Slush 2014 took place this week in Helsinki, Finland. Started in 2008 with only around 150 attendees, this year’s attendee count clocked in at just over 14,000 showing amazing growth. The atmosphere was a mix of nightclub and conference, with participants from a range of varying companies: from early stage startups looking for funding, and accelerators and investors wanting to help, to established companies such as Nokia, F-Secure and Rovio. Nokia even made a key announcement at the event.
Great speakers were also a part of the event. The prime minister of Finland, Alexander Stubb, kicked off the event, and was followed by Wang Jian, CTO of Alibaba, talking about how the atmosphere has changed in China allowing for innovation and growth. On the second day, I had the opportunity to meet Arthur the robot, controlled by smartphone. His facial movements were frighteningly real, and developer Hanson Robotics has some big plans for how their robots could be involved in health care in the future.
Although gaming was a key component of the event, there also were many other products represented. I’ve already mentioned the Nokia announcement, but Samsung, Alibaba, F-Secure and Rovio all had a substantial presence.
F-Secure talked about whether or not the Internet was dead. Have we built a monster that will eventually die due to security issues? CTO Mikko Hyppönen gave a very interesting discussion on this topic and the sum of his discussion was that the Internet is not dead, yet. Some of the statistics he shared were shocking. For example, every day F-Secure receives samples of potential malware to test. For Android, they receive 9,000 malware samples on a daily basis, and there are 2.5 billion online reputation queries per day seen by the company’s servers.
“Internet of Things” made a showing with Enevo, connected trash removal. Every week you see the trash men come through your neighborhood and check every single bin, some need emptying and some don’t. You’ve probably never thought about if there is wasted time and cost associated with that practice, but Enevo did. It provides sensors that utilize sonar to monitor the level of trash in waste receptacles and help waste management companies determine when a pick-up is required. The company has shown in trials a reduction in costs by up to 50%. Based on the status of waste levels in trash bins, drivers receive automatically generated routing directions. The status of bins and routes can be accessed while on the road via smartphones via a subscription service paid for based on the number of bins to be monitored. Enevo’s sensors have global network coverage and are currently usable in over 100 countries on 204 wireless carriers.
Although the event was a little tough to navigate if you were trying to find specific participants given the crowds and layout, some of the innovation shown can provide great ideas for the future. The level of participation from headline tech speakers and the political arena was truly impressive.
