“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

Summary Video from SIME Amsterdam

SIME Amsterdam held couple of weeks ago gathered over 1000+ people in a high energy setting featuring inspiring speakers and panelists. Some of the speakers included Dr. Werner Vogels CTO Amazon, Stefan Glaenzer, Last.Fm, Europe’s premier angel investor, Sara Ohrvall, Head of R&D for Bonnier, Pieter Paul Van Oerle, Lead Media and Entertainment, Accenture, Jacob Hsu, CEO Symbio Group with offices in China, US and the Nordics.

The day touched upon different aspects of digital ranging from marketing going ka-ching, to the exponential growth of mobile, a sneak peek into Amazon’s world and the growth of the SME phenomenon. The star of the day was Puck from puckipedia.nl – a 11 year old wiz kid who is into developing apps (both paid and free) and was a revelation on stage.

Our friends at Powerstar (Shahin Totabi, Roman Sarghandoy) i.c.w. Marlooz and HvA have made a great summary video of the day. Thanks guys.

David Rowan, wired chief editor and SIME speaker writes about his SIME experience from Vienna

David Rowan, chief editor of Wired was one of the speakers at the recently concluded SIME Vienna event. David writes about his talk which was called “Fail Fast” urging European entrepreneurs to not be afraid to ship products into the market, fail and learn faster than before (we had a similar talk with then SUN Microsystems head Stephen Parish)

Below is the link to the article and the videos from his talk

Article here

Videos below:

Happy Holidays from the SIME Team!

Here’s wishing you and your family a season of great happiness and joy. Thank you for helping SIME reach greater heights during 2010. It has been a dream year for us, bringing together the best speakers and thought leaders to talk to an overflowing enthusiastic crowd of top level CMO’s, decision makers, entrepreneurs, investors and press in 3 cities. Without your support and enthusiasm, none would have been possible. Again, thank you and have a rocking 2011!

Dear Brands, build fanboys and not customers

The attention economy demands you build fan boys and not customers.

If you had a care-o-meter, most of your average mass marketing messages do not elicit enough attention from most if not all consumers.

Apple has fanboys who will kill for their brand. It’s even part of pop culture called mac envy

Walmart might be considered too cheap, but they serve their market exactly well. So do budget airlines.

The key is not what everyone thinks, but what your actual consumers think and then take their experience to a delightful new level.

At SIME, we asked marketing managers of the major brands today, what and how they built their fanboys. And we collected their response in this video below as part of the SIME Brand Stories collection.

So what’s your story?

SIME 10 Highlights!

The theme of SIME Stockholm this year was storytelling.

And the setting was 60 speakers in an over-crowded hall of over 1500 enthusiastic CMOs, decision makers, bloggers, entrepreneurs and press that did not hesitate to stand on the side or sit on the floor or on top of each other, with curiosity and excitement of the discussions brimming on each one of them. That was the story of SIME 10: a fantastic 2 days of inspiration, knowledge and storytelling on the main stage that continued into the workshops leading to a night of riveting fun and celebration with the SIME Media Momentum Awards and the After-Party. SIME10 also marked the inauguration of SIME Non-Profit, a separate arm of SIME to help NGOs and social entrepreneurs understand digital better  to make the world a better place.

The Best of SIME10 – in a nutshell

You can read the elaborate key take aways from all sessions here

You can watch some of the movies from SIME 10 here

You can read about the SIME-Media Momentum Awards here

You can track your own conversations that happened at SIME 10 here

Thank you for a fantastic 2 days of inspiration and knowledge. And see you next year!

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

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”.

The Barcelona Diary: Internet vs FC Barcelona

I genuinely think FC Barcelona is by far the best team in the world. I also think Messi is one of the most gifted players in the world. Ok wait, my views don’t mean nothing, but that said, we asked some of the folks in Barcelona on whether they preferred the internet or their team FC Barcelona. May be we were being pure stupid in asking the question, but well it proves the theory one more time.

Watch the video here