Gorgeous weather accompanies SIME – after at least one week of grey and foggy November weather. Not that this really matters to the conference, but it does make people feel better and adds to the in general very positive atmosphere at SIME.

The first day offered some highlights, starting with the fireside-chat with Niklas Zennström, founder of Skype.

During the panel about “The Art of Value creation” the discussion covered among other success factors if there are any special characteristics of true entrepreneurs-personalities, and it became clear that ADHD as well as Aspergers are actually of advantage in entrepreneurs. The one helps coming up with creative ideas, the other one helps with being persistent and pursuing your goal. I was surprised that these two conditions got named at all and that in connection with entrepreneurship. One the other hand, I happen to know of two great entrepreneurs, one of them has ADHD, the other one Aspergers, and they are both much more successful in what they do than “normal” people. Great that one starts seeing the opportunities of so-called disabilities and uses the advantages rather than perceiving them as a stigma!

Then, Jan Helin, Editor in Chief of Aftonbladet (the Swedish tabloid) tried to teach us about ethics in news publishing during the session called “News, Entertainment or Bullshit”. As an example he pointed to the English tabloids at the time when they exploited the whole story about footballer Ryan Giggs, which tested the current British privacy laws to the extend, some of you might remember. In all fairness one has to say, that he stated the facts and refrained from claiming that Aftonbladet always gets this ethics-thingy right.

Another highlight in the afternoon was Martin Deinoff and Fredrik Marcus from Creuna about how to focus on the important stuff when designing your website. “Extreme Makeover” really fitted the short and fun session that actually made you think about the current look of your website! They also ran a workshop about the topic in the afternoon, which was already fully booked when I registered for SIME… An indication for the quality these guys deliver! Maybe we can hire them for #NEXT12?

In the afternoon it was workshop time. The workshops are mostly run by the sponsors of the conference, and like usually, when this is the case, it seems to go direction product pitch rather than really useful stuff. My highlight was the session of “The Art Of Making An Issue Important”. I got so much useful stuff out of it, that there will be an extra blog post about it soon. So stay tuned!

Let me conclude my personal impressions of the first day with some pictures: