The morning train brought me to Amsterdam. I had not been in this beautiful city for over a year and so was happy to get the invitation for SIME 2011 and thus a good excuse to go to the Netherlands again. It was a bright and sunny day as I stepped out of Amsterdam Centraal, walking down Damrak, passing tourists, locals, and being passed by a lot of bikes.
Upon arriving at the SIME venue, the name badges were not ready yet, so I was ushered straight in to catch the end of Ola Ahlvarsson’s talk on “A Global Journey in Digital Opportunities”.
The “Fireside Chat with the SIME Amsterdam founders” gave an introduction to the people and ideas behind the Amsterdam version of the “Scandinavian Interactive Media Event”, ending with Joris van Oers of De Telefoongids on how no one uses phone books anymore and how DTG transformed.
It was followed by “Making Marketing Go Ka-Ching” with an introduction by Erinn Leahey Marzo of Buddy Media was pretty interesting, with lots of stats and data on social marketing with a focus on Facebook. More interesting, actually, then the following panel with Heleen Dura-Van Oord and Maks Giordano, that did not seem to find a point to converge on. What disturbed me during this session were all the people tweeting about how Erinn Marzo reminded them of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, especially when she sat down for the panel. Such an objectification and sexualization did not happen to any of the male speakers and, in my opinion, casts a bad light on the audience at SIME.
During and after the panel, people were picking up their badges, and the Wifi password was also finally made available.
“Amazon’s World” with the CTO of Amazon.com, Werner Vogels, who struck me as a pragmatic guy with a strong vision. He also uttered the memorable “Your teams should be no larger than you can feed with two pizzas” that made Quote of the Day at SIME Amsterdam 2011, as well as lines like “Yes, I believe engineers are artists. But the difference is, they make money”. His suggestion to hire only the very best was echoed by many in the audience, including myself. He continued to say that the very best did not need to be given orders and were more efficient when they are given a lot of freedom, and again I agree.
This quite interesting session was followed by “Companies that make us go wow!”, an advertising slot slash stage pitch. While JamesList, a marketplace for “ridiculously expensive luxury goods”, was entertaining at least, the following presentation about StarStable, or “World of Horsecraft”, missed the audience by a long shot and sounded like a too-long and rather boring sales pitch for a game that is not even released yet, focusing on girls under the age of 14 with an interest in horses. The presentation also repeated tired clichés of boys favoring games where they shoot, slay, or blow up stuff, while girls are interested in riding horses across landscapes. This kind of thinking needlessly reinforces social gender conditioning and must culminate in “World of Housework” sooner or later… not a fan.
The next panel, “Innovation at the Speed of Life” with Anil Hansjee of Google and Jake Hsu of Symbio, was much more interesting. Anil talked about Google’s acquisition history, how they mostly buy companies for the people, and how to get bought by Google (“don’t go public, be valued under $50m”). Jake Hsu shared insights from his life.
“Master Class 1: Mobile Sells – or does it?” did not teach me anything new, despite having people from Layar, MobyPicture or Whatser on the panel. Considering the tweets during the session, most of the audience seemed to feel the same. It certainly did not help that the beginning of the panel felt like a round of elevator pitches when everyone introduced their respective company or service.
“Inside the Head of a Serial Entrepreneur” started with an introduction by Peter-Frans Pauwels, the founder of TomTom, explaining how TomTom started and how long it took them to really get the market and start making profits. Interesting enough until it turned into a too-long sales pitch advertising the new TomTom service. However, the panel, with people like Stefan Glänzer (founder of Ricardo, investor in last.fm, and business angel) and Oded Vardi (founder of Superna Group, son of Yossi Vardi) and Erik Wikström (founder of Result and others) saved the slot. I was especially impressed by Stefan Glänzer’s calm and dry wit.
Even though I did not know Ad Scheepbouwer before the “Fireside chat” with him, it was pretty captivating listening to the former CEO of a huge telecommunications company, KPN, talk about change and how to adapt in a world that is changing ever faster.
It was followed by the panel on “Re-Shaping the Media Industry” with Sara Öhrvall (Bonnier Group), Patrick Mesterton (De Telefoongids), and Tobias Oswald (CondéNast Digital Germany), which was off to a very slow start. For the first ten minutes, the most interesting thing on the panel were the shoes of Sara Öhrvall (Swedish Hasbeens, “[of course](tweet by Sara)”). It did not get much better when the panel appeared increasingly self-referential, and I did not take any insight from the panel that went beyond “know your customers”. Other members of the audience seemed to agree, but another group seemed to really like the panel, so maybe I simply wasn’t the intended audience.
“Meet the next Skype” was a chance for the CMO of Rebtel to introduce their service to the audience. While Rebtel is an interesting enough success story, the slot’s title promised too much as Rebtel competes merely in the VoIP space, but does not seem to have anything comparable to Skype’s desktop clients and peer-to-peer mesh. While their marketing is quite good, the actual quality of the Rebtel service, from my friends’ and my own experience, is mediocre. However, the VoIP space is and will certainly be interesting to watch for the next few years, and Rebtel positioned themselves as a strong player.
I took the break as a chance to look aorund the venue a bit more. SIME Amsterdam took place in the “Beurs van Berlage” building, a few walking minutes from the main train station. The Beurs, formerly the Amsterdam stock exchange, has been turned into a spacious event venue without compromising the original substance of the building, and they even have an active Twitter account.
“Fireside Chat with Puck” was one of the high points of SIME Amsterdam. Puck is an 11-year-old who taught himself English so he could then learn to program. By now, he has written a number of webapps in PHP as well as several apps for iOS. When asked what he wanted to be when he grows up, he says “a programmer”. While his story is less uncommon than one may think, the exposure he has gotten allows him and his father to spread a message of support for similarly interested and smart kids.
The “Fireside Chat – Top Dutch Media Communications & High Tech Innovations” afterwards was mostly a showcase for several Dutch companies, most of which I did not know before. However, Shapeways were mentioned, and I shall take this opportunity to try and make them more known. Shapeways was founded a few years ago (!!as a subsidiary of Philips?) as a 3D-printing company. While the selection of materials and methods was limited in the beginning, they now offer over !!number materials for 3D-printing or milling. If you want to create a custom shape for jewelry, lamps etc., you should try Shapeways.
Finally, the second high point of the afternoon, “Your Brain is the Best Marketer” with Kim Cramer, neuro-marketer, and Victor Lamme, professor of cognitive neuroscience. The team used MRI scanning to gather insights into how marketing and advertisements are received and processed by your brain. Test subjects are put into a MRI scanner and are then shown TV spots or print ads. The activation of different parts of the brain is measured and later evaluated. Their conclusions from the data gathered so far is interesting – the decision to purchase something is driven by desire, but tempered by pain. Humans seem to want pretty much everything desirable, but “paying money makes your brain hurt,” as Victor Lamme put it. They also showed examples of spots and what responses they triggered, for example two versions of a spot for the Renault Clio, one which ends with the protagonist meeting his girlfriends’ parents, the other with the couple kissing while a number of other men watch jealously. The latter showed significantly higher activation in the brains of subjects, for reasons that can only be speculated about for now.
The Wrap-Up session marked the end of talks for the day, with only two “master classes” to go. Since we were running about thirty minutes late by then, I decided to skip the final master class to instead socialize and network for a bit before I had to catch my train. I talked to a number of people about what I do and what hackers are, how they are different from crackers, and how hacking is not limited to software. Some other people only came by to congratulate me on my hair and how it was a great marketing instrument, which was fine with me, too.
In closing, I would like to thank the organizers for a good conference with interesting people both on and off stage, and especially Bob Stumpel for the invitation. Even though I was not the primary target audience for SIME, I feel that the day trip to Amsterdam was well worth my while and I look forward to visiting other SIME conferences in the future.