Berlin Digital » San Francisco

Berliner Startups at the web 2.0 expo in San Francisco 2010

Alexander Kölpin — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:09:30 +0000

For the 4th year in a row Berlin (i.e. Berlin Partner) is organizing a booth at the web 2.0 expo in San Francisco. A dozen Berlin based companies will travel to California (about half of them will participate in the Berlin booth as well):

Aka-Aki – mobile Startup
Chocri – customized chocolate online
Compuccino – social media agency
Jovoto – crowdsourcing platform
Palabea -language learning network
Sternwald -consultancy
Mufin – music startup
Smeet – 3D entertainment
Ralf Otto Tax Consultants
Berlin Partner – be Berlin – Berlin’s economic development agency
Germany Trade and Invest – foreign trade & inward investment agency
Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications – R&D in Information Technology

We will have a Berlin Night on the 5th of May in the ROE Club, here is the FB Event.

Berliner Startups auf der web 2.0 Expo Anfang Mai 2010 in San Francisco

Alexander Kölpin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:37:47 +0000

Wie in den letzten 3 Jahren wird auch dieses Jahr Berlin wieder mit einem Stand auf der web 2. 0 Expo vom 3. – 5. Mai in San Francisco vertreten sein. Organisiert wird der Messestand durch die Berlin Partner GmbH, die auch Silver Sponsor der web 2.0 Expo ist. Ziel ist es, sowohl amerikanische (internationale) Unternehmen zu finden, die nach Europa bzw Berlin expandieren wollen, d.h. für Berlin zu werben, als auch Berliner Startups eine preiswerte Möglichkeit zu geben, Kunden und Partner in den USA zu finden.
Es wird Platz für 3-5 Startups auf dem relativ zentral gelegenen Stand geben. Ticket und Standkosten sind in der relativ geringen Teilnahmegebühr enthalten, Reise- und weitere Kosten sind selbst zu tragen. Bewerben und mehr Informationen erhalten kann man bei Berlin Partner [Der Rechtsweg ist ausgeschlossen].

Berlin at the web 2.0 Expo 09 in San Francisco – review

Alexander Kölpin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:11:46 +0000

The third year in a row Berlin has had its booth at the web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. I think I remember Berlin being the only German booth as well as being the only economic development agency there in the past. Counting all companies there now I come to approx. 10 from Germany and their majority from the Berlin region. With this I think the German constituency seems to be the largest but one cannot be sure, since the origin of exhibitors cannot be searched. I do not know about the percentage of Germany attendees, I however met several and suppose they constitute the largest group from continental Europe. The Berlin booth was organized by Berlin Partner, Brandenburg was represented by the Zukunftsagentur (both economic development agencies), Solidground (BizDev) and Ralf Otto (TaxConsult) offered their services. The highlight turned out to be Metaversum or rather its project twinity, a real life 3D model of Berlin. It attracted many visitors which were curious about the project and gave a us a good starting point for discussions. I am not sure how the founders would like to see it described, I’d call it a mixture between Second Life and Facebook, taking the best things out of each (i.e. the 3D animated world only with “real” cities and the social network with real names and “real” avatars). They will roll out Singapore and London next, I suppose the US will be tackled then. However, Zanox, who last time shared our booth had set up their own now and Germany Trade and Invest (the former Invest in Germany) had their own large booth, sharing it with the Fraunhofer Institute and Sachsen-Anhalt. Coremedia from Hamburg had a booth as well. Having been there already a couple of years one could see the recession, I guess the exhibition area was rented out by 30% less and there were 2.000 visitors less. However, the glass was half full in my opinion: most of the exhibitors seemed to have returned and most of the attendees as well (10.000 last year). I share Jennifer Pahlka’s optimism – the vibe was good despite the economic downturn. We were able to show steadiness in our approach with the booth to market Berlin as the ideal investment location for a European expansion of US entrepreneurs. Of course we tried to bring our message across about the digital side of Berlin – we had the chance to talk to Sean Percival (twitter), founder of the lalawag magazin about Berlin and our intentions. The lalawag covers tech culture, events, gossip and news from Los Angeles.
Another interesting encounter happened with Stuart Schulzke, director from FORA.tv who gather the “web’s largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences”. They know now about my choice between the iphone and Blackberry and, of course, about Berlin
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Berlin at the Webmonday in San Francisco March 2009

Alexander Kölpin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:34:52 +0000

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.

Berlin wird auf der web 2.o expo in San Francisco April 2009 sein

Alexander Kölpin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:59:21 +0000

Berlin wird im April 2009 zum 3. Mal auf der web 2.o Expo im Silicon Valley vertreten sein. Berlin Partner hat einen Stand für die Hauptstadtregion organisiert, der gemeinsam mit der Brandenburger Wirtschaftsförderung ZAB für eine Expansion nach Berlin – Brandenburg bzw. Deutschland und Europa wirbt. Gleichzeitig bieten Solidground und Ralf Otto Steuerberatung ihre Services ansiedlungsinteressierten Unternehmen für einen Markteintritt in Europa an.
Solidground ist auf Beratung und Business Development besonders hinsichtlich deutsch – amerikanischer Projekte spezialisiert und die Ralf Otto Steuerberatung auf internationale Kunden, die Unterstützung bei Steuern und Finanzen benötigen.
Auf dem Stand wird Berlin auch digital zu sehen sein. Metaversum stellt dort ihr Projekt twinity vor, ein dreidimensionales virtuelles Berlin, durch das man mit seinem Avatar laufen kann. Im Gegensatz zu Second Life setzt Metaversum auf das Prinzip, die virtuelle Welt eng mit der realen zu verknüpfen, d.h. echte Namen für Personen zu verwenden und Berlin so wie es ist in twinity abzubilden. Die Berliner Firma arbeitet derzeit an Modellen von Singapur und London.
Es werden viele Events im und um das Moscone Center stattfinden – eins ist definitiv noch zu erwähnen: es wird ein Silicon Valley Webmontag (am Dienstag ;-) stattfinden, zu dem alle herzlich eingeladen sind. Ich werde berichten.

Mit Deinem Startup Ende März 09 zur Web 2.0 Expo nach San Francisco

Alexander Kölpin — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:54:27 +0000

Du arbeitest in/an einem Startup in der Hauptstadtregion Berlin – Brandenburg? Du willst nach San Francisco zur Mutter aller web 2.0 Koferenzen?

Berlin Partner wird zusammen mit der Zukunftsagentur Brandenburg auf einem Stand auf dem Messeteil der web 2.o Konferenz in San Francisco vertreten sein. Die Berliner und Brandenburger Wirtschaftsförderer boten schon 2007 und 2008 Unternehmen aus der Region die Möglichkeit, mit ihrer Firma auf dem Messestand präsent zu sein und werden dies auch 2009 wieder tun. Sie werben um ausländische Investoren, die sie in die Hauptstadt der Startups locken wollen. Was könnte ein besseres Testimonial für Berlin sein, als ein Gespräch mit Unternehmern, die dort bereits ihr Startup aufbauen?
Die Hauptstadtregion bietet dafür ihren Unternehmen die Möglichkeit auf eine sehr preiswerte Weise im Silicon Valley präsent zu sein. Die Webunternehmen, die im März zur web 2.0 Expo kommen, können gegen ein geringes Entgelt Teil eines gemeinsamen Hauptstadtstandes werden, also ihr Unternehmen dort vertreten, erhalten ein Poster am Stand und die Möglichkeit, ihre Broschüren auszulegen. Anfragen können hier gestellt werden.

Berlin at the Web 2.0 Summit 2008

Alexander Kölpin — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:08:12 +0000

One of the most forward thinking events I have ever visited was the web 2.0 summit 2008 organized by O’Reilly Media. They are usually organized at the end of each year in November in San Francisco. It is an invitation only event (you can ask for one here) which has a steep price but in my opinion is worth every cent. The organizers limit the number of multipliers and service companies and so the majority of the participants is from media, web, soft- and hardware companies. It was a more or less international event, the majority of people came from the US, understandably to a large extent from the Silicon Valley. However, I met Australians, many Europeans including half a dozen fellow countrymen and -women from Germany, and Asians.
A tip for those who don’t have thousands of $$$ left to spend for a ticket: like at any good conference there are always opportunities to network outside of the actual meeting rooms, many people spent the main hours of each day in the Lobby of the “Palace Hotel” and talked to the participants free of charge.
Going to the summit that week is worthwile as other organizations organize smaller events at that time as well, making use of the web summit week and thus making it easier to decide to travel because there is not only the 3 to 4 day summit but other events to learn and network. I used the time to meet companies at meetings I had scheduled in order to help them with their decision to expand to Europe/Germany/Berlin. I was pleasently surprised that even in the economic situation at the beginning of November 2008 I had discussions with companies looking at Europe and thus having a definite interest in Berlin, so that I could return home and follow up on the leads.
I was lucky enough to have been at the summt twice, 2007 and 2008. I plan on returning whenever possible. At both summits there was a line-up of excellent speakers and at both summits I was able to experience first hand decisions/information (for example: Yahoo CEO Yang), which largely influenced the web 2.0 and social media sphere.