Just a quick note to anybody who wants to reach our email addresses at PavingWays - they might be bouncing back due to a server crash earlier. We’re in the process of transferring the site to a new host and DNS and MX entries are still interfering with the old and new server settings.
So best way to reach us is by calling or sending a mail to my gmail address (if you have it ;) ).
Should be resolved during the next couple of hours though…
The last couple of days we spent some time at Borders, a great bookstore. You have a really broad selection of books there and a cozy coffee shop inside, where you can read or do your work. I also love Amazon. So, the following list contains books from both retailers :)
My list of great books that in my opinion really help starting your (web) business:
If you have read or know another must-read book, let me know!
Last Tuesday we went to a BayCHI meeting in Palo Alto to hear Guy Kawasaki’s presentation about “How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09” (Yes, tongue in cheek here).
First of all Guy Kawasaki is a great presenter - we really enjoyed his presentation. He has the right mix between presenting and entertaining :)
So, what was this headline filled with so many buzzwords all about?
In his talk Guy introduced his new startup Truemors. Well, at the first look you may think “What’s the point of this site?”. To be honest, when I saw Truemors a couple of days before the event, I was also a bit confused and did not really see the value of this website. But after that event I changed my mind…
Last Monday we’ve been to the Mobile Monday at the AOL building in Mountain View. Too bad that we missed the Demo sessions (we arrived a bit late). But still we met some interesting (mobile oriented) people there, like Donnie Flood from AdMob or Tim Kay from Boopsie, and many more.
As expected the Mobile Monday in the Silicon Valley was more casual than it is in Germany and we definitely met more mobile startups here. We liked it very much. Not too much organization (no registration in advance), pizza for everybody, good location and you could get in touch with people easily.
Still, the Mobile Monday in the Silicon Valley has not as many attendees as its German counterpart (but again, the crowd is differently structured). But it seems a better place for showing around your mobile apps, even if your are not a big player in the industry. Great event! More!
Yesterday we had quite a busy networking day. At lunch we met Alec from MoVoxx in Palo Alto. MoVoxx is a mobile ad agency focused exclusively on SMS marketing. The company already has some impressive customers, such as Mercury News in San Jose or NASCAR. You can find some case studies on the MoVoxx Website.
After a yummy lunch we drove to San Jose and were really enjoying the nice weather. It is so much warmer in the Valley than it is in San Francisco.
Around 8:00 pm we went to the Silicon Valley Startup Entrepreneur Meetup Group organized by Philippe Tregon, which also took place in Palo Alto. It was an informal meeting with other founders, freelancers etc. of the Bay Area. After everybody had introduced themselves and why they had come to the Meetup, it was great talking to so many people coming from different business areas and with different intentions.
Around 10:30 pm some people decided to go across the street to grab some food, unfortunately the probably best Greek spot in Palo Alto, Evvia, was closing already, so we ended up getting a coffee at Cuppa Coffee (free WiFi, power outlets and great coffee). We joined Tarun, Dan and Philippe and had a fascinating discussion about the mobile industry and the future of the Web itself. It was a real mind-opener in many ways.
We took off to San Francisco at 1:30 am. Thanks to the Meetup organizers for the organization and the chance for meeting new people so easily. That is what makes the Bay Area so special.
Last week we attended the monthly held Mobile Internet SIG: Mobile User Experience at the ACCESS building in Sunnyvale. The event started at 6:30 pm with pizza and free T-Shirts and it was our first mobile-oriented event here in the Bay Area.After 30 minutes of networking with quite some interesting people, e.g. Dr. Paul James of Nokia Inc. (Nokia also sponsored this event), the presentations started. The first one was held by Sergei Krupenin, Director of Business Development at ACCESS. Sergei showed some interesting innovations which we will soon see in upcoming versions of the NetFront mobile browser:
NetFront also supports web standards for web applications. They developed a widget framework that supports the creation and use of dynamic Web applications based on open standard Web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript/Ajax - sounds familiar, but they actually showed a widget in action on a windows mobile device. It was quite impressive to see how the widget was launched from the top menu bar and then became usable on top of the currently open application. In this case an excel sheet, just like a widget should work. Here you can find some more info and pictures of the NetFront browser in action.
The second presentation was held by Deborah Johnson, Technology Manager at FrogDesign. She introduced her company and their Celltop technology, which enables users to access, manage and organize a wide range of information already available on their Alltel Wireless phones. Celltop is only available on Alltel phones, free-of-charge and features 10 “cells” that come pre-installed and via download. Each cell is a category- specific half screen comprised of graphics and text that provides shortcuts for wireless users to navigate through information and applications including: call log, weather, news, baseball, basketball, football, rodeo, stocks, text messaging inbox and ringtones.
Both talks were very interesting and caused a lot of questions. It is very interesting to see how slowly data plans grow in the US. Mobile internet still seems like being in its early stages to some extend around here. Also if you compare the numbers of visitors (it were about 30) to the ones of Web 2.0-centered events like geekSessions, you get this impression.
After all it was a great evening in a nice location and hopefully there will be more of those - thanks to ACCESS and SDForum!
A couple of days ago I went to Borders and while wandering through the shelves I came across the book “Entrepreneuship 101″ from the Trump University. I bought it and started reading it immediately at a cozy coffee shop inside Borders.
Although I have not finished the book yet, it is very interesting and helpful. I wished the professors at my university had teached business management so understandable. The book is a good guideline for startups with helpful practical examples.
On page 27 I stumbled across an interesting quotation of Shakti Gawain:
“Your Life Is Your Work of Art
I like to think of myself as an artist, and my life is my greatest work of art.
Every moment is a moment of creation, and each moment of creation contains infinite possibilities. I can do things the way I have always done them, or I can look at all the different alternatives, and try something new and different and potentially more rewarding. Every moment presents a new opportunity and a new decision.
What a wonderful game we are playing, and what a magnificent art form.”
Yesterday we attended the geekSessions at City Club in downtown San Francisco. This event is pretty new and we were happy that we still got tickets (all of the 150 tickets were sold out on Monday). geekSessions will be held every month and they started it in June 2007.So, we were at the second geekSessions event and this months topic was Web Infrastructure: Surviving The “Hockey Stick”.
The event began at 6:00 pm and after some networking around 6:30 pm the panel started. The speakers were Sandy Jen - founder of Meebo, Nick Heyman from VideoEgg, Ron Gorodetzky from Digg and Jonathan Abrams - the founder of Friendster and Socializr. They were talking about their experience how keeping a web infrastructure alive and thriving when demand goes through the roof.Here are some pieces of advice from the panelists:
They all agreed that you can not predict everything. But if problems appear, deal with it, try to find out why it happened and don’t be afraid to ask for help.After the panel there were two drawings. One company drawed 8 skateboards and another one an Apple iPhone. We weren’t lucky that day :(After that the social networking part started (free beer thanks to Arcscale). We’ve got in touch with a couple of interesting people. I had nice chats with Daniel from bitpusher, Tristan from Bebo, Mark from techcrunch and Chris & Scott from Havadot. We also heard about new projects in social video sharing and an interesting dating project.We want to the afterparty in a club nearby, but couldn’t stick around for too long. All in all it was a great evening and a great opportunity to get in touch with the web scene in the Bay Area - looking forward to the next geekSession.
Earlier this week we started working from the Citizen Space offices. It is more efficient than working at coffee shops. We met Tara and Chris from Citizen Space there and a couple of other interesting people/companies. Everybody is very friendly and we really like the idea of coworking. Instead of sitting alone in an office you can meet lots of new and also international people.
If you are in San Francisco and need a place to work, then you should definitely try Citizen Space located at 425 Second St on the third floor - make sure there’s a place available by calling them before.
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