Having always been the good girl, I felt extremely naughty sneaking into this year’s SIME conference 14-15 November without paying the registration fee.
The conference description:
Global and local leaders of the Internet-, Telecom-, Media and Entertainment industries will gather in Stockholm to teach, learn, share ideas and do business with over 1000 local stars, aficionados and executives together creating the SIME magic. […] This year our focus is to build bridges between digital and traditional companies, between digital threats and opportunities.
Speakers included Niklas Zennström (of Skype fame), Esther Dyson (EDventure, “the queen of US Internet”), Google’s Director of Product Marketing EMEA, Tristan Nitot (Mozilla Europe), Tariq Krim (Netvibes), Mattias Miksche (Stardoll), Danny Rimer (Index Ventures), Simon Mulcahy (Head of IT Industries Group, World Economic Forum), Martin Varsavsky (FON), and not to forget, Martin’s absolute charmer of 13-year-old son, Tom.
Compared to another recent internet conference, Daytona Sessions, SIME07 felt more old school, mainly due to the audience. At Daytona, everyone definitely “got” internet, and for most, web 2.0 was already old news. It was bleeding edge entrepreneurs, visionaries, trend forecasters, … And the sessions were all about the future. At SIME, people still talked about how to decrease the fear of new technology within organisations, and the focus was more on the now. What are the cool startups today, what are the recent changes, how can you leverage current technology, etc. And most people I saw in the audience seemed to be from old media, or IT departments at traditional companies. But I guess that’s what you get when you advertise big in DN, the largest Swedish newspaper, and charge around €1000 for the ticket. Two very different worlds, indeed.
Nonetheless, SIME was pretty cool. It’s not often you get to see so many web dignitaries on the same stage in little Stockholm — very inspirational! I especially liked that the speakers were from around the world, mirroring how borderless internet truly is. And for me, coming from a hardcore geeky computer science background, but currently working as a strategy consultant with engagements mainly in “old” industries, attending a conference as this is like finding water after a looooong dry trek in the desert.
It’s easy to forget after two days like this that most companies out there today still aren’t even close to understanding internet. For them, internet is only good for emailing and hosting a static company website. Their only point of interaction with customers online is a dated contact form, with most messages sent through it never even getting a reply. The attendants at SIME were maybe not all hardcore internet enthusiasts, but they were definitely interested in change, unlike the majority of organisations I’ve encountered the past couple of years, outside the internet bubble, in “the real world”.
The world is changing, and those who don’t embrace digital technologies and learn to leverage them will be left behind. But I wonder how traditional industry dinosaurs will ever catch up. Will traditional and digital ever meet?
