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Why should entrepreneurs go on holidays ?

2009-05-15T16:45:00Z

Note: I started writing this post on February this year, left it as draft as I had no time to finish it (almost forgot it I had written it). I shared these ideas with some friends yesterday night and they encouraged me to finish it. So here it is !

I've just came back from my 14-day holidays at the beach in Argentina, my longest holidays since I started Zauber exactly 2 years ago. These time off the office made me realize how difficult it is for entrepreneurs to go on holidays on the early stages of their startup, but at the same time how important it is to allow yourself to go away on holidays for a couple of weeks. I would like to share my thoughts on this subject.

Here are the reasons why I think it's important for entrepreneurs to go on holidays: <lu>

Devote some time for the people you care for
Starting a company is not an easy venture, you must know that at the beginning you'll be working extra time, including weekends, sacrificing time you would like to spend with your friends, your family, your girlfriend. They are aware of this and they support you, they are your backbone. That's why you should compensate and thank back that support once your startup is operating in a stable and mature way. Going on holidays with any of these people that supported you so much is a great way to say Thanks! (and they will really appreciate it)

Devote some time for yourself
Be careful, I mean You, not your startup ! You spend 24 hours a day thinking on your startup, you dream about it, you talk about it to your friends when having a beer some random night, you talk about it to your girlfriend when enjoying a dinner on a warm night. You sacrifice other activities (like going to the gym to work out) because you can't find the free time to do it. Well, now you got maybe 14 days at least to forget about it ! During my holidays, I woke up early almost every day and first thing in the morning was going out walking and running by the sea (i usually spent between 45 minutes and 2 hours to this activity every day).

Free your mind: welcome fresh new ideas
During your holidays, you will have the chance to free your mind from everyday work at least for a couple of hours (depending on your decision on turning your 3G connection off or not, i didn't I must confess). Maybe you will find yourself laying at an infinitely quiet beach, just listening to the sea. That's a perfect scenery to get loose of all the things you already know, and start thinking on new ideas, projects, products, from another perspective, seeking inspiration on the landscape that surrounds you. It worked for me a couple of days, really.

</lu>

Well, for the moment I just thought of these three items. Maybe you could add more to the list or just leave me your thoughts on this subject.

Behavioral vs. Semantic Targeting

2008-12-02T00:45:00Z

Earlier today I received a report from Mr. Tweet with a list of recommended people I should be following on Twitter. I was waiting for that report since last week when I first knew about the project. I was really looking forward for the results, because they would help me to build effective relationships on Twitter and was in fact curious on how they would do that.

When I started browsing the report, I must admit I got a little frustrated because, despite the fact I had effectively found cool interesting people to follow, I also found a long list of other people not interesting at all for me (some of them I already knew them and had explicitly decided not to follow them, some of them were complete strangers with no interest match with me). My complaint had an immediate reply from @earlkman that inspired this post (and a direct message from MrTweet trying go get to know what my suggestion to their service was).

I sent a direct message back to MrTweet guys trying to make my point in 140 chars, but I felt a more detailed explanation was needed, and that's how I got a great excuse to blog again. The point is that MrTweet service seems to be building a list of recommended people based on behavioral approaches (who do I follow ? who do my followers follow ? who are the people most of my contacts are following and I am not, etc). That's not a bad approach, in the end it was able to provide me with relevant information, but it also suggested many items (people) I immediately discovered I was not interested in.

What was wrong ? Nothing is wrong, it's just incomplete. In my opinion, this kind of recommendations are lacking a more semantic approach. . The key to success in recommending interesting people to follow is not necessarily who they follow or who are they followed by, it's the content of what they say in Twitter. The key is the type of issues they talk about, the opinions they express, the links to other sources they provide , that's relevant ! (or at least that would work as a perfect second-pass-filter to the behavioral and more traditional approach). Applying a second filtering based on concepts and semantics would improve dramatically recommendations.

So ... who's the winner ? I think Behavioral and Semantic are no rivals at all ... they are more like brothers ... and the key to success is making them work together. Fortunately, my colleagues and partners at Popego know this better than me ;)

Flof maps available for iPhone

2008-10-03T16:10:00Z

Some days ago, Zauber's project Flof released a new web version optimized for Apple iPhone. With a new interface, specially designed for this mobile phone, Flof and iPhone users are able to search places nearby, according to their location and filtering by tags.

You can check all the details of this new feature in Flof Blog

Speaker at SMX Buenos Aires 2008

2008-09-19T23:38:00Z

I know it's been a long time since my last post (shame on me!), but a lot of projects and hard work prevented me from devoting myself to the activity of blogging (i don't even dream about naming myself a blogger, i just like writing from time to time but I hardly find the time to do it these days).

Now I found an excuse to write at least a few lines: I've been invited to participate as speaker in SMX Buenos Aires 2008. I will be in charge of a workshop on Facebook applications development.

Hope to see you around that day.

OpenSocial Week. Review #1

2008-04-30T14:28:00Z

Last night I attended the first of a series of events related to Google Open Social scheduled for this week in Buenos aires, This first event was labeled as "Open Social for Marketers" and was clearly intended to promote Open Social and social networks among marketers, advertising networks and brand agencies. From my point of view, I would have expected much more from this event, taking into account that Google was taking part of it. I wanted to listen to things most of the audience last night didn't know already. I think most of the attendees might have felt a bit disappointed about the content of the presentations (not to mention the fact that the place, Barhein, didn't have a wifi Internet connection and Patrick Chanezon from Google could not show any live example of Open Social Apps). Maybe it was my fault and I was attending the wrong meeting but I had the chance to talk to many other people last night (and follow some twits recently) and the feeling of disappointment was shared. The intended audience (marketes and agencies) was not present (only a few raised their hands when the CRO of Sonico asked: "how many of you work in marketing agencies?"). Instead, a community of Internet power users and entrepreneurs was there, all anxious to see and listen to somenthing new. But that didn't happened.

The good thing was that I could meet with colleagues and friends I hadn't seen for a couple of weeks since the last Palermo-Valley-related meetings (PVNs and SMUA) and get to know new people. The other good thing about this event was that it made think about how this market is going to evolve in the next years and who the players will be in this game. I think this a game of three: social networks, advertising networks / brand agencies and web2.0-opensource-oriented software development companies. This is a good thing to know and it renforces the road we are following at Zauber with our services offer: agile methodologies, web standards, open source technologies, semantic web, microformats, open id, and many other cool things.

The last good thing about this event is that it gave me a great reason to get back to writing, something I was missing.

Flof on Fire ! ... Flof Firefox Extension

2008-02-23T16:37:00Z

Marcelo Turrin and Chrisitan Nardi, members of the technology team at Zauber, have developed a new tool for Flof. As part of their internal project of R&D at the company, they have developed a Firefox Extension that enables the user to search any place, tag, city or address that appears on a web page directly in Flof. This extension also allows the users to search places on the map and browse through their personal collection of places and tags in Flof, directly on the sidebar of your Firefox browser.

This is the first public version of the extension and I think the final product is great, specially when it is the first development on this technology (Mozilla XUL) we are doing. Congratulations Marce and Chris ! Great work !

You can find all the details of this new tool here. Install it now and have your personal agenda of places everywhere !

Palermo Valley ... a state of mind

2008-02-22T02:08:00Z

It happened so fast...not more than two weeks ago these words began to be heard in the air, I heard them at the office and thoght it was just nonsense. Then I began to find it in Twitter, Santi Siri was the first to mention it and started pushing the meme. With extraordinaire speed, the idea of giving a name to this powerful ecosystem of web startups, technology companies, entrepreneurs and even VCs, all of them settled in the area formerly known as Palermo Hollywood, got stronger and stronger.

A couple of days ago, the "official blog" of Palermo Valley appeared. It gave everybody the chance to know a little more about it. And the planning of the first Palermo Valley Night was a reality. It happened tonight...at Monk, a cute pub that ended up to be too small for all of us.

This first meeting was a real success and gave us the chance to make new friends and share our ideas...but most of all...it showed each of us that there is a critical mass of people with bright ideas and projects, willing to make something big...something that could be recognized world-wide, something we could all be proud of.

Keep on moving guys !

Zauber is hiring !

2008-02-17T15:44:00Z

Hey geeks ! Zauber is seeking for talented and smart developers to join the team. Are you tired of use cases ? Do you prefer a shell rather than windows ? Do you prefer open-source software over propietary one ? Well...let's meet each other because maybe Zauber and you are a perfect match !

For those of you who may be first time visitors, let me tell you shortly a little about Zauber. We are a small software factory based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the heart of the soon-to-be-named Palermo Valley. We develop a variety of projects, such us Web 2.0 Internet projects, device integration and automation, Facebook Applications development, computer vision, augmented reality and custom made software. As you can see, we love to specialize in that field where ordinary software companies don't. We embrace the "choose the better tool for the job" philosophy and that is why you 'll find that we work on Java, C, C++, Pyhton, Ruby on Rails, etc.

In Zauber you'll have your personal time to invest in your favourite R & D project, the freedom to work the time that you like best (there is always someone working at the office from 9 AM to 10 PM), contribute to our open-source projects and work in a great atmosphere.

If you are passionate about technology and love learning something new every day, send your resume to jobs {at} zauber {dot} com {dot} ar

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion

2008-02-01T16:11:00Z

Today everybody is talking about this. In a desperate effort of Microsoft to defeat Google in the Internet business battle, the company founded by Bill Gates offered an astronomic amount of money to aquire Yahoo!. You can see Yahoo Press Release and Microsoft Announcement for further details.

At least in my case, hearing of this caused great surprise, specially after reading the news about Yahoo! laying off 1.000 employees (7% of the company staff) last week, after announcing a 23 percent profits decrease in Q4 2007. Maybe it is no surprise Microsoft striking again against Yahoo!. Now that the company has admitted this profits fall, they consider the company value is less than a couple of months ago. No matter what, today Yahoo! stocks has risen almost 60% in Nasdaq.

What will happen next ? What will the Board of Directors at Yahoo! decide ?

To be continued...

Here comes another bubble...really?

2008-01-23T22:30:00Z

The author of this video was quite right...many of us would blog about it inmediatly after seeing it.

It's no news that the growth of Internet projects these last years and the sudden and surprising success of many of them (i.e. Flickr, YouTube, Facebook) have given place to a new rush of web startups and a new version of the web...Web 2.0. VCs and young entrepreneurs are moving fast to come first with their ideas and projects and the challenge is quite attractive.

But many others still remember the dot-com-boom in year 2000 and forecast a new ending for this Web 2.0 excitement. Clearly, the author of this video is one of them, isn't he ?

What do you think ?

TED.com : Videos worth watching

2008-01-15T01:48:00Z

A couple of weeks ago, one of my partners at Zauber suggested to visit TED.com, a site whose objective is to broacast through the Internet great and inspiring talks held during the last years by the most important thinkers and doers worlwide. Among its themes, TED.com features talks about Techonology, Business, Science, Culture, Global Issues (such us poverty), Art. I personally liked best those related with Technology, Science and Business but found indredibly interesting talks about Global Issues too. Every week, at least two new talks are posted on the site, each of them with an average duration of 15-20 minutes.

The first weeked I had the time to take a deep insight on this site, I found myself watching talk after talk for nearly two hours. I had the chance to listen to Jeff Bezzos, the founder and CEO of Amazon at a talk in February 2003 exposing his view about innovation on the Internet and comparing the dot-com boom to the Gold Rush and , the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin, at a talk in February 2004 commenting on how Google works and how their products are developed. But so far the best and most inspiring talk I watched was one by Iqbal Quadir about his venture in Bangladesh to help fight poverty and his belief that businesses and private investment are a better tool than humaniritarian help to poor countries. I really recommend this talk, which I am also embedding.

Try this site and tell me what you think...maybe you will realize that you no longer need cable TV if you have an Internet broadband connection (well...I guess most of you are already feeling that, don't you?).

Why this name for a blog ?

2007-12-24T20:47:00Z

I am pretty sure that most of you might be wondering which is the origin of the name for this blog. Why on earth I came out with this German phrase when I had to baptize my blog ? Well...it is quite a long story but I'll try to make it short for you and hope you enjoy it.

Since my first years at High School at CNBA and thanks to its music teachers, I have developed special interest in classical mussic. In particular, Ludwig van Beethoven, the German composer, became my favourite classical artist and of course the 9th. Symphony my favourite piece. This was one of Beethoven's last compositions and in my humble opinion the most inspiring and lovely piece of music the human race has ever listened to. The 5th and surprising last movement of this symphony gave birth to the famous music Ode to Joy (in German Ode an die Freude), based on the poem of the German writer Friedrich Schiller. As its name says, this poem is an ode to joy, a shout for happiness, brotherhood and love in the world.

I find this composition a real masterpiece and thought of the name for this blog as a tribute to this great music and the genius who was behind it. So now you know where I got the name for my blog. If you still don't know what I am talking about...just listen ! (a complete performance of the Vienna Philharmonic directed by Leonard Bernstein)

Hello world !

2007-12-20T18:26:00Z

It is said there are more than 60M blogs in the world and this number increases every day. Well...here you have yet another personal blog.
It is quite a challenge for me this new venture, since until now I have had neither the time nor the necessary motivation to write. Now that year 2007 is reaching its end, I have started to think about my personal balance of the year. You know: what went wonrg and what went well, which objetives I have accomplished and which ones are left for next year, think about the plans for 2008, including personal and proffesional life. It is at this point that I realized that my blog was missing. So here I am...satisfying myself.
I promise to write frequenlty about the subjects I am most interested in, such us technology, businesses, internet and the entrepreneurial world.