SIME: It's your party!

I accidentally stumbled upon this video of Ace of Base performing for the first time in 12 years at SIME 08 Awards and Gala with Mia Rose, and it struck me again that SIME is a party where entrepreneurs and people in the digital arena are the rock stars. Its a party like no other you have seen – fun, inspiration, business and knowledge. I still remember when I first went to Stockholm and someone said “Its a conference in a night club”. And how true it is.

SIME – It’s your party and you are welcome to a new world of knowledge, inspiration, business and fun

Register for SIME 10 here

Morten Lund's interview with BBC

As we reported earlier, our very own SIME Star Morten Lund gave an interview with BBC on “Entrepreneuring through Boom and Bust”. You can listen to his interview now from the link below. Of course, it reeks of Morten style: flamboyant, passionate, don’t care, lucky, maverick, passion, loaded, lucky and did I mention passion?

Worth your 25 minutes in lieu of your TED-a-day- habit or reading the news

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00924n7

Dr. Werner Vogels: "The cloud is more secure and affordable than firms realise"

[This is a repost of the interview by Dr. Werner Vogels given to http://www.siliconrepublic.com/strategy/item/17491-the-cloud-is-more-secure/. Dr. Werner Vogels was a speaker at SIME 09, named the CTO of the year by Information Week and one of the most important people in the cloud computing arena]

As a revolution in technology, how would you rate the take-up of cloud computing?

Companies in virtually every industry are taking advantage of the on-demand, scalable and pay-as-you-go benefits. We believe that these services are rapidly changing what tech vendors are offering to customers and how those customers are purchasing IT.

Fast-growing start-ups and Fortune 500 companies alike are leveraging the on-demand technology resources from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to innovate, rapidly scale and cut costs.

These services are available on demand so a customer doesn’t need to think about controlling them, maintaining them or where they’re located. Customers access the services when they need them and pay for only what they use.

Have businesses been reluctant to embrace cloud computing because of security fears or having their data mingle with other data for compliance reasons?

I realise that CIOs feel very responsible for the performance and security of the company’s technology infrastructure. There is an element of control in being able to walk down the hall for the throat to choke. There’s also a comfort in knowing you can take some action if there’s a problem. And relinquishing that control is understandably difficult.

Once customers understand how we handle security, many say that we provide equal to or even better security than they can achieve on their own.

Examining Amazon’s cloud, you’ll see that the same security isolations are employed as would be found in a traditional data centre. It provides the same familiar approaches to security that companies have been using for decades.

How big an aspect is the cloud for Amazon’s business into the future?

AWS was developed from a skill we already have and that is building technology infrastructure at massive scale. The web-scale computing services that AWS offers are based on Amazon’s own back-end technology infrastructure, which we’ve spent over a decade building.

In the fullness of time – not sure if this will be five, 10 or 20 years – we believe few companies will have their own data centres and those that do will have much smaller footprints. For that reason, we believe that one day AWS could be as big as or bigger than our retail business, the reason is that cloud computing is where technology is going.

What does the future hold for cloud computing?

The old world meant lots of capex, underutilised infrastructure and wasted time and focus on undifferentiated IT. The new world is no capex, pay for what you use and the ability to focus on what differentiates your business. CEOs, CFOs and CIOs owe it to their shareholders to take a hard look at their technology infrastructure and make sure it’s really differentiated and adding value … as it’s likely costing them a lot of money.

Dr Werner Vogels will be speaking at the Cloud Computing Summit at Croke Park Stadium on 9 September. To learn more go to www.siliconrepublic.com/special-events/the-2010-cloud-computing-summit

YOU are Invited to take the leap with us @ SIME Stockholm, November 17,18!

SIME opens registration today for SIME Stockholm to be held on November 17 and 18. And you are invited to be part of an exciting 2 day journey of business, inspiration, knowledge and fun. Join us and listen to over 40 international experts on the main stage talking about digital opportunities, 24 expert workshops and a match-making session all to be held at Ambassadeur & Rigoletto, Kungsgatan 16, Stockholm.

This year, we have some of the big weights from the digital arena like Rolv Erik Ryssdal, CEO Schibsted (Norway), Bruno Giussani, EU Director TED Conferences, Om Malik Industry Commentator from the famed GigaOM Network. You can view the speaker roster here while we are in the meantime continuously updating the list with more big names.

[UPDATE AND CORRECTION]

You have 2 packages to choose from while buying your tickets.

a) “The Unlimited SIME” Option which gives you access to the main stage between 0900 – 1500, matchmaking from 1500-1900 and 24 workshops to choose from (which also happen between 1500-1900 at various rooms) on both the days.

b) “The Limited SIME” Option which gives you access to only the main stage and the matchmaking sessions on both the days, no workshops to go to.

On top of this, we have an additional toping that we think is as much fun as the main event itself. The Oscars of the digital scene, SIME Awards and Gala Ticket which gives you access to the SIME Gala and Awards presenting great entertainment (in 2008 we had Ace of Base perform after 12 years for the first time  to begin with), lot of fun and not to mention recognizing Nordic’s finest entrepreneurial creations in the Awards segment which happens on the end of the second day of SIME.  Of course, we end SIME with a great party where the mayor of Stockholm gives us the keys for a night of rollicking fun.

So in short, pick a or b and buy your Gala Ticket (early, limited seats) and set aside 2 days in the third week of November for its going to open your eyes to new opportunities, new business, new thinking horizons and some amazing fun.

You are welcome to join us in this journey and we think its going to be one helluva fun ride. Go ahead, register for one of the most important events of the year and take the leap with us!

Register for SIME Stockholm

On Hacking, and How to Hack a Hotel Room – Pablos Holman

Pablos “Paul” Holman is a genius. And despite the term hacker being strewed in negative connotations, here he is channelizing all his efforts into some real good causes. Pablos hacked into a phone line live at SIME to begin with to justify the negative connotation of the word hacker, and then spoke about some of his futuristic inventions for reducing global warming, eradicating Malaria and harnessing nuclear energy (a Plan C for the world if one might call that). A classic view of how one’s skills can be garnered for a positive change.

Here are couple of his nice talks Lets call it dinner time viewing that would make you drop your food!

Ready for the Tidal Wave? (by Matthew Szymczyk)

[This is a repost from Matthew Szymczyk's article at AdWeek. Matthew Szymczyk was a speaker at SIME 09 and is also the founder of Zugara, an interactive marketing and advertising agency. The original article can be found here ]

Mobile (especially location-based services) is obviously here to stay and will be the critical component to any integrated marketing campaign. Also, marketers seem to understand that augmented reality can be a useful and utility-based technology. His talk from SIME 09 can be found below.

The web is becoming a Reality – Matthew Szymczyk – Zugara.com – SIME 09 from Ayman van Bregt on Vimeo.

(more…)

The 2 Faces of Marko Ahtisaari

Clearly Marko is a “He can be whoever you want him to be”. We love him in both.

Welcome to SIME Helsinki from SIME on Vimeo.

Online Data Collection: 10000 Times More Efficient than the KGB?

Listen to former SIME Speaker (2007) Andreas Weigend (ex-chief Scientist Amazon) talk about the social data revolution. He explains that personal data collection is growing at such an exponential rate, that it’s now 10000 times more efficient than the KGB was 20 years ago. Andreas Weigend, Amazon.com’s Chief Scientist until January 2004, is a leading behavioral marketing expert. His career as a scientist, data strategist and quantitative methods innovator has enabled him to bridge the gap between industry and academia.

Listen to Tom Crampton and Morten Lund this week.

SIME Stars and former speakers Tom Crampton and Morten Lund have 2 interesting “public appearances” lined up.

Tom on using FourSquare for Business

Tom is the 360 Digital Influence for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, and heads a team stretching across 23 cities in 15 Asian territories helping companies conceive, develop and execute strategies in Social Media. Check out his interesting blog at http://www.thomascrampton.com.

Join Brian Giesen, John Stauffer and Tom Crampton for a FREE webinar about how businesses can – and are – using Foursquare for business all across Asia Pacific. (including a great case that just finished in Sydney.)

Foursquare for Business Webinar:
Thursday, 19 August 2010
11:00am Hong Kong Time
REGISTER HERE!

Morten Lund: Entrepreneuring through Boom and Bust on BBC

Morten Lund, the maverick from Denmark, the swashbuckling entrepreneur gets talking with BBC on the journey of entrepreneurship. He is not a regular run off the mill guy, and I for one would be personally curious to see how he makes it through without swearing. So do not be surprised if you do hear a lot of bleeps and booms during the interview.

You can find his interview here

We asked Costa Rica' Ex-President what is the worst spam he has ever gotten?

Our Production House (Galej Production) went around asking about Spam including Costa Rica’s Ex-President opinion at SIME Barcelona. Well, no purpose, but just to see if people even care about it any more or are they complete noobs out there too.

But if spam was a person, you know it might very well say “your love makes me strong, your hate makes me unstoppable”.