The Best of DLD 2012

Matan Talmi January 30, 2012 Tweet

What are the odds of seeing the founders of Twitter, Tumblr, Groupon, Dropbox and Wikipedia; the CEOs of eBay, Salesforce, Audi and Lufthansa; and Yoko Ono and Arianna Huffington in one place? Pretty high if you attended this year’s DLD conference in Munich.

DLD (Digital – Life – Design), a global conference on innovation, digital media, science and culture, was founded 8 years ago and is chaired by publisher Hubert Burda and serial digital investor Yossi Vardi. Considered by Wired and others as Europe’s hottest conference invitation, DLD is without a doubt an overwhelming and mind-opening experience.

I was one of the lucky attendees at the conference last week, and here are some of my highlights:

Many talks and panels at DLD featured entrepreneurs and CEOs who shared their insights, thoughts and experiences.

• Jack Dorsey, founder and chairman at Twitter and founder of Square, discussed Twitter’s impact on the world and its business model.
• Alexander Ljung, Soundcloud’s founder and CEO, shared entreprenurial tips and revealed that the service has just reached 10 million users.
• John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, shared some of the company’s strategy and told the crowd what kind of startups eBay is looking to acquire.
• Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, discussed the sharing economy and the company’s vision.
• Yossi Vardi, along with Tel-Aviv mayor Ron Holdai, and Saul Singer, author of the bestseller “Start-up Nation,” exposed facts and stories from Israel’s boiling startup scene.
• Arianna Huffington, founder of Huffington Post, received the conference’s Aenne Burda Award and inspired the crowd with her personal take on life.
• Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, wrapped up the conference and delved into Facebook’s impact on small and medium businesses.

The conference also exposed and demoed many exciting web and mobile ventures.

Here are some worth checking out:

Aurasma – an augmented reality platform and mobile app, which lets you combign the physical world with virtual ones.
Udacity – an education platform aiming to democratize higher education
Cowbird – a community of storytellers focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling
Summly – an iPhone app that sums up the highlights of any article on the web
Khoya – an interactive fantasy adventure book for iPad

Can’t wait for DLD 2013!  In the meantime, you can watch the DLD 2012 sessions here.