London will host Europe's first week-long internet festival in November this year, following in the footsteps of New York where the annual Internet Week was established three years ago.
Some of the biggest digital brands in the world will take part in more than 100 events across the capital in the seven-day Internet Week Europe. But it will not just be for the internet monoliths like Google, as organisers are inviting digital companies from across the continent to host their own event at no cost.
Sponsored by Yahoo, the festival is aiming to follow in the footsteps of Internet Week New York which took place for the third time in June this year. The annual US jamboree hosted more than 150 events and saw participation from organisations including AOL, Mashable and Time Warner. Internet players such as the Guardian, BBC, Moo.com and WPP Digital will all make an appearance at the event.
David-Michel Davies, chairman of Internet Week New York, will head the London festival along with Nicolas Roope and Nick Farnhill, founders of Pokelondon.com. Davies, also executive director of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, told the Guardian it was high time the European internet industry was brought together for an event like this.
"We started in New York because we really just wanted to bring the industry to life and found – because it's New York – that we got national interest, people coming from all over the country and having events in the city," he said. "Now we want to bring people to London.
"We felt we wanted to engage the entire European industry and London is a similar city to New York in that every internet company has an outpost there or travels through there. It's a big, big benefit to the city here in New York. The community comes together to help programme everything and it really is part of the story of the resurgence of the tech industy here in New York."
Although there are numerous industry events based around technology around Europe, Internet Week Europe is a different beast altogether. "We knew it had to work as the internet works," said Davies. "So we decided to make it an open source festival, allowing companies to add their own events rather than a few people in a room figure out who gets to appear. It's really organic and more relevant that way."
Nick Farnhill, co-chair of Internet Week Europe, said: "My interest for London in terms of relevancy is that it has an appeal outside of the industry events we see. There's a lot of events that are silos – for broadcast, radio, the web – but this appeal goes much wider. It's basically for anyone who feels the web is at the centre of their business."
Internet Week Europe will run from 8-12 November; a preliminary schedule will be announced in early October. The festival's executive council includes many of Europe's most incisive internet presences, including Tom Uglow, manager of Google's Creative Lab team; Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute.com and mydeco.com; Aleks Krotoski, journalist at the Guardian; Richard Moross, founder and chief executive of Moo.com; Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch Europe; and Iain Dodsworth, founder and chief executive of TweetDeck.
