Wednesday and Thursday evening of the BerlinWebWeek 2009 were a good occasion to meet new people and catch up on old acquaintences. Nicole Simon invited the GirlGeeks who were around to her GirlGeekDinner to CoffeeKarma in Friedrichshain and Alexander Hüsing from Deutsche Startups invited the movers and shakers of the web scene to his Echtzeit III event at the zanox campus. Both events were invitation only, at least for men.
Women are of course the target group of the GirlGeeKDinner, so men to come along need to find a female companion, thankfully the website allows you to ask to be “adopted”. ..and the concept works, more than half ot the people were were women. The atmosphere was relaxed, one is encouraged to present ideas and projects. A student presented her idea to write about the History of the Push Button, something I really liked. Or was it the Button Push? I do not know, I just hope she finds partners to write with, and do it interactively, in some kind of portal, web site, as she suggested. Echtzeit (Realtime) was invitation only for everybody, no matter which gender. Short presentations were followed by networking between a lot of entrepreneurs, founders and investors. This concept works as well in my opinion, the relatively small event (under 200 people) allows you to find the people you want to talk to or get intros to new contacts. The businesslike atmosphere suits the event and is nevertheless relaxed enough, no wonder, it’s all about the web. A much bigger crowd gathered when zanox called for their summer party – I can only repeat estimats that roughly a thousand people met at Spindler&Klatt on the other side (seen rom zanox’ offices) of the river Spree. It was a great party, exhausted as I was from the BerlinWebWeek (it was the 5th day of conferences, barcamps, networking and parties) I left after midnight, the twitterstream tells me that the last people left when the sun was almost up… I would not have liked to miss anything of this and was happy that I could be part of it. A big thank you to all the organizers!
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.
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.
The BerlinWebWeek SpringEdition will take place at the end of May 2009, the preparations are going on fine and I am very optimistic, that the days of the BerlinWebWeek will be packed with events again. They will make travelling to the capital worthwhile. I have tried to compile a digital review. As somebody who is one of the initiators of BerlinWebWeek I am surely not neutral, the initiative is very important to me. However, I found almost only positive feedack in the internet. The choice between events was huge, everybody could find a niche topic for him or her… and if you have suggestions please give feedback. Kai has aggregated, how BerlinWebWeek became a portal and is now a fixture if you want to know hat is going on in Berlin and how we will make it again a series of events in May. BerlinBlase has compiled a map of events and locations, Nicole Simon wrote in Crueltobekind. Zanox has filmed a video about some of the events:
The next BerlinWebWeek will take place end of May 2009. The best time for it was discussed for a long time since there are two big events in the 2nd quarter of the year which would have been suitable, the re:publica and the webinale. Organisational reasons led to the decision to have the BerlinWebWeek around the webinale at the end of May. The re:publica at the beginning of April will even without the BerlinWebWeek be (again) extremly well attended and interesting, we will keep you informed.
Today there are already a couple of events later at the the end of May in the BerlinWebWeek: the webinale, the ux camp, the TYPO Berlin, the Mobile Monday, so we will have a Web Week again about 10 days long. 10 day which will make it worth coming from other regions of Germany and further away to the German capital. If you plan an event, please put it here. Should you think about organizing one, please contact Berlin Partner.
Echtzeit (Realtime) was invitation only for everybody, no matter which gender. Short presentations were followed by networking between a lot of entrepreneurs, founders and investors. This concept works as well in my opinion, the relatively small event (under 200 people) allows you to find the people you want to talk to or get intros to new contacts. The businesslike atmosphere suits the event and is nevertheless relaxed enough, no wonder, it’s all about the web.
A much bigger crowd gathered when zanox called for their summer party – I can only repeat estimats that roughly a thousand people met at Spindler&Klatt on the other side (seen rom zanox’ offices) of the river Spree. It was a great party, exhausted as I was from the BerlinWebWeek (it was the 5th day of conferences, barcamps, networking and parties) I left after midnight, the twitterstream tells me that the last people left when the sun was almost up… I would not have liked to miss anything of this and was happy that I could be part of it. A big thank you to all the organizers!
