Advance Conference – International Web and StartUp Conference in Cologne - September 19 & 20, 2011, Cologne (Germany)

Twelve institutions from Europe and US pitch their most recent activities, funding programs and innovative infrastructures: Lars Hinrichs, Founder of HackFwd: Completly new offering: We start with inspiration. Most passionate developers are turning their ideas into a profitable company. Giving developers/coders a one years salary to develop their idea. Having conferences with the other teams and …

Steve Blame (Author) starts out by relating how his own failure with Viva 2 affected him psychologically and emotionally, and then the panelists – Verena Delius (Young Internet), Dominik Matyka (Plista), and Paul Jozefak (Neuhaus Partners) – briefly introduce themselves and sketch their own failures they went through. Some collected topics and opinions: What should …

After brief self-introductions by the panelists – Patrick Meisberger (T-Venture), Markus Fuhrmann (Team Europe), Lars Hinrichs (HackFwd), and Isaac Wolkerstorfer (6 Wunderkinder) – host Mike Butcher (TechCrunch Europe) gets the discussion going on the pros and cons of “cloning” successful business models. Some of the perspectives put forward by the panelists are: Europeans rarely clone …

The initial question, says Fadi Bishara (blackbox), was: How to accelerate startups globally? Entrepreneurship is exploding anywhere as less resources are needed and almost any market on the globe has become accessible. But the rate of success is very low: 9 out of 10 startups fail. What they did was searching for a scalable way …

Monty Metzger (Recomy) An entrepreneur by heart with a great passion for technology, hot trends, and social media, Monty Metzger wants to introduce the audience to his “vision of the web.” Web Vision “Technology trends are quite clear, but people don’t change as fast as technology so we need a vision.” 1. Right now, the …

“Part of our business is to take a look into the future,” says Prof. Dr. Stefan Wrobel (Fraunhofer IAIS) about the Fraunhofer Institute, a “Technology Company” with 17,000 people that contributed to shaping the web. What Fraunhofer is interested in isn’t “fleeting technology” that will change next year, but trends that reach beyond that, and …

Transcript of Neelie Kroes’ video message to ADVANCE conference Ladies and Gentlemen, Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. As the EU’s Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, I am convinced that the Internet revolution will change the world. In Europe, the Internet sector is already a substantial and growing part of our economy, …

The question put forward by Guido Doublet (Takomat) to the panelists in a nutshell: Is money the most important thing? The panelists – Philipp Möhring (Seedcamp), Ralf Bartoleit (SevenVentures), Elizabeth Varley (TechHub) and Alice Zagury (Le Camping) – offer quite different approaches to that question. Important factors beyond cash are certainly speed, knowledge, and the …

The panel, moderated by Marc Ziegler, starts with a presentation by Guido Baumhauer from Deutsche Welle. The “iCustomer,” as Baumhauer calls it, wants relevant content, wants to be heard and get a response, and wants to share information and his or her ideas about the product. How can media companies respond? Being a “Gatekeeper” doesn’t …