Imagine sitting at a stadium experiencing the atmosphere that has [...]]]> The sport industry is still reluctant to utilize social media to amplify their events and to share the social experience at stadiums with the rest of the world. The potential is notable, and aligned to the core purpose of sport – engaging communities of passion.

Imagine sitting at a stadium experiencing the atmosphere that has drawn people to arenas since the time of the gladiators. What we experience is a collective relation with the people we share that moment and passion with offline and online. And collective relations are as powerful for people as intimate relations with our spouses and relational relationships with friends. It is that collective experience we want to support with Gignal, engaging audiences at physical locations and around the world.

So with 2012 in front of us, what can sport teams and venues do to amplify the collective experience and engage their audience? From Gignal’s perspective a lot can be done, with or without our stream – here is five low hanging fruits just waiting to be picked.

1. Micro-reporting
It is no longer only the television- and radio stations that report live from a game, the most active reporters are the audience, with thousands of mobile phones they are standing in the front line eager to report the atmosphere, emotions and defining moments to their network. They share their experience trough pictures, videos and status updates, viewed by friends and fans outside the venue that did not have a ticket. To engage the audience as pitchside reporters, interaction with the team, the players, the coach and the venue is key. We already see sport stars on Twitter and Facebook, but much more can be done to make the audience share their experience.

Through the social media stream on physical screens at the stadium, the audience can monitor the collective participation, which makes them aware of their role as a micro-reporter. And the audience watching from home, can follow the social media buzz online, as if they were standing in the front line them selves.

2. Cross media experience
The audience are multitasking even when they are at the stadium watching the game. They follow the action on the ground, on the billboard, on their phones and on screens at the tribune. At home the TV or radio is on, and so is the laptop where the fans can search for further information and interact on social networks.

The social media stream is not competing with TV or radio, on the contrary it presents the audience experience rather than a reporters, making it an ideal supplement for a cross media experience.

3. Engage communities of passion
Football teams describe the 12th. player as the audience. If the audience is engaged and cheering for their team, they empower the players. Through the stream on stadium screens, the coach can send a message to the audience – to make them roar their support to the players in crucial moments. The team players can send messages before and after the game, to create buzz and to thank the audience directly.

There lies an incredible power in audience engagement, because in the end it is all about stimulating communities of passion, to create a memorable social experience.



4. Social media stream – before, during and after the game.
During games we are often able to watch a live video stream, but sport teams tend to forget that fans talk constantly about their team, upcoming games and their expectations. It would be easy and obvious for sport teams to have a “Live” area on their website, so fans can click and see the real-time buzz, produced by fans and the team across social networks.

Gignal provides a widget, making it easy for clubs to host and present all the social media buzz from a geo tag and hashtags on their own website. Not only will it be easier for people to find the buzz, it also brings the traffic back to the clubs, instead of keeping it on the social networks.

5. Real-time marketing
When a fan checks-in to a stadium, writes a tweet or takes a picture, we know where they are based on the geo tag. This is also the ideal time to market and sell merchandise, tickets and other location based goods, to a passionate and captive audience. During the heat of the moment it us much easier to sell tickets for the game next week, merchandise and beer at the pub after the game. Some clubs are seeing this potential, one of them are Real Madrid, that has been working with mobile marketing for a while.

With Gignal, sport clubs can present these time limited offers on the stadium screens, reaching a captive audience, that are much more willing to press buy while they experience the atmosphere in that given moment.

Every brand is media company
Every organization and brand is a media company. But since this is not their core business or skill, utilizing the new media opportunities can be difficult for the people involved. We want to make it easy for sport teams to gather, host and present all the buzz that surrounds their brand, so they can be in charge of audience involvement.

My latest contribution for Scenario Magazine, about how technology has played a significant role against Egypt’s despotic regime.

After I wrote this article new riots erupted at Tahrir Square in Cairo, with the terrible consequence that even more people lost their lives fighting for freedom and democracy against their regime.

The journey [...]]]>

My latest contribution for Scenario Magazine, about how technology has played a significant role against Egypt’s despotic regime.

After I wrote this article new riots erupted at Tahrir Square in Cairo, with the terrible consequence that even more people lost their lives fighting for freedom and democracy against their regime.

The journey towards a new and better country has just started for Egypt, while Europe worries about recession, the Egyptian people are fighting for basic human rights. But as a wonderful Egyptian friend and entrepreneur puts it; we are optimistic – we have to be.

Thanks to all the amazing Egyptian entrepreneurs and the US and Danish mentors, for an unforgettable journey and experience, June 2011 in Cairo .

Friday the 18th. November 2011 our team joined Startup Weekend Copenhagen. We wanted to participate to meet and work with new talents, build a new frontend for our stream and get business strategy feedback. Friday evening after our pitch 8 people were gathered ready to execute. After midnight the [...]]]>
The Dream Team.

Friday the 18th. November 2011 our team joined Startup Weekend Copenhagen. We wanted to participate to meet and work with new talents, build a new frontend for our stream and get business strategy feedback. Friday evening after our pitch 8 people were gathered ready to execute. After midnight the weekend was planned and smaller teams organized based on peoples skills.

Our desktop stream. “Before Startup Weekend”

Saturday morning our focus was to create the design describing the user scenarios, address use case questions and sketch the first mockups. Ray – our designer worked intensely until the first design was ready at 2 pm Saturday. Now the developers could take over, Mariano, Morten on the backend and Signe on the frontend. With the design in place Jesper and Kevin could also start to work on our video – presenting Gignal in action at a stadium. Niels and I worked on our use cases, market research and business model. Saturday was mentor day, where we met with great mentors, giving us feedback and introducing us to valuable contacts.

Saturday evening the first version of our billboard version was ready – boosting our energy after twelve hours of intense work. A late evening turned into Saturday night fewer and after few hours of sleep, for some on chairs and on the floor, we were ready to work on the final version and our afternoon pitch.

On Sunday all the small pieces were put together, the last touch on the stream and a few more designs for later progress were in place – we were as ready as we could get with the design, the stream, the video and the pitch. And this is the result of a weekend of work.

The new billboard stream.

Kevin and Jesper did an amazing job with the video – presenting Gignal Stadium.

After the pitch we used the rest of our adrenalin to celebrate, relax and look back at an awesome weekend.

We have created a special branch for Startup Weekend on Github, so if anyone wants to hack feel free to be creative and please show us your work.

All this was only made possible by the great team organizing Startup Weekend and our amazing team! Even though we had hours of fatigue and last day stress, the team spirit was high and the collaboration was admirable. Proving ones again that teams drive progress not individuals, it was a true honor to be a captain on this team – thank you Signe, Mariano, Niels, Kevin, Ray, Jesper and Morten!

-Natasha

So said Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick from Wired in June 2011, and we certainly agree! But what is it about the stream, why do we follow it daily on our devices and where will it take us in the future?

We are constantly exposed to tremendous amounts of data across our social [...]]]>

So said Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick from Wired in June 2011, and we certainly agree! But what is it about the stream, why do we follow it daily on our devices and where will it take us in the future?

We are constantly exposed to tremendous amounts of data across our social networks, when friends and followers distribute pictures, videos, links and messages. The only way we can qualify the content is by scanning it briefly, deciding what message in the stream will get our attention, while the rest will be lost and forgotten forever.

But that’s how we navigate through the flood of information – the stream is constant but our attention is random. We screen, we pick and we participate when it makes sense, and ignore the rest. True qualification of content still depends on humans cognitive skills, no algorithm can replace that – yet. Until that happens, which might take a while even in Internet years, our remedy is the stream. One of the big challenges in data qualification is that robots cannot anticipate what an individual defines as value, nor which topics will be relevant to us tomorrow, because algorithms are based on our actions in the past, which doesn’t necessary lead to our behavior in the future. This gap in technology leaves the need of a stream for us to follow, engage and interact with others.

That is why we are building Gignal. We want to make a stream that amplifies peoples voices and images from events. We want to give any person online, access to any event they want to witness through the eyes and thoughts of the people physically present. Gignal takes the physical atmosphere online in a shared world based on a shared experience.

We are not inventing a need, we are just supporting what people are already doing when their favorite football team scores a goal and when they win a match – they roar with their mobile phone on social media – and we will echo that on Gignal.

The same reaction happens at basically any event where a crowd are sharing an experience. From festivals to world movements as the Arab Spring, where the world joined and supported the young people in the streets of Cairo. Instead of just following the content on Twitter or Facebook, we want to show all the real-time conversations surrounding an event and across social networks, giving our users a real-time experience.

So there is no past, there is no future and there is no end to where our stream will take us, engage us and entertain us – but we want to define it.

Cool Cat in a café at the Khan El-Khalili Market – with the entrepreneurs in the mirror.

Back in Denmark after an unforgettable trip to Cairo where I attended the event – Next Generation of Egyptian Entrepreneurs 2011, as a mentor from June 28th to July 1st. This was my trip and [...]]]>

Cool Cat in a café at the Khan El-Khalili Market – with the entrepreneurs in the mirror.

Back in Denmark after an unforgettable trip to Cairo where I attended the event – Next Generation of Egyptian Entrepreneurs 2011, as a mentor from June 28th to July 1st. This was my trip and my impressions.

Day 1. Tuesday 28th. 2011.

In the spring of 2011 the Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen met with President Barack Obama at the White House. The Arab Spring was in action and supporting initiatives were discussed by the two leaders.
In Denmark the startup accelerator program StartupBootcamp has tremendous success, not only in Denmark but across Europe, where they are expanding their accelerator program. The Danish Foreign Ministry reached out to StartupBootcamp to get inspiration from their program, and to utilize their mentors. The result was the 5 day NextGen2011 bootcamp, where mentors from Denmark and the US were invited to Cairo, to contribute with their experience and support these young entrepreneurs move forward with their business.

Yesterday I kissed my son goodbye on his birthday to head for Cairo, I had the privilege of being one of the Danish mentors. I explained to my son that I was going to a country fighting for freedom and that I was meeting some of the young people that overruled their dictator, and now have the opportunity to rebuild their country and future.

I looked so much forward to give, learn and to get another perspective of Egypt, through the eyes of the future generation. A generation that will be responsible for rebuilding their country, where one of the key solutions might very well be entrepreneurship.

Despite the language and cultural differences between Denmark and Egypt, what united us in Cairo was our entrepreneurial culture based on creativity, passion and the will to utilize opportunities in the Golden Age of Technology.

The delegates from Denmark and the US in front of the pyramids at 6 am Wednesday morning.

Day 2 – Next Generation 2011 in Action.

Wednesday I met the teams for the first time, although they started Monday. I was so excited to finally meet the young entrepreneurs, hear their pitches, and had no idea what to expect.

I was blown away, together with the rest of the Danish and US delegation. We faced  young passionate minds, who took their business very seriously. A lot of them were already far, had amazing user traction and were using focus groups to understand their target groups better. Despite the language barrier for some, they all did an amazing job communicating their ideas and visions. We spend the day giving feedback to every startup, during panel sessions and one to one sessions with the teams. I was mentoring the outstanding ladies from SuperMama and Inkezny the “tourist feel safe” app.

Out of 38 participants, 6 were women which was a surprising ration, that’s more or less what you can expect at startup events in Denmark. The girls were amazing, but had different views on their role as entrepreneurs. Some said they were privileged since financially supported by their families or hubbies, that didn’t expect anything from them – a perfect bootstrapping state. Others felt they had to be very persistent to proof to their families that what they are doing is important, not only to them but as role models for other women and for their country.

After an intense day, we were invited to visit the Danish ambassador Christian Hoppe. All the teams gave excellent 1 minute pitches, directly to the ambassador and his 60 guests. They improved their performance so rapidly, and the fact that they were able to give short, precise pitches after only two days of training and mentoring – was outstanding.

At 11 pm we were heading back to the Marriott Hotel, ready to be tourists, but due to riads at Tahrir Square, where 1200 people got injured – we were advised to stay at the hotel. That said it is perfectly safe to be in Cairo and with 30 degrees celsius and a calm breeze, the climate is perfect.

The SuperMama team - Zeinab Samir and Yasmine ElMehairy.

Day 3 – The Final.

The teams were as ready as they could get, after working non-stop for 3 days. At the end of the day, culminating the event, 4  teams would be chosen, two of the teams would get an internship at EyeContact in the US, and two teams would go to Denmark for 3 months, to be a part of the StartupBootcamp accelerator program.

5 hours later we had the winners and they were announced in front of the Danish Ambassador, Egyptian representatives, the press – counting New York Times, Arab newspapers and the rest of the NextGen2011 team. The winners were in alphabetical order:

18 Days in Egypt – Crowdit is a social media storytelling platform inspired by the revolution.

Bey2ollak – A mobile traffic alert service, already counting 15.000 users.

Inkezny – A mobile app keeping tourists safe in developing countries by giving easy access to emergency assistance.

SuperMama – a social community providing women in Arab countries quality information about motherhood.

We celebrated by sailing and dining up the River Nile, eating exquisite cuisine while entertained with Arab music and belly dance. We ended the day at Tahrir Square where people were protesting again, for three days in a row. The SuperMama team drove us safely to the hectic city market Khan El-Khalili – which isn’t a matter of course in Cairo. Families were gathered in the square, and kids running around enjoying their summer holiday. After extensive shopping and bargaining we ended the day drinking strong coffee and mint tea in a narrow alley, where locals smoked water pipes and played music, being magnified by mirrors on the surrounding buildings.

After getting close to these brilliant entrepreneurs, we had an emotional farewell. But it will hopefully not be a past memory, but a relationship that will continue with some of the teams in the future.

Back in Denmark I miss the warm courtesy of the Egyptian people, the sound of drums at the market and the warm breeze – in the city that never sleeps.

More impressions from NextGen2011:
My pictures.
Excellent blog post by Alex Farcet from StartupBootcamp.

Once in a while and so far in every edition, I have the privilege of contributing with articles and digital trends to the price winning Danish magazine Scenario. In the spring I suggested that they should interview� Lane Becker, a brilliant mind and a wonderful character. Lane is a serial entrepreneur and [...]]]>

Once in a while and so far in every edition, I have the privilege of contributing with articles and digital trends to the price winning Danish magazine Scenario. In the spring I suggested that they should interview� Lane Becker, a brilliant mind and a wonderful character. Lane is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of several successful companies hereunder, Adaptive Path and Get Satisfaction. That suggestions ended with me doing the article and the result can now be read in the latest edition of the Scenario Magazine.

Appetizer:
Lane Becker studied art history and dreamed of a professorship, but became a web pioneer in Silicon Valley. He has resided in this epicentre for communication technology since 1994. It was he and others around him who defined the “blog”, and were behind the development of Google Analytics, Adaptive Path and AJAX (JavaScript), which generates the simultaneous suggestions we get when we put things into Google’s search box. SCENARIO’s Natasha Friis Saxberg met Becker for a talk about Silicon Valley’s wholly unique entrepreneurship ethos, which he now sees spreading to the rest of the world….

Read the rest of the appetizer article at� Scenario Magazine.

From June 11-25 2011 Gignal will present the social media buzz created by the audience in- and outside the U21 tournament venues.

The games are played at different locations in Denmark, and the matches will be watched not only at stadiums but also in city squares and other outdoor meetup points.

Facebook experiences a loss of users in primarily the US, Canada and Russia, this news has hit the headlines of international media including the Danish.

Tuesday I gave my take to DR News – the Danish television station, on why Facebook experiences a decrease of users in specific countries. The pattern [...]]]>

Facebook experiences a loss of users in primarily the US, Canada and Russia, this news has hit the headlines of international media including the Danish.

Tuesday I gave my take to DR News – the Danish television station, on why Facebook experiences a decrease of users in specific countries. The pattern shows that once they reach half the population, their market limit is reached. It is also the countries Facebook first penetrated that are now experiencing a loss of users, a fact Facebook denies. Countries that were entered later as Mexico and Brazil is still in high growth.

What Facebook experiences now, is the case for many successful companies, they have traveled the J curve journey, and now they are meeting their market limit, which for Facebook is an impressive 50 percent of a country population. Reaching 700 m. users, we are now spending more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook per month. With a reign of 10 percent of the world population, they are indeed conquering the world, in a way Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan and the rest of the world conqueror club, would never have dreamt of.

With 2.5 m. websites connected to Facebook, there is still a great commercial opportunity. Very few companies knows as much about their users as Facebook, so we should expect further commercial cultivation, or to use a buzz word – f-commerce.
I look forward to the day where I have to explain why Gignal has experienced a slight decrease in our 700 million users – a problem to love indeed!

Every year the Danish event “TV2 Zulu Summer Bio” is touring Denmark presenting outdoor movies from various locations. We presented tweets, check-ins, photos and SMS messages.

We presented the Gignal on the center screen at Zulu Summer Bio, spreading the social media buzz from more than +120.000 audiences.

photo: TV2 Zulu sommerbio