64 HAPPENING Media Honeypot
A Finnish meet-up is bringing together media tech start-ups and established players from across the globe to learn and discover new business opportunities Words by Neal Romanek SWEET START UP SUCCESS
global, so why shouldn’t the partners be global?” Media Honeypot has been a great way for Nordic and Finnish companies to increase their interaction with partners outside the region. “Finland has a good brand and we have a lot of tech companies, but it’s tough to get those outside media companies to connect here. It’s all still very local, but Media Honeypot, luckily, is an international event and brings together expertise from other markets.” Media Honeypot further expanded its presence by partnering with the IBC Show in 2017 and hosting the event’s Start-up Forum, which featured pitches and a competition for new broadcast tech companies. Media partners for this year’s Media Honeypot included media houses Sanoma, Otava Group, Alma Media and Finnish broadcaster Yle. This year’s speakers included representatives from Amazon Web Services, Channel 4, TV 2 Denmark, MTG Norway and experts from a variety of tech companies. THE BIG PITCH This year’s Media Honeypot focused on key areas currently of interest to the digital media industry. “We shortened the programme over last year,” says Salo-Glasemann. “This year we really focused on specific topics, like how broadcasters and publishers innovate, what publishers are doing around personalisation. Then there was
candinavia has been home to a surge in development in
media tech start-ups and a new catalyst for these companies is a Helsinki-based meet-up called Media Honeypot. The latest Media Honeypot took place in February. It consists of a series of speed-dating rounds, in which tech start- ups pitch ideas and meet with potential partners, combined with a conference. Media Honeypot was started by Heikki Rotko, who had been CEO of Finnish commercial TV channel MTV. Rotko wanted to create a way for European media tech start-ups to trade ideas and help each other build value. Working with Arctic Start-up, which focuses on entrepreneurship in the Nordic and Baltic countries, the first Media Honeypot was launched in April 2016. “Heikki wanted to build a platform where executors in media from all over Europe could meet with each other and really communicate, and where start-ups from all over could also come and meet them,” says Media Honeypot managing director Janina Salo-Glasemann. “The competition is global, the customers are
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