably synonyms for beautiful could also be inspiration, and enriching. And this post aims tries to package that inspiration and energy into this post, but as for the beauty of Barcelona and the lovely setting of SIME itself, sorry folks, its SIME magic.

Agenda, Speaker profiles, twitter, Facebook page

Ola Ahlvarsson - the future has already happened, its just unequally distributed

The Internet is fantastically entertaining, (ad’s like this and how Carlsberg responded with this is a classic example of using digital channels to do get more entertaining); the Internet and hence the world is socializing more than ever before; there is a totally different lens when it comes to how the digital immigrants and digital natives use the Internet in their lives. However there is a significant amount of information on the web, and finding slick ways to stay on top of the noise would help companies to find their niche and the market.

And that brought us to the beginning of the first panel: “counting the ones you reach, or reaching the ones that count” - Andrew Bradford (Platform A), Jimmy Mayman (founder goviral.com), Bob Stumpel (Result Netherlands, Advertising and Marketing Guru)

Advertising and marketing are getting more technological, and it cuts across geographical barriers and helps companies reach a vast market faster. The key for companies is to understand that people / customers are not fools, and they simply cannot be fooled to buy or transact with you unless there is a compelling incentive. Finding reach across the Internet might take more time than you can imagine, and the Susan Boyle phenomenon is not an everyday affair, and unless there is interesting, relevant and compelling content the audience wants to watch, there is no point spending millions on advertising.

And Jimmy Mayman who is running more than dozens of such campaigns wants companies to have a dedicated budget online, that can be anywhere between 5 - 60K Euros per month. The unanimous vote is that traditional media is dead, and now its more of cross-media transaction across the channels that will hold sway for companies to reach their customer faster.

Despite an online strategy, the external environment seems to be at its worst, and that brought us to the next speaker of the day on the topic : Oops the market - Christopher Pommerening, SIME Barcelona Catalyst, founder of Active Venture Capital

Chris and his venture coined a term called “Venturepreneurs” - a combination of Venture Capital catalyzed by entrepreneurs. In essence people who are still entrepreneurs running companies, at the helm of entrepreneurship and are angel investors come together to form a company / group that taps into a fund and invests in company that can be a great asset with the combined hugely amassed tacit knowledge. And he thinks the market is helping find more innovative concepts and companies, and it is going to be a very good time for people to combine and do more cooler things together.

Next was Marko Ahtisaari, founder of Dopplr, and son of Nobel Prize Laureate and former President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari was on stage to talk about “Data porn” and how people, places and mobility will be the corner stone of the next life of the internet.

[You can take a look at the SIME Dopplr crowd, and you would be surprised on how global the event is, and how global the participants are].

Act 1: Serendipity : whatever be the state of the world, people want to travel smarter and efficiently. And there will always be people who will travel despite the economic crisis, H1N1 etc. The result of connecting people who are traveling is the DNA of Dopplr.

Act 2: The Social Atlas:   Adding the community touch and location to the services, helping find things around you.

There was a quick demo on the iPhone Dopplr version and saying it looked impressive would be an understatement. It was quite neat, slick and just worked. And Marko firmly believes that the world will move towards the mobile and the location will be the cornerstone in communications, socializing and business.

This gave way to finding the European touch in the European digital scene, a panel with Jennifer LSchenker, journalist for 30 years, respected industry commentator and founder of Informilo.com, Robert Lang, current CEO of Result, Inma Martinez -Principal at Stradbroke Advisors, , and Marko Ahtisaari

It was a panel that only time could have cut through since there were such enriching discussions, and the speakers at times were in harmony and at times not, making it more spicy. But ultimately the Rolex ticked, and it meant the discussions were cut short with no clear answer.

They all agreed on the fact that Europeans are good at building good products and innovating but bad at marketing and sales, that has been typically the scoring point for the Americans. Although the feeling of old rusty museum Europe is giving way, it is still not enough to make American companies focus here. Hence, there is a lot of room for local innovation and good packaging. And one key is to accept both success and failure. Europeans do neither, too much success is not exactly welcoming, and if you are a failure you are branded, and that despises innovation. Americans treat both such parties as super stars, and that’s an attitude Europeans need to develop better. Everyone nodded.

Spanish mobile marketing expert Sixto Arias got on stage to give us some insightful tips on how mobile, and in particular mobile marketing and Internet are evolving. In essence:

• Mobile is the remote control of the media and soon the internet.
• Its the finger and your pinkie that will control your internet experience.
• Real Address vs IP Address - location and real time address vs your IP virtual address that has no meaning and value.
• Apps vs Browser - apps will be your gateway to connect to people and the world, just like the browser on the PC.

Labeled as a must listen to panel / discussion of the day, the lovely serial entrepreneurs - Martin Varsavsky, Morten Lund, Stefan Glaenzer, Manfred Bodner, Johan Staël von Holstein, the faces of European entrepreneurship in the world were all on one stage

And you would not be all wrong to think that the audience were waiting for this panel, and holding their hungry stomachs till then. After their individual commentaries on entrepreneurship, they all got together to face the grind on the facets of entrepreneurship, the next big thing, what they would invest 1M dollars in if they had access to it, cultures role in entrepreneurship amongst others.

If you have the attitude of “I will do it whatever happens” as Morten said, its no brainer that you will be a successful entrepreneur, and when you get the chance and socialist help (Martin called it “fuck you money”), use it to build businesses and not to use it only to smoke pot. Stefan felt this was the best time to get your entrepreneurship hat since its the best time to be innovative and get noticed. Johan bubbling with energy as usual, and effervescing with positivity, he felt that he sees the future of the internet to be independent distributed nodes of knowledge that combines the social element to it. And Manfred echoed what the room could not deny, to stay positive.

Spanish digital arena by Martin Varsavsky and the audience

Being a completely audience panel moderated by Martin Varsavsky, the focus on Spain’s role in the European and the global digital scene. The mood in the audience panel was one that was skeptical about the Spanish business environment, thanks to the language issues, and the mentality amongst Spaniards to not even accept a variant of Spanish, leave English and other languages.

Finally, what’s cooking in the digital natives world with Tom Varsavsky

Tom Varsavsky, a SIME favorite starting 2007 in Copenhagen when he was brave to go up on stage, and rocked the panel with his witty yet true comments to questions and here he was again in the cusp of adolescence and yet trying to be in the shoes of the charming kid that he can be.

Emails and dating are for old losers, and he thinks the natives would use Facebook messages, chat in lieu of Email; his “never met” facebook friends are as much friends as his real world friends. And killing people in games is not negative, on the contrary he thinks it gets the hate out of the system and makes you more content and peaceful in the real world. Well some things are best understood by not complicating it too hard, thats the message for digital immigrants like us.

And that quite much tells the story of SIME - keep the messages simple and clear. Treat digital channels like a novel - if you do not understand, drop it. But do not give up, find the experts. And SIME aims to bring knowledge closer to you in an interactive format for you to better understand the scene around you and your company.