Arctic Evening in Copenhagen

24.4.2015 Copenhagen

Woke up on Friday. Took my laptop to the kitchen. Made some coffee and opened my computer and as many of us do, checked my Facebook. The first thing I saw on my news feed was ArcticStartup’s (External link) post about their Arctic Evening they were going to host in Copenhagen, Rocket Labs that same evening. Without a doubt I signed up for the event and was super excited for my Friday evening plans.

I got two off my friends to come with me. We head over to Rocket Labs (External link) around five. Rocket Labs was more than familiar to me. Earlier in the fall, if you remember, we in AES took a trip to CPH to check out the Danish startup scene. You can read the blog posts here and here. Our experience from Rocket Labs was very good and I was very happy to go back there. Rocket Labs is a coworking space, dedicated to tech startups and digital entrepreneurs, located in Nørrebro.

We got there casually just in time. People were friendly and welcoming. I showed the guys around in the lab.

Dmitri Sarle, CEO of Arctic Startup opened the event.

One of the guest speakers was Sohan Maheswar, web developer at InMobi (External link). InMobi enables the world’s leading brands, developers, and publishers to engage global consumers through mobile advertising. InMobi has 1 billion users. Insane.

Sohan gave us an presentation about application adds and how everybody, both user, advertiser and the company can take advantages of them. Very interesting to get a different approach on the subject from someone in the industry who works everyday with companies, making the best add for them and their users.

Matias Møl Dalsgaard founder of GoMore (External link) talked about their company. Most of the people commute by bicycle in Greater Copenhagen. People that owns cars can have them standing on the street for several days, even weeks. GoMore has found a way how the car owners can take advantage out of it. GoMore is basically that: The car owners can list their cars for rental. Then they select the rental price and car availability. A renter can book the car and pays it online to the owner. Later the owner confirms the booking and the renter receives the exact address and pickup instructions. A very useful service for people who lives in the city.

My favorite presentation was Dmitris.

ArcticStartup, founded in 2007 is an independent technology blog that reports on digital startups and growth entrepreneurship from the Nordic and Baltic countries. ArcticStartup’s goal is to provide exceptional coverage of the news and trends needed to support a developed entrepreneurship community in Northern Europe.

We at AES go to a lot of events to represent. That’s what Arctic Startup also do. They’re a media company writing about startups and they attend a lot, and I really mean A LOT of events every year. Marking in your calendar that you will be two days at an event is okey, but there’s a difference if you’re just AT the event or if you’ve really been planning on what you actually are going to do during those two days. Dmitri and his teams usually have a two hour brain stroming and planning session before attending an event. These guys are really creative and think outside the box, believe me. He told us some great stories too. How they ended up on the stage, ringing the Nasdaq bell with a lot VIP guys in suits and how he and his friend (who were not supposed to be on stage) were standing there in their sky blue sweaters and nobody even dared to ask them what they were doing up there and many more (crazy) stories.

Dmitri gave some really good advices too when it comes to hacking an event.

• Find new faces
• Efficiency: start and end conversations
• Be a connector, faciliator
• Quality vs. Quantity.
• Use Twitter and other social media
• Be memorable
• Come early
• Business cards
• 3 pocket rule
• Wear clothes to stand out
• Fill your calendar
• Do not listen to speakers
• Active networking
• Step out of your comfort zone

ArctisStartup is having their fourth edition of Arctic15 by the end of this month.

Check out Arctic15 (External link)@ Kaapelitehdas May 26th-27th and HACK the event 😉

 

// Jessica Blechingberg (External link)
Copenhagen, Denmark

Pictures: Max Edin