Today I was at Webstock, a one day conference dedicated to blogging and web 2.0 and organized by Cristian Manafu and his company Evensys. Covered topics included, but were not limited to, the current state of Romanian blogosphere (as depicted by some of its members and the results of RoBloggers Survey 2008), ideas for web 2.0 projects, blog marketing, financing online projects and the next generation mobile phone.
Presentations and workshops were interesting, debating hot topics in the Romanian online industry. The event was also a very good networking opportunity, because I’ve had the chance to meet some of the notorious names of the Romanian blogosphere, as well as some friends. Discussions were interesting and interactive, both inside the conference area, as well as outside, where people explored various issues and opportunities of the online industry.
The conclusion of the event was that there are a lot of business and growth opportunities in the Romanian online industry, since it still is an emergent market and the real growth is yet still to come. The blogosphere continues to grow in both numbers and quality, becoming an alternative communication channel for news, opinions or general information. Online marketing, despite not being fully understood by some of the players on the market (be it publishers or advertising clients) is still growing rapidly, attracting a sizeable part of the marketing budgets.
Overall a very interesting event that confirmed the fact that the Romanian online industry is an extremely atractive place to be at the moment, because money can be made on a market that offers a lot of opportunities.
