Live from Digital Worldbike 2020!

Digital WorldBike is happening right now. We’ll be periodically editing this post to add updates for as long as our enthusiasm holds.

Welcome

This is what it looks like. The backdrop changes every few seconds. If you click Conference, you can hear people talk Sport, Tech, or Mobility. If you click Expo you can look at some virtual trade show stands (and harass the company’s employees via text chat). If you click Info, you can choose between a chat room and registering for some kind of thing.

Jens greets you. We saw this twice, so it probably wasn’t live unless his boss is as committed to making him repeatedly perform the same task over and over again as ours is.

Here’s the agenda. Dan from VeloNews up later on. Going to drop into the chat and ask why he never responds to our emails.

Some booths. You can click on them. It’s like visiting a website from 2000.

It’s ok, we’ll leave the booth staff alone.

The Info area starts with a tutorial. The thing explaining your show shouldn’t require a tutorial to understand. Just throwing that out there.

Loadster

We entered the Tech room just as this talk was beginning. And also as our baby needed feeding, meaning we stayed for the full 20 minutes. Someone talking at you about their product way beyond your interest level is a pretty authentic trade show experience.

After talking up all the failures of cargo bikes versus cars, these guys unveiled their product, which was basically a mobility scooter.

“No more bike parts.” Thanks, very cool.

Loadster is a perfect example of how easy it is to play “Is it a sincere European company name or the handle of a Twitter troll?”

Ironically, we’d rather hear what @fattloadster_420 has to say. Ted King is next though!

Ted King

Guess you could call this a Ted Talk!!!

He was discussing gravel.

“Thesis: US road cycling is in dire straits. US gravel is not.” Fair enough.

We should all be getting on with our day jobs

Wait, we’re talking about Berlin yet again?

And a different German in the Sports room. Maybe this trade show is German.

And another thing…

We thought we were done, but then we found this screenshot. Is this real? Is someone going to jump out and yell “It’s a social experiment, bro” at us? Is this entire trade show an elaborate ruse to secure coverage for a bizarre PhD thesis about whether cyclists and mice are similar?

Magnificent stuff.