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Going to Conferences

Posted on September 25, 2008

As a research firm we may select conferences a bit differently than those who go for "networking" reasons.  We went to quite a few conferences three or four years ago and they served us quite well as a firehose of information and new contacts to replace what had been lost after a few years in "management" on Wall Street. 

Besides being back up to speed a few things have also changed since then.  First of all online information and social networking has evolved very quickly.  So often access to the presentation and related material is available during or immediately after the event.  Somewhat perversely the presentation content that companies bring to investment conferences is often available online *before* conference attendees can see it.   For example there is a UBS conference today and a number of companies scheduled to present filed their content with the SEC early this morning so we’ve already had a chance to review it all by 7:30 a.m. but I digress.

They key to conferences these days is getting to them at a point where they have a critical mass of content and attendees but before they go super commercial as many do.  They also obviously have different content focuses today so it’s more possible to attend shorter, more narrowly defined events.    For example we just attended a two-day workshop on open source software in Europe that was worth the time and very complete.  By doing it we are able to very effectively get our arms around all that we need to know for the next six to twelve months.

Our next event is the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin on October 21-23 which is very focused on more practical content around emerging web technologies.  As we prepare for broader enterprise adoption in the coming few years we think this is an important area to focus on.  It is after all the commercial absorption of these technologies that will define some of our best investment results in the next five years which is what matters most to us and our clients.

The hands-on focus of many of the talks will be injecting a healthy dose of reality regarding many of our key research areas including cloud computing, social networks, mobile Internet, online collaboration, and analytics to name a few.  We also expect to get some new insights on some public companies in our ecosystem like Adobe, Google and Nokia.

For anyone that wants to enjoy a 35% discount for the event please use our discount code: webeu08gr63 and let us know if you are coming.

Tags: web2expoEU, web2expoEU08, w2e_europe08, eurotech, ADBE, GOOG, NOK

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