We’re preparing for a productive Web 2.0 conference in Berlin October 21-23. Recently Tim O’Reilly was shaken up so much by being in such close proximity to the fires of the financial meltdown at the NYC Web 2.0 Expo that he had to rewrite his whole speech to refocus on doing things that "matter" (instead of mashups that show the correlation between crime in Chicago and milkshake flavor choices at an In-N-Out burger in LA.)
In October we should be able to focus a bit more on technologies and start-ups, particularly more from Europe. We see Europe as a much more fertile ground for startups for a number of reasons. While Europe lacks some of the features of Silicon Valley it has some different elements that can be just as effective. There’s no shortage of talent and technology expertise which makes it a hotbed of activity. Additionally many large companies still prefer to use and even champion local technology to help small firms get a business foothold and critical real-world feedback.Â
We’re also starting to see increasing VC activity in Europe as leading firms like Union Square Ventures have shifted more of their focus to Europe and even started to make some investments. Zemanta being a good recent example and it’s even based in Solvenia.   It’s been a long time coming but we see a sustained upswing of activity here because the environment is becoming more "target rich" every day and the expectations and level of VC competition is less heady than what one finds today in the Valley and even now in Boston and NYC.Â
In addition to being at the event we’ll be actively covering the more interesting pieces here and hosting a small group dinner on the nights of the 21st and 22nd. If you haven’t been to Berlin it’s a great place to be.  We also have a code (webeu08gr63) which gets 35% off the registration. We’ve distributed to our clients but the conference organizers said we could also post it here.Â
Tags: web2expoEU, web2expoEU08, w2e_europe08, eurotech
Comments on this entry are closed.