The Struggle

June 17th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

badass.
“this is not checkers; this is mutherfuckin’ chess” and “there is always a move”

Gender In Tech: No Longer A Silent Issue

June 7th, 2012 § Comments Off on Gender In Tech: No Longer A Silent Issue § permalink

this has been resonating recently, and righteously so. enough with the old boys’ clubs and forever-pubescent mentalities!

English: Maps of laws and executive orders ban...

English: Maps of laws and executive orders banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gender In Tech: No Longer A Silent Issue

Ellen Pao‘s lawsuit allows our community to discuss these “women in tech” issues as real problems. By Cristina Cordova (Business Development, Pulse) TechCrunch reported that Kleiner Perkins Partner Ellen Pao sued her firm for gender and sexual discrimination.

via: www.women2.com

in a related article, i saw this: “The tech community in general is probably 20 years behind most when it comes to gender issues, and needs every reminder that it’s still got a ways to go.” (gawker)

For Tech Start-Ups, New York Has Increasing Allure

June 6th, 2012 § Comments Off on For Tech Start-Ups, New York Has Increasing Allure § permalink

English: I took photo of CNN building in New Y...

English: I took photo of CNN building in New York City with Canon camera. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

this article is the most accurate description of New York as a tech hub:

For Tech Start-Ups, New York Has Increasing Allure

Enlarge This Image Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Doug Imbruce, the founder of Qwiki, an interactive video start-up, recently decided to move his company back to New York. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Employees of Qwiki, located on Spring Street in SoHo.

via: www.nytimes.com

in a nutshell, the takeaways are:

  • partners: “Many new start-ups benefit from proximity to the media, advertising and fashion industries, New York’s strengths.”
  • financing: “The number of venture capital deals in the city has risen 32 percent since 2007, while the figures for other areas, including the Valley, have dropped.”
  • it’s the greatest city on the planet: “he did not have to rely on hiring New York-based engineers. Instead, he found them elsewhere and convinced them to move.”
  • it’s a hipsterville: “Those at start-ups in New York repeatedly mention the intimacy of the relatively small but tight-knit industry here — in fact, they may be the only people who say they moved to New York because they liked its small-town vibe.”
  • keeps you humble: “In New York, no one’s ever heard of Quora,” “In New York, it keeps you humble that you walk out and there’s the CNN building.”
  • it’s rational: “I don’t like New York,” he said. “I just think it’s the best place for my business.”

… excuse all the quotes this time, they are by various people from the same article.

 

know when you’re up to something and know when you’re too early

June 5th, 2012 § Comments Off on know when you’re up to something and know when you’re too early § permalink

Image representing Wists as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

this story of pinterest before pinterest has many lessons in strategic thinking, that are only attainable the hard way, or by hearing them from someone who got them the hard way.

Wists-ful thinking: lessons from a prelude to Pinterest

Back in 2006, Wists, a visual bookmarking site I had launched a year earlier was gaining traction with women who were into crafts. I showed the website to two whip-smart friends, Shana Fisher and her husband, Jonathan Glick. Like many people, they didn’t buy my argument that collecting thumbnail image links would be a big deal, but they were less skeptical than most. Last year, I got a cryptic Tweet from Jonathan saying, “You Were Right.”

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: gigaom.com

… and most importantly, realize that if anyone else finds the gold nugget in the same pond, and goes on to find the gold mine, he didn’t steal it from you. this author has great attitude.

piano media’s lessons on geography

June 4th, 2012 § Comments Off on piano media’s lessons on geography § permalink

 

OpenStreetMap Logo

OpenStreetMap Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m amused by the US media’s understanding of European geography / economy:

Slovakia’s news payment system going large in July

Piano Media, the joint web news payment system operating in Slovakia and Slovenia, is preparing to launch in a third, larger market this summer, after recently taking funding for globalisation. “The third country we are launching in July will be much larger than the two we already have combined,…

There is a question mark over whether Piano can replicate even these small numbers outside its own back yard

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: paidcontent.org

… to think that slovenia is slovakia’s backyard, or that they are both the same backyard, is like saying US and Panama are the same backyard.

on the other hand, I’m glad Piano did their tests in these two countries, because now maybe more westerners will actually learn to tell us apart.

startups, creatives and bankers

June 2nd, 2012 § Comments Off on startups, creatives and bankers § permalink

I saw this poster for Brooklyn Northside Festival:

… I was as surprised to see ‘entrepreneurship‘ there as the designer who had to find a way to put it there. It seems we are merging with Arts and creative industries, which I believe is an underestimated revolution. Of course SXSW and TED did that years ago, of course Wired knew all along, but Brooklyn Northside?

don’t get me wrong, I think that’s great. I think entrepreneurs really are rock stars of this age/generation, I think it’s up to us to solve big problems that this Planet is facing, and leave it to our kids in a better shape. I think we are looking to complete the capitalism’s promise, and upgrading it with what we’ve learned from globalization and new age.

And I think that we need to join forces with Arts and Creatives and Everyone else, to make this happen, because if we are to replace a broken and unfair economic system, we have to breathe the same air. Financial industry increasingly feels like new age bureaucracy, pushing pieces of paper around, detached from reality. It won’t survive the century.

A capitalism's social pyramid

A capitalism’s social pyramid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

Iceland’s president explains why startups are better than bankers.

June 1st, 2012 § 5 comments § permalink

Ólafur_Ragnar_Grímsson

Ólafur_Ragnar_Grímsson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Business Insider has a great interview with Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who has been President of Iceland since 1996, and announced last month he would be running for a fifth term.

It is an incredible read, because he is obviously very smart and very ethical person, a rare gift for politician these days. I wish everyone in Slovenia read this and adjust their expectations on how a public leader should behave, react, lead. He makes several super-insightful points, that clearly come from a lot of experience and thought.

For instance, about the importance of the banking sector:

As everybody knows now, we did not pump public money into the failed banks. We treated them like private companies that went bankrupt, and we let them fail. Some people say we did it because we didn’t have any other option, there is clearly something in that argument, but it does not change the fact that it turned out to be a wise move or whatever reason. Whereas in many other countries, the prevailing orthodoxy is you pump public money into banks and you make taxpayers responsible for the banks in the long run, and somehow treat the banks as if they are holier institutions in the economy than manufacturing companies, commercial companies, IT companies, or whatever.


Capitalistic financial markets can exist in many other parts of the world, even without democracy. So in my opinion, Europe is and should be more about democracy than about financial markets. Based with this choice, it was in the end, clear that I had to choose democracy.

… and one positive story on journalism – i wish more media aspired to be this fair when they are judgmental:

One has to hand it to the editorial board of The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, that they supported Iceland’s case all along. And if The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, who have never been special friends of Iceland, saw through this argument by the British and the Dutch government, why on earth didn’t the other European governments do so?

… and a match point for creative industries (which includes startups btw):

the Icelandic banks, like all modern big banks in Europe and America and all the other parts of the world, are no longer banks in the old-fashioned way. They have become high-tech companies. High-ranked engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, programmers and so on and so forth. And their success depends largely on how successful they are in hiring people with this education and capability, not necessarily those trained in business schools or finance, but in engineering, mathematics, computer science and so on.

So the lesson from this is: if you want your economy to excel in the 21st century, for the IT, information-based high-tech sectors, a big banking sector, even a very successful banking system, is bad news for your economy.

… about the inherent problem of all ‘ecosystems’ – clubbing

And I said to myself — I know it’s a mistake now — in early 2007, if all the credit agencies are giving the Icelandic banks a clean bill of health, these pillars of European banking are doing integral business with the Icelandic banks, these critical voices are not really onto what’s happening.

… and an example of true collaboration, going on without the media really noticing it…

Fortunately, during this time when there was very little attention to the Arctic, the eight Arctic countries were able peacefully, almost off the radar, to develop co-operation within the Arctic Council, and to consolidate the peaceful and constructive dialogue among Russia, the United States, Canada, and the five Nordic countries.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/olafur-ragnur-grimsson-iceland-2012-4

Where am I?

You are currently viewing the archives for June, 2012 at Rational Idealist.