Technology and PR networking events for January 2010, plus a review of TechCrunch (#xmascrunch)

Tuesday's TechCrunch for the UK and Europe's vibrant start-up sector, organised by @mikebutcher, @PetraJohansson and @rassami, was excellent. This now-regular gathering provides a place and a space for the latest thinking in the technology space, attracting start-ups such as Catwalk Genius, established businesses such as Skype, VCs and angels such as Balderton, as well as journalists, PR and SEO communities. Here is an excellent review of the day's proceedings by Basheera Khan.

In front of an audience of almost 1,000 (including those via live-streaming) key notes speeches delivered by TweetDeck, Festbuzz, Seesmic, The Filter and Tweetmeme provided some interesting insights into developments in the Web 2.0 space. Key themes for 2010 that came up again and again were hyperlocal, sentiment analysis, and real-time.

Here a selection of my Tweets from the day:

• Tweetdeck - has 19% of non twitter based applications
• Tweetdeck 10million downloads to date - but what's next! Funding, services eg: LinkedIn, updates to directory, mobile
• Tweetdeck essentially locks people in via lists/organised experience
• Sentiment companies are chasing the Holy-Grail. There will always be a trade-off in real-time.
• What does 'real-time' mean to you? Immediate? Soon? Later?
• It is reputation, content, context or location that makes information relevant
• Same content different delivery: successful paywalls are rare
• Location in online delivery is going to be a significant theme for next year. 09: cloud + real time, 10: real time + hyperlocal
• Quality journalism is not dead, long live quality journalism
• Info about info is more valuable than the info itself
• Vertical and real time is where the true value of search lies

Networking is an essential part of building any business. January 2010 is much quieter (probably due to detoxing requirements after December's frenzy of events), however here are just some of the technology and PR events happening up in London that we could find:

21/1/10: CloudCamp London - unconference style event striving to advance cloud computing
27/1/10: Digital Lounge - topic to be announced, but always a great group of people
28/1/10: MashUp - Apps: What's your strategy? - investigating the link between mobile web strategy and apps
2/2/10: First Tuesday - To charge or not to charge - though leadership seminar
15/2/10: The Debating Group - topic to be announced, but a great proper debate held in the heart of the House of Commons

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... W: wait... BL: wait... C: wait...

TechCrunch: ' The Europas' - and the winners are.....

Last night TechCrunch (the blog bible for all things Web 2.0 and mobile), held The Europas - the publication's first-ever awards to recognise the brightest and the best in the industry. Over 250 people attended, with a stella cast directed by the editor Mike Butcher, including Robert Scoble and the Traveling Geeks, Brent Hoberman of MyDeco and Lastminute fame and Michael Birch of Bebo and BirthdayAlarm.

News of the night was that Hoberman and Birch have indeed partnered (the rumour broke earlier this year) to form a fund - PROfounders Capital and panel debate focused on why expansion of start-ups into Europe was so tough. (Although our cross-border eCommerce white paper - Borderless - was published way-back in October 2008, language was deemed to be a key factor, as Sarah Lacy on the panel pointed-out.)

So the winners were:
Grand Prix - Spotify
Best New Startup Summer 2008-2009 - Spotify (TweetDeck, my personal Twitter application favourite, was Highly Commended)
Best Investor - TAG The Accelerator Group
Best Startup Founders - Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon of Spotify
Best Mobile Application (EMEA) - Spinvox
Best Mobile Startup (EMEA) - Nimbuzz
Best Entertainment Application or Service - SoundCloud
Best European / Real World Gadget - Poken
Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup - AlertMe
Best Enterprise / B2B Startup - Huddle
Best Social Innovation (which benefits society EMEA) - Mendeley
Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old) - Soup.io
Best Design - Songkick
Best Web Application or Service (EMEA) - Spotify

It was truly a fantastic evening. Spotify certainly swept the board, however there were some extremely deserving businesses in the Highly Commended categories. I'm personally hoping that the awards will be repeated next year to give well-deserved credit to the stars and future stars of this innovative and extremely exciting industry.