SIME Awards just sold out!

Christoffer just informed us that the "Conference + Awards"-tickets are sold out! Congratulations to all of you who managed to get one. We do however have "Conference Only"-tickets lefts. They are SEK 7200 excl VAT. The agenda for the conference is the best ever. Register here. Only two weeks left!

SIME looks at the Big picture

The "100 Dollar Laptop" from MIT Media Lab

Any conference of our size must focus on what is really important: how new technology can help us build a sustainable future for everyone on our planet. Nobody knows these issues better than Simon Mulcahy, Head of IT Industries Group, World Economic Forum. We are so excited that Simon has agreed to join as a speaker.

Simon heads the World Economic Forum's engagement with the IT sector globally. In this role, he works closely with CEOs, leading strategists, government affairs leaders and independent experts – to identify the most pressing industry issues, and then to coordinate Forum and joint industry approaches. With significant experience in multi-stakeholder projects in developing nations, he ran the Forum's "IT Access For Everyone" initiative (with Cisco, Intel, AMD, Dell, Philips).

Recent work includes scenarios on India, China, and the Future of Innovation in Financial Services. He is currently creating a global innovation heat-map, and running programs to bring together leading global decision makers around issues of green technology and security/privacy.

Take a look at the full updated list of speakers!

Årets SIME-bilaga i SvD

Sorry this is in Swedish only.

Ur årets SIME-bilaga: "SIME Awards, 1200 beslutsfattare, Internetaficionados, internationella talare, press, Filip & Fredrik, Niklas Zennström, Google, Alexander Bard, champagne till vinnarna, nya idéer. Äntligen SIME07."

Läs hela bilagan här. Distribueras med Svenska Dagbladet oktober 2007.

SIME goes to Web 2.0 Summit

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and Johan Battelle, moderator.

I'm here at the Web 2.0 Summit 2007 in San Francisco with about 1,000 other people. Many of whom seem to be disappointed that, being an invitation-only event, it has become a lot less intimate than earlier years. The agenda is great with names like Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, Rupert Murdoch, NewsCorp and Meg Whitman, eBay. Some SIME speakers and hangarounds are also in da house: Tariq Krim, Andreas Weigend, Niklas Zennström, Loïc LeMeure and Martin Varsavsky. The Swedish participants outnumber all the other non-American groups! Stardoll, Pixbox, Maria Plaza, Mobispine, Myblock, and a few other companies are represented.

Most memorable from day 1: Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook as a platform, Rupert Murdoch & Chris DeWolfe on myspace and Melissa Mayer on Google's new focus on health services.

Hi, there Per Mosseby!

We're going to check up what some of our favorite SIME participants are up to. First out is Per Mosseby, CEO of Swedish photo-sharing service Pixbox.

1. What are you up to right now?

We've recently launched our Pixbox Facebook application, and right now I'm visiting Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco together with my chairman Yavor Adel.

2. What are your expectations on SIME 2007?

I expect and hope SIME 2007 to be as good as it was last year! It is the only world-class interactive media event that exists in Scandinavia.

PixBox is planning an expansion, but the "traditional" markets like France, Germany, and Great Britain are not on the list. The competition is too fierce. Instead Pixbox is looking to establish operations in Eastern Europe and Russia. The first office will be opened in S:t Petersburg, and then Poland and Bulgaria. The founders of Orc Software, Ulrika Hagdahl and Johan Thorell (founders of Locellus, Din Bostad and Sagax), have invested to support this expansion.

SIME Entertainment News

(Yes, we also want to know what happened to that good looking popstar).

Our favorite elite netizen and philosopher Alexander Bard has done it again! He has managed to win a slot in the 2008 version of the the Swedish annual music competition "Melodifestivalen". His song, "Lay Your Love On Me" was one of the 28 finalists, from over 3,000 entries.

copyright: Sveriges Television.

The competition has a considerable impact on music charts in Sweden and everyone from kids to grandmothers watch it on TV. In 2007, the semifinals averaged 3.1 million viewers, and an estimated four million Swedes watched the final.

But you don't have to watch Melodifestivalen to get a glimpse of the multi-talented Alexander Bard. See him live at SIME 2007! He will participate in the panel "What is really important right now" featuring some of the most controversial and interesting thinkers in the shouting match of the year. Don't miss it!

SIME presents: Filip & Fredrik

You don't have to be interested in VC:s, Ajax, gadgets or anything 2.0 to enjoy SIME 2007. Scandinavia's funniest guys are back, and they will be hosting the SIME Awards 2007.

Above is a great moment of Filip & Fredrik-humor: the duo singing hymns with the former Prime Minister Göran Persson. More of them on their MySpace profile.

Congratulations to Jaiku

Congratulations to Jyri, Petteri, and team at Jaiku for the Google acquisition. For those of you reading this blog, you know that these Finns have always been SIME-favorites. Jaiku will be working with the Google developers to expand its technology into new, and hopefully, useful services. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, Jaiku has decided to close new user sign-ups for now. Existing users can still invite new friends, though.

More about the company: Jaiku is an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones. The service helps you stay in touch with friends and family by allowing you to post updates of what you are up to. By inviting friends you can see and comment on each others' updates and activities.

SIME is proud that Google would opt for Scandinavian Jaiku and not Twitter. More on that aspect of the deal at Mashable.

Tools for mashups

I will be reporting from the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, starting Oct 17. Today it was announced that the event will use the Popfly Mashup Aggregator to give the participants a consolidated view of what’s going on using popular internet services like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

Popfly, still in a private alpha, is designed to allow non-professional programmers and hobbyists to build mash-ups, gadgets, Web sites and applications using pre-built “blocks.”

The interactive design surface enables you to drag and drop these “blocks” and connect them together to build your own application. As of now, there are 40 of these Web-programming blocks from which they can choose, including Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, Virtual Earth and news service blocks. Popfly users can tie together these data-source, transformation and display blocks to create their own customized mash-ups.

I like the explanation to the name “Popfly”. From the FAQ: “Left to our own devices we would have called it ‘Microsoft Visual Mashup Creator Express, May 2007 Community Tech Preview Internet Edition’, but instead we asked some folks for help and they suggested some cool names and we all liked Popfly”.

Thanks to Robert Folkesson, Developer Evangelist at Microsoft, Sweden for explaining the technical aspects of Popfly on his blog (in Swedish).

Achtung Baby!

This year we have received a great deal of interest from members of the German press. In the SIME audience there will also be several representatives from the German Internet industry, such as the entrepreneur and SIME06 speaker Nico Lumma.

I asked Ulrike Reinhard, who will be reporting from SIME07 for Süeddeutsche Zeitung to name a few of the most interesting entrepreneurs acording to her view. Here is her list:

* Boris Wasmuth, Gameduell (gaming community), Berlin.

* Till Behnke, betterplace.org, Berlin. (Enables people working to escape poverty and create a better future for themselves to connect with new opportunities.) Ulrike: "They are just about launching! Great concept and very good people.

* Axel Schmiegelow, serial entrepreneur and founder of internet agency Denkwerk Group, Cologne

* Sören Stamer, CoreMedia (social software), Hamburg. In 2005, Red Herring magazine ranked CoreMedia as one of the 100 most innovative non-listed technology companies in Europe.

* Axel Pfennigschmidt, member of the creative network Pulk, Berlin. Ulrike: "more than internet, very good"

* Dieter Rappold, Managing Director, Knallgrau New Media Solutions, Vienna, Austria.

P S Don't forget to watch out for the Swedish überkids of music sharing service SoundCloud in Berlin, Eric Wahlforss and AlexanderLjung. D S

SIME@Virtual Worlds in San Jose

Beata with Ralph Koster, CEO Areae and creator of Ultima Online.

Over 1,000 participants and 100 speakers have gathered at the Virtual Worlds event in San Jose Oct 10-11. The big discssion has been on how to blend the stickiness and ease of use of social networks, such as Facebook, with the rich user experience of a virtual world.

Many of the participants are here to further explore how to extend their product or service with a virtual environment. Lego for example announced that they are creating the Lego Universe, a proprietary world to be realeased Aug 2008.

The web is going 3D faster than anyone could have imagined. It is a bit of a cultural shock to see a speaker like Sandy Kearny, Global Director, 3D Internet, IBM (!) talk about the challenges of the conceptual age and referring to Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind" as her new bible of creative thinking. She also admitted that "it took IBM 8 years to understand e-business, but only 8 months to get 3D Internet".

Now I am off to listen to the panel on "Kids and Teen worlds" where Mattias Miksche, CEO of the paperdoll heaven Stardoll, and Sampo Karjalainen, founder of Habbo Hotel is participating. Second Life may be at the center of attention at an event like this, but Stardoll is still three times larger! Way to go, girls!

The conference jet-setters meet at Stream

Greetings from the travelling conference jet-setters Ola, Nikolaj, Esther & Co. This weekend the brains of the Internet industry gathered at the Stream Event, which was held at Club Med in Athens. Such a hard life... Thanks to Guido van Nispen for the pix.



The conference agenda?




Grand SIME Master Ola Ahlvarsson and his conference hangarounds.



Typical conference attire?



Esther with a cool laptop.



Thomas Madsen Mygdal of 23.

SIME goes mobile

At this year’s event, the mobile media will be an integrated part of the conference experience.
Through the mobile, the visitors will be able to follow the event, read the latest SIME news and watch mobile TV from SIME. The mobile channel will also be used for practical issues such as registration, updates in the agenda and seating at the SIME Awards show.

The service is brought to you by Globalmouth, a SIME partner specializing in mobile communication for corporate clients.

Report from The Future of Web Apps 2007

Felix Petersen, Jyri Engstrom and Brian Oberkirch. Photo by Ted Rheingold.

We know a lot of you are attending other exciting events, besides SIME. Here are some ideas and conclusions from FOWA (The Future of Webb Apps 2007) last week in London. The event, which was sold out, focused on successful web 2.0 applications. Thanks to Joachim Jardenberg, for the input! Check out Joachim’s blog for more inspiration or meet him at SIME in November.

What was hot at FOWA?

1. Jaikus backchannel: Seriously, it’s becoming clear that Jyri Engström is a guy to listen carefully to.

2. Heather Champ gave the audience a great behind-the-scenes tour of Flickr. She is always a great presenter with interesting ideas on how to create user experience.

3. The conversation between Om Malik, GigaOM and Michael Arrington, TechCrunch was a great introduction.

4. Kevin Rose, chief architect at digg, is a darling on stage, although he doesn’t have that much to say, that hasn’t already been cited a hundred times. But still. Cosy.

5. Paul Graham from Y Combinator was unexpectdely good.

6. Erika Hall, Mule Design, did a simple but tasteful story of the importance of using words in a proper way. Feel-good, in a Meg Ryan-kind of way.

7. What I liked the most were the participants! There was a great crowd here. Fascinating to see that there were so few Swedes. I think we were only four in total, among which Niklas Derouche was the most prominent. Where is everyone else? And where are the traditional media?

SIME Crew Working hard for you

Here dear participants, speakers and other SIME friends is the SIME2007 Crew.
Location: Headquarters in Stockholm

Mission: To produce the best SIME ever

Mr SIME, Ola Ahlvarsson and PR Manager Beata Wickbom.

Mr Everything & more: Christoffer Granfelt.

Webmaster Felicio da Costa and Ola.

The man with the Excel-sheet: Mats Larsson, producer.

Henric Wirfelt, working with SIME Awards, (together with Urban Pettersson).

Top media executive in the age of information overload

The media industry is struggling to find new business models in the digital age. Will anyone pay for content in the future? What will be the relationship between the media companies, the advertisers and the readers/users? What is journalism 2.0? Will the social networking entrepreneurs replace the role of the publishers? We will have several discussions on these topics at SIME. To nourish these discussions we are proud to include Michael Oreskes, editor in chief at the International Herald Tribune, in the agenda. Before joining the IHT, Michael was the deputy managing editor of The New York Times.

To give you an idea of Micheal Oreskes view on the role of journalism, here is an excerpt from his opening remarks in the media panel in Davos 2007.

"... living in the digital age is like standing at the bottom of a grain elevator as they pour in the wheat.

Our audiences are literally drowning in information, unrefined wheat and chaff and all the muck raked up with the harvest…

You can call this the digital age, or the internet age, or the information age…to a lot of people it must seem like the age of information overload. At first that overload seems like a problem to us, perhaps a fatal problem, but I suggest it is in fact our opportunity. Indeed, information overload is THE opportunity that we as journalists cannot afford to miss. For our own sakes and for the sake of the society that needs what we journalists do. It is the opportunity to reshape what we do so it survives well into the future.. And survival, it wont surprise any of you to hear, really is at stake".

Zennström stepped down from Skype ahead of schedule

Yesterday SIME:s keynote speaker and industry hero, Niklas Zennström stepped down from the role as CEO of Skype, the company he founded with Janus Friis four years ago. This was ahead of the scheduled work-through period after the acquisition by eBay.

Shortly before the public announcement of his departure, Zennstrom agreed to give an exclusive English-language interview to Thomas Crampton (our favorite SIME-moderator). Zennström has also agreed to speak with Dagens Industri (but the interview has not been published yet). Good job Thomas!

From the interview: "Top on Zennstrom’s Internet wish list: A solution to the deluge of email. 'Everyone is getting lost in their in-boxes. I would really like to see some innovation there, please.'" Read the full story on Thomas' blog.

SIME announces the Awards Jury

The SIME Awards were founded in 1996.Over the years the competition has grown in scope and size. This year we expect over 300 entries from all the Scandinavian countries. This year’s jury, under the chair of Pontus Schultz, Editor-in-Chief for Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer, will look more closely at the strategic level of the entries.

The purpose of the awards, which have nine categories, is to highlight and honor excellence in online communication, business practice and technology. Many of the entries are business critical multimillion investments, but you can also find the rising stars of tomorrow, who are using the web in new and creative ways. ”Perhaps we will find the next Skype among the participating companies”, says Hjalmar Winbladh, founder and CEO of Rebtel and chairman of the technical jury.

This year’s jury is divided into three different teams; technology, communication and business strategy. Chairmen of the different jury teams are:

- Hjalmar Winbladh, founder and CEO of Rebtel (Technology)

- Göran Garberg, marketing-guru and CEO of Corporate Missions (Communication)

- Jette Jörgensen, CEO of MTG Denmark (Strategy)

Among the other jury members are: Osma Ahvenlampi, Sulake (producers of Habbo Hotel), Daniele Palmucci, Ericsson, Sofia Svantesson, Ocean Observations, Martin Tivéus, VD Glocalnet, Anna O. Lindgren, vVD SvD Nya Medier och Vetle Sovik, Startsiden i Norge.

Nominate your site now!

Mr Netocracy: Alexander Bard

Yes, you will have a chance to meet your favorite rebel and Master of Netocracy at SIME2007!

We asked Alexander to answer a few questions for our readers:

1. What is really important right now?

The world economy, as always. And inventing a more intelligent social community tool than the stupid underclass nonsense called Facebook.

2. What are your expectations on SIME?

Networking, networking, networking, and getting some new insights I never had before. Plus of course going home afterwards with some new delightful little gadget in my pocket (beata: hint to sponsors?). Let's not underrate the value of fetichism.

3. What can European entrepreneurs learn from their American counterparts?

Being more daring and updated, for a start. When it comes to entrepreneurship, it is currently American entrepreneurs who have more to learn from their European brethren rather than the other way round. And everybody should learn a thing or two from Korean and Indian entrepreneurs.

4. How can Internet contribute beyond the corporate world?

It does already. People LIVE through the internet these days. The world is already virtual and symbolic.

Alexander Bard is a writer, a founder of the Netocrats.com, a non-profit organization aimed to build the new informational society and a member of the band BWO (Bodies without Organs).

Fight for Burma - on the net

Much of the footage of soldiers facing Buddhist monks – and details of the events in Burma – have come from so-called citizen-journalists, sending images and information to outlets such as Irrawaddy, Mizzima and the Burmese-language services of the BBC and other broadcasters. The Financial Times had a great article yesterday on this topic: "All eyes on Burma in the information age". (Thanks to Ulf Wickbom for the link).

Since Friday the news from inside Burma have dried up. The news service Irrawaddy is "infected with a virus". Has the government pulled the plug on internet links?

Don't forget the Burmese people. You are powerful, you can help by spreading the news and keeping the struggle alive and visible in your network.