There’s been a lot of talk lately about all kinds of accelerators and Y Combinator like set-ups in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Most recently Aalto Entrepreneurship Society announced that they are in the process of building their own ‘Y Combinator’, although this would be directed only to Aalto University, which really makes it a university incubator.

Barbara Gibson, ABC, 2008-2009 chair of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), has selected Neville Hobson, ABC as the recipient of the 2009 Chairman’s Award. The award was presented on 7 June at the opening general session at the World Conference in San Francisco.
Congrats Neville!

Tim O’Reilly: “Web 2.0 is never intended to be a version number, it was really a reflection of what happened after the dot-com bust”
@Tim: you made me smile when you said this.
This time I couldn’t make it to San Francisco but I was hoping that Tim could have start his keynote exactly like he did. Why? Well let’s say to set things clear.

Zipipop, a new media start-up that develops web-based services for making everyday life easier, is going to Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco on the 3rd November. Zipipop was selected to present at the conference when it won the Mobile 2.0 Europe.

The Internet Agency Valve has been all quiet about its plans, but there is something going on about its operations abroad. The agency is a famous flash house in Finland, that has hogged numerous awards from many different competitions. It seems like they have something going on in the US at the moment, more specifically San Francisco.

Helene Auramo, Zipipop CEO, hinted ArcticStartup that the colorful Finnish start-up is finally preparing for 

Finland is renown best from Nokia and competence in the mobile technology. In addition to Nokia’s success many unexpected innovations have been born in Finland – Linux kernel, SMS messaging and IRC – Internet relay chat, forefather of instant messengers. So, in addition to mobile technology enthusiasm the Finns can be expected to push to the limits with new, disruptive ideas. The latest – but certainly not the last - was Jaiku, acquired by Google in 2007.

There is an ongoing boom of European countries grouping their social media startups and taking them to San Francisco with plans to dig(g) gold. Delegations from Israel (which can be considered Europe based on their presence in the Eurovision song contest), UK and Spain have recently or will tour the Bay area with their best rosters. The Finnish strike team is arriving in San Francisco in three days.

Parties!

Juhani Polkko compiled a list of parties at the Web 2.0 Expo.

He is also updating a public Google Calendar to help scheduling. See
Juhani's blog at XIHA Life: http://en.xihalife.com/b/juhani/1540