As you have probably gathered, over the last 6 moths or so TechCrunch Europe has been running a fairly intense events programme across Europe. With our own, curated panel discussion and startup pitch competitions we hit Barcelona, Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and Helsinki. Every event attracted between 150 to 300+ people and each one was live video streamed, usually putting at least as many more people “into the room”. That’s not forgetting the informal meetups we held in other places like Hamburg, and the other events we attended as part of our rolling coverage of European tech, like The Next Web in Amsterdam or Next09 in Hamburg, or the various Seedcamp events around Europe.
But next year we’re going to focus even more.
First of all, we’re going to carry on synchronising our events with the Seedcamp programme – usually running a TechCrunch Europe event the day after Seedcamp in a particular city. This has worked very well and both Seedcamp and the startups we talk to have liked this format. Our TechCrunch Europe organisation and events are totally separate from Seedcamp (separate ticketing, often different speakers etc) but we hope that by synchronising with them, it makes it a lot more convenient for everyone in the European tech scene, given there is enough need to travel as it is. In future we’ll be working with local players and sponsors to bring together the scene in each city. Please contact the editor Mike Butcher for more details about how you can help us bring the TechCrunch spotlight to your city.
Second of all we’re going to make our existing “big” events slightly bigger. Our annual conference, Geek ‘n Rolla – which this year saw 300 people come to the day long event in London and 400 people attend the afterparty – will move to a two day event. We will keep to the same, successful, format of fast pitches which are as educational as possible and have very little “sales” content. Editor Mike Butcher will continue to curate and shape this important event.
We will also expand our annual awards for tech companies, The Europas. This year 300 people came to a glamorous evening in London to celebrate the tech scene from all over Europe. We hope to reproduce that vibrant atmosphere next year.
We will also continue our highly successful partnership with event company 2 Pears, so to become a sponsor for Geek’n Rolla and/or The Europas, please contact Petra Johansson on petra[AT]twistedtree.co.uk or Twitter for more information.
Finally, we’d like to thank all our event sponsors over the last few months for making it an awesome year so far. We’ve had a great time working with you. We like to help our sponsors get lots of value out of our events and we often work very creatively with them. So get in touch today.