Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on January 5, 2009 – 9:01 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
That is it! Party time is over!
No more champagne and stuffed turkey.
Back to the drawing board!
It is now January 5th and there are no excuses left to NOT work on that beautiful start-up you vowed to start in the new year.
We here at The Next Web Blog and Conference are eager to start the year and work on some exciting projects for you. We will keep reporting on anything that is of any interest for the International Internet Professionals reading this blog and we have already started preparing for the fourth edition of The Next Web Conference
This years edition of our conference which will take place on April 15, 16 and 17 in 2009 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We will launch the official site and start selling tickets in only a few weeks.
We hope you will enjoy our blog even more in 2009 than you did in previous years and keep commenting and sending in news and tips.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on December 8, 2008 – 4:05 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Arjen, Ernst-Jan and me are on our way to Paris today to attend Le Web. It starts on Tuesday morning and ends on Wednesday evening. This evening we are having dinner with a large group of Dutch people but look forward to meeting a lot of local people too. Let us know if you are in town too!
Oh, since a large part of our team is in this car with only iPhones for connectivity (at €2 per MB) don’t expect too many posts today. We expect to make up for it tomorrow with live reports from LeWeb.
(Published after 6 attempts over 0.5G at €2 per MB)
Written on November 29, 2008 – 7:24 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Although our industry is all about online activity, two of the best ways to get connected still takes place offline: conferences and meet-ups. I prefer the first, as some top dogs don’t have time for meet-ups, but do come to conferences. Most of my meetings with heroes 2.0 took place at gigs like Le Web, Next08, The Next Web and Web 2.0 Expo.
Money, money
There’s just one problem with those events: they’re pretty damn expensive. If you’re young, self-employed or a student, and not able to get a press pass - you will have a hard time collecting those 750 euros to get in.
I’ve seen both sides, as I’ve organized a conference as well as having tried to get into them for free. The high prices are there to cover the financial risk, but most people don’t get this and complain on Twitter and blogs.
Skip your holiday
I don’t worry too much about people who have plenty of money to spend on a conference but are unwilling to make the effort - that’s mostly a matter of priorities. Skip your holiday. But I do think it’s a waste that a lot of talented students and young entrepreneurs see no way to cross the financial barrier.
The solution is pretty simple. Next time when I organize a conference, I’ll definitely find a company or angel to create some sort of talent fund. They give me money good for ten tickets, and I’ll give these away to talented folks. That way I don’t risk losing money, the investor gets an image boost, and the talents have the time of their life.
Talent pool
Leading example is Youthwatching, a conference about youth marketing and trends which will take place in Ghent on December 12. If you’re young and able to convince organizer Trendwolves you’re also talented, you’ll get in for free.
Walk up to your hero
Promise me one thing though. Make it worth it. Walk up to your hero (Martin Lindstrom, anyone?), tell him why you admire him, and make a great impression.
Written on November 21, 2008 – 11:40 pm
Peter Robinett, Web Programmer and Founder of Lunch 2.0.nl
The slush falling down this evening as I biked home from The Next Web offices must be a sign of things to come, as I will be representing The Next Web on Monday at Slush Helsinki. Slush is a one day startup conference showcasing the latest and greatest in the Finnish startup scene, including big success stories such as Jaiku and MySQL. I’m looking foward to meeting all these entrepeneurs and reporting back to you here at The Next Web about what we can expect next out of the icy north.
If you’re also in town, I’d love to meet up. Please email me (peter@bubblefoundry.com) or send me a message on Twitter (@pr1001).
Written on November 10, 2008 – 7:43 am
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
In the past posts I presented two Romanian web festivals/conferences: Webstock and Internetics
You might wonder “How many Romanian web festivals will you present? And how many of them are there??”
Well, I have two more for you and we are done for this year :).
The newest entrant in this area is RoNewMedia conference. The first edition was held on May 29, 2008 and the next edition is being held as we speak (11 November) at JW Marriot Grand hotel from Romanian capital, Bucharest.
This edition there are even more speakers than the last edition: 34 (many international speakers too)
Last edition drew 450 participants and this number is expected to rise this edition.
In this edition new web projects will be presented and discussed, case studies will be analyzed, real life examples will be shown, networking between participants will be made possible.
There are some high profile international speakers like:
- Alexis Bonte (Investor - erepulik.com and trilulilu.ro)
- Miguel Ripoll (Creative Director - cesserdigital.net)
- Luca Passani (Mobile consultant - WURFL-Pro)
- Marvin Liao (Director of Sales Development for Yahoo! Inc’s Emerging Markets Business Unit)
- Matthew Bowden (Project Manager - Inside Mobile)
- Attila Bihari (Founder - ConQUIZtador.com)
- Lampros Latsaras (Managing Director - CareerBuilder.com.ro)
- Alexander R. Trommen (Marketing director - United-mobile.com)
As well as some local speakers:
- Marius Ghenea (President - pcfun.ro)
- Gabriel Sora (Product manager - Vodafone)
- Dragos Manac (Founder - ghelir.ro)
- Orlando Nicoara (Director - Media Pro Interactiv)
- Anca Fieraru (Director - eResearch Corp.)
- Lucian Despoiu (Founder - Kondiment.com)
- Ionut Oprea (Director - IAB Romania and Blogagency.ro)
- Dragos Novac (Director - Metropotam.ro)
One of the main attaction of this conference is the RoWebDesign Awards section which will select and award the best designed romanian websites which are totally original (it is called “anti copy-paste” award). There are no competition categories. The only criterias for a site to enter in the competition is to be absolutely original in design and to be romanian.
This new festival managed also to attract powerful partners and sponsors like The Money Channel, Vodafone, Business Standard, Cotidianul, HTTPool Marketing.
The fact that there’s so many web conferences and festivals shows the apetite of Romania in digesting this new communication media.
I will not be surprised if other new events will pop up next year.
Written on September 29, 2008 – 5:39 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The guys (and girls?) at freshheads have just sent us their design for The Next Web Conference 2009 website. We like it but what do we know about design, right? Maybe YOU have some ideas about how this looks and how you could improve it?
Well, here is your chance! Download the PSD file and edit all you want. All the layers are there and you can do what you want. Then upload your design to Flickr or send it to me and I will upload it to Flickr for you.
We can’t promise that we will use your ideas but if they are REALLY good we will happily steal whatever you show us. If we do, you will get full credit of course. Thanks in advance… ;-)
Download:
http://www.yousendit.com/download/bVlDYnU0QTZ0TWxMWEE9PQ
Design Preview (click for large version):
Written on September 22, 2008 – 10:00 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
As you may have read a few weeks ago we now send out a regular newsletter. Every Friday we collect some statistics from the site and figure out what the most popular post was. We email this to everyone who has attended a conference before, to The Next Web LinkedIn group and to people who sign-up for our weekly newsletter here at the site.
What we haven’t made clear yet is that if you sign up for the newsletter you will also receive invitations to The Next Web Salon events and The Next Web Conference before anyone else.
The first Next Web Salon was sold out within 48 hours and the second one, which was held last Friday, was sold out within 20 hours! We first send out an invitation to our mailing list and then, if we still have tickets left, we post the invitation to our blog.
As soon as we have more details about The Next Web Conference 2009 we will send out an invitation to our mailing list first and post it to the blog and send out a press release later.
If you want to make sure you are invited first to all our events do sign-up for our newsletter!
Click the image on the right here to see an example newsletter and sign-up here:
Sign up for our weekly Next Web Update. Just the highlights!
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Written on September 13, 2008 – 9:26 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
For those of you who follow me on Dopplr, this is old news. But I just wanted to let you know, dear reader, that I’m off to New York City. I have the pleasure of covering an Altsearchengines meeting plus the Web 2.0 Expo NYC edition. If you’re in the neighborhood and want to meet up for a good chat or a brainstorm, don’t hesitate to drop me a line via Twitter, mail, or the comments.
Oh and by the way, Robin will keep you up to date about European start-ups, so you will stay in loop about the latest tech news from your continent. Here’s the RSS, just in case…
Photo by Grufnik
Written on June 3, 2008 – 9:43 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Here at the Next Web office, we’re getting ready for our second trip of the year to San Francisco. We weren’t planning on it - at least not in such a short while -, yet the experience at Web 2.0 Expo was so beyond our expectations that we HAVE to go back. So Patrick, Arjen, and I are going to Supernova on June 16 to June 18.
Boris and I wrote 17 posts about Web 2.0 Expo, met up with almost every important blogger - from Richard MacManus to Pete Cashmore -, had a few great parties, found a lot inspiration, and - above all - met a lot of you guys, our readers (Apparently we’re not the only Europeans crossing the ocean once in a while). Moreover, Supernova seems like a really interesting conference, as their speakers address the influence of the new technologies on business, society, and politics. Of course we’ll be live blogging their keynotes. The confirmed speakers list includes:
- Jonathan Schwartz (Sun)
- Esther Dyson (EDventure)
- Clay Shirky (NYU)
- Lili Cheng (Microsoft)
-
Joe Kraus (Google)
But were not just coming for the speakers, we’d love to meet up with you too. So please drop us a line to schedule a date. Or just walk up to us when you see three white suits passing by.
Written on May 30, 2008 – 12:11 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Despite the occasional fuzz about Twitter, or Web 2.0 in general, lacking the ability to go mainstream, there are significant signs that Enterprise 2.0 in general is getting the attention of the enterprise more and more. Although many might argue that Enterprise 2.0 already is on the agenda of the manager, I would argue that this is still limited to a few enterprise early adopters or early followers. But as I said, this is changing slowly, which is a good sign for all of us. But we need to stay focused, as we might lose the connection with the important followers.
Ross Mayfield and beer
About three weeks ago I visited a Dutch conference on Enterprise 2.0. This conference focused solely on end users of Enterprise 2.0 related tools and concepts, and was free of charge for these end users. Free of charge, in my opinion, resulted in an entirely different crowd than say the visitors of The Next Web Conference where mainly early adopters spend a fee to network and see their Web 2.0 heroes in action. So we ended up with a crowd that had relatively fresh interest in Enterprise 2.0, but limited knowledge and could in no way be compared to a crowd of early adopters.
What struck me again during the conference is that there is an enormous crowd that is just discovering the possibilities of Enterprise 2.0 related concepts. At this point, many of these participants know not much more about Enterprise 2.0 than “the application of some tools like wikis as knowledge management initiatives” (despite the fact that there is an entire different world behind this). At the same time, there is still skepticism about the ROI and applicability of Enterprise 2.0. I sometimes think that it’s a crowd that we as early adopters seem to lose sight of too often. In this sense, spending too much time with the ‘in crowd’ who ‘get’ Enterprise 2.0 can result in serious over-enthusiasm and ‘lack of realism’.
As a relatively early adopter, despite the interesting line-up including Ross Mayfield and Andrew McAfee, I didn’t hear much news at the conference. At first I felt disappointed about this, but after I realized the aforementioned point about over-enthusiasm, it hit me that we might have to focus for a while on getting the followers up to speed before we move on to the next web 3.0, or whatever version number we want to associate with what comes next. Otherwise we all might lose an important shot at truly socializing the Enterprise…
That is it! Party time is over!
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
