If you wanna attend the conference too, register here with a 20% discount especially for Plugg followers.

See you there!

The Next Web Is Near! (20% discount) written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: the next web, the next web 2009, the next web conference

Innovate!Europe, one of our event partners, is (also) looking for Europe’s top startup, and the deadline to apply is March 23rd.

Innovate!Europe will be hosting Going Global workshops and networking meetups in Europe and Israel from March 30th - April 8th (see below or check the calendar).

Start-ups will receive mentoring and feedback from Guidewire Group’s renowned analyst team on how to improve your pitch and hone the skills you need to compete in fast-paced markets like Silicon Valley.

Best of all, there is no cost to apply or to participate in the Going Global workshops.

If you want to participate in the competition but can't attend one of the workshops, fill out the form anyway. If you're selected, Guidewire Group's analysts will conduct a phone interview with you.

30 MARCH

Bern, Switzerland

Going Global workshop from 9:30 to 17:30: apply now

Networking Meet-up at 18:00 (co-hosted by Orrick Swiss Innovation Promotion Agency CTI)

– RSVP required

1 APRIL

Tel Aviv, Israel

Going Global workshop from 9:30 to 17:30: apply now

Networking Meet-up at 18:30 (co-hosted by Orrick)

– RSVP required

3 APRIL

Berlin, Germany

Going Global workshop from 9:30 to 17:30: apply now

Networking Meet-up at 18:00 (co-hosted by Orrick and SAP)

– RSVP required

6 APRIL

Paris, France

Going Global workshop from 9:30: to 17:30: apply now

Networking Meet-up at 18:00 (co-hosted by Orrick)

– RSVP required

8 APRIL

London, UK

Going Global workshop from 9:30 to 17:30: apply now

Networking Meet-up at 18:00 (co-hosted by Orrick)

– RSVP required

Note: You don’t need to be a workshop participant to join one of the networking meetups. The meetups are also open to investors, journalists and other members of the entrepreneurial community. However, an RSVP is required as space is limited. If you want to follow the competition, learn about the competitors and connect with other members of the ecosystem, subscribe to the blog or join the Innovate!Europe's Facebook and LinkedIn groups.

Innovate!Europe coming up, deadline approaching written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: guidewire, guidewire group, innovate!europe, innovate-europe

To all who have attended, thank you for being there and for all the feedback that was sent our way. Nearly all of it was positive but we can always learn from the negative as well so kudos to everyone, and don't be afraid to get in touch with us by e-mail or simply in comments to let us know your thoughts as well. Whether you've attended or not, we want to share all the material from the conference with you.

If you would like to watch the videos recorded at the event, you can check our Vimeo channel or go to this page for an embeddable widget containing all videos. The pictures are up on Flickr as well, and you can find an embedded slideshow on a special page as well.

We've even put all the presentations on a virtual fileserver powered by NomaDesk, so if you're interested in downloading that material to your computer, you can install their free software suite and it will enable you to synch a folder on your desktop that contains all the slidedecks in the format that it was delivered in. The fileserver also contains the videos for the 10-minute pitches delivered by the 3 finalists: Jinni, Mendeley (the winner) and Myngle (winner of the audience's choice award).

You need to sign up for an invitation to the fileserver, and if you do this before the end of the month you can also win one of the NomaDesk USB modems that will be distributed to 10 randomly selected winners.

Here's how:

- Go to this sign-up page

- leave your details and click on the link in your invitation e-mail

- Create a NomaDesk account, download and install NomaDesk

- Select "I was invited to join this Fileserver"

- NomaDesk will then create a Plugg2009-Public drive on your local computer

- Allow NomaDesk to sync and access the files on the Plugg2009-Public drive

If there's anything, let us know asap!

Videos, pictures and presentations are online! written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: flickr, pictures, plugg, plugg 2009, presentations, round-up, roundup, video, videos, vimeo

This pitching competition has brought 20 startups from all over Europe to Brussels to present their business to a highly relevant audience and a professional jury of industry pundits and investors, and moments ago the winners of the competition have been announced.

The overall winner was Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com), based in London. They describe themselves as the "Last.fm for research". the startup essentially aims to enable academics to manage and sharing their research paper inventory and at the same time discover like- minded people and papers thanks to a recommendation and matching algorithm.

The audience also cast their votes in the morning session and awarded Myngle (http://www.myngle.com) with the People's Choice Award. This startup, based in The Netherlands, pitches itself as a 'new way to learn languages'. Myngle was founded by ex-eBay employees and operates a platform for online language education where teachers and students can virtually connect and determine if there’s a match for an online course to start between the parties (from both sides).

For any questions about the Plugg conference and the concept behind it, please contact the organizers:

Robin Wauters - robin@plugg.eu

Veronique Pochet - veronique@plugg.eu

Winners for Plugg Start-Ups Rally 2009 announced written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: competition, plugg 09, start-ups, start-ups rally, startups, startups rally, winners, winners plugg 2009

We're ready to go here for the second edition of Plugg, which is now merely 37 hours away from being kicked off at the time of publication of this blog post. The event is shaping up to be very exciting, with a promising bunch of knowledgeable keynote speakers and panelists from all over Europe and from a variety of industries, which is one of the goals we set for ourselves in terms of programming the content. We're also delighted with the quality of the startups that will participate in our annual pitching competition and judging by the content of their presentation slidedecks, things are bound to be getting very interesting.

We can't thank our sponsors, and also our many media & event partners enough for making the event possible in the first place, but evidently we would like to extend this gratitude to all attendees who've registered to participate (we published the participant list on the Amiando subsite so you can see who else is going to be there).

Plugg is not the largest web conference in Europe any way you look at it, but we're proud of the fact that we've managed to make it relevant enough to attract a decent amount of visitors (the same as last year, which is great considering the economic downturn which unfortunately forces some Web 2.0 events to cancel altogether). We'll do our best to make the event memorable and continue to stubbornly focus on celebrating European entrepreneurship and showing the world what we can accomplish here!

Hope to see you soon!

Robin Wauters & Véronique Pochet

PS: if you haven't yet registered, you can still do so until midnight tomorrow (11 March 23:59 PM CET). If you're unable to attend, we would like to inform you that we won't be live-streaming the event, but you can keep track of the chatter on Twitter and we will record a boat load of videos and make them available along with the presentation slidedecks right after the conference. Stay tuned!

Counting down to Plugg 2009 written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: count-down, countdown

- Ashu Mathura from mobile advertising company MADS, a highly experienced entrepreneur, will share his views on the vision of the mobile ad market.

- Dries Buytaert, the original creator of Drupal and co-founder of both Acquia (based in the U.S.) and Mollom (based in Belgium), will share his experience on the difference in conducting web business and raising venture capital in America as opposed to Europe.

- Joining the VC panel is Sake Bosch, founder & managing partner at Prime Technology Ventures. 

Some of our sponsors will also deliver a short keynote, and the speakers they've delegated are top notch:

- Rudy De Waele from dotopen / Mobile Monday Barcelona / Mobile 2.0 Europe

- Dr. M. Claire Van de Velde from IBBT

- Jo Caudron from ONE Agency (one of Arkafund's investments)

Now haven't you still registered for the event? Do it now!

Latest confirmed speakers written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: speaker, speakers

So huge kudos to Sun Microsystems, Arkafund, Amazon Web Services, Gimv, IBBT and Netlash for joining us as Gold sponsors, and thanks to Big Bang Ventures, Voxbone, Oxynade, Netlog, 3Scale, Cruyplants Eloy Wagemans, dotopen and Arjuna for becoming a Silver sponsor.

We heart you!

Shout-out To Our Sponsors written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: kudos, sponsors, thanks

We're now finally ready to announce the 20 finalists that will be pitching at the event, after we got confirmation of their attendance. They're all pretty excited, and so are we!

Here's the list of the 20 nominees that will be presenting at Plugg (in alphabetical order):

ApSynth (Calcul Plus) from France - http://apsynth.com/

BeeBole from Belgium - http://beebole.com/en/ 

Bubok from Spain - http://bubok.com

Burt from Sweden - http://byburt.com/

ContextIn from Israel - http://contextin.com/

Desktop Reporting from Belgium - http://www.desktop-reporting.com/

DPIvision (CannyBill) from the UK - http://www.cannybill.com

Hammerkit from Finland - http://hammerkit.com

iOpus (AlertFox) from Germany - http://www.alertfox.com/

Jinni from Israel - http://www.jinni.com

Mendeley from the UK - http://www.mendeley.com/

Myngle from The Netherlands - http://www.myngle.com

Nulaz from The Netherlands - http://www.nulaz.net

Plista from Germany - http://plista.com

SenseBoard from Sweden - http://senseboard.com

Silentale from France - http://www.silentale.com

Snagsta from the UK – http://snagsta.com

SofaTutor from Germany - http://www.sofatutor.de

Tailgate Technologies from the UK - http://tailgatetechnologies.com

VinoGusto from Belgium - http://www.vinogusto.com/

We wish them all the best of luck and a good time preparing for the event.

Over the weekend, we will update the list of presenting startups and compile a list along with logos and short summaries of their business, so keep checking back!

If you want to see these startups present their wares at Plugg, register now while you can still catch tickets at the discounted early bird fee!

Here's the official press release if you're interested.

These are the 20 finalists for Plugg's Start-Ups Rally written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: start-ups rally 2009, startup, startups, startups-rally

We have a very worthy replacement with Ashu Mathura, founder & CEO of MADS, Europe’s leading mobile advertising network and marketing technology provider. He'll be talking about mobile advertising as it stands now, the technology, trends in the market, targeting and his vision of where he believes it will be in the future.

We're honored to have Ashu as a keynote speaker and we're sure you'll enjoy his talk too!

Update: Pat Phelan not speaking, Ashu Mathura replacing written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: ashu mathura, mads, pat phelan, speaker, speakers

Register here!

Please help us spread the word about the conference so people can still enjoy the discounted price!

Early bird fee expires next Saturday! written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: early-bird, pricing

Of course, you already knew who the speakers were, but we were and are still adding some, so keep following this blog to learn more about that soon. The program won't change all that much, so if you were holding out on registering for the event until you knew what to expect, the currently posted draft day schedule won't be far off.

Draft schedule posted written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: agenda, program, schedule, speakers

The jury is currently hard at work jointly determining which 20 startups they wanna hear more from at the conference because they believe in the potential of the idea and the team.

We expect to be able to announce the finalists next Friday or over the weekend at the latest.

By the way, you should register for the event now (the early bird fee of 380€ still applies)!

Plugg Startups Rally 2009: 126 companies to rate written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: jury, plugg startups rally, plugg startups rally 2009, rating, startups rally, startups rally 2009

Plugg Startups Rally 2009: deadline for registration quickly approaching written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: deadline, startups, startups rally, startups rally 2009

Excellent points!

Mike Butcher: 5 ways start-up culture in Europe has changed written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: culture, europe, european, european startup culture, mike-butcher, start culture, startup, startups

Starting now, companies can submit their company profile on this mini-site; deadline is Wednesday 4 February at midnight CET.

Check out the criteria before registering, and feel free to consult the jury member list for this year (which is still being assembled at this point).

The jury will take a detailed and critical look at all the submissions after the deadline date, and select 20 startups out of the bunch to come present their stuff on the center stage at Plugg 2009, in front of an audience of hundreds of pundits, VCs, trade press and tech bloggers.

If you're a European startup, what are you still waiting for?

Registrations for Plugg Start-Ups Rally 2009 (finally) open written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: start-ups rally, start-ups rally 2009, startups, startups rally 2009, startups-rally

There's still opportunity to register at a significant discount, but you'll need to act fast. The exclusive tickets will be on sale until midnight today (Jan 19, CET).

Jump straight to our mini-site for registering right away.

More updates coming soon!

Last chance for limited discounted tickets! written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: discount, early-bird, entrance, price, registration

The SURF House is a modular event for conferences, meetings and parties with a beautfil subterrain lounge (20 metres high) and a state-of-the-art conference room with a very wide screen and comfortable seating.

We're still in the process of changing the information of MCE here and there to Belgacom SURF House, so bear with us. In any case, the new address can already be found here.

Changing venue for the event written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: belgacom-surf-house, location, management-centre-europe, mce, surf-house, venue

Happy New Year everyone! written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: 2009, new-year, newyear

It's an impressive company with awesome technology, so I wasn't all that surprised that they won again. They picked up the gold metal (full review on TechCrunch) so that's another prize for them to brag with. :)

Congratulations Viewdle!

Viewdle wins again! written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: le web, leweb, start-ups rally, startups rally, viewdle

Kudos to Loïc & Geraldine Le Meur for organizing this cool event in Europe.

As a member of TechCrunch's editorial team, I would also like to point you to the party we're hosting on the evening of the last day of Le Web. About 600 persons will be enjoying an open bar and special networking opportunities.

Au revoir, et beacoup d'amour!

Le Web, TechCrunch party and love in general written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: geraldine le meur, le web, le web paris, le web party, leweb, loic le meur, techcrunch

Hansjee joined Google in September 2006 as Head of Corporate Development for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to that, Anil was a Principal with the venture capital firm IDG Ventures, where he was board director of one of their portfolio companies, the mobile music company, Shazam Entertainment.

You can read his full bio here.

Anil Hansjee (Google) joins the 'confirmed speakers' list written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: anil hansjee, anilhansjee, google, keynote, panel, speaker

1) Amazon Web Services as our newest Gold sponsor. They've been doing amazing stuff for startups ever since they've starting offering cloud computing services, and they have something special in store for the companies pitching in the Start-ups Rally to boot!

2) Yakov Sadchikov as a keynote speaker. He has an impressive educational, financial and entrepreneurial background and he's very prolific in the Eastern European / Russian internet market, which he's going to share more about at Plugg.

A big welcome to both of them!

More announcements coming soon.

Amazon Web Services joins as a sponsor, Yakov Sadchikov as a speaker written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: amazon, amazon web services, gold sponsor, quintura, speaker, sponsor, yakov sadchikov

As you can see, we've completely revamped our website design for next year's edition of the Plugg conference, all in the spirit of freshening up the look and making sure visitors have all the information they're looking for readily available in an enjoyable atmosphere.

Big kudos to Netlash, who took care of the information architecture and design!

Now that we've made the domain switch - you can still visit the Plugg 2008 website here - we're getting ready to spread the word so interested people can find out more about the date, the venue, the currently confirmed speakers, etc. and even registering early (more on that later).

You can consider this post a soft-launch, as we're still heads down in adding more content, sponsors, media & event partners, etc. to the website. Feel free to browse around and help us get out the last kinks.

If you have any question or comments at this point, feel free to get in touch asap.

Kicking off Plugg 2009 with a brand new website written by Robin Wauters in: default

Tags: kick-off, launch, plugg, plugg 09, plugg 2009