Saturday, February 11, 2012

The Best Of #TCBaltics Plus Some Feedback

Riga, Latvia
TechCrunch Baltics 2012
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1st ever TechCrunch Baltics event organized in Riga (capital of Latvia) by TechCrunch Europe and TechHub Riga was a real success. Tickets were sold long before the event and around 250 people gathered to discuss Baltic startup scene in Riga from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and bunch other places. A number of interesting presentations were made, including the announcement of new pan-Baltic startup accelerator - StartupWiseGuys. Visit TechCrunch Baltics website for full agenda, list of speakers / startup pitch contest participants and video recording of the event. Also, check out my post about 1st impressions from TechCrunch Baltics. Now, for a startup IT conference, which claims the title of "the biggest and most important ever" in Baltic region, there is certainly lack of after-event coverage, reflection on what was good and what needs improvement. I will look into tweets from TechCrunch Baltics, media coverage and some feedback from participants to fill in the gap.

Twitter #TCBaltics
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There was a lively stream of news coming from TechCrunch Baltics under Twitter hashtag #TCBaltics. It wasn't a real discussion or important to something in particular, but certainly added value. Especially to people like me, who could not come to the conference and had to watch live streaming. If you had to stop watching for a while due to work, family or other insignificant reasons, Twitter helped to catch up with what you missed and what was going on at that moment. This should certainly be used even more extensively in future startup events. Anyways, here are the best tweets, subjectively selected by me (no order, just what seemed to be fun or interesting):

Media coverage
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Guys, I spent more than one hour searching for newspaper articles and blog posts through Google and Yandex. The turn out is so scarce its sad. Clearly, TechCrunch Baltics was overcrowded not because of interest of media outlets. Thus, if there is something to improve for next TC Baltics its PR. Without it, how can we really expect more investors / new people coming in the future? If I am wrong, please drop a link to an article or post in the comments (no more translations of TechCrunch articles please).  

Estonia:
  • Could not find any decent article or blog post, just some mentions in forums etc. What's up with that Estonians? 
Latvia:
Lithuania:
Finland:
Baltic / Nordic:
TechCrunch Europe:
Great after event review of TechCrunch Baltics was written by Natasha Starkell: TechCrunch Baltics reveals strong ties in the Northern European startup scene. An example for all Europeans to follow?

Feedback
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I am a big believer of learning from mistakes and seeking for advice to make things better. Thus, here goes a small collection of feedback from comments of people who attended TechCrunch Baltics, on what could be done better next time (not mine, but picked, rephrased and/or translated by me).  . 
  1. Direction. #TCBaltics attracted a lot of startup community members from all three Baltic states and Finland, which happens rarely and is very important to unite the ecosystem. However, conference had significantly a lot more opportunities for startups seeking to enter an accelerator rather than looking for seed or later stage investment.
  2. Organization. Event was very similar to usual local conferences that happen in Baltic region. Can't be compared to ones in Berlin, London or the great San Francisco - that is what we should aiming at.  Good that there were some representatives from Baltic governments, but  #TCBaltics lacked participants / investors from other neighbor countries like Russia and maybe some more facilitation in networking.
  3. Venue. Organizers probably did not expect such interest in  #TCBaltics, thus though 11th floor was nice to look through the window, it was hard to get in / out (e.g. during lunch), there was too little space, poor conditioning etc. Plus Internet connection video streaming problems in IT conference...
  4. Pitching. The majority of pitches lacked preparation and speakers were very mediocre. Maybe pitching rehearsals from the event organizers would help next time.
I hope you found this kind of overview useful. Anyways, lets take everything from TechCrunch Baltics in and start looking forward to next big event for Baltic and Nordic countries  - Startup Monthly Vilnius 2012! Check out Startup Monthly Vilnius Facebook page and follow in Twitter for the latest news from organizers. 

Have nice weekend folks,

Eddy
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