Barcelona Entrepreneur Week 2010 & The SIME fair

Yesterday morning part of the SuiteLife team joined thousands of other local and international entrepreneurs, startups and Investors for a morning of very special presentations and talks for the “Día del Emprendedor” Fair, held at the Fira at Placa España. The event was run by SIME, which is northern Europe’s largest conference about the Internet and digital opportunities and was part of The Barcelona Entrepreneur Week.

When we arrived yesterday morning, the beautiful Barelona sun was beaming down on us and the atmosphere at Placa España was full of excitement. We went to an outside pavilion and waited in anticipation for the SIME Conference Barcelona to begin. Ola Ahlvarsson, Chairman of SIME and a former world champion in Kickboxing, invited a very well-chosen selection of different industry leaders spreading across multiple industries.

We listened to some very interesting Keynotes about the digital future, mega trends, how to fail fast and restart entrepreneurial businesses. Interesting and quite amusing was the speech by Pablos Holman, A futurist, IT security expert, and world-class hacker.  In his speech “Inside the brain of a hacker”, he showed us how he is able to copy any key or how he easily he can lift all your credit card info in a split second using an 8 Dollar card reader he bought on Ebay.  But the really interesting part was the “malaria carrying mosquito laser killing machine” he and his team are developing in the US, which could solve one of biggest problems of Africa.

Also we listened to Ace of Base member Ulf Ekberg. Ace of Base sold over 24 million copies of their debut album with immortal pop songs like “The Sign” and “All that she wants”. We were really impressed with Ulf.  He’s very into new technologies and he gave us a great insight on the evolution of both the “music” industry (which he says is thriving like never before) and the “record” industry (which is about to go into extinction).  After he spoke we ran up to him and asked for a photo for the blog and he was super friendly.  Really great guy and we wish him the best on his new album coming out in October.

We think SIME and the Día Del Emprendedor Fair is a great opportunity for small business and startups like Suitelife to connect and exchange valuable entrepreneurial experience. If you have registered through the internet, most parts of all speeches and conference are free to join. The evening the fair ends, there is a huge open-air Party next to the Montjuic Fountains where you can meet the rest of the people involved in the Day of the Entrepreneur. You can get your ticket at the Day of the Entrepreneur Information Point located in Pavillion 8 at the Fira in Placa España.

Even our soon-to-be Director of Operations, Ranald, made it out!