April 30th, 2013 § § permalink
bakery (Photo credit: Sachiho)
Slovenia is a small country. it’s a fact, but unfortunately this realization is too often used as an excuse to not do something right. In my opinion, this means two other things:
- because it’s a small country, we can have much better overview of activities, if only we choose so. our national statistics centre is able to produce monthly insights into many aspects of the society without much effort, so we actually have data available that could be used to empower better decisions easily.
- because we don’t have infinite pool of human resources, we have to be more careful on where we employ them.
I don’t see enough efforts on either part, and I’m pretty sure very few people in slovenia are actually aware of the actual distribution of human potential of the country, which results in lots of ungrounded frustrations and much ranting about “too big government sector” or “too little economic growth“, without data to back it up.
So i wanted to get better sense of what our high level structure is. here is first draft of a breakdown of slovenian population:
… every slovenian resident can find herself in exactly one of the squares. now we can observe some interesting facts, some that we have known before, and some that might be a surprise:
- government is not so big. 40.000 people work across the administration. the same for public sector – all our education and health is run by only 5% of the population
- i ventured into separating private sector into two halves – the pseudo-private sector are people employed in companies that are funded mainly from public sources. i’ll get more accurate data, but i believe this distinction is important, because those companies are not actually creating value on the market, but rather live off national budget.
- so my theory is, that until we get more people from all other buckets into the real private sector, there is little hope of solving the economic crisis. if all our growth is dependent on government projects, and only 16% of people daily work on and think about adding value to the
complete data table is:
| sector |
group |
headcount |
percent |
| slovenija |
|
2,050,000 |
100.00% |
| pre-active |
slovenija |
430,000 |
20.98% |
| active |
slovenija |
940,000 |
45.85% |
| inactive |
slovenija |
680,000 |
33.17% |
| kids under 15 |
pre-active |
250,000 |
12.20% |
| young students |
pre-active |
90,000 |
4.39% |
| student |
pre-active |
90,000 |
4.39% |
| government |
active |
40,000 |
1.95% |
| public sector |
active |
110,000 |
5.37% |
| pseudo-private |
active |
330,000 |
16.10% |
| real private |
active |
340,000 |
16.59% |
| unemployed |
active |
120,000 |
5.85% |
| other |
inactive |
110,000 |
5.37% |
| retired |
inactive |
570,000 |
27.80% |
i’m imagining next steps for this visualization will be:
- make it update itself from monthly data
- add more complexity, adding ability to drill into individual sectors
- create a comparable breakdown of added-value, or contribution to GDP, or something similar, to back my thesis that we need more people in the real private sector.
thoughts? what else do you see in the chart?
April 1st, 2013 § § permalink
A map of the Slovene Land and Provinces, author Peter Kozler Hrvatski: Zemljovid slovenskih zemalja i pokrajina, autor Peter Kozler (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
every western media seems to be talking about slovenia these days…
Fears that Slovenia will become the next eurozone nation to need a bail-out have been fuelled by a sharp cut to the country’s growth forecasts by the government’s economic institute. Slovenia has become the first victim of contagion from Cyprus as its borrowing costs rocketed last week in the wake of a punishing bail-out deal.
via: www.telegraph.co.uk
as an ‘insider’ I feel obliged to comment:
- to all westerns: slovenia is going to be just fine. the current state of public finance is a residue of a couple of years of poor governments, that resulted in couple of months of public uprisings and a new government that feels promising. so stop panicking and pay attention to details. every crisis in EU zone in the last three years was handled completely differently, there are no patterns.
- to slovenian politicians: this is actually awesome public PR opportunity – the world is looking at us closely now, let’s keep the limelight on us as long as possible and make sure the ‘crisis’ resolves while they are paying attention. now is the time to invest in all kinds of projects
- to slovenian public: go vote next time around. and pay more attention next time. the rest of the world cares more about slovenia than you do.
March 18th, 2013 § § permalink
I gave several book interviews since starting Zemanta and moving to NYC, most of them in the last 18 months. Lots of authors are exploring the technology revolution that we were fortunate to participate in.
Books are coming this year, discussing it from various angles – comparatively with .com boom, the rise of entrepreneurship Europe, new entrepreneurship as a lifestyle, … It is no surprise to me, that the first book to actually publish is the one specifically celebrating NY tech community and agility and resilience.
Tech and the City became available on Kindle two days ago, and hardcopies are coming in April. I received the notification from the authors this morning, and already I’m half way trough it. It’s that good.
It starts with an amazingly inspiring foreword by Fred Wilson, which alone is worth the $2.99, as it perfectly outlines the mental model of the greatest city on the planet. After that, the book only gets better, weaving the story trough fragments of conversations with participants in the ecosystem, rather than lazily throwing together yet another series of interviews. This enables the book to read like a travel diary, rather than a self-hype-help business manual.
For the finish, the authors have collected a very comprehensive list of the NY tech ecosystem institutions – vc’s, events, co-working spaces and competitions. They have also published them on the official blog of the book.
It’s cheap and it’s short, and it’s awesome. Go read it and learn how you should be thinking about helping entrepreneurs in your cities / countries.
January 21st, 2013 § § permalink
first, a disclaimer. in light of recent political events and unrests in slovenia, i’d like to stress that this post is not meant to take any sides. i’ll merely try to point out to a project that might otherwise go unnoticed.
English: Detail from Government. Mural by Elihu Vedder. Lobby to Main Reading Room, Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
last year, i’ve spend a couple of days reading our national budget. the purpose of the exercise was to find ways to create something not unlike the famous ‘death and taxes’ infographic. i was pleasantly surprised with the fact, that our budget is actually very well designed, with fascinating inherent structure of programs and spenders, but unpleasantly not-surprised, that it was published as PDF.
to create an infographic with such complex data, that should be rebuilt every year, one needs programmatic ways to process it. so i ended up parsing the pdf, with many silly problems on the way. but it worked, and i’ve published the broken-down version for the years 2010-2012.
that was in spring, and ever since i’ve been waiting for the new government to finally publish the budget that was supposed to govern us this year, so i could compare it with the old ones. i really resent the fact that the budget was kept unpublished all throughout the legislative process. i really feel it’s an insult to the citizens.
but, they finally published it last week, and to my great surprise, they’ve really made an effort – they published detailed explanations of each section, and, ta-da-da-da, we have machine-parsable CSV files as well!
i realize it’s not perfect, but it’s light years ahead of what we used to have to deal with. so, who’s up for some info-charting now? 
December 3rd, 2012 § § permalink
serious large scale demonstrations are going on in my home town last few days. the last time so many people gathered in protest was before we joined nato, in the height of anti-globalism movements of 2001. unfortunately it’s not that simple this time.
Bob at Piran Café blog in Slovenia shares this photograph in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool. On his blog, he explains: This [photograph of a policeman behind a riot shield] was taken at about 6 pm last night, shortly after protesters were giving carnations to police officers stationed in front of Parliament.
via: boingboing.net
these demonstrations have nothing to do with neo-nazi’s, political disagreements or economic recession. they are just about people finally understanding that disillusionment is nothing without action. so far we assumed that politicians are paid to do a job of managing the country, just like profesional managers.
one thing that foreigners can’t understand from reports about neo-nazi groups in the otherwise quite city is that slovenians are normally very serious about in-activity. they should have protested any number of times in the last decade, or at least vote for different people the last 5 times they had a chance.
but they didn’t. they know the democracy doesn’t work, so they don’t bother with elections. neither they would bother with coming forth with plans to improve parts of it. instead they would complain a lot, and look at the most promising new european country flounder. slovenians have proven to be very good at feeling helpless.
we didn’t have corrupt elections yet, people actually voted for corrupt majors. some voted for them because they don’t know better. the others didn’t bother going to elections, or engaging in actions / conversations that would raise the profile of counter-candidates. it’s a pattern we have seen over and over again in our history of elections – rule of thumb is 30% voters turn-up is guaranteed, and 60% of them will vote for the commonly recognized worst option. dare to count how many times this was deemed ‘majority’ ? dare to guess how representative this sample is?
so getting 10k people on the streets is a great success, and hopefully a sign of changes to come. this post is more intended for fellow readers in slovenia, who are very good at amplifying opinions, but i’d like to provoke you to actually fucking do something. vote, vote more carefully, talk about issues when there is time to do something about them.
i wouldn’t even ask the next complaining slovenian: “and what did you do to make things better?” – they wouldn’t get it. the right questions is: “and what have you not done to contribute to this mess?”
August 23rd, 2012 § § permalink
I actually like this article, in spite of the new-age-y feeling to it.. something to keep in mind all the time, but know that there is no truth. I often get too worried about finding out the truth, when all is needed is just a decision. It’s a Slovenian thing…
7 modern workplace myths Here are 13 counterintuitive business truths I’ve come to know, even if I can’t exactly explain why they make sense. The first truth actually relates to that very subject: the how and why of things. To understand how things work, just observe; don’t ask why. This is more or less the Tao Te Ching in a nutshell.
via: www.cbsnews.com
- Embrace the counterintuitive (davidhieatt.typepad.com)
- Frustration; Truth is in the calm (bbroseproductions.wordpress.com)
- Counterintuitive results (cutandplante.wordpress.com)
August 18th, 2012 § § permalink
Roughly three quarters of the webpages of Slovenian startups don’t say who the founders are. Not on the front page, not on the about page, nowhere. Most of the list the tax ID numbers and official address of the company, but not the names of the people running it.
This is a catastrophe! Are you trying to hide your head in the sand until the success ‘happens’, and only after that will you collect the credit? The founding fathers of America wrote their names on the Constitution, before it was a success.
Every young company has two major challenges when it comes to public communication:
- how do I tell enough people we exist?
- how do I make them trust us with their money?
The best answer to the first one is – go out of the office and talk to people on events and in their native environment. It’s also a great way to get to know your core audience inside-out.
But for the trust issue, the absolutely best remedy is for the founders to be put up front, essentially saying loud and clear: “Trust Me”. Don’t just trust the words I’ve written (they are wrong), don’t trust the design (it’s bad), don’t trust what you heard on the street about us (it was probably wrong), trust ME, I believe in what we are doing, I believe we are changing the world into a better place, and should something bad happen, I will feel ashamed to death.
So startup founders, please, write your names everywhere you can and be proud of it. There is no other way your startups will succeed.
August 17th, 2012 § § permalink
We live in amazing times – in a couple of years, we will have digitized all books every published (that survived), and we will be able to apply machine learning to the past. It will spur a whole new era of historiography.
#linguistics With millions of books scanned and digitized by Google, a new type of linguistic analysis has become possible – as people are able to delve into hundreds of years and millions of books’ worth of data.
via: io9.com
… that the research has been done by a fellow Slovenian is not a coincidence – lots of talent over here
June 6th, 2012 § § permalink
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:
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.
June 4th, 2012 § § permalink
OpenStreetMap Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m amused by the US media’s understanding of European geography / economy:
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…
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.
