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!

SIME co-organizes the Polar Music Sessions on August 30

SIME for the second year in row will organize the knowledge sharing event to be held in conjunction with the prestigious Polar Music Prize. In this 0900-1400 event, we will expand our focus on the social impact of music and the increasingly blurring lines between culture, medicine, technology, creativity, business and music in all its forms. The Sessions aim to tap into the brilliant minds that attend the awards with the objective to learn more about how music and entertainment form the way we live, work and play. The Polar Music Sessions offer “jam sessions” with cutting edge topics and international thought leaders who meet their Swedish peers and exchange ideas and experiences. The topics span over a wide spectrum, ranging from new opportunities in the music industry to property rights, technical innovations, and the healing properties of music. We aim to bring together some of the hottest leaders, entrepreneurs, artists and music aficionados.

Date and time: August 30, 09.00-14.00
Place: Nalen, Regeringsgatan 74, Stockholm

(Entrance is by ticket only)

You can apply for the invitation here.

See you on the 30th

SIME 09: Highlights

Relive the SIME Magic, the SIME Inspiration through some recorded footage and pictures

SIME 09 was all about the 4 dimensions of digital opportunities: business, knowledge, inspiration and fun, the 4 pillars or the corner stones for this year’s SIME. And we took every step to make sure during the 2 days you got your best business opportunities, learnt as much from the sessions, workshops, drew inspiration from the speakers and the participants and, most importantly had riveting fun before, during and after the conference.

Looking back, we did quite much shake the SIME cover. From coming up with a new format, an agenda that boasts of covering most verticals within the digital landscape, and a revised Awards format, we did have quite an uphill task to package them the best and add the SIME touch at the end. At the end, if you had as much fun at SIME as we had arranging it, we think it’s a job well done

The Highlights section is here

Some very good footage from the whole show is here

Interviews with SIME speakers and Participants here and here (thanks folks from 23business, Germany).

Pictures from Tom Solo (SIME’s “legend behind the lens”)

SIME Pool at Flickr (user uploaded)

And stay tuned for the year ahead. SIME is going even more international, so get ready to welcome SIME to your city!

SIME Awards: Published the Draft Edition

Just a quick note to say, sorry, we stand digitally corrected.

We realized that we published the draft or earlier version of the Mighty 36 order yesterday, a mistake that makes few companies go up and down the list, not giving you the final numbers of what the entire jury agreed on.  And we realized it today (yes the after-party helped us), and we have corrected it. So if you were in the Mighty 36 and wondered why your rankings differed so drastically as compared to yesterday, we are sorry.

The final ranking can be found here.

Congrats folks, you are all stars of the Nordics!

Meet the nominee of the day (36), Livebookings, Sweden

Company Bio

Livebookings helps make restaurants more profitable by delivering customers through an online, real-time booking service. Livebookings provide restaurants with the tools to build a customer database, run offers, be listed on hundreds of websites, generate more bookings and improve the way they manage their reservations.

Country

Sweden

Website

http://livebookings.net

SIME Profile

http://sime.nu/09/awards/rising-stars-of-the-north/livebookings/

Snapshot

Jury Motivation

Swedish company with a good shot of making it on the global table reservation market.

Meet the SIME jury here

Couple of days to go, the wait cannot get any tenser. May the best folks win!

Meet the nominee of the day (34), Mr. Green, Sweden

Company Bio

Mr Green is the fastest growing online gambling company in Norway and Sweden, in spite of a very late start (2008) and fierce competition. A focus on design, look and feel, brand uniqueness and responsible gaming and an ethical gambling offering made the difference. The company is currently rolled out over Europe (SE, AT, NO ready, UK, FI and ES happening this fall). Internetworld rated Mr Green Sweden’s best gambling web site beating Svenska Spel (national monopoly), Betsson, Expekt and Unibet.

Country

Sweden

Website

https://www.mrgreen.com/

SIME Profile

http://sime.nu/09/awards/rising-stars-of-the-north/mr-green/

Snapshot

(more…)

Meet the nominee of the day (33), Burt, Sweden

Company Bio

Burt builds easy-to-use products that inspires and enables better and more creative advertising:

• Copybox The world’s first word processor created with the digital copywriter in mind.
• Meme Machine Enables quick and cost-efficient creation of ”real-time ads”, ads that optimize the message dynamically for each viewer
• Rich A campaign analytics tool for digital media focused on creative agencies

Country

Sweden

Website

http://byburt.com/

SIME Profile

http://sime.nu/09/awards/rising-stars-of-the-north/bur

Snapshot

(more…)

Meet the nominee of the day (31), LoadImpact, Sweden

Company Bio

Load Impact  provides the world’s first true online load test service. Instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars to consultants for a singel load test, users can now go to www.loadimpact.com, enter a URL and for either free or a few dollars get a complete load test performed. The company excels in technology and vision in a way that will make it a true Swedish internet star.

Country

Sweden

Website

http://loadimpact.com/

SIME Profile

http://sime.nu/09/awards/rising-stars-of-the-north/load-impact/

Snapshot

Jury Motivation

Finally it’s here. A service that infact is doing load testing in a smart reliable way without you having to put resources into a massive tech project.

Meet the SIME Jury

Online Coverage by Arctic Startup, Killer Startups

LoadImpact twitter

Meet the Nominee of the Day (30), Powerkiss, Finland

Company Bio

Powerkiss has developed an integrated wireless charging solution, which turns basic furniture into smart energy platforms. To juice up your gadgets, you only need to place them above the furniture surface. Just like you´d do anyway.

Country

Finland

Website

http://powerkiss.com

SIME Profile

http://sime.nu/09/awards/rising-stars-of-the-north/powerkiss/

Snapshot

Jury Motivation

Wireless Phone, Wireless Lan and now Wireless Power – no need to say more.

Meet the SIME Jury here

[ You can read about the rest of the nominees for the SIME Awards Mighty 36 from this archive ]

SIME Helsinki – An orgy of knowledge and inspiration

SIME Helsinki was fabulous, and nothing short of sheer inspiration and knowledge. In fact, the crowd that got in (was an invite only event) were pleasantly surprised by the surge of knowledge and discussions put forward from the folks on stage. The SIME team in Helsinki did a great job in putting great content, great speakers, and great settings for some great discussions fueled by inspiring topics, in true SIME folklore.

Below is a collection of some pictures taken from SIME Helsinki, thanks to Gary Shainberg!

Some twitter feed screenshots from folks who were at Helsinki then and loved the contents and speakers.

Thanks Joakim Lonnroth and the rest of the SIME team for a great SIME Helsinki.