Overwhelming. That’s what it initially felt like when walking the floor of Collision through thousands of start-ups trying to grab your attention, and the attention of media like USA Today.
Sister event to Web Summit, this technology conference drew big crowds in this its second year. And with all the resources for entrepreneurs available today – including many from Dell — there may have never been a better time to build your own business, but that doesn’t make it any easier to rise above that crowd.
So, I focused my time on the floor looking for our Dell customers and talking with them about what cool and interesting things they were doing. It was great to meet men and women from all around the world including Sweden, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, Netherlands, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, Poland, Columbia, UK and across the U.S.
While many of the start-ups were lugging desktops, laptops and monitors around, Argon Credit (above), who specialize in “fast, friendly loans,” found our Inspiron 20 3000 Series All-in-Ones were the perfect mobile solution for displaying their service.
Zonedin caught my eye with the way they are blending real world activity with online social networking to "turn your skate experience into a real life video game." And, Scirra is enabling anyone to create video games without writing a line of code using their Construct 2 software.
Transfercar has found a way to match rental car agencies that need to move inventory between locations with travelers who will do it for them – essentially providing free car rentals. And, TimeHub is creating an online front office for small and medium businesses with booking, staff scheduling and customer relationship management capabilities.
While talking with the Brabov team, I found that the cattle industry in Brazil is much larger and more “corporate” than the small herd my father managed when I was growing up. The goal of their application is to make livestock production even more productive and profitable.
A shout out, also, to the founders and leaders of these other new companies that were spotted having chosen Dell to help them get off the ground:
Alpha Payments Cloud, LeadFerret, Reel, Branddy, Huntup.me, TBIox, Filestory, Kolektio, ServingVets, Jackpot Rising, Feelix, Inkess, Pamotos, Briko, Fishidy and the pay-it-forward network Nobly.
My thanks to Paddy Cosgrave, Aoife Quilty, and the rest of the crew for inviting me to speak at Collision (above) about some of the things we’re doing here at Dell to engage with customers and employees through this blog and other social media programs.
I’d say the team accomplished their goal of being “a meeting place for people who are both building the companies of tomorrow and managing the companies of today.” It was great to chat with some of our larger customers there, like NASDAQ, but especially exciting to see how Dell is playing a part in building so many new companies.
Thanks to Trippeo for the photo from my panel!
