“SIME is like Christmas for the Nordic digital industry” – Johan Siwers

Below is a guest post by Johan Siwers who makes a recollection with a trip down memory lane from the time of ‘SIME Genesis’ to today. Johan is one of the online industry veterans, former MD of Match.com in the Nordics, and has over the past 15 years been involved in breaking ground for a wide range of media and online media ventures within companies like Kinnevik, Spray, Shibsted and InterActive Corp (IAC). And most importantly a credited SIME Junkie. He is one of our favorite writers at the blog with some of his previous posts here and here

Finally it is SIME time again. For anyone involved in the online scene, this is our Christmas, our time to celebrate the great industry we are representing. It is now 15 years since SIME kick started the Scandinavian industry around the Internet by putting the people, the companies and the ideas in the limelight.

Some of us recall where things stood back then. There was the report made by the agency Projektor, predicting that in 1997 online advertising would reach 300 million SEK in turn over, receiving nothing but laughter in response. Earlier this year IRM announced that the online media is the second largest media in Sweden, reaching a turnover of 5,7 billion SEK in 2010.

There was Spray challenging the traditional players proclaiming that the online media was superior to more or less anything else. But the early products such as the Citinavigator, the citiguide Rival or the directory/search service punkt.se did not have any material impact on the world outside of the core online community. This fall Google received the award for “best media in Sweden”, taking over the spot TV4 has subscribed to for some years.

There was SIME being bold and brave when setting up – and filling up – SIME at the classic location Cirkus at Djurgården. When SIME now some years later returns to Cirkus, it is to confirm it’s position as a grown up industry. Still yet being a teenager with passion, ambitions and adventures at the horizon.

Over the years SIME has always been there, bringing the world to Scandinavia – and Scandinavia to the world. The list of influential people that has been visiting – and returning year after year – is nothing less than impressive. SIME has been inspiring us all by sharing stories about success as well as lessons to be learnt by failure. The SIME co-founders, Ola and Christoffer, have raised the bar – in more than one sense – and become a symbol for the passion many of us feel about the industry we are in.

In my role as the Chairman of IAB Sweden, the global industry organization for the online industry, I am happy to be a supporting partner of SIME this year. The members behind IAB are long time visitors at SIME, and we see SIME as a platform for a dialog with You and the rest of the industry. We are passionate about strengthening the online industry and to grow the share of the online media in the eyes of advertisers, agencies and media owners.

IAB, just like SIME, relies on the trust we can get from the industry. We believe the challenges ahead in an ever changing industry calls for a strong industry organization. That is why we are taking the lead in important questions for us all, for example:

1. Our task forces within Mobile, Legal or Search
2. Establishing a framework for the cookie regulation debate,
3. Industry research, with reports like AdEx2011, covering the development in 25+ markets in Europe
4. And ongoing seminars within areas such as search, mobile and social media

Bloggers @ SIME 11: Meet Evelina Ander covering E-Commerce

Evelina, the theme blogger covering E-commerce, is a marketing manager at Yubico. When not focusing social media and email marketing, she blogs at her personal blog and on the swedish book blog, Bokcircus.

What are you passionate about in the digital space?

- My passion is to find out how companies, brands and individuals (meaning more or less everyone) can take the best advantage of everything cool that happens every day in the digital space and
transform that into something useful. My main focus has always been communication, how we by words and tools can reach our goals. It stretches from how to convert visitors to customers, increase
brand awareness or how to manage your every day digital life.

What do you expect from this year’s SIME?

- This would be my first time at SIME. My expectation is to be inspired from the conference, workshops and all the people I would meet as well as make it possible to inspire those who can’t participate
with my blog posts and tweets. In the end – find useful ways of improving communication and e-commerce.

Keep track of Evelina!

- Visit her blog at evelinaander.se and start following Evelina on twitter where she’s goes by the handle @evelinaander.

We at SIME are happy to welcome Evelina as theme blogger and are hoping she’ll have a great time at her first SIME Conference.

If you want to go to SIME Stockholm 2011, but haven’t got a ticket, you are still in luck. The registration is still open, but the tickets are starting to run short, so hurry up and sign up for this years conference!

Viral is dead! [Updated]

As an addition to the short post about the art of Viral here, below is a teaser by Jacob Lachmann, who runs GoViral (part of AOL now), one of the leading viral agencies out there. You can meet him at SIME Stockholm and attend his workshop on November 15th from 17.15 – 18.00. Register for SIME here

More Passionate speakers, 24 Workshops, networking and lot of fun

SIME is proud to present more world leading speakers sharing how they created services that hundreds of millions love, Niklas Zennström, the founder of Skype is back at SIME11, as is Samir Arora, the CEO of Internet giant Glam.com boosting more than 250 million users. Also Christian Quarles, marketing director of Metro shares how he made Lady Gaga chief editor for a day and created online history and many more…

Check out the latest speakers updated here!

For the complete schedule for SIME Workshops, click here!

To see the full agenda for SIME Stockholm November 15, click here!

To see the full agenda for SIME Stockholm November 16, click here!

Tickets are selling out fast! Please register here!

Viral is dead! Long live Viral Marketing

Virality is moving from art to science and the need to have a viral marketing and communication campaign has become more important than ever. How many ad campaigns and brands do you remember? Does the medium of communication matter – you see a viral video on TV, do you try to find it on youtube and share it with friends? Should viral have a large incentive for you to share, like the campaign below from IKEA in 2009 where they combined your carrot of getting a free furniture with a stick of making you comment and share with friends or another campaign where MINI made people run around Stockholm to find virtual MINI cars to drive?

Well there are so many ways to make your message sticky and viral, and together with the experts at GoViral, we show you how your video message can have the viral zing. GoViral are experts in making your videos viral and they have been doing it so well working with some of the largest brands such as P&G, Nike, Nissan etc. We have a workshop together with them on November 15, 17.15 – 18.00 at Hasselbacken where they take you on a hands on case safari of some of the best practices in making your message go viral!

You can read the agenda here

Welcome to a viral journey! Welcome to SIME Stockholm November 15, 16.

SIME loves bloggers!

Friends, if you feel that we haven’t communicated well enough about the bloggers pass this year and we scrapped of the exercise, breathe in peace as we do! While we are uber busy making sure you have the best SIME experience, the bloggers pass has and is always something that we are very happy and proud to give away. We have had a previous post about it here

Theme blogger, say what?
At SIME we believe in change and are driven by a curiosity for new things. This is why we this year want to try something slightly new when it comes to conference bloggers. Our goal is to, with the help of passionate bloggers, make the reporting of SIME valuable both during and after the event, for people both on and off set. In order to acchive this, we’ve decided to let each invited blogger focus on a certain theme. The theme blogger application is open for everyone. If you are selected you will commit to cover a specific topic and write at least one summary of your topic in English on the SIME blog. Of course you are welcome to blog all you want in whatever language you want on your own blog.

Theme blogger benefits
As a theme blogger you are very important to us and we put great value in your efforts! Therefor we will do our very best to show you our appreciation and give you the attention and treatment hard working bloggers deserve. To shorten it down: you will be given more than just a badge and a seat, trust us.

How are the theme bloggers selected?
We have 9 blog passes to hand out. The selection will be based on an ambition to assemble a blog team with both diversity, skills and passion. Please apply below and send word around about it if you know someone in your network who is a great theme blogger candidate

How to apply

1. Fill out the form below (name, url, email, phone number and Twitternick if you have one)
2. Pick one or several themes that you are interested in covering.
3. Give us a brief motivation of why you should be one of our theme bloggers at SIME Stockholm 2011.

We need your application Tuesday, November 1st at 11.59 PM at the latest. Good luck we say

SIME Stockholm – speakers preview

As we keep adding more speakers, here is a quick preview of some of the more confirmed speakers.

Welcome to 2 days of inspiration. Welcome to SIME Stockholm!

SIME Stockholm : 10 reasons why you shouldn’t miss SIME!

For those of you who are still considering to attend SIME Stockholm this year we thought we should give you 10 reasons why you shouldn’t miss SIME this year.

1. A fantastic mix of speakers – from the founder of Glam.com to a 12 year old entrepreneur, we have tried to bring the best mix of speakers who can shake things up

2. A well crafted agenda that helps you surf the next wave – from the battle of the living room (why your TV will never be the same again) to 15 years of e-commerce – what have we learnt? – topics that get even better with 24 workshops giving you in-depth insights with the movers and shakers of the industry

3. 24 Workshops – you wish you could attend them all: We have 24 workshops together with some of the best moderators featuring movers and shakers where your participation is obligatory

4. SIME Investor Summit: For the first time ever we bring together VC’s, entrepreneurs and senior corporate executives for a focused session from 1530 – 1800 on both the days

5. SIME Non-Profit: For the second year, we continue working with the non-profit sector, social entrepreneurs and organizations that are making the world a better place, inviting them to attend the whole SIME conference for free to use digital to connect causes with people.

6. SIME Match Making: Come to our dedicated match making corner and meet people who you would want to connect with – be it other delegates or partners. Or better, use our app (to be released soon) where you can search people at the event and connect with everyone around you. Business is all about networking and we want you to squeeze the juice out of SIME by connecting with others who can help build your business or are fun to hang out with

7. SIME Awards: We continue our ever-lasting tradition of celebrating Nordic’s finest entrepreneurs and large companies through our traditional SIME Awards repackaged this year. More info on this coming soon…

8. SIME Gala Dinner: We end the 2 days of knowledge and inspiration with a gala dinner where we celebrate our journey so far and wish each other all the luck and spirit to continue our journey into the new year of opportunities and business

9. SIME Experience and Magic: We like to call it the SIME magic where you have surprise performances, strange combination of things you might not have seen before which, hopefully if not anything else take notice and make you smile.

10. SIME After-Party : And what’s SIME without a raving after-party – where as a SIME attendee you get access to different clubs and as we call it “you have the keys to the city” with your SIME badge. We end the night with a riveting evening of celebrations

And if you are intrigued, you should register here – tickets are going out like hot cakes (and get your friends too!)

SIME goes Svenska Turistgalan!

SIME together with our partners at Swedish Travel and Tourism Federation are putting together Europe’s largest seminar and gala focusing on the development in the travel and tourism industry, celebrating succesful entrepreneurs, hearing from policy makers and regulators on the advancements in the industry and how we all can be part of shaping the future growth and development.

The event is on October 20th at Berns, Stockholm. You can find all the information here

Fastest growing sector 

Travel and tourism is the largest and fastest growing sector with more than 800M people traveling every year, is the world’s number 1 employer and contributes to 10% of global spending. From the airports to museums to tourist passes to finding out information on what to do where, online has only accelerated the consumption mechanism. From a consumer point of view, we of course use tripadvisor to read reviews and ratings of places, use our social network to get recommendations on things to do, book our flights through our online travel agent, use our phone for fixing itineraries, and as much as travel is engrained in the digital world, there is so much work to be done, and the Svenska Turistgalan wants to bring such ideas to life.

SIME and Turistgalan   

SIME as part of our mission to spread knowledge about internet and digital opportunities, will help bring out some of the coolest trends, technologies and tools that are in the offing today within the travel and tourism sector – for instance, layar on augmented reality or tripbirds with their social travel engine amongst other such emerging concepts.

Digital opportunities


Follow a journey into digital opportunities where SIME, Europe’ s leading event for digital business, look into new business opportunities, interesting case studies and a digital future that changes the travel industry fundamentally to be moderated by Ola Ahlvarsson, international serial entrepreneur, investor and founder of SIME together with Swedish and international leaders. Meet some of the digital world stars showing you a range of exciting business opportunities!

Full day seminar and Gala Evening

To be held on October 20th at Berns in Stockholm, the Turistgala features high prominent speakers such as Taleb Rifai, General Secretary of UN World Tourist Organization, Thea Chisea, Head of Aviation, Travel & Tourism Industry, World Economic Forum, Pablos Holman, The Intellectual Ventures Laboratory amongst other international leaders and entrepreneurs in the space. You can find all the information here. The day ends with a celebration of the people who have pioneered the industry through 3 separate awards handed over in Eurovision style with a mix of media, interviews, on stage announcements and a lot of fun!

Are you in the travel & tourism industry? Or want take advantage of the new business opportunities arising in this rapidly growing industry! If you are, this is a day you can’t afford to miss!

Passion Wins @ SIME Stockholm, get your tickets now!

The opportunities in the digital arena keep developing and creating business, entertainment, political turmoil and unparalleled opportunities for the ones in the know. During two action-packed days SIME Stockholm will be your guide into new insights, concrete business opportunities, tools and the smartest brains from the international digital arena. In addition we take having fun seriously and know that no event is better than its participants. Welcome to SIME Stockholm 2011, November 15-16.

Welcome to one of the most important events of the year.

http://sime.nu/stockholm/