There has been lively discussions of whether the many web conferences are really the most effective use of time for a startup. Similarly many people see the value in these conferences very differently, for example people from the United States tend to spend most if not all their time networking in the lobbies and hallways, at least more so than the Europeans are used to. We, the Europeans, on the other hand, tend to pay equal attention to the speakers at the stage.

At ArcticStartup we believe that meeting friends and strangers, as many as possible, is the best way to spend your time in these conferences. But that’s just us. Thus, we wanted to know what other startups think and decided to ask a group of Finnish startups, who travelled to the LeWeb with us, what they think. Here are some perspectives:

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I talked very briefly to Kimmo Sainio of Cellictica, a Finland based mobile applications company focusing into translation services in Slush. Their service Trippo is available in the Nokia download catalogue in about 10 different countries, which has proven a good partnership for Cellictica. Trippo is a Java language based server-client application that can be used to translate a number of phrases. It currently supports translations from/to English-French, English-Italian and English-Spanish.

The cool thing about Trippo is that even if you’re shy - you can use it, the service itself can dictate the translation and thus help you out in an awkward situation abroad. The only question that comes to my mind is about the required internet connection to the server. John Biggs of CrunchGear once again reminded people travelling abroad to avoid data roaming - it still costs a fortune. This is a huge show stopper for many mobile consumer applications. Once we sort that out, a ton of applications will become a lot more useful.

Risto Siilasmaa, the founder and former CEO of F-Secure (among other tricks of trade), kicked off Slush Helsinki last week with his keynote addressing the current economic situation. Mr. Siilasmaa is one of the most famous Finnish entrepreneurs of all time, having IPO’d F-Secure and now directing such companies as Fruugo, Nokia and others as a board member.

Apologies for the small ticks in the film, you’re not missing more than a few secs in total - technical glitches.

I interviewed Juha Rytky, the CEO of Ball-IT, in Slush last week. Ball-IT has developed a very cool solution combining a physical object with some motion control technology to become a game control for different platforms. With the recent success of Nintendo Wii, they have decided to go after several platforms such as mobile phones as well as the PC market.

There’s definitely a lot of potential in their technology and a working demo of the product without any glitches whatsoever did play a part in making up my mind. Just as Juha tells in the video, they are currently looking for a set of partners to take their products worldwide - something which in my opinion will determine how successful they will be.

Now what kind of a title for a post is that you may ask. It’s a title that is trying to constructively criticise the traditional press about its methods. We’re talking about Slush Helsinki of course.

The sad truth is that the traditional press was uninterested in covering anything from Slush, be it a short article online or a in a more material format. A quick query with Ampparit, a Finnish news aggregator site, results in 0 results about Slush. The irony of this is that the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, has written an apology e-mail to Helene Auramo, one of the organisers, apologising that she was unable to attend (Helene wrote about this in Jaiku). The press did not bother to reply to any queries about coverage.

This is extremely sad, when Risto Siilasmaa, one of the most successful Finnish entrepreneurs said in his keynote about growth entrepreneurship the responsibility everyone has in times of crisis. He also nodded towards angel investors, as they need to believe more than anybody in these companies to invest in them - when it makes no economical sense whatsoever. Risto also talked about the responsibility of the media - these companies need visibility - ahem ahem, are we the only ones supporting this cause?

Slush Helsinki was an extremely successful event in many different ways. We managed to get the elite of the Finnish growth entrepreneurial scene under one roof for the first time in Finland and in a way that close to 400 people could listen and learn from these experts. This in itself is something that should interest many people, what do these experts have to say about pushing yourself beyond belief in a venture that only you believe in with endless passion - looking to make it big from the Arctic.

However, being able to organise such an event that created so many happy faces, so many positive thoughts about the future of the growth entrepreneurship and so many new deals during a time of huge, unimaginable financial crisis. I believe these sort of events are extremely important as they lay the foundation of hope for something that is crucial to the economy in terms of not only growth, but competition in the international markets when we, Finland especially, cannot count on the support of the more traditional industries such as forestry or machinery.

Then again, Slush Helsinki was not created with support of external financing nor official support from a member of government. It was created out of passion and belief that growth entrepreneurship does and will happen out of the Arctics. Maybe in a few years we can turn to the traditional press and tell them - we told you so.

Apologies for a long rant without any bigger news value (pun intended), but I believe this is an important issue that should be addressed and not only in Finland. We’ll be releasing lots of video material in the coming days to spread the knowledge from the event.