This is our first try of live blogging an event. So we’ll see how it goes.

14h – For now, the scene is in place. The event should start soon.

Here are a few pictures I took yesterday of the great space the event is happening in. And an other one of the speech of Pedro Janela.

14h15 : The full jury is almost in place.

The candidates look ready to pitch, but a little stressed…

14h17 : The audience is gathering.

14h45 : we are about to start!

The rule is 8mn of pitch, then 8 minutes for questions (I think we gonna overshoot that).

14h50 : time for a small introductory speech, and pep talk for the pitchers. The spirit : be brave, be crazy, be a Pirate!

A few figures about the event. No chairs and no tables at the beginning. 76 bottles of rum are still to drink!

Andrea is telling the story of all this happened. Great connections between Portugal and Slovakia actually. 16 participants came in, and formed 5 teams, then developed a full vision and transformed it into the beginning of a business plan.

15h: introduction and presentation of the jury. That’s us!

Then the main sponsors, like Venvivis, an early-stage investor based in Bratislava.

First team : I teach, I learn, I work.

It’s a website platform to bring all these 3 communities – teaching, learning and working – together. For companies to find the rightly skilled project member, and students to learn from great teachers.

The presentation is very well sketched, the presenter a little bit stressed though. He manages to answer well.

Second team : Touch 2 Go !

They even have a Prezi presentation, great ! They’re looking for solutions to get cabs to the 2000 people that don’t every week. Great story about how the idea came to them, and great speaker.

Third : Snabb

They are trying to solve the “email problem”. That’s ambitious but ambition is great.

Great presentation and figures about the problem. Transforming email into text-messages-like interface, with statistics and challenges to improve your productivity.

Jury is tough on questions, but that’s the game… The team is fun and resistant, though.

Next : eWents.pro

Little joke at the beginning, not bad. It’s all about an event organizer tool : before, during, and after the event.

Great presentation, with a demo, and actual customers!

Last one : boARd

Stands for global standard for AR games.

Very impressive demo of an augmented reality technology, in fact. Selling games or technology, that’s the question!

16h20 That’s it for the pitches, time to deliberate!

Well, the winners are eWents.pro, boARd, and Time 2 Go (more or less in that order). Congratulations to all the team! More lengthy story about the event later!

Before going back to a full-throttle publishing pace, let’s continue with looking back at some of the best startups we featured in the past few months. It was the beginning of U.S.E., so maybe you missed some of those…

European summer

After a few months of publishing, it looked like a good idea to look back at startups we featured, and that you may have missed along the way.

 Archify
Record all your browsing history, and find quicker what you looked at just yesterday. Read more
Since featured in February, they raised capital in May, and moved from Vienna to Berlin!

 Checkthis
Between nothing and a blog, sounds like a great idea. Read more
They raised capital too, and look like they’re on a great path!

 Roozz
Rent your code, and make it work in a web browser with a wonderful plugin. Read more

 Mobbles
It’s a new mobile game, working with your position, and some funny looking creatures you have to take care of. Read more

 Conceptboard
A great collaborative tool, to work on designs, mock-ups, and documents. Available on iPad. Read more