Social Networking Woes

The best way to learn more about a certain topic, or to catch up on the latest innovations in the industry, is to head to a conference. These events are also great opportunities for networking. You get to talk to other industry players and experts, find out what your competitors are doing and who knows, you might even meet a few potential business partners!

April brought us to two conferences. Arnout was at an e-commerce conference in Singapore, preaching passionately about how conference organizers and delegates can benefit from online marketplaces (like Conference Bay!). He blew everyone away of course! Frank had the opportunity to attend The Next Web conference in Amsterdam on a free ticket! Yes, a free ticket! Free is a golden magic word in Singapore. One never refuses anything that is given away free of charge! We scored that ticket by submitting this very professional home-video! George Lucas, watch out!

Visit The Next Web for free!

I just heard about a great initiative developed by Erwin Blom and Arne Hulstein in the Netherlands; if you are a start-up and you want to visit The Next Web, a leading Internet industry conference in Europe, you can get sponsored if you send in a short (3 minute) video clip explaining why you think you deserve to be funded. They are now raising funds and have raised 3500 Euro in a matter of days. This amount will be matched by The Next Web people so it looks like at least 10 people will be able to attend this event for free. What a great idea. Read all about it here:

Of course, Conference Bay offers the opportunity to make a bid for a seat at conferences such as these, and we are normally able to get good discounts as well (40-50% off is the average) but I love this initiative as it is so simple and targetted. We will certainly start working on a short video to see if we can get sponsorship to visit The Next Web, we’ll need it because our flight to Europe will already be quite expensive…