Entries Tagged 'english' ↓

Dimitris Glezos presenting Fedora & transifex

It is with our great pleasure and excitement to announce that our member and principal organizer of Open Coffee Patras, Dimitris Glezos, has been selected to join the much respected Fedora Project Board. Dimitris has been tirelessly contributing to the local Open Source and Open Coffee efforts, while now working on the equally promising Transifex, and such an appointment clearly serves as a huge boost for himself and the community at large. Let the good times roll!

Having attended LeWeb08 and after talking and interacting with a few of the people there, here are a few of my insights from mingling with those of the startup community that managed to make it to one of the most important such European events. Hopefully this will provide an indication of what the competition in starting up is about.

The bloggers/content-generating people: Perhaps the most conscientious attendants from the crowd. The first couple of rows before the stage which were reserved for them never really seemed to empty - despite the online connectivity issues. I can only imagine they were able to use twitter during the slivers of internet uptime. A few of them - the more brave or better organised ones - were in the back rooms and quite corners with cameras and microphones holding interview sessions with ‘celebrities’ and others. The whole conference was a cauldron of user-generated content, mainly due to them.

The A-listers: They were quite a few of them and all seemed to share a common characteristic: too busy to do anything. I distinctly remember noticing Mike Arrington talking half-distracted with someone while walking towards the startup booths, breaking off the conversation and literally running towards where he was going - only to be stopped mid-stride by someone else wanting some of his time. I always think it’s a sure sign of intelligence to actually stop and be polite (even if to the point) in such circumstances and he indeed did do that.

The startuppers: Split between the startup booths and pitching their project for a few minutes I suspect their day varied from extreme boredom to absolute anxiety. The lack of an internet connection on stage made their work even more problematic but I think most lived up to the expectations - startup style. Videos and snapshots were introduced as a plan B, while perhaps the startup booth that attracted the most attention was by no coincidence the one that offered free popcorn. Overall, I’d say that a decent number of startups were of above average quality while a few had a bit too ‘corporate’ approach on things. Having said that, I think that if you plan to startup, I’d say that competition is stiff but not mind-blowing.

The PR people: A subset of startuppers and also others playing the role of minions sent to the conference by large companies to evangelise their brand/goals/products. How to recognise them: usually late 30s or older, clean cut or sharply dressed, knowing their lines well but also not showing exceeding enthousiasm about whatever they represent. Perhaps a good PR person is as rare as a really competent programmer.

The faithful: I was amused to find a room in the lower section of the LeWeb venue doubly-curtained off to create an approximately 30 people presentation room with plastic chairs arranged in two neat sets and opposite them a projection surface. Day one held a Google workshop and day two a Facebook one. It didn’t seem like stuff you could not have learned online - I could be wrong though - but the faithful congregated to listen to the preachers of their respective cults. The chapel of Google and the church of Facebook were only a few prayers short of becoming a cult.

(Notice the lack of a speakers category: I didn’t watch that many of the talks - I thought it best to spend my time mingling and talking rather than just listen.)

(last image by DanieVDM)

a guest post by Yorgos Dedes, winner of the contest for a semi-free LeWeb ticket

Another LeWeb has reached its end. LeWeb 08, Paris - the major annual international internet conference in Europe, organized by Loic Le Meur (founder of Seesmic) and his wife Geraldine, has been a controversial event. More than 1700 participants from all over the world, a cast of international names, a start up competition, big sponsors, demo rooms-workshops, two French government ministers and two after-show parties can sum up what Le Web 08 was all about.

Criticism

This event didn’t meet the expectations of many of its participants. That was obvious. Some people called it “No Web” since you had to pray for some minutes of internet. Room temperature for the first day was too low to survive without wearing your coat. The food was really tasty if you had the luck to taste it. Loic describes the problems much better than me and I really like the way he does it. Except for the infrastructure issues, Loic got critised about his softball interviews, especially these ones regarding the sponsors.

But still, Le Web is about networking. Le Web is people from around the globe, gathered in the same place in order to meet old friends and make new ones. A place where you can meet in personal people who you only know through the web, pitch your ideas and get feedback. So, for a newbie like me, Le Web was a great experience! The content may not have been always of high level, but there were times that I really enjoyed being there. I feel really lucky for attending Le Web and I want once more to thank opencoffee.gr who gave me this chance.

Highlights, Day One

So, let’s go through the highlights of Le Web 08. On day one, David Weinberger with his presentation entitled “leadership at the end of the age of information” pointed out that leadership is property of a network. In the past information naturally flowed up to the leaders, at the top. Now information is everywhere and available for everyone. So, a leader nowadays has to get the best of the best network.

Helen Fisher gave a long presentation trying to explain how love works and how important it is for us to clear this out. One thing among the many points that caught my attention was that after experiments, love and coccaine activate the same part of the brain!

Then, Paulo Coelho, the famous Brasilian author and blogger, made clear that “You’ll have to share in order to get some revenue”. He has tested this policy, against his publicers willing, and he found out that people download the book but don’t read it, they just wait for the hardcopy.
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We initiated kind of an experiment yesterday night, trying to come up with a list of the Open Coffee Athens XVII participants and extending the network effect in the dimension of time. So, we created a typical form and asked whoever wanted to go and submit her details (name/title (required), url, twitter and a short message, plus her email if she wanted to be submitted in our mailing list to receive announcements of our future events).

It’s clear that the process wasn’t flawless and the bottleneck in the one laptop receiving all submissions was significant, nevertheless the list of a small portion of the attendees follows here, while the rest of you may submit your details now, or leave a comment (the post will be updated). And, of course, we’re waiting for your feedcack on this very rough idea!

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Athens Startup Weekend

So the Athens Startup Weekend came and went and I think it’s left a most positive impression to everyone involved and about all its aspects. Andrew and Alexandros were there with us to show us how starting simply from an idea you can turn it into a startup within 2.5 days. Patrick and Lydia from Microsoft which hosted the event in the offices of the Microsoft Innovation Center made sure all our technical and maintenance (i.e. food and drinks) needs were met - thank you both for that! Apart from the participants, a number of people with a background on business, law and PR (as well as a few possible funders) were also invited to contribute their expertise to the event - ensuring each team had access to all the disciplines necessary to make their product work. And of course, everyone collectively contributed to create an excellent atmosphere choke full of creativity, ideas, positive vibes, effectiveness and above all results.

Speaking of which. the startups that presented in the end were the following:

1. pettycards allows micropayments using mobiles and scratch cards
2. howsocial.ru calculates the total social impact of individuals in a number of online communities
3. Digital Rights Protection collects all legal data on various worldwide legal systems and allows search for patents aiming to help interested parties look for infringements
4. rentawife.gr outsources household chores to others so you can regain your quality time
5. blognudge allows you to put a button on your blog so that people can suggest that you should write something and perhaps include a topic or send you a donation
6. mobcommerce.com allows e-commerce store owners to create mobile stores automatically
7. freecycling FB app helps people organise giving of stuff they don’t want to people who ask for them instead of throwing them away
8. mydoulapa FB app organises your wardrobe and allows you to donate some items to charity while fashion houses can also create an identity in it and tap their demographic of interest
9. beeshopper presents an array of e-shops in a single interface categorised per field
10. uArt looks like a deviantArt clone… only with a monetisation model for the artists’ works
    
11. betcafe is an online gambling site

And of course we’d like to wish all the best to pettycards who managed to stand out from the rest and attract the promise of the GIVE fund to take a closer look in their project and hopefully invest seed money in them. Congratulations guys! And congratulations to all who participated and helped make the weekend a success.

(Tag for content on twitter, flickr, YouTube, etc is #asw - and sometimes #aws)

Hello from Startup Weekend Athens, we’re building some great stuff here (and we’ll try to live stream the final startups presentations tonight at 20.00 greek time) but I’ve got some even better news for our pals in Patras:

Andrew Hyde, the mind and soul behind Startup Weekends around the globe, will join the already excellent line up of tomorrow’s Open Coffee Patras II speakers! Andrew will give a speech on 

How do startup start?  Let’s look at the common ways teams form, why they are funded and why they succeed, and how each part is independent.  What lessons can we learn from Startup Weekend?

and you and your friends have really no choice but come and join us tomorrow evening at Poikili Stoa!