Who wins the prize as most multi talented speaker?

We do have an amazing line-up of speakers this year. Some of them are just so multitalented you think they made their bios up! Just look at some of the talents of Joshua Cooper Ramo.

Joshua is the Senior Advisor to Goldman Sachs and a professor at Tsinghua University. His advisory work focuses on political, economic and business areas with a particular emphasis on China. He is the author of the widely discussed paper 'The Beijing Consensus', where he argues that constant, massive, sustained innovation is the core of the Chinese growth.

In his new report, “Brand China”, Ramo argues that China's national image, and the misalignment between China's image of itself and how it is viewed by the rest of the world, may be its greatest strategic threat. It argues that alongside its other reforms, China needs a 'fifth transition' if the trust and understanding necessary for the next stage of its development are to be achieved.

Formerly, Ramo was Editor at Large at Time Inc. He joined Time magazine in 1996, and went on to become the magazine’s youngest Assistant Managing Editor and Foreign Editor, overseeing Time’s international coverage. Ramo was also an international affairs analyst for CNN.

Joshua also holds two US national point-to-point air speed records and is an avid aerobatics pilot. He has described his dangerous hobby in the book: “No visible Horizon”.

And we know from previous years that he is an engaging and inspiring speaker as well! Don't miss him.

Pre-SIME

On Thursday November 1st, Google hosted the PRE-SIME event "Engine for business growth" together with Telenor and Ericsson.

Andreas Weigend introduces the idea of "Conversational Marketing"

"Just like actors on stage performing and expecting applause at the end of every act, companies spend endless hours internally carefully crafting PR messages, broadcasting them, and expecting customers to lap them up. Since each customer’s opinion is separated from the rest, collective voices could not be expressed.

That sweet self delusion has come to a dramatic end. We have entered the new era of conversational marketing, where the individual is clearly heard through blogs and social networks. In many cases, their credibility and outreach surpass the voices of the companies. Due to the nature of the blogosphere and search engines, critical articles often have similar ranking as the “official statements”.

Furthermore, opinions that resonate with others get reinforced and exponentially grow as people reference them, quote them, link to them and comment on them. Whether companies like it or not, conversations between customers happen, and they are fully empowered to form groups, support fellow customers, and spread the word, good and bad. And they trust each other significantly more than the companies whose PR stories they have long stopped to believe.

Companies now have a choice. Should they continue to be detached from the very platform where their customers interact and share information about their products? Or should they play an active, positive role, participating in the conversation to get feedback on improvements, while slowly understanding how they can tap into the customer pool and learn in a positive manner?

If you seek to follow the latter, what tools can you use to understand the tones and issues underlying those authentic conversations? How do you present a human face to your customers while working with the most credible voices in the audience to make your own voice more compelling and real? And at another level, what are the difficult conversations that you need to have with your various agencies to practice Conversational Marketing?"
Andreas Weigend, Nov 2007.

Andreas Weigend, who served as Amazon.com's Chief Scientist until 2004, is an expert in data mining and computational marketing. He currently teaches the course "Data Mining and E-Business" at Stanford University, as well as the executive course "Technology, Information, and Innovation". Until 1999, he was full-time faculty at New York University's Stern School of Business.

Meet Andreas Weigend at SIME 2007.

Pre-SIME Event Sturecompagniet Stockholm

Together with our co-hosts Google, Telenor and Ericsson we decided that we just could not wait to get a taste of some of the SIME magic so we arranged a Pre-SIME event at Sturecompagniet last night.

200 aficionados, media agency professionals and marketers had great hamburgers, played retro arcade games like Defender and Packman and shared beers and thoughts.

On stage Kurt Sillén, VP of Ericsson Mobility World and Business Innovation, Daniel Dersén, Head of Content and Premium Services at Telenor and Rikard Steiber, Director of Product Marketing EMEA, Google had a great panel. They all opened the hood of their respective company in an honest and educational discussion that managed to completely steal everyone’s attention. Well done guys on the panel and a special thanks to Gustaf Radell from Google who got the ball rolling!

The feeling was almost like the weight-in at a title fight, full of anticipation and excitement for what is soon to come.

This is what Jonas Hombert, co-founder, Jaycut, thought of last night:
”Pre-SIME was a great warm-up for the main event. It was actually so good that it raised my expectations for the main event! But considering the agenda, the amazing list of speakers, participants and hosts, I am convinced my expectations will be surpassed on November 14-15.”

SIME is almost here, can't wait... /Ola Ahlvarsson

Digital Dan from CBS News is coming to SIME!

Photo by Amy Nevala, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

It's Digital Dan time at SIME07. Dan Dubno, the CBS veteran and gadget guru takes us through the must haves in technology on his special SIME show on Nov 14 (at 16.30). Don't miss him!

Dan regularly appears on-air as Digital Dan on a variety of CBS News broadcasts discussing new technology. His technology website, Gizmorama, is one of the most popular technology review sites on the Internet. He also writes a monthly technology column for Discover Magazine, and contributes to other science magazines on occasion.

Winner of numerous National Emmy awards, Dubno was previously a producer of the Eye on America enterprise reports for the CBS Evening News, and he produced investigative and feature segments for Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, America Tonight and economics coverage for CBS This Morning.

Everyone vs. Facebook

We’re seeing a Flixster application on MySpace now through the OpenSocial APIs. Flixster says it took them less than a day to create this.

Wow! do things change quickly in the Internet world. I remember that old saying from back in 90s about one Internet year being like four ordinary years. Just when we thought that Facebook was about to win the social community war, Google strikes back. And they are not alone in this struggle. Just about everyone is ganging up on Facebook. I cannot wait to hear more from Google at SIME07!

MySpace, Six Apart and Bebo have now confirmed that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle have already announced that they are Google partners on this initative.

In short, OpenSocial will launch a set of common APIs, designed to create an alternative developer platform to that offered by Facebook. The idea is of course to draw back third-party developer efforts from Facebook’s proprietary platform, and back towards the web as the platform.

TechCrunch is pretty straightforward: "Google may have just come out of nowhere and checkmated Facebook in the social networking power struggle."

On October 31, Google stock passed through $700 a share, becoming the 5th largest listed company in the United States.

Is “free” a better business model than “paid”?

Stefan Glänzer, former Chairman Last.fm is coming to SIME07.

Tricky question #1: Who is not so smart?

1 the new companies, without business models but with many happy users?

X the traditional industrialists that say happiness is positive cash flow?

2 you

Find out at SIME07 on Nov 15 @15.20.

We expect a great discussion between:
Tariq Krim, CEO and founder Netvibes, Tristan Nitot, Founder and President of Mozilla Europe and Stefan Glänzer, former executive chairman and investor, Last.fm, founder and CEO, Myblog.de.