DAHO.AM 17 - Munichs Tech Conference for Startups and Developers

First of all we would like to thank Stylight Tech for organizing a great developer conference here in Munich! Back in 2014 when we sat with a couple of other developers in the front yard of Stylight and enjoyed the BBQ we didn’t know that we witnessed the birth of such a great developer conference. Amazing how this has grown!

And here is my perspective on the conference:

The talks and panels were organized in three tracks: startup, developer and disruption.

I began with the startup track and afterwards I was mostly wandering between the developer and the startup track.

The European Ecosystem for Startups

The first talk I attended was about the European Ecosystem for startups from Balthazar de Lavergne from TheFamily.  My main takeaways:

• European startups have to think bigger and to realize their own strength when they understand themselves as part of a Europe-wide network. It shouldn’t be a problem to meet people in London on one day and Barcelona the other day. Compared with the U.S these distances are still very small.
• TheFamily with batch organized startups and a coaching with gamification elements seems to be a good place to ask for venture capital.

Mobility Panel

Next I listened to the mobility panel about connected and/or autonomous cars and the future of mobility. The discussion led to the following insights

• Connectivity between cars (also in rural and remote areas) is for example realized by Veniam. These robust networks are a mandatory fundamental for all of the current fascinating opportunities in mobility (connected cars, autonomous cars, …)
• The collected data should be available to enhance public services, increase security (e.g. with methods developed by Artisense, etc). While individual data must remain private all other data should be used to improve the life of all. Only the small portion which definitively provides a competitive advantage to companies should be owned by them.
• The discussion ended with the hint to all the opportunities for innovation that arise from the changed cityscapes when there is no parking space required anymore. Taken into account what changes will come from the retail evolution which will replace more and more brick & mortar stores with their online equivalent the question becomes even more urgent: what is the vision for our inner cities when parking space and retail stores vanish and give room to something new?

Robotics Panel

After lunch I visited the robotics panel and here are my takeaways:

• We distinguish between the following types of robots
  • “simple” assembly robots (do their programmed task(s))
  • Co-existing robots which work in the same environment as humans and do the same, comparable or complementary tasks. These robots must ensure that if they interfere with humans they immediately stop. The newer generations are already behavioral which means they are able to learn their tasks instead of having to be programmed
  • Co-working robots are behavioural, because they must be able to work with humans together on the same taskand hence must adapt to unforeseen events
• Further development can be expected in the improvements of the behavioral robots and their ability to learn and adapt to human behavior
• A total different approach to robotics was presented by robo wunderkind (http://robowunderkind.com/): they understood the importance of making the world of electronics, programming and robotics attractive and accessible to everyone. They provide modular robot system - simple enough that even 5 years old kids are able to build and program(!) robots. This reminded me of our approach PlayHardware to lower the barriers to get involved into electronics and start prototyping.

Conclusion

In retrospective I would have rather attended more sessions from the disruption track. But overall it was again an inspiring conference which is incredible valuable to further promote Munich as an important Tech and Startup hub.

However, I sometimes had the feeling that the three tracks were a little too ambitious and in an reminiscent mood remembered the first daho.am which blew me away by the amazing quality of each single speaker and the incredible dense and inspiring program.