my comments on “Slovenia cuts growth forecast as bail-out fears grow”

April 1st, 2013 § Comments Off on my comments on “Slovenia cuts growth forecast as bail-out fears grow” § permalink

 

A map of the Slovene Land and Provinces, autho...

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…

Slovenia cuts growth forecast as bail-out fears grow

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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 🙂
  3. 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.
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slovenia’s national budget and open data

January 21st, 2013 § 2 comments § 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 Elih...

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? 😉

Demonstrations in Ljubljana: Carnations, Neo-Nazis and a Water Cannon

December 3rd, 2012 § 6 comments § 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.

Demonstrations in Ljubljana: Carnations, Neo-Nazis and a Water Cannon

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.

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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?”

Global Dashboards of Everything

August 25th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

 

Planet example

Planet example (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

So, everyone is talking about a balloon accident lately, but my Blogspire sent me a version of the report that blew my mind – hungarian project that maps all emergency events on the planet, from major traffic accidents to fly-by-objects.

Here is an example:

 

Vehicle Accident – Europe – Slovenia

EDIS Number: VI-20120823-36303-SVN Date / time: 23/08/2012 14:30:44 [UTC] Event: Vehicle Accident Area: Europe Country: Slovenia State/County: Capital City Location: [About 6 miles south of Ljubljana] Number of Deads: 4 person(s) Number of Injured: 28 person(s) Number of Infected: N/A Number of Missing: N/A Number of Affected:…

via: hisz.rsoe.hu

 

and they have another project, mapping all grobal warming events.

 

Both of them are a great addition to a growing list of real-time global dashboards of differenti aspects of the Planet. I’ve been collecting them for a while now, and it seems it’s time to create a dedicated page for them.

 

 

Please feel free to submit any dashboard you know of that I’ve missed in the comments. 

 

 

 

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

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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.

Slovenian aventurer ends eco-friendly trip around the world

May 17th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

yet another crazy fellow slovenian!

Slovenian aventurer ends eco-friendly trip around the world

Matevz Lenarcic, a Slovenian pilot, biologist and photographer, opens the door of his plane after landing from an around the world flight, at the Ljubljana Airport. -AFP Photo LJUBLJANA: Slovenian adventurer Matevz Lenarcic successfully concluded a 100-day eco-friendly trip around the world on Thursday in an ultra-light plane boasting super-low…

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via: dawn.com

as I usually say, we have a long and proud history of eccentric mad scientists and extreme sportsmen. cheers to all!

iTunes Match begins rolling out in Slovenia!

May 3rd, 2012 § Comments Off on iTunes Match begins rolling out in Slovenia! § permalink

first: itunes match is awesome! not because it makes your music ‘legal’, but because it manages to reduce the storage space needed on the planet by several orders of magnitude. the fact that all the music is on all devices is just a bonus 🙂

and secondly, wow to have it available in slovenia! we are not third digital world anymore!

iTunes Match begins rolling out in Italy, Portugal, Greece, more

Apple has slowly rolled out its iTunes Match service worldwide over the past few months, but today it looks like more countries were added, because the music matching service began rolling out in Italy, Portugal, Greece, Slovenia, and Austria.

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

via: 9to5mac.com

PR News Poll: Wikipedia Mostly Unexplored By PR Pros

March 19th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

My Grace Park Photo On Wikipedia

My Grace Park Photo On Wikipedia (Photo credit: kk+)

I am surprised, more and more often, by really well written Wikipedia pages for very obscure people and services.

I so far assumed they are written by themselves, or rather a PR professional on their behalf.I just couldn’t believe there is enough people who care about XX to properly maintain that article, and even have it much more elaborate than for instance the one about YY.

Also, my favorite trick to use for content-based pet projects in Slovenia is, to contribute part of the content to an under resourced Wikipedia, and cite the new project as the source. Everybody wins.

So I guess I’m surprised that Wikipedia is not under attack by mercenaries who should know everything about content business. It might be that Wikipedians are such merciless defenders of the shrine, that nobody evil dares to touch it.  😉

PR News Poll: Wikipedia Mostly Unexplored By PR Pros

PR News Poll: Wikipedia Mostly Unexplored By PR Pros By Bill Miltenberg, PR News There’s been an ongoing debate between leading PR pros and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about PR’s participation in the creation and editing of Wikipedia posts. Wales says that objectivity and transparency is lacking among PR pros, especially within agencies.

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via: www.prnewsonline.com

I think it’s a fascinating topic, and one we will hear more about this year, as the content marketing goes mainstream. What if Wikipedians were paid to edit Wikipedia full time?

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Slovenia’s Big Pay ‘Wall’ Has Made €26,000

March 15th, 2012 § Comments Off on Slovenia’s Big Pay ‘Wall’ Has Made €26,000 § permalink

it’s actually not a bad result, they managed to reach everyone possibly interested in just a month.

slovenia has 2M population, but the largest print daily newspaper had 200k circulation. so it’s safe to assume that only 0.5M people read newspapers, and 5000 customers online is exactly 1%. that’s the penetration you can always count on, regardless of what you’re doing.

I’ll bet that they will never get above that 🙂

Slovenia’s Big Pay ‘Wall’ Has Made €26,000

Piano Media, the online news payment system which first launched in Slovakia last year, says it made €26,000 in its first month in Slovenia this year. Users pay €4.90 per month for access to new paid parts of all nine participating sites from the country’s main publishers. So I calculate Piano has 5,306 paying customers in Slovenia.

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

 

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the problem of scale – government of Slovenia and fishing

February 16th, 2012 § 2 comments § permalink

English: Trawler Hauling Nets Source: http://w...

Image via Wikipedia

A friend of mine mentioned a while ago, that after listening to tv news about fishing disputes with Croatia, she went and checked how many fishermen there are actually. She is from the coastal region, so she suspected there might be something wrong with the facts.

she found out, that there is in fact, just over 100 people in this “sector”. to quote the “National strategic plan  for development of fishing in Slovenia“:

Statistični podatki kažejo pomembno povečanje v številu delovno aktivnih oseb v gospodarskem ribolovu in akvakulturi skupaj za obdobje 1996-2004. Število delovno aktivnih oseb v ribiški predelavi se je v istem obdobju rahlo zmanjšalo. Vendar je bilo v letu 2005 okoli 142 zaposlenih v morskem ribištvu, kar je 2 manj kot leta 2004

from: Ministry of Agriculture

The document i’m quoting here is 38 pages of dense text about the status and the plans to develop a commercial sector of 150 people. Fishing has it special place in our national budget, with 10,740,533 EUR allocated for it’s development in 2012. Yes, that’s 10 and 6 zeros following it.

I like fishing, I like the sea, I like fishermen.

But for crying out loud, how can our country survive the financial crisis if the Ministries are spending time, resources and energy on, I’m sorry, projects with no impact on national level?!?!?!

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