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conferences, τεχνολογία, internet, επιχειρείν, meetings, minutes, publicity

DLD conference 2009

January 29, 2009 1 Comment

Είχα την τύχη να παρεβρεθώ στο DLD (Digital Life Design) conference που έγινε 25-27 Ιανουαρίου στο Μόναχο. Το DLD είναι μία από τις μεγαλύτερες συναντήσεις ανθρώπων από το web και όχι μόνο και οργανώνεται από τον Γερμανό εκδότη Hubert Burda και τον Yossi Vardi. Συνάντησα αρκετές γνωστές προσωπικότητες του web 2.0 όπως τους Chad Hurley (YouTube), Samir Arora (Glam Media), Mitchell Baker (Mozilla Foundation), Peter Hirshberg (Technorati.com), Andrew Paulson (co-founder, SUP / Livejournal), Lukasz Gadowski (Spreadshirt.com), Max Levchin (Slide.com), Joel Spolsky (Fog Creek Software), Marissa Mayer (Google.com), Xavier Court (Vente-privee.com), Julia Allison (nonsociety.com), Loic Le Meur (seesmic.com), Joi Ito (Creative Commons) και το γνωστό σε όλους ιδρυτή του Facebook Mark Zuckerberg ο οποίος ήρθε εκτός προγράμματος ως έκπληξη του συνεδρίου.

Εκτός από τις web προσωπικότητες στο συνέδρειο μίλησαν και αρκετοί CEO μεγάλων εταιριών που με εξαίρεση τον Brad Anderson από το Best Buy δεν είχαν ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον. Η πιο διασκεδαστική στιγμή του συνεδρίου ήταν το party που έγινε τη δεύτερη μέρα καθώς ήρθαν διάφορα γερμανικά celebrities τα οποία δυστυχώς δεν γνώριζα:):) μιας και το party ήταν ένα mix του DLD μαζί με ανθρώπους από περιοδικά που εκδίδει ο Hubert Burda.

Για περισσότερα σχετικά με το συνέδριο μπορείτε να διαβάσετε το σχετικό post στο blog μου και προτείνω να επισκευτείτε και το http://www.dld-conference.com καθώς οι ομιλίες βρίσκονται εκεί σε βίντεο και είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρουσες!

conferences

Open Breakfast Patras I

January 12, 2009 4 Comments

Trattoria Την Κυριακή 18/1 στις 10πμ. οργανώνουμε πρώτο Open Breakfast στην Πάτρα. Yeehaa!

Το Open Breakfast είναι ένας συνδυασμός του Open Coffee με πρωινό: μια συνάντηση Ελλήνων entrepreneurs, technology enthusiasts, επενδυτών κλπ το πρωί της Κυριακής.

Ο οικοδεσπότης μας είναι το bistro bar “Don Camillo e Peppone — Trattoria del Popolo”, Γερμανού 48, λίγο παραπάνω από το αρχαίο Ωδείο της Πάτρας. Το πρωινό θα είναι τύπου buffet με διάφορα ποιοτικά φαγητά και ποτά και θα κοστίζει 9 €. Ο χώρος διαθέτει free wireless για όσους θέλουν να επιδείξουν τα prototypes τους.

Οι συναντήσεις Open Breakfast στην Πάτρα θα γίνονται κάθε πρώτη Κυριακή τους μονούς μήνες του έτους. Για να μείνετε up2date, δείτε το πρόγραμμα συναντήσεων και το calendar μας.

conferences, english

The LeWeb08 tribes

December 22, 2008 No Comments

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)

conferences, επιχειρείν, presentations

Lessons learned at LeWeb 2008

December 16, 2008 2 Comments

The following post is about advice on how to pitch startups, and on how to best consume the pitches. If you’re looking for a detailed account of the experience, you should definitely read the great guest post by Yiorgos Dedes.

It was my first time at LeWeb, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I was very attracted by the Startup Competition though. I love the energy and freshness that startups emit, so I tried to watch as much of it as I could. Still I’m much better at destroying things than making them, so instead of advice on what to do, I’d like to point some common mistakes.

How not to pitch

Don’t look like a bartender, greasy hair doesn’t help. First impressions, and of course appearances do matter. This might sound shallow, but when you have almost no time to evaluate someone you’re seeing for the first time, everything counts.
Don’t try to look thin by wearing tight clothes. This is actually a life lesson. Don’t make me pull out French Vogue editorials on this.
Don’t stay too much on the stupid UI that you can’t find designers for, insisting it’s revolutionary simple. Some companies may get away with it, but a newcomer won’t. Even though feature creep is unpleasant, it’s consistently the main thing that drives adoption of a product.
Putting emphasis on each and every word that you say won’t make any of them right. They have to make sense. Non verbal decorations come second.
Making slow and end-accelerating gestures won’t convince anyone either.
Saving people from 1 click isn’t significant, unless this 1 click is part of a process that they get into very often. If you what you’re selling is optimization, then you need to start counting how many clicks you save people per day, month and so on.
Preparing a video that substitutes you entire presentation isn’t a bad idea at all. In every major conference the network is broken and this will probably effect your presentation. Putting a lot of effort on an excellent plan B might sound tedious, but will make you glow in comparison to those other people that now only have slides.
Throwing slides that have big photos and single words can’t convince. They can drive up enthusiasm, but they can’t convince logical people. It turns out that judges are likely to have been pitched-to a lot, and aren’t easily swayed by charm.
If you’re the CEO of the company, you’re very likely unfit to make the pitch. This is a speaker’s work. Not a marketer’s, not a designer’s, not a developer’s and certainly not the CEO’s.
Slides presenting the team are good for the soul™. The audience won’t like them, but substantiating the skills and the experience of the team looks good to judges.
If you’re not design conscious stick with the defaults in fonts and layouts. Otherwise your slides will very likely look ugly.

How not to evaluate a pitch

This is strange, but I really feel that people watching presentations, focus more on the pitch than the product itself, and then rate the pitch instead of the product.

This is a profoundly troubling way to approach the rating proccess.

It really shouldn’t matter if a pitch is efficient or not. You need to start seeing behind the marketing skills of the person in front of you. If you willingly allow yourself to be swept away by their charm, then you really are doing a disservice to yourself and to others, because you are creating a false perception of reality.

All in all, even if the person delivering the presentation makes all of the mistakes I mentioned, that shouldn’t matter.

When evaluating if something is good or not, either because

you want to rate it as part of a game,
you are evaluating a possible collaboration,
maybe you will buy it,

it’s very important that you learn to peel the onion and look at the true value behind the proposition.

conferences, english

Le Web 08, the review

December 12, 2008 3 Comments

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.

conferences, meetings, presentations, publicity, start-up, VC

Athens Startup Weekend, the minutes

November 27, 2008 9 Comments

The following is a detailed account of the Athens Startup Weekend experience.

Friday Evening

Discussing ideas as people flock in the Microsoft Innovation Center. Familiar faces, new faces.
Andrew Hyde, the originator of the SUW meme, presents the idea in greater formalism. Out of several slides, I keep a single point that rings familiar: Fix it ! If you have a problem, don’t whine about it, go out and find a solution.
People are a little bit frozen when Andrew asks them to step up and pitch their ideas.
When the 3rd idea is heard, there’s a bit of a tipping point. The people watching, have had just enough time to cook up some ideas. They’re all pretty vague, but they’re plenty. The list just keeps growing, and growing and growing. This is fantastic !
It’s worth noting that, at this point, the people with tech ideas are openly mocking the people with non-tech ideas. Now we know we’re bound to see something interesting emerge out of this. This is so fun !
After listing all the ideas, a magic thing happens. People are split in functioning groups. What essentially just happened, is that when someone liked another person’s idea they approached them and asked to join. The amazing thing about this, is that there’s no arguing, no asking for CVs, no mistrusting, no nothing ! It’s rare to see such selfless self-organizing groups in Greece.
Once interest groups have formed, we’re out to discuss the details. Find out what the real problem is, rethink the way our business models work etc. The nice thing about the space is that we’re provided immediately with working spaces. There are round tables on all floors, extra monitors for those who can use them (Dell), and a free coffee vending machine (Loumidis). Above all, there are 3 separate WIFI networks courtesy of Wind. It’d be nice if they were more reliable though. We all experienced plenty of disconnections.
There’s also free food ! (Domino’s)

After several hours of brainstorming and solving common problems we call it a night. I think I speak for many others when I say I didn’t really sleep that night. More of twisting in my bed, thinking out the problem at hand.

Saturday

It’s early morning in Greek weekend time, which is to say it’s 10:30 am by the time most people start working again.
We’re all into coding frenzy. Problems that we couldn’t notice before start becoming obvious. We’re all in need of precious resources such as developers, designers and business developers that can write solid business plans.
The coffee machine is out of order. Hordes of sleepy-eyed, caffeine-deprived people cause a stampede as the news bleed out of the mess hall. This happens a bit too often, to the point that the hosts learn how to fix it. Ugh ! Thankfully there was an abundance of caffeinated soft drinks, chocolates of all kinds and potato chips. A perfectly balanced diet for any developer.
We have people floating around us. Guests include MBAs, Business Developers and Public Relations. We’re being offered free advice ! How nice is that ?
Things get much better when the lunch arrives. Plenty of pizzas (certainly more than we could eat), salads (just for looks) and some. People gather around food and keep debating on their products.
Friendly spying goes on with more or less obvious ways. People either come smiling and ask ‘What are you people working on and what’s your progress ?’ or eat suspiciously close to us. For the record, the straightforward approach gave us and the others the best results. In the future, just come and ask.
As the day ends, we all realize that it was much less productive than we had anticipated. We all set our goals to optimistic, and didn’t prepare for a fallback plan. A lot of work remains for day 3, while some of us decide on what to cut off immediately.
By now most people have decided on their site structure (yes we are all web based) , aesthetics and so on.

Andrew calls it a day, gathers us up and makes some final suggestions. Among them is to take up the names of our services in every online outlet that we can.
Everyone comes back from the meeting thinking that they can still work. The truth is that we’re exhausted though. We all just finalize our work, check our emails and go home.

Sunday

Everyone is early this morning. There is an obvious anxiety in the air. Everyone is finalizing the details of their product. Whether it’s code deliverables or pure business plans everyone is trying to put the final pieces together.
Some groups are almost over with their work. In their wisdom, they actually picked projects that could actually be delivered in the given timeframe. Two groups are even accused of having brought over their half finished projects to make an impression. The Open Coffee intelligence services though can actually verify that this couldn’t be more detached from the truth.

Lunch time. People agree that the buffalo sauce chicken wings look suspicious. Evidence suggests that those who could stomach them were actually robots !
Back to work. Everyone is in a frenzy to finish the last bits of work. A magic thing happens though. People are seeking and getting help. Our team was benefited twice and offered as much help. Especially since we were blessed with a designer.
Guests are again floating around. Venture capitalists that are previewing the running projects before the final judgment. Also lawyers which actually provided resolve in two groups that had doubts about their work. The event is really well organized.
Everything is in final order. We are ready for the presentations. Some of them are quite good, some or them plain bad. A single one is outright offensive. Every single one of the presentations though are spirited and delivered with their creators’ love.
VCs and rest of the judges leave for the top floor. Whispers are heard and phones ring.
It’s time to announce the winner.

won !!!

Pettycards is a system and logical device for making micropayments by using prepaid cards that are attached to your cellphone. A really great idea, and one of those that in our humble opinion stood out of the rest from the first moments.

There is ofcourse a bittersweet feeling. Every contestant would feel that their baby is prettier than those of the others. Still the pettycards project won fair and square.

Advice to the rest: Don’t be dissapointed. Your idea just didn’t fit the profile of the VCs. Keep working on it, add more value, and you will either have a successful product on it’s own, or justify an investment.

Aftermath

The experience overall was just great. Everything in the hosting department except for WIND’s wifi was very finely tuned. Congratulations are in order Andrew Hyde for delivering the idea, and Alexandros Pagidas for bringing Andrew here. For the hosts, I’ll quote Pagidas, who said that the reception in part of the Innovation Center changed his perception of Microsoft, later explaining that he expected at least some rules about incorporating Microsoft’s software in the startups being built. I think that’s true for many of us. Congrats are also in order for Patrick and Lydia for really providing assistance and catering to our needs. Finally a congrats are in order for the GIVE foundation. The promise of a 20.000 € investment, which was after all a significant drive for the competition and excellence of the projects.

You can also see the viewpoints of others that attended the event, such as John Nousis’, Dimitris Athanasiadis, Alex Georgiadis, George Tziralis, Stavros Messinis . Please leave a comment if you were there, we’re still trying to backlink as many of you as possible.

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