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    TechCrunch LateCrunch Event Wrapup

    Mike Butcher

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    Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

    Friday, October 24th, 2008
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    What’s a good strategy when about 1,000 developers and startups converge on one point? Throw a Techcrunch party of course. So it was with some relish that we threw an end of conference networking event for startups following the Web 2.0 Expo Europe O’Reilly / TechWeb conference in Berlin. We decided to call it LateCrunch, opened up tickets and over 300 people turned up. Result!

    But, there was method to this madness. If European startups are going to weather the coming nuclear winter they are going to need eachother, for support, advice and connections. That’s a harder environment to create when the European tech scene is so spread out. So we did our best to network everyone to death – even to the point of subjecting them to an Air Guitar competition (see the evidence in the pictures and movie below – Berliners really know to to play Air Guitar! Our winner won an iPod Shuffle and we also raffled an iPod Nano). There are lots more pitctures of Facebook, such as Pavel Neuman’s Buzzboot collection.

    Held in the HomeBase Lounge, LateCrunch was graciously given the status as the official Web 2.0 Expo Euro After-Party, and generously sponsored by the following companies. A huge thanks to our sponsors!

    Amazon Web Services
    Amazon Web Services, providing Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), and Amazon Mechanical Turk.

    Aventiv
    Aventiv created NomaDesk, the world’s first virtual fileserver for nomadic businesses.

    Blurb
    Blurb is a creative publishing platform which enables every blogger, artist, marketer, photographer, traveler, entrepreneur and poet to create and sell their own book.

    Gimahhot
    Gimahhot is Amazon Marketplace with bargaining. Users can either buy at the merchants’ offer prices or they can also enter a price that they would buy the certain product for.

    Plista
    Plista, a user-centric personalization and recommendation network that works across multiple websites. It allows enhancing online experience by recommending more relevant content, products and advertising in real-time. It works as a widget, per API integration or browser plug-in. plista delivers on-site as well as cross-site recommendations. It allows the publishers to monetize websites, promote items and target customers individually.

    Quidco
    Quidco is an online shopping collective where members earn cashback on their purchases and connect with other like-minded consumers.

    Rummble
    Rummble makes it easier to find people and places nearby that you will like. It works anywhere – you can use it at home or on the move via your mobile.

    Sun Microsystems
    Exclusively for startups, the fee-free Sun Startup Essentials program offers deep discounts on industry leading systems and storage products, massively scalable Web hosting services, plus free training and technical advice. Build your business on an infrastructure that scales right along with your success. Sun Startup Essentials Programme is now expanding across Europe, if you are a startup and want to build your business to scale now, then sign up here today.

    Winston & Strawn
    Winston & Strawn is an international law firm with over 950 attorneys in the across the USA as well as in London, Paris, Geneva and Moscow.

    zanox
    zanox is a leading company for performance-based online marketing and provides a global platform for efficiently marketing products and services on the Internet. zanox offers global solutions for efficient commercialisation of products and services in the Internet for advertiser and supports publisher in achieving sales out of their traffic.

    Zendesk
    Zendesk provides on-demand Web 2.0 help desk solutions. Using turnkey SaaS delivery, Zendesk deploys in minutes and provides a complete support community portal that lets customers communicate directly with the internal help desk. 500 customers from all over the world already use Zendesk. Love your help desk!

    • http://blogs.sun.com/startups Stewart Townsend

      Wish was there to grab a beer, and do my man in the shirt air guitar pitch, looks like fun……and Ive not heard back from startup essentials team, so they must be all still in bed :-)

      • http://www.charmainechen.com Web2.0 Chick

        Blurb seems useful :) How I wish it’s open source… As for Rummble – the idea behind it is interesting, but I wasn’t tempted to join because the main page looks too cartoonish

    • http://www.flashcomguru.com Stefan Richter

      Who’s that person with the red eyes?

    • http://patphelan.net Pat Phelan

      Can’t say enough good things about Zendesk, we use them here at MAXroam, excellent product and an excellent team
      Seriously a 10 out 10 product and yes we do pay for it :-)

      • http://www.gregorylent.com gregorylent

        is zendesk the reason when i sent a simple inquiry, how to get maxroam in india, i got a bunch of emails about tickets, some crap to fill out, and some more emails, and no answer? convinced me to ignore max roam and just buy sim cards for my trip to asia ..

    • http://www.quidco.com Paul

      So I’m thinking next time modernise the comp and do ‘Air Guitar Hero’.

      Good party thanks all!

    • http://www.gigpay.com Joe Charakupa

      Someone at TechCrunch needs to start offering a naming service to startups.

      CrunchBar, CrunchBase and now LateCrunch. All good plays on the original.

      Looks like the party was good though.

    • http://plista.com Dominik

      Thanks 2 everybody for coming. Great party!
      Dominik

    • http://me.dm Philip Campbell

      Enjoyed the free drinks and PLENTY of people. Lots to mingle around! :)

    • http://www.twitter.com/googlehagel/ Googlehagel

      Oh what a night!

    • http://www.trendpreneur.com/online/friday-linkfest-web-20-expo-wrapup/ Friday Linkfest: Web 2.0 Expo Wrapup » trendpreneur

      [...] the expo, far more thorough than I: BerlinBlase, One Man & His Blog. Not to mention the TC LateCrunch and Pitch [...]

    • http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/26/latecrunch-the-techcrunch-party-for-euro-startups/ LateCrunch – The TechCrunch Party For Euro Startups

      [...] Previous Post LateCrunch – The TechCrunch Party For Euro Startups by Mike Butcher on October 26, [...]

    • http://www.informednetworker.com/story/36325 informednetworker.com

      LateCrunch – The TechCrunch Party For Euro Startups…

      What’s a good strategy when about 1,000 developers and startups converge on one point? Throw a Techcrunch party of course. So it was with some relish that we threw an end of conference networking event for startups following the Web 2.0 Expo Europe O…

    • Minor

      There’s a lot of old stuff. Old and boring to some extend. Gimme smth new, fresh, creative. Gimme a START-UP. Gimme http://www.quotag.com

    • http://www.techaddress.com/2008/10/26/latecrunch-the-techcrunch-party-for-euro-startups/ LateCrunch – The TechCrunch Party For Euro Startups  »TechAddress

      [...] when the European tech scene is so spread out. Luckily in Europe we have Air Guitar to break the ice… Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover [...]

    • http://newblogtopic.blogspot.com/ Lcnne
    • http://www.goebel.net/technews Markus Göbel

      HomeBase is such a nogo area. Only boring networking events. Couldn’t you get a real club? It’s Berlin! I guess you booked from the US and got a noob package.

    • http://www.redriever.com/blog/?p=174 Redriever Blog » Blog Archive » Web 2.0 Expo Europe

      [...] highlights from here and here. addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.redriever.com%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D174′; addthis_title = [...]

    • http://uk.techcrunch.com Mike Butcher

      Thanks for your kind words Markus. Next time we’ll consult you first.

    • http://www.e-driven.de e-driven

      Thanks for the party – it was a very cool event! And hey: It’s all about the people ;-)

    • http://www.bootlaw.com Danvers Baillieu

      It was a great night and good to see what’s going on in Berlin. As sponsors (Winston & Strawn) it was very nice of Mike to “big us up” so much…

    • http://newblogtopic.blogspot.com/ ERW

      see the evidence in the pictures and movie below – Berliners really know to to play Air Guitar!
      Here we go!!

    • http://doctr.com Fabienne Serriere

      Thanks Mike for organizing and throwing this event, it was lovely for us as we hadn’t met a lot of other local startups.

    • http://uk.techcrunch.com Mike Butcher

      Hey Fabienne – my pleasure.

    • http://blog.zanox.com/en/zanox/2008/10/30/berlin-web-week-impressions/ zanox Official Blog » Blog Archive » Berlin Web Week Impressions | Inside the mind of the global alliance

      [...] Web 2.0 Expo started on the 21st and hosted an international crowd of Web 2.0 advocates. The LateCrunch event was a big highlight with more than 300 [...]

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