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  • Media Round-Up from DLD 11

    Posted by mahesh in Blog Entrepreneurship Events Inspiration | Jan 25, 2011 @ 13:00

    Staci. D. Kramer from ContentNext Media, Robin Wateurs from Tech Crunch have done some very good coverage from the panels and thoughts of the luminaries at DLD, one of Europe’s premier tech conferences. DLD, a 3 day event held in Munich, brings together the 170 thought leaders from around the world, over 1000 participants, bringing together a mix of digital, media and art. SIME along with DLD, Le Web are part of the European Alliances of Conferences, sharing ideas and thoughts amongst each other.

    Here is the summary from some of the panels at DLD:

    And here is the link to the livestream




  • SIME Speaker Updates – Inspiration and Story Telling!

    Posted by mahesh in Entrepreneurship SIME 10 SIME News SIME People Upcoming | Nov 10, 2010 @ 13:09

    With the count down to SIME, here are some more speakers who are coming to SIME, going to be part of workshop discussions and available to meet you! Welcome to SIME. Welcome to 2 days of inspiration and story-telling.

    MORE TOP SPEAKERS TO SIME STOCKHOLM 17-18 NOV
    We’re proud to reveal more speakers for the SIME Stockholm roster. We will continuously update the speakers list. Stay tuned. Many of the speakers will also be involved as expert teachers in the SIME Academy workshops.
    Nina Nina Wahlgren, Head of Brand Development & Coordination, SEB
    Nina is an experienced communications proffessional responsible for developing one of Sweden’s most trusted brands in finance with a long history being part of the fabric of Swedes society.
    Karin Karin Larsson, Director Communications, Volvo Cars Sweden
    Karin Larsson is responsible for communication of Volvo cars, overseeing the Nordic communications efforts and bulding one of the brands that define Swedes in the global community….
    Merci Merci Olsson, Marketing and Communications, Nobel Web
    Merci Olsson has a 15 year background in marketing and communication mainly on the digital platform. Formerly PR Manager at Pricerunner.com and several advertising agencies, Merci is now the….
    Kati Kati Sulin, COO and Interactive Strategy Director EMEA Hill and Knowlton Finland
    Before joining Hill & Knowlton, Kati Sulin spent eight years at digital marketing solutions company TOIMISTO in management role where she worked with various clients integrating their marketing initiatives.
    Barsness Aaron Barsness, Associate Marketing Director P&G Nordic
    Aaron has been with P&G since 2000 and has worked with several of P&G’s leading brands including Yes, Ariel, and Pampers. Aaron’s current role is leading the Brand Operations division in the Nordics.
    Sohrab Sohrab Ghotbi, Director Advertising, Global Online Media
    As Advertising Director, International Digital Media, Sohrab Ghotbi leads the global online sales effort for the New York Times Media Group. He has been based in Paris since 2007.  
    Deinoff Martin Deinoff, VP Marketing and Business Development, Creuna
    Martin is the Senior manager and business consultant in Creuna, one of the Nordics’ leading digital communication agencies. Martin is vastly experienced in strategy, concept development, project management…
    Liljedahl Joakim Liljedahl, Head of Marketing, Nordic and Baltics, Sony Ericsson
    Joakim Liljedahl is the Head of Marketing for Sony Ericsson in the Nordics since 2009. Joakim was part of the Swedish/Japanese joint venture already in its founding year 2001, and has since then had…
    Katrin Katrin Ley, Global Marketing Director, Reebok
    Katrin Ley is Head of Brand Strategy, Business Development and Women’s Sport Business Unit for the Reebok brand. Katrin is responsible for developing the brand strategy and process that delivers…
    Dwan Michael Dwan, Microsoft Advertising
    Michael searches for harmony and surprise. He is passionate about brands and helping them take full advantage of the interactive palette to engage and entertain audiences. As the Director of Creative….
    Kartzman Ben Kartzman, CEO of Spongecell
    Ben Kartzman is the CEO and co-founder of interactive ad company Spongecell which uses cutting-edge technology to transform standard banner ads into dynamic flash ads with rich media-like functionality….
    Raoul Raoul Grünthal, CEO Schibsted
    Raoul Grünthal is the CEO of Schibsted and a veteran in the media industry. Raoul has served as the CEO of Svenska Dagbladet since 2006. Between 2003 and 2006 he was chief editor and CEO of the…
    Vincent John Vincent, CEO, Eyewonder
    Mr. Vincent co-founded EyeWonder in August of 1999 and was part of the original team that pioneered first ever Instant Play Video Ad in 2000. Vincent is active in setting direction for the future of online rich…
    Jonathan Jonathan Forster, Global Sales Director, Spotify
    Before joining Spotify, Jonathan Forster spent eight years at digital marketing solutions company Valueclick in a series of management roles where he worked across display media, price comparison…




  • SIME Non-Profit in one of the leading news site in Sweden [in Swedish]

    Posted by mahesh in Blog Entrepreneurship Inspiration SIME News | Oct 26, 2010 @ 7:36

    [Dagensmedia.se, one of the leading news sites in Sweden ran an article about SIME Non-Profit that we are launching this year. The original article in Swedish is here and the repost is below]

    Organisatörerna bakom Sime drar igång Sime Non-Profit Summit.

    Tanken är att bygga en plattform där sociala entreprenörer och ideella organisationer kan lära av varandra och få kunskap om hur digitala kanaler, it och sociala medier kan användas för förbättra människors liv.

    – Vi känner att det behövs ett forum dit ideella organisationer och sociala entreprenörer kan vända sig, säger Therese Engström, verksamhetschef och grundare till Sime Non-Profit tillsammans med Claudia Gonzalez och Sime.

    Konferensen hålls parallellt med Sime 17-18 november. På programmet står bland annat utbildning kring hur man använder Facebook, Google och Microsofts kanaler för att engagera potentiella kontakter, hur Obamas valkampanj drevs i sociala medier, kampanjoptimering och ett seminarium om hur FN:s flyktingorgan fått över en miljon Twitter-anhängare.

    – Målsättningen är att Sime Non-Profit ska bli ännu större de kommande åren.

    Under Sime Non-Profit delas även ett pris ut som ska belöna en inspirerande och visionär marknadsföringsinsats. Priset sponsras av Microsoft Advertising som bidrar med utrymme i sina kanaler till ett värde av 100 000 kronor.




  • Infographic: Facebook Mobile Growth – Hysteric!

    Posted by mahesh in Entrepreneurship Knowledge | Oct 21, 2010 @ 13:11




  • TED Talks – Stories worth telling at SIME

    Posted by mahesh in Blog Entrepreneurship Inspiration Knowledge SIME 10 Upcoming | Sep 30, 2010 @ 14:18

    The TED conference  started in 1984, but it was with the power of the internet, beginning 2006 that the world started to understand the power of gathering a set of thought leaders to talk about their vision, futuristic thinking and forward looking outlook. And as we know TED today, its become the nucleus of inspiration, knowledge and all things good about man kind, intelligence, power and connecting ideas with opportunities.

    Simply put, its a classic case of good ideas spread, and great ideas catch on like a virus. TED has become the story of the decade and with chapters like TED Fellow, TED India, TEDx all around the world, the ideas have been exported to become talking points at branding and knowledge sessions at work to dinner tables at home.

    At SIME, we want to bring the art of story telling to you.

    And we have invited Bruno Giussani, EU Director for the TED Conferences to share some of the most inspiring stories that are worth telling.

    We invite you to this tale of inspiration and knowledge. We invite you to 2 days of SIME Stockholm full of energy, adrenaline and inspiration.
    Warm Welcome

    Bruno Giussani, EU Director TED Conferences

    Bruno Giussani is the European director of the TED conferences (www.ted.com) and a writer (his works have appeared in many publications including the NYTimes and the Economist). He has authored several books, including “Roam: Making Sense of the Wireless Internet “(Random House), and is a member of the Boards of Tinext, a Swiss Internet consultancy, and of the Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. He’s producing the TEDGlobal 2010 conference http://conferences.ted.com/TEDGlobal2010/




  • Presenting to you SIME Non-Profit

    Posted by mahesh in Blog Entrepreneurship Inspiration SIME 10 SIME Companies SIME News Upcoming | Sep 27, 2010 @ 16:14

    A landmark day within the SIME Ecosystem as we spawn out a new arm called SIME Non-Profit, committed to making the world a better place, one step at a time. Its amazing when you think about it how one simple idea can grow in your head like a virus. It goes back to Claudia Gonzales and her profound influence on the audience at SIME -09 and most importantly the moderator Ola Ahlvarsson and the SIME team.

    Claudia Gonzalez, heading the PR for the UN agency for refugees, UNCHR, used new and innovative ways to maximize the organization’s media outreach, resulting in an enormous growth and attention to the support system for refugees all around the world.

    But to think about it, not all socially inclined organizations have the right channels to get their noble causes out to the people and companies who want to support them. When talking to different non-profit organizations, we realized that a large portion of their resources (time, money etc.) are devoted to getting the attention and eye-balls through the traditional, expensive, media ways, which is not completely in sync with the efficient technology and digital opportunities that are available to all of us today.

    And this is where SIME wants to play a part. So this year at SIME Stockholm on November 17 – 18, we have one focus on the non-profit segment whereby we invite several organizations and their change-makers to understand the digital landscape, learn from case studies and further help their cause by channeling their resources through the right avenues. In short, a digital focus for non-profit organizations and social entrepreneurs.

    SIME Non-Profit Summit

    This year at SIME Stockholm, we will give hundreds of people working to help others access to a free SIME Non-Profit Summit. In the company of thought leaders and business executives, we present phenomenal case studies and hands-on advice to help implement social causes and take their reach to millions more through the interconnectedness of the web. While there are many causes channeled online, no structured format exists. We believe learning from experts and from each other can help reduce chances of failure and bring out the best in every organization.

    If you are an organization working towards a social cause, you can apply for an invitation here.

    APPLY HERE

    What then happens at SIME Stockholm?

    During the first day, we launch the SIME Non-Profit summit at 14.00. The invited delegates and entrepreneurs from socially devoted organizations will then be presented with case studies ranging from the Obama campaign to best practices on Facebook and other social networks.

    While the rest of the delegates will be attending the workshops of the choice, the Non Profit delegates during the first day will be attending talks and sessions with speakers on some of the best case studies of using online channels for a social cause. The second day, we will mark the workshops that we believe will have an influence on and can help non-profit organizations with a green dot.

    This is a new needle in the clock that’s got us going. And we think its a great cause to further the role of the digital opportunities.

    Agenda for SIME Stockholm

    Welcome to 2 days of inspiration, and a commitment to making the world a better place. Welcome to SIME Non-Profit




  • Media Mix – Shaken not Stirred at SIME Stockholm

    Posted by mahesh in Entrepreneurship Innovation Knowledge SIME 10 Upcoming | Sep 23, 2010 @ 15:31

    They say its the end of media companies as we know it. RIP Good Times – too cliche for the one’s following the industry, but its quite stark. Despite the death of old media, chaos, confusion and lot of dust, consumerism is at its best yet, internet is becoming more ubiquitous, and trends are clear. This could be possibly the best time for a media company to even be in the market. The Big Dinosaurs that are still crawling their way up are easy to beat by the new age suave disruptors that come in all forms, shapes and geographies. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be the new start up beating the old guys to the market, but even big companies that encourage their teams to work as entrepreneurs, cultivate a soil and culture of innovation and intrapreneurship.

    And the new kind of media companies:

    • add new verticals that they can sell their unsold ad inventory to
    • thrive on compelling content
    • rely on personalization and relevancy
    • listen to the social media stream to connect
    • live on new channels ranging from the iPad to java phones
    • focus on user experience rather than features.

    We have all learnt and read about the above I am sure – for all these are ideas from age old – but how you bring them together and package it is what makes a compelling strategy. And Schibsted who you can meet at SIME Stockholm has a wonderful packaging culture. Ranging from owning the largest P2P E-Commerce platform in Sweden to news, gossip, entertainment, weight clubs and what not – and they seem to have a good marketing mix of print, classifieds and online.
    And they had the best quarter in business so far.

    Welcome to understand the successful media mix strategy to grow your business. Welcome to SIME Stockholm November 17, 18




  • 10 Tips For Entrepreneurs And Start Ups Looking To Embrace Social Media

    Posted by mahesh in Blog Entrepreneurship Inspiration | Sep 22, 2010 @ 14:05

    [A repost from one of my favorite reading snacks on the web - The Next Web. This article is written by Niall Harbison and can be found here] ….

    The 10 commandments and the explanation below.

    1. You have incredible freedom
    2. It won’t be a 3 Month Quick Win
    3. Social Media won’t help your traffic that much
    4. Ask yourself will it actually drive sales
    5. Don’t get into thinking social media is work
    6. Compliment with Traditional Marketing
    7. Your friends are not your customers
    8. Help other people, it really works
    9. Platforms come and go, but blogs are forever
    10. Use social media to shape your brand

    You Have Incredible Freedom

    Many large organizations are crippled these days because getting one Facebook update, a tweet or blog post has to pass through several departments before getting sign off from legal. The beauty of being a start up is that you don’t face these challenges. Whatever you feel like saying you can pretty much just say, You can give people sneak access to products, share interesting facts about your company, do short videos or talk to your customers in the way you see fit. As a start up you have the incredible luxury of being able to push your message out and engage in the way you see fit with very few limitations. Embrace that freedom and share useful information that big competitors can’t.

    It Won’t Be A 3 Month Quick Win

    I’d always urge start ups to take a long term view on social media. Chances are you won’t get much out of it in the first 3 months. Nobody will read your blog, your Facebook page will have a few friends and family as fans and it’ll feel as if you are talking to yourself on Twitter. Building a network takes a lot of time. It’s only after a year or two of networking online and building relationships that you start to see the real value. Most start ups and businesses jump in to social media thinking it will solve all their problems only to be disappointed by the results and leave. The one piece of advice I would have here is to really stick at it because it will work in the long run but it takes time and patience.
    (more…)




  • The Next Web's Crystal Ball: 5 Trends in Social Media

    Posted by mahesh in Entrepreneurship Inspiration | Sep 21, 2010 @ 10:43

    [This is a repost from The Next Web's article on Sep 19th, 2010 by David Reinhardt]

    The past few years have seen some spectacular changes in the technology that embeds itself in our daily lives. The perfect storm of social media, smart phones and location awareness is only beginning to take full effect. We’ve gazed into crystal ball and considered how we think these technologies will combine to become such an established fabric of our lives that in the next few years what we’ve written here won’t be considered amazing at all.

    Identity will become embedded in your devices

    Your social media identities (Twitter username, Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, Digg profile, etc.) will be entered as part of setting up your devices and propagated into all applications. Apps will then be able to access social network functionality through APIs and be able to use embedded identity without need for entering credentials.

    You’ll no longer have to enter your Twitter or Facebook credentials to access Twitter and Facebook functionality on mobile phone apps, they will seamlessly access your profile in the same way that a “mailto:” link opens an already configured email client on your desktop. Therecently rumoured Facebook phone is an example how this approach could be applied.

    The sign of success for a major social media platform will become whether device manufacturers and browsers include its identity as part of their configuration settings.

    Online sharing will become embedded into your media life

    As soon as social identity is embedded into our day-to-day devices, social sharing will become an integral part of the way we enjoy media on our regular tv’s, dvd players and music players.

    Media servers and the like will fade into history as our living room tv’s, PVRs and hi-fis will be internet enabled and allow us to share likes, links and personal commentary. Remote controls will include “like” buttons which autopost to your Facebook page. Music players will sync preferences to Facebook and / or Ping.

    Location will become embedded into all activities

    It all began with Flickr showing photos on a map view using EXIF data. Over time, geo-tagging photos grew in popularity and some digital cameras now include positioning chips to embed geo-tags in all photos.

    In the online world, Foursquare and Gowalla have slowly carved out a market for the location check-in market and the recent launch of Facebook Places brings this to a mainstream audience. Twitter has allowed location meta-data for some time and introduced it into the twitter.com client in March.

    The “holy grail” for location aware functions will be pre-emptive use of location to alert the user to things or people nearby that may be of interest. Users won’t have to check-in to a place to see if their friends are nearby, their device will just alert them. The potential commercial tie-ins are obvious – vouchers and discounts in Foursquare are really just the tip of the ice-berg.

    Smart devices and web apps will automatically check-in and post updates

    One thing that frustrates me about Gowalla is that I need to open it up and check-in every time I’m somewhere of interest. I would like to pre-approve some places – my favourite restaurant, my local cinema, my local pub, etc. – and have the app automagically check-in on my behalf.

    Interestingly, the much derided Facebook Beacon was perhaps the first mainstream application of this type of functionality. Facebook got the privacy and permissions model all wrong and probably delayed further development of the idea by some years. I don’t want everything I buy on Amazon advertised to my friends as a matter of course, but I might be happy with an option – available for each order – that enables this, especially if my Twitter identity is already embedded into my browser.

    The coming onslaught of identity aware devices, empowered by embeddable RFID tags, will allow this type of technology to spread much wider than just your mobile phone. Smart handbags, for example, could enable auto-checkins and send coupons to your phone as you enter your favourite store.

    A few examples of ideas in this space: Facebook Beacon, Blippy (credit card transactions),RunKeeper (exercise information).

    Social networking will revolutionise the way large organisations collaborate

    Earlier this week a client said to me “If we knew what it is that we knew, we could make this company double as productive.” Large organisations have always struggled to share knowledge across multiple teams, divisions and geographies.

    Social media inspired design patterns applied to existing enterprise software and/or intranets opens up opportunities for collaboration on an unprecedented scale. Employees in large organisations will finally be able to find colleagues with knowledge or experience they could benefit from. Collaboration will no longer mean simply sharing documents and version control, but the ability to find colleagues by shared interest and collaborate seamlessly in a multi-channel environment.

    At the moment, current examples include disruptive innovators like SocialText, Yammer, Podio and SocialWok. In time, the established intranet software vendors will begin to include social functionality as part and parcel of their offering. It also seems likely that vendors of HR software, which already contains much profile related data, will be looking to expand into this space.

    Bringing it all together

    It’s about ongoing convergence (tvs becoming social media devices, corporate intranets becoming private social networks etc.) enabled by embedded identity and enhanced by location awareness.

    The meta trends – convergence pushing towards ubiquity of a given set of technology – has been the natural order of events for years. Applied to the current crop of cutting edge web and mobile technologies, it looks like the next few years are going to be quite exciting.




  • Inside the head of a serial entrepreneur: Why can't they stop starting over?

    Posted by mahesh in Entrepreneurship SIME 10 Upcoming | Sep 20, 2010 @ 14:43

    We feature a session on a special breed of entrepreneurs who love to ideate, build and move on to the next venture, over and over again. Called the serial entrepreneurs, are these entrepreneurs a special breed amongst the clan? May be they just love the idea of genesis rather than building and watching your beautiful creation come to life? May be they just like to keep doing new things or may be just may be they are just like others who exit faster than the rest since they believe they have hit the point of diminishing returns?

    Agenda at SIME Stockholm

    Speakers at SIME Stockholm

    Well, I wouldn’t go out and say this form of entrepreneurship stands out compared to the rest, but guess in today’s world, when big companies are ever open than before, exit has become a viable business model and entrepreneurs do feel stuck with glass roofs on top of their heads in large organizations that they turn to doing what they do best – creation and building new ventures.

    At SIME Stockholm, we will find out if there is a secret mantra on why these guys keep going on and on, not play golf full time and do more than 1 or 2 businesses at the same time.

    Welcome to the world of creators and serial entrepreneurs. Welcome to SIME Stockholm.




About the blog
Mahesh Kumar is the man behind the blog. A wanna be digital native, thinks there are no smart answers but just smart questions, believer of rogue economic theories, addicted to knowledge, a social butterfly and a self credited SIME junkie.
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