We attended the Plugg conference today to participate in the start-up rally and learn more about the web scene in Europe.

The schedule is great.

Some really interesting comments from Gerd Leonhard about the future of media and how the media world is converging. He commented that moving from a closed to a more open business culture will change how media will works and that attention is the new currency.

Lisa Sounio, discussed Dopplr and the trends on travel. She was really interested in building meaningful social media and that they can come from Europe. She ran through how Dopplr works and how sharing can produce new opportunities for businesses. She indicated that there are three trends that are affecting how we live today: declarative living, like twittering; user-generated data, from service like Dopplr; and social intelligence to provide a better travel experience. She ended by asking EU officials to share their travel plans so tax payers can see where they are travelling!

Rudy De Waele, from dotopen, talked about mobile internet access and predicted 1billion new mobile internet users. by 2015. He believes the internet will become the mobile internet. He talked about the IPSO alliance and the ideas of smart objects. There is some really interesting stuff around augmented reality and connectivity. The main thing he sees is the growth of mobile services. Mobile Jam 09 17, 18, 19th June 2009. Start up event, called Under the Radar.

Jo Caudron of ONE-agency. Social media is exploding and he talked about "social object" and the birds and the bees. When bees find a great flower, they dance...and Jo said that is what we do as people when we find a new service we love...great insight. He also said forget about social media and think about social business. He also gave a heads-up on Glowbox (www.glowbox.com), a SaaS platform for creating social media sites..."not just another system to build simple sites". He was asked how are Glowbox going make money...they will charge a monthly fee for "bundles"...they will sell through partners.

We heard that European entrepreneurs are clueless, pirates and superbad from Immaculada Martinez. She showed the trailer for IronSky from Finland, the "steal the film" site from UK and Piratebay (one of the top 20 sites on the web) - use your cheekiness was here comment.