Menorca TechTalk2008
May 14th, 2008 by Dave. No Comments »
Another year, another Menorca TechTalk hosted by Martin Varsavsky at his farm. Josh, Ribot, and I arrived on Friday night only to find the hotel we booked online wasn’t open until July, however all ended well (I suppose with 3 guys in an industry of “expect the unexpected” our chances were high).
On Saturday the quick sessions started with Joi Ito talking about the history & future of the internet in Japan. I found it really interesting that he said privacy for kids is hiding under their bed cover with their mobile to avoid passing eyes. Martin then called on Jacob Hsu & Thomas Crampton to talk about China; propaganda; opportunities; government; great firewall and all. Having been in Beijing recently I found this an interesting topic.
Andrew Mclaughlin, who heads Global Public Policy at Google talked about legislation and how the internet is in danger with talks of old-school regulations being “ported” online. Michael Wolf talked about the future of TV, how MTV has used virals and how it aims to pass viewers over to VH1 around a certain age- when they no longer “get it”.
Marko Ahtisaari talked about Blyk, parts of this were interesting (the advertising, the stats, infrastructure) however personally I found it a little too much about his company rather then those concepts. Martin decided a panel was in order and pulled together Zaryn Dentzel who’s moved from America to Spain, Loic Le Meur who’s moved from France to America, and Ola Ahlvarsson who helps companies go international to talk about their international experience as entrepreneurs.
Stefan (of Soocial) finally joined us after being delayed at Barcelona airport. That evening we went to Cova den Xoroi which is possibly the most amazing club I’ve ever been to- it’s in a cave, on a cliff, overlooking the Mediterranean sea. Although arriving back at the hotel in the early hours of the morning we were up, fresh and ready for lunch at Martin’s, and although I’m a vegetarian I must say the meat looked impressive.
Much relaxing, chatting and demoing each others projects- both public & private commenced, ending another amazing event. Thank you very much Martin & Matias for organizing everything.