For developers only
Written on 22nd June 2009
1 COMMENT 
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Besides blogging at The Next Web we also enjoy organizing conferences. This year is the 2nd time we organize Kings of Code, a conference for web developers. Last years conference was super! With 320 developers it was sold out, people learned a lot and were enthusiastic about this geek gathering.
Kings of Code will take place next week (June 29-30) at the extraordinary Tuschinski theater in Amsterdam.
Here are 5 reasons why you should send your (more…)
FIVE reasons why you don’t want to miss The Next Web
Written on 13th April 2009
0 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Easter is over, it is time to get back to work, do business, meet new people and have fun.
You could do that in your home town, or you could join the most web savvy crowd you can find in Europe, do business there and have fun with your peers (and competitors).
If you’re still doubting if you should book your flight or if you should tell your fiancee that he/she should join you in Amsterdam (or miss you for some days), then let me give you 5 reasons to convince yourself:
1. We have great, inspiring, and approachable speakers
2. We have a 360 schedule for you throughout the whole conference
3. The Next Web is the place to do business with the international tech scene (over 30 nationalities)
4. You’ll see a lot of new stuff and the launching of companies
5. The future of the web and your company will be defined here
Bonus:
6. You get access to all people attending The Next Web via our business network
7. Every night there is at least one (networking) party
8. Your competitors are going as well
9. I give you a “100% 3 days you’ll never forget guarantee”
10. You won’t have to explain all year why you weren’t at The Next Web
11. I’ll buy you a beer (many beers actually)
12. We love you
I’m super excited about the coming week. It is going to be a long week, but hey… sleep is overrated!
See you in Amsterdam @thenextweb
From Amsterdam with love
Written on 12th April 2009
9 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Approximate reading time: 10 minutes. Nice weekend read
Background info on The Next Web Conference
Every year Boris comes up to me during or after the conference saying: “I’m so looking forward to next year, it is going to be soo much easier to organize all this” and every year we come to the conclusion that this is just not true. Sure, our network is getting bigger every year, sure the name The Next Web is becoming more and more well known in Europe and overseas, sure we’ve learned a lot on how to organize such an event over the past 3 years, BUT we don’t want to sit still and just organize the same conference each year. We’re entrepreneurs and we like to improve every time we get the chance. Just like with apps, you need to push the limit, you need to build a better product each day of the year.
Every year it is just as tough or more tough to organize The Next Web. I’d like to give you some insight in the organization, our thoughts and motivation and how we came to the point where we are right now.
How it all started:
In April 2006 Boris and I we’re talking to an American startup about how to launch our soon to be ready startup. They recommended us to launch at a conference, because it is great for your PR, you get to know a lot of bloggers and journalists, traffic goes up and you can get a lot of feedback on your service. We liked the idea and just before we hung up the phone we asked a last question “How much does it cost to do all this?”
They replied: “well you have to fly over, sponsor the conference, hire a PR firm, print some marketing material, book a hotel, rent a booth and spent money on food and drinks…. All together, count on 30k dollars -mas o menos-”
That first email
We hung up the telephone and we knew we didn’t have that kind of money (we didn’t have any funding), but if we were going to spend that amount of money from our own pocket, why not organize a conference of our own? I mean how hard can it be? This way we can invite whoever we want and get to know the people in the industry better and we might earn some of the investment back on selling tickets.
Boris and I had both never been to a conference! What we’re we thinking… Well, we just started!
On April 4th 2006, after claiming thenextweb.org, we wrote an email to an upcoming blogger, Michael Arrington, we were big fans of his blog and he had 40k RSS readers in that time. I looked back in my mailbox, this is what I found:
On Apr 4, 2006, at 12:39 PM, Boris wrote:
Hello Michael,
We are organizing a one day conference on July 7, 2006 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Would you be interested in joining us as a speaker?
His reply:
From: “Michael Arrington”
Date: 4 april 2006 22:38:42 GMT+02:00
To: “Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten”
Cc: “Patrick de Laive”
Subject: Re: Invitation to The Next Web Conference in AmsterdamLove to. Can you cover my expenses?
We have a conference, now what?
So that was it, we were throwing a conference! Everybody thought we were crazy, “You cannot organize an international conference in less then 3 months, you first pick a topic, second thing is finding sponsors and then you need 6 months for ticket sales“.
We didn’t care how it was done normally or by professional conference organizers. We thought that if we had great speakers the rest would flow by itself. BOY, were we wrong! One month before the conference, with a website and a great lineup, with 130k in cash out (to be paid) we sold 1 (one!) ticket. We were financially devastated!
Then we made a bold move, we called Kevin Kelly and asked him as a speaker. He wasn’t cheap, to say the least, but anyway we decided to do it. We must have thought; if you go down, go down big. But this move appeared to be the turning point. Nobody could ignore us anymore, we were serious about this conference. The media started to write about these guys who were doing a conference on the future of the Web…
Minus 14k dollars, is that all?
In the end we had 280 people at the conference (50% signed up in the last 5 days), all paid for tickets and some sponsors. It was a great conference, we didn’t launch our company there (people were paying to get in so we felt that it would be very inappropriate to push our own service on main stage), and we lost 14k euros. It was worth every dime.
Growing the event
We grew the conference from there, with the same passion and model. In 2007, Arjen joined the team, The Next Web grew to 500 people, in 2008 we started this blog, added an extra day to the conference and we had 750 guests. We introduced a business network for our attendees to be able to connect with other attendees and speakers up front, during and after the conference. The content and overall quality improved each year. Each year we have been pushing ourselves to build a better conference, to facilitate better networking opportunities, to improve the content and production, to connect more people in a personal way, to give more value for money (in 06 it was 550 euros for 1 day, now 750 for 3 days AND 3 nights party) to make The Next Web a conference people love to go to.
Proud
I think we have succeeded in many ways. We’re privileged to have met so many great and inspiring people. I’m grateful for all the awesome people that helps us in so many ways (partners, sponsors, next web readers, twitterati etc.) I’m really proud of the team (Nicolas, Boris and Arjen). We all work our asses off, we have to because it is a hell of a job for only 4 people (who have other companies as well). We might make some mistakes every now and then, but we love our work and do everything with a smile on our face and deal with all sh*t ourselves.
2009 edition is in 4 days
This year we build a new registration system, which is saving us a lot of time, a new business network, added a 3rd day and 2 extra party nights. We managed to get a super line up and we’re really looking forward to welcome the creme de la creme of the European Internet scene in the city that we love; Amsterdam.
This 4th edition is going to be the best so far. Let’s do it, let’s make it one big happening with many great talks, launching startups, engaging conversations, interactive and fierce discussions, good deals and a lot of fun and free beers!
See you in Amsterdam this week. Don’t forget to come fully energized and in super spirit to the conference. If you do that, you’ll have three unforgettable days, business wise and personally.
Happy Easter.
Patrick
PS I found great pictures, but I liked my kind of nerdy pose at the end of the 2006 conference.
You Don’t Have To Fight For Your Right To Party!
Written on 10th April 2009
1 COMMENT
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
One of the main reasons why conferences are so important to attend are the parties around it. As you probably know the parties are perfect places to really connect with people. This year you get great value for your money! Apart from 3 days of great content and inspiring people, we have a full party schedule for you.
Get ready to party:
Wednesday Night:
Get the party started at HotelV, Music & Bits will take care of the music. All speakers, and a lot of international guests, stay at Hotel V so this might be a great opportunity to meet some of them. Starts at 21:00 and the hotel expect to close up around 23:30. We will see about that. ;-)
Picture made by Julia de Boer @ The Next Web Party 2008
Thursday Night:
The Next Web goes Wolvenstreet! There are 3 parties in 3 bars next to each other:
Dinner and Party (Free Beer!) @ Brix 19:30 – 01:00 First drinks by iTypeFastR (interested in sponsoring?)
Dinner and Party (Free Beer!) @ Loup 19:30 – 01:00 (interested in sponsoring?)
Dinner and Party (Free Beer!) @ Wolvenstraat bar 21:00 – 01:00
The Wolvenstraat is our favorite street in Amsterdam and we love to hang out, have dinner and drinks there. For dinner you can book your own table with friends or new business contacts and make it your own side event.
Book your table at the Brix via +31206390351
Book a table next door at Loup via +31 20 3307470.
Make sure you mention The Next Web, because otherwise they’ll tell you that they’re fully booked.
Picture made by Julia de Boer @ The Next Web Party 2008
Friday Night:
The Next Web Dinner @ Odeon, first course at 19:00hrs (only 7 tickets left)
The Next Web Closing Party @ Odeon 21:00 – 04:00 (Free entrance for Next Web peeps until 22:30hrs).
Free Beer, Champagne and DJ Rodrigues de Souza Faria!
Picture made by Julia de Boer @ The Next Web Party 2008
You voted for these 3 winners on stage
Written on 8th April 2009
5 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Apart from the 19 startups the jury picked selected to present on The Next Web Conference, we gave other startups the chance to be chosen by our readers. 15 startups entered the competition by uploading a video on why they wanted to present at The Next Web.
You have had your opportunity to cast your vote via our voting poll AND via Twitter. Thanks all for voting. It was a very close call and differences were minimal. Unfortunately we cannot have everybody on stage.
And the winners are:
Yubby.com
With 810 votes
Kimengi.com
With 307 votes
Citisins.com
With 286 votes
Congratulations to all. You get the opportunity to do a 5 minute demo on main stage during The Next Web Conference for our highly tech savvy crowd! Start practicing.
Heads up to the runners up; Babylolly (283 votes) and Pixengo (270 votes)
Announcing the 19 finalists of The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally
Written on 5th April 2009
7 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Apart from keynote presentations (e.g. Matt Mullenweg, Bradley Horowitz, Jeff Jarvis, Chris Sacca), Pecha Kucha presentations and a Twitter ecosystem session, 24 startups get the opportunity to show their new product or service for free to the 900 Internet professionals who are attending The Next Web Conference.
All startups get 5 minutes on main stage to impress the highly tech savvy in the so called The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally.
In total 200 startups submitted their company to present here. After a long and strict jury process the top 19 startups were selected. The 5 other startups are selected by the public via a voting mechanism on twitter and on this blog
Mashable and Techcrunch broke this news this morning.
The finalists are:
yellowBird
Yellow Birds don’t have wings but they fly to make you experience a 3D reality. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Contextured
Contextured is the pain free SEO and SEM solution search marketers have been waiting for. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Prezi
Create stunning presentations that helps you to move beyond the slide
E
E connects people to people and people to services, all in real life. It’s like having all your online identities in your pocket. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Aroxo
Name your own price on thousands of items then negotiate! Launching at The Next Web Conference
Silentale
With Silentale, store all your personal conversations in one place and access them from anywhere. Time travel through your message history.
Klomptek
Remote Device Management solution for mobile business phones. Monitor, access, synchronise and control employees mobile phones via RCM Web (administrator) panel. Launching at The Next Web Conference
ShoutEm
Roll your own Microblogging or Mobile Social Network!
Quick TV
We provide revolutionary online tools & accountable video play-out to media publishers looking to give their videos the interactive edge. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Mimic Media
MimicMe enables online shoppers to fit clothes online with a personalized 3d model and shop real time together with their friends. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Yourtour
YourTour is a unique online solution for tailor-made holidays.
plista
Personalize your internet experience. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Yunoo
Yunoo is a personal finance application where users can get insight into their personal finance, discuss financial topics and save money.
Mendeley
Mendeley: Free academic software to manage & share research papers and a network to discover research trends and like-minded researchers
Huddle.net
Huddle is the world’s greatest collaboration app – beautiful, so usable, open API and fully integrated with Linkedin, Facebook and more
IRL Connect
IRL is the first visual social network on the web to map where your friends are & what they are saying. See your social network on a map. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Visibuild
Bring your architectural 3d to life in an online, interactive 3d project environment. Create a true architectural experience with Visibuild. Launching at The Next Web Conference
tarpipe
tarpipe makes it easy to share content across different social media applications.
CoTweet
CoTweet powers your brand on Twitter. Engage people across your organization to tweet through your brand’s Twitter account as a team.
Descriptions are the answers of the companies to the question; Pitch us Twitter style
A professional jury helps us to select the winners and the ultimate winner during the conference. Jury members are:
* Adeo Ressi, Founding Member of TheFunded.com
* Stewart Townsend, manager startup and emerging markets EMEA, SUN Microsystems
* Barend van de Brande, Big Bang Ventures
* Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon.com
* Robin Wauters, editor TechCrunch, organizer Plugg
We’re really looking forward to see all these great companies at The Next Web. The conference takes place in Amsterdam on April 15, 16 and 17. If you haven’t signed up yet, get your tickets now!
Start-up Challenge: everybody deserves a second chance…
Written on 31st March 2009
29 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Update: Vote Now!
Yesterday we emailed 43 startups that they were selected to give a 5 minute demo/presentation for The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally. The jury had selected these 43 companies out of almost 200 companies who applied. It is very difficult to pick 43 start-ups from 200 submissions and the jury spend a lot of time checking out all the information presented to them to make an informed decision.
Of course a lot of startups were disappointed that they didn’t make the cut. I can imagine the frustration these people feel as I’ve been rejected in many Startup rallies as well. I received many emails, calls, IMs and tweets asking for ‘5 minutes of my time’ and a second chance. This and the fact that many startups are really cool got me thinking on how we could give them a second chance…
I think the jury did an excellent job and have invested a lot of time to rate all companies (thank you Barend, Adeo and Stewart) and we stick with the choices we made. But we still decided to adopt the idols (Pop Star) model and let the people, our audience, help us pick 3 of the 24 companies we will see on stage at The Next Web.
We have room for 24 start-ups presentations on stage. 20 start-ups will be selected by our jury, 1 start-up will be selected during the conference (from attending start-ups with a booth) and 3 start-ups will be chosen by the audience by votes.
So here is your second chance to present your startup at The Next Web Conference. If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, read this closely.
How you can join
- Record a 90 second pitch why you should be presenting at The Next Web (not a second longer).
- Upload it to youtube with the tag ‘tnw09demo’
- Leave a comment here with the url to your movie
We have developed a voting mechanism and post all videos here on Thursday and let our audience vote on them. The top 3 startups with the most votes will be invited
Who can join?
Any startup can join, if you’ve submitted your company for the Rising Sun Startup rally or not. As long as you enter your movie before Wednesday 14:00 CET.
Bradley Horowitz (Google) joins keynote speaker list of The Next Web Conference
Written on 18th March 2009
1 COMMENT
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
We’re happy to announce that Bradley Horowitz will come to Amsterdam as keynote speaker of The Next Web Conference.
I met Bradley 2 years ago, when he was still working for Yahoo (read why he left Yahoo for Google). He was in a panel with Marissa Mayer and just kicked ass and made a great impression on me. Bradley is a great presenter and very respected in the tech scene. He is a much anticipated speaker on many tech conferences. Here is what Crunchbase says about Bradley:
“Bradley oversees Google’s communications products and social applications including Google Talk, GrandCentral, Blogger and Picasa. Before joining Google, Bradley led Yahoo’s advanced development division, which developed new products such as Yahoo! Pipes, and drove the acquisition of products such as Flickr and MyBlogLog.
Bradley Horowitz is the former vice president of Yahoo’s product strategy group. He led Yahoo’s efforts in building innovative products and technologies across the company. Horowitz drove innovation and leveraged Yahoo’s platform to deliver compelling Yahoo products and services to a community of 500 million users. In addition, he was responsible for the company’s initiative to open up its platform which included overseeing the Yahoo Developer Network (YDN).….”
The conference is filling up fast and it is going to be super fun, interesting, inspiring and business wise it will rock as well. Join us and 900 peers at The Next Web Conference.
Last call for startup submissions for The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally
Written on 15th March 2009
3 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Loads of startups have signed up for The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally already. This makes a lot of sense since it is a great opportunity to present your startup (at no costs) to the most influential European Internet crowd out there. This will boost buzz around your company, you’ll meet very interesting people (bloggers, journalists, peers, investors, decisions makers of big companies).
Joining the rally means that we (the jury) will review your submission and 50 – 60 startups will be interviewed (via phone and skype) to end up with the 24 best and most promising startups that will present on main stage during The Next Web Conference. Even if you don’t make it to the final, we’ll show our appreciation to you for taking the time and energy to sign up. It takes only 10 minutes of your time and did I already mention that it is free….
Submit your startup now. Today it is the last day we take on submissions.
If you’ve a cool twitter app / company, make sure you check the special Twitter ecosystem session.
Shine a light on the Twitter ecosystem
Written on 11th March 2009
4 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
If your service is on this logo map, feel free to add your url to the map on Flickr
Twitter is becoming a phenomenon that cannot be ignored any more (here at The Next Web we’ve been covering a lot of Twitter news). People, businesses, marketing gurus, blogs, and traditional media are raving about it. News and stories are spreading faster than ever (plain crashes, earthquakes) and Twitter is growing at a very impressive rate.
The Twitter Business Model
Over the last few weeks people have been speculating about the business model of Twitter, about Twitter search becoming a threat to Google, about possible acquisitions. And it is unthinkable to not talk about Twitter when addressing the web, or in this case, The Next Web. Therefore we’ve decided to embrace Twitter as one of the topics during The Next Web Conference 2009.
Special Twitter Ecosystem session during The Next Web Conference
One of the key drivers for the growth of Twitter is certainly their API, and there are hundreds of Twitter services out there that build handy and nifty extra functionality on top of the Twitter platform. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, once told me that the Twitter API generates 20 times as much requests as their web server. With all those Twitter added value services one could speak of a true ecosystem that has evolved around Twitter. During the conference we will address Twitter and its ecosystem.
The Format of the Twitter ecosystem session:
We’ll have a 20 minute keynote on the Twitter ecosystem by Chris Sacca, seed investor and advisor to Twitter. This is followed by 10 mini-presentations of different Twitter apps. These presentations last 3 minutes and will contain maximum 5 slides, with 1 tweet per slide. This is a new format for presentations between a pitch and a demo, we internally call it twords. This forces people to get to the core of their business and ‘impress with less’.
If you have build a Twitter app and want to present at The Next Web, sign up here (you need to be a registered attendee to be considered for a presentation, so make sure you have a conference pass).
* If people talk about the … ecosystem, you know it must be a serious player. Not many companies can say that they have an ecosystem around them (although many companies try to claim they do). I can remember 3 true ecosystems that were widely acknowledged: Facebook, The Netvibes ecosystem (at the height of their fame) and the inventors of this phenomena; the Google ecosystem.
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