The first panel of the Bizzin3D meetup was titled “The Immersive Internet – Virtual Worlds and the Transformation of Business”. I enjoyed the honesty of the panel – the transformation has clearly just begun and it will take many years till there is a clear change due to virtual worlds (VWs). The change we see is due to new concepts in our digital age, a shrunken world (in distances), a bigger world (in possible experiences). However, having companies like Linden Lab and Metaversum in Berlin existing solely on Virtual Worlds and their service providers like Second Interest and Youin3D is already a change to the old world. The VWs user growth is now in children and youths, so a new generation is growing and using VWs, the real Digital Natives are born not longer than 3-5 years ago. I doubt that many users watched the events in Second Life and twinity, though I think it is absolutely necessary to do the streaming of course.
It’s all about monetisation in the end, so to the question why companies should move to a VW, Clare Rees basically pointed to “collaboration”, Michael Schumann stressed future advantages: “these are strategic moves today for a strategic advantage tomorrow” and Mirko Caspar showcased his Asian early adopter Singapur, who has great plans for their digital future. ..and I guess all three are legitimate answers and all true at the same time. The general agreement was that, if you are able to bring your own audience, you can start now.
But again, in my opinion it will take years till we are at a stage, where use of VW is widespread in the corporate world. I, however, believe VWs will be a major part of the future natural habitat of Digital Natives, since interaction there is much more natural than over mail etc. The question I wanted to ask Second Life, when they will allow the use of real names (since they have already real cities (newBerlin e.g.) could not be answered (”we are thinking about it”), I give them another 6 months max., till they do that, the need is clearly there.
If you are interested in a much more detailed view on this event, Mr.Topf a.k.a Tao Takashi was there and has published a review in his blog.

The bcc, designed by the Bauhaus Student and probably most well known East German architect Hermann Henselmann, lends itself very well to conferences like this. It is small enough to not feel lost inside and has an open atmosphere. That it is located in the very center of Berlin is another point for it. It suited the feeling of the webinale, many tracks to choose from and lots of networking opportunities. I was there every day for at least half a day, from the first startupday on monday to the following full conference days. I missed the webinale crawl, 3 parallel guided office tours through Berlin-based web companies but I look forward to join next year. Looking for food for thought I joined the keynotes of Ossi Urchs and the one from Karlheinz (call me Charly) Toni, the Austrian CEO of the British startup Piins. Piins is his 2nd project after Miomi.

Karlheinz Toni, CEO of Piins

Toni’s key note topic was “The flaw of the internet and modern communication“. It started out well with some maths about exponential functions and their relation to the internet and its growths resp. question, whether its growths (data flow) could be accomodated by the technical infrastructure/standards. However, at some place it turned into how contents can be combined and displayed on the same page/window. ..which is where Piins comes into play. I enjoyed the start of his speech, he was very entertaining and invited everybody to visit him and his team on his houseboat Nr. 10 in London.
An invitation to play was the keynote of Kevin Slavin from areacode. Areacode produces cross-media games and entertainment, his examples were entertaining and thought provoking. A member of areaplay is also involved in botanicalls, a device enabling plants to twitter and text messaging. His scarce use of powerpoint was also enjoyable.

Kevin Slavin of areacode

Das Programm war wie immer auf barcamps divers, auch für mich als bloßer UXTester (=User) war etwas dabei. organisiert war es auch sehr gut, ich werde 2010 wieder kommen. Endlich konnte ich mal mehr über Poken erfahren, was ich sonst immer nur als #Poken im Twitterstream wahrgenommen habe. Hannes Trapp aus Karlsruhe hat eine Einführungsgrunde gegeben und das Schweizer Projekt vorgestellt (der Gründer, ein gebürtiger Kanadier, arbeitet jetzt von San Francisco aus). Eine Prognose zu geben ist schwer, sollte es Poken gelingen mit Social Networks zu kooperieren, das Gerät bei Konferenzen zu etablieren und das Tamagotchi Design durch andere (v.a. Business tauglichere) zu ersetzen, kann ich mir vorstellen, dass es wirtschaftlich erfolgreich wird. Allerdings ist das Fenster nicht zu groß, viele andere stoßen in ähnliche Bereiche vor. Laut eigenen Angaben produziert man monatlich bis zu 60.000 Stück. Das Gerät ist im Prinzip ein USB Stick mit einer Knopfzelle, die etwa ein Jahr halten soll und ein paar LEDs. Man überträgt eine ID zum Partnergerät, wenn man die Geräte direkt aufeinanderhält.

Poken im Einsatz

Wenn man dann mit dem Poken online geht, wird diese übertragen und man kann auf seiner Seite die Details des anderen sehen bzw. seine freischalten etc. und das über viele Netzwerke. Aber ausführlicher beschrieben findet Ihr das bei missionpoken.de. Der große Nachteil ist einfach, man kann nur jemanden poken, der ein Poken hat. Als Zusatzfeature von Linkedin oder XING könnte ich es mir vorstellen. So eher nicht in der Breite. Aber nach der Session haben gefühlte 20% der Teilnehmer einen Poken für 15 EUR gekauft, also ist da ein Markt und ich werde dann im Sommer eins nachkaufen und eines besseren belehrt sein…
Auch um meine persönlichen Kaufeintscheidungen für ein Handy etwas zu fundieren bin ich in die Session von Marcus Kucborski gegangen, der eine Einführung in das mobile Internet gegeben hat, also eine Einführung für Leute, die durchaus Datenflatrates für ihr mobiles Endgerät haben. Der Hörsaal (und am Sonntag bei der OpenAir Version mehrere Bierbänke) war vollbesetzt, natürlich war das iPhone omnipräsent, was aber zu erwarten war. Interessant fand ich seinen Überblick über die Appstores und den Ausblick darauf: er erwartet eine ähnliche Entwicklung wie im Computerbereich, da das entwickeln nativer Applikationen zeitraubend ist und einzelne Anwendungen im Meer ihrer Wettbewerber im Store untergehen, wird wohl auch im mobilen Bereich der Screen bald durch die Browsernutzung dominiert werden.  Ich halte das für plausibel, obwohl ich im Moment eher darauf schaue, wie die Google Phones und der Android Market mit dem iPhone Appstore mithalten, irgendwann muß ich mich entscheiden… Insgesamt war der sonnige Tag lohnenswert, für die lange Fahrt nach Adlershof wurde man durch die schöne Umgebung und die Möglichkeit draußen zu sitzen, entschädigt.

Insgesamt kann ich einen Besuch im sommerlichen Adlershof nur empfehlen, “Die lange Nacht der Wissenschaften” am 13.6.2009 wäre ein guter Anlaß, die Architektur lohnt eine Stippvisite sowieso.

Webmontag

Yesterday the Webmonday Silicon Valley took place, i.e. the Webmontag web 2.0 Expo edition. I do not exactly know, how many people were there, I suppose around 40 all in all. It took place in Citizen Space, a co-working place in San Francisco’s city centre I have already used on previous trips, both as a place to get some work done and as the place where the previous webmondays were held, which I (Berlin Partner co)sponsored. There were organized by Tim Bonnemann, the inventor of the Webmontag concept.
I very much enjoy Webmondays, be it in Berlin or here in SanFran, you get to network easily and the presentations are always short and to the point, letting you make the maximum out of your time. Yesterday Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) and Berlin Partner presented their services for investors expanding to Germany. Metaversum showed their 3D World Twinity and the Fraunhofer HHI showcased their video retrieval technologies, they are all going to be at the expo too. I found doodle, a Swiss company very interesting. They allow you to solve the problem of coordinating meeting or conf call times with people using different calenders. They have an outlook integration and opend their API recently (it goes on for 2 more weeks, you can win a trip to Switzerland) and I suppose to see even more of them in the future.
A project I will check out for the blogs I am contributing to is apture. They seem to have found an amazing way to improve the usability (surfing experience) of websites, integrating multimedia to your site in a very easy to use way. They are interesting for bloggers and publishers alike. Check out the lower part of their site to experience it. It’s great! There was camera running, I hope to be able to show some video footage soon.

There were so many, that is was impossible to be at all of them, as Nico Lumma wrote. The MIKI, which Kai produced shows that in colourful pictures. Fastenyourseatbelts has used the Week to ask me, how events like that interact with citymarketing, investments and tourism. Radio Fritz broadcasted a short interview with me in the broadcast Trackback. OnPodcast.de is an extensive interview with Nico Lumma about some of the events.
There are so many people and portals who wrote about the BerlinWebWeek, I only want to mention a few: Stylewalker, Dittes, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Dagger, Berlin Kollektiv, Twemes – Tweets with BerlinWebWeek, Fotos on Flickr, Berliner Zeitung and many many more.

To get an overview about who is who and who is doing what in the German (speaking) Startup scene, a regular visit of  Deutsche Startups is recommended. The portal, whose editorial office is located in Berlin, publishes a daily newsletter, offers a huge  list of existing web startups, a long list of potential investors and an equally interesting list with companies already in the “dead pool“.

For entrepreneurs and employees equally interesting is the  Jobboard with jobs for interns. The shareholders of the portal are chief editor Alexander Hüsing, Stefan Vosskötter (managing director of DS Media and founder of „Webnews“) as well as the European Founders Fund (a.k.a. the Samwer brothers) and Holtzbrinck Ventures.
Since the end of 2008 on one can experience Deutsche Startups also offline, Alexander Hüsing has established a series of events called Echtzeit, which has been organized with the help of sponsors already twice in Berlin. I was on the 3rd of February at Echtzeit II Berlin in the premises of  Zanox with over  170 other guests. The topic of the day was “External Financing vs. Bootstrapping”, very suitable for the economic situation of the first quarter of 2009. Since the event is an invitation only event the percentage of entrepreneurs and investors was very high among the guests. I can only recommend to use Deutsche Startups.de online (if you know a little German) and offline to get introduced to what is happening in Germany and German speaking regions in the web 2.0 area.

Of course there are presentations, for which you can put your name down in a Wiki and then you have the chance to present your ideas, your questions or success stories to an interested audience.

I met an interesting mixture of innovative companies as barcoo, fresh ideas – yes, I could imagine paying 3 EUR/month for a very good blog about Berlin – and Networking offers in and with Asia by a nice Berliner (Mario Behling).