23 Oct 2008 A postcard from Berlin

Hallo! Wir sind in Berlin, at Web2ExpoEurope, one of the O’Reilly Web2 conferences that was brought to Europe by the almighty Tim.

We didn’t have much time to tour the city yet, as we’re pitching TripShake when we can, and following the conference sessions.

In fact, we had the great opportunity to be partecipating at PitchCamp, one of the great sessions organized in the conference that gave a selected few startups (12 out of the 50 that sent the application) the chance to be coached by one of the experts in the panel. We were paired with Jens Redmer from Google, who helped us a lot refine our pitch and got us ready to present TripShake to a panel of investors and experts. Thanks Jens, and thanks to Ted Shelton and Robert Goldberg for organizing the whole thing.

Yesterday the explosive Mike Butcher from TechCrunch organized an improvised up-the-stairs pitch on level C of the congress center: 10 startups showed up, and it was a fun time for all of us. Mike is a great showman and we all did our best to pitch the whole startup in 1 minute. You can listen to the results right on TechCrunch UK.

Coming to the fun stuff, one bit of advice from Berlin. If you happen to be in the city and you want to taste great German food, there is one place you should go: nicknamed StäV, the Ständige Vertretung sits on the banks of the Spree, at the Subway and S-Bahn Friedrichstrasse. The exact address is Schiffbauerdamm 8, Berlin: be sure to try the amazing Berlin meatballs, or the marinated roasted meat. You can end your dinner with a flambée apfel cake, but be sure to light up the fire right away, or they will add more Calvados, making it harder to get home straight after dinner. Tschüss!