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 (und Partner dieser Website).
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].

Berliner Messegemeinschaftsstand organisiert durch media.net und Berlin Partner auf der dmexco 2009

Die dmexco – digital marketing exposition & conference öffnet in diesem Jahr erstmals ihre Tore auf dem neuen Nordgelände der Koelnmesse. Unter dem Motto “Create Effects” steht die dmexco 2009 ganz im Zeichen digitaler Kreativität und Effizienz.
Für Unternehmen der Hauptstadtregion organisieren Berlin Partner und media.net einen Gemeinschaftsstand zu günstigen Konditionen. Begleiten Sie uns nach Köln! Bereits zugesagt haben Berlin.de, Metaversum, dotBERLIN und moviepilot.
Ein besonderes Highlight: Mit dem Gemeinschaftsstand wird auch gleichzeitig der neue be Berlin Hauptstadtstand eingeweiht. Finanziert wird das Projekt mit Mitteln des europäischen Fonds für regionale Entwicklung (EFRE) und des Landes Berlin.

BERLIN.digital@dmexco – der Messegemeinschaftsstand der Hauptstadtregion Berlin-Brandenburg am 23. & 24. September 2009 auf der dmexco in Köln.

Info
info@medianet-bb.de
messe@berlin-partner.de

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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On the 31st of March 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 Berlin Partner cosponsored. 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. This time 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 were 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.

Anthony Barba, the Managing Director of iliketotallyloveit, talks about his company, his experiences as an US entrepreneur in Germany and the Berlin web scene. Anthony moved to Berlin from New York just months ago and develops his project iliketotallyloveit now from Berlin. Iliketotallyloveit allows “users to publish and share products with the broader public which they find cool, innovative, exceptionally beautiful, or just weird”.

Anthony Barba, Managing Director of iliketotallyloveit from BerlinWebWeek on Vimeo.