The Next Web Conference 2011 in Amsterdam is next week and as usual it’s, well, a gas. It’s startups, it’s good weather, it’s in Amsterdam – what’s not to love? Amazingly it’s in its sixth year and TechCrunch Europe will be there to cover the action as we have for many previous editions. And as you can see from the entertainment map the men in white suits (Patrick and Boris) have in store, it’ll be the usual fun event mixed with serious business. I just hope it doesn’t kill me.
Speakers this year include Pablos Holman, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, Dave Winer, Rudy de Waele, and Alexander Ljung among many others.
A web conference would be nothing without a good old startup competition, and the organizing team have sent us the finalists that will be pitching the audience on stage. I’m one of the jury members that will be deciding which European startup takes home the prize, so I’m looking forward to seeing what these have in store:
Bossa Studios
Pitch: Making the ‘social networking games are not really games’ debate totally irrelevant.
Tag: Social Gaming
Moqee
Pitch: Taking social video curation to the next level.
Tag: Video
Createplaceads
Pitch: The easiest way to create and place ads in tomorrow’s newspaper or magazine.
Tag: Print
Openmargin
Pitch: The margin of a book made public domain for readers to exchange annotations and engage in a meaningful dialogue.
Tag: eReading
Squeeqly
Pitch: Identify top influencers and reward them with discounts for generating word of mouth about you!
Tag: Social commerce
Flockler
Pitch: Topic based curation platform for publishers.
Tag: Media
Zmazz
Pitch: Mobile payments free of charge, fun and social
Tag: Mobile payments
Wosju
Pitch: It’s not about who you know – but how well you know them #socialgraph #trust #curatedsearch
Tag: Social Networking
Cleeng
Pitch: Publisher generate incremental revenues on top of advertising and subscriptions with Cleeng
Tag: Media
Silk
Pitch: Silk lets you easily add meaning to content while creating it, allowing people to search, aggregate and visualize it in powerful new ways.
Tag: Semantic web
Hitchie
Pitch: Online Speed Networking platform.
Tag: Social Networking
Foodzy
Pitch: Foursquare for Food: Keep track of what you eat and earn badges for fun and healthy eating habits.
Tag: Mobile
Qubulus
Pitch: Crowd Sourced Indoor Positioning
Tag: LBS
oneDrum
Pitch: All apps will be collaborative.
Tag: Collaboration
The Charity Engine
Pitch: World computing
Tag: Collabartive computing power
Soup.me
Pitch: All your digital life visualized just the way you want it, nicer and easier than ever before.
Tag: Social Networking
Onavo
Pitch: Helps smartphone users regain control of mobile data usage. Save money on data charges.
Tag: Mobile
Kuvva
Pitch: Connecting fans to brands
Tag: Online advertising
The startups above were selected out of hundreds of companies that submitted their profile for consideration. Each of them will get 5 minutes of stage time to impress the audience and the jury.
We’ll let you know which ones rocked.
Hope to see you in Amsterdam!