Amazee nominated for “The Europas” – Please vote!
June 29, 2009
On July 9, TechCrunch Europe will hold the first Europe-wide tech awards ceremony. They have opened voting in The Europas, the tech innovation awards honouring the best tech companies and startups from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. And guess what… Amazee is nominated in the category Best Web Application or Service EMEA!
We are very honoured and now need your vote here: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/the-europas-best-web-application-or-service-emea/
Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in each category. Voting will close on Wednesday July 1. Thanks a lot, dear friends of Amazee, we appreciate your vote a lot :)
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/the-europas-best-web-application-or-service-emea/
Venture Leaders @ MIT
June 25, 2009
My trip to Boston with the Venture Leaders 2009 is over. It was fantastic and I just want to share a few impressions of our MIT Campus Tour. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research.
Joost Bonsen gave us great insights during our tour through the campus. Joost is member of the Global Board of Directors of the MIT Entreprise Forum, Co-founder of MIT Innovation Club and TechLink, Host of the weekly TV Show “HigTechFever” and much more – those who have seen his business card know what I mean.
He showed us the architectural highlights…
… and pointed out some remarkable achievements at MIT and important moments in the history of the university.
MIT is an impressive place, check it out whenever you’re in Cambridge or Boston!
Don’t miss Amazee at Dock 18 this Friday!
June 24, 2009
If you live in Zurich or the Zurich area, be sure not to miss our presentation at Dock 18 at Rote Fabrik this Friday, the 26th. Lucas and I, Mathias, are going to represent for Amazee and talk briefly about our little platform and social collaboration. There are several topics on this evening, among others, Oliver Gassner, blogger from Germany, will be lecturing. Be there or be square! The event starts at 6:30 p.m.
Visiting Demandware in Boston
June 18, 2009
As I mentioned in my blog post from June 12, I want to tell you more about a great visit at the company Demandware in Boston.
Prior to founding Demandware in 2004, Stephan Schambach was CEO of Intershop, an ecommerce company he founded in 1992, built to market leadership, brought public in 1998 on the Germany and in 2000 at NASDAQ in the US. After the IPO he wanted to change Intershop in a very significant way. He didn’t believe that the “Web 1.0” way the software works will work in future. Downloading software and paying a license fee is just not the way to go; he wanted to change to Software as a Service (SAAS). But somehow, the Board didn’t really agree with his vision. Instead of pushing through his idea – being the largest shareholder, CEO and president of the board – he quit. This was probably the first big surprise for us in the audience. He explained that he needed people the carry the transformation along and they didn’t exist in the company. So he left Intershop as CEO and president of the board and started Demandware – in a time where e-commerce was almost equal to a swearword.
Demandware provides SAAS for large retailers or, in their own words:
“The vision—then and now—was clear: bring to market an enterprise-class ecommerce solution that would put more power and innovation in the hands of merchandisers and at the same time would remove the technical costs, risks and complexities of running an ecommerce operation. We took what we knew of great ecommerce merchandising (our founders have been in ecommerce since 1994) and applied to it the then-emerging advancements in Software-as-a-Service architectures and dynamic grid computing. Then we worked hard. We stayed up late. We drank lots of coffee. And ultimately, in late 2005, we delivered the market’s first on-demand enterprise ecommerce platform.”
They revolutionized the business by introducing cutting-edge products and selling them not against a license fee, but for a revenue share of their clients. Second real surprise for the audience. How can you pursue clients buying a software to pay a few percents of their total revenue? Just build a product that significantly increases your revenue and they are in.
Stephan seems to be a very straight forward, honest, sympathetic person and on the other hand you have the feeling he’ll turn anything he touches into gold. And when telling us his success stories, I always see this boyish smile on his face, somehow not believing what he really has achieved and amazed what has happened.
He is a true entrepreneur, invested 10 million of his own money into Demandware – next to 50 million of venture capital. Now they’re aiming for an IPO whenever IPOs happen again. One of his statements helps to describe the way he thinks and acts:
“You have to be careful in applying to much experience to the things you do. Some things that weren’t a good idea a few years ago, may be good now.”
A wonderful story
June 17, 2009
10315. That’s the number of books in English language which our friend Carsten Rübsaamen and his dedicated team of scouts from Neumarkt in northern Bavaria have already collected as part of their project “Book Bridge Mongolia“! Their goal is to help stock up libraries and school with English books in the Mongolian town of Arvaikher, aiding a local teacher by the name of Uuganaa.
In Arvaikher (about 250 miles south of the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator; check out Google maps for the breath taking satellite view) there are schools, but the material needed in class is rare. While aid organisations like the Red Cross or the American Peace Corps are bringing food supplies and clothing to the town, the “Book Bridge” is collecting text. Books, primarily in English, help the kids learn another language and get a perspective on their own future.
A team of six (includign craftsmen, librarians, medical staff as well as a student of Mongolian studies) will bring the school books to their destination in Mongolia via the Trans-Siberian Railway and trucks and will stay in Arvaikher for two months. Along with local scouts they will stock the shelves of the local library. The rest of the huge donation will be distributed among the 14 schools in the area, including some remote schools in traditional yurts. In cooperation with Uuganaa and the American Peace Corps teachers will be taught to ensure a good use of the books.
The group departs from German on August, 13 – so there is still enough time to look for unused books (in English, preferably) and support an outstanding project.
Buecherbrucke Mongolei from Amazee on Vimeo.
A new brain for Amazee
June 16, 2009
Welcome! Marco Unternährer has joined the Amazee team. He’s taking over Danny’s trainee chair (=hard work and unlimited health risks). Danny by the way moved on – inhouse of course, and is now supporting Luci as Deputy Head Technology. A steep career in a little company. Congrats!
Exodus to the virtual world
June 15, 2009
Besides lots of other tasks I yesterday had the pleasure to finish Edward Castronova’s Publication Exodus to the virtual world. It’s an inspiring read in which he claims that society will experience a dramatic change as more and more people spend time in virtual reality. Why? It’s just the better place to have fun!
Did you for example know that the average gamer is 33, 25% of gamers are above 50 and that there are significantly more women over age 18 playing games than boys under 18? Or that 20 percent of virtual world players surveyed by Casanova indicated that they think of the virtual world as their true home? – for example World of Warcraft, the massive multiplayer online role-playing games that already hosts 11.5 million monthly subscribers. No doubt – the synthetic world has become a strong competitor for real life.
The core points Casanova makes, is that in the context of virtual worlds, game design is equivalent to public policy design and that the real world therefore will begin to model its institutions on games simply because people find them more fun (page 17: “When real-world governments are asked to make things better, they will increasingly turn to the game designers for advice. The economies and societies we now see in games will eventually become blueprints for the construction of real economies and societies.”). Casanova furthermore assumes that the new society will be better educated, more productive and more civically engaged because synthetic worlds help people learn and work and socialize while having fun.
Now, whereas I generally agree with Casanova – for example that virtual worlds can improve social skills and that the governments should design norms and strategies the way that they make most people happy, he sometimes gets a bit too enthusiastic for my taste (page 89: “A game design approach to public policy would be a radical departure from the status quo. But I predict that we will have no choice. The growing importance of fun will make it second nature for most people to see the answers to social problems as a simple matter of redesigning the rules of the game.”)
As long as we cannot disconnect from our physical existence, we will have to spend lots of time and money maintaining our physical infrastructure – including lots of work on not so fun issues. For example the global climate change, a US unemployment rate of 9.4%, one billion of the world’s population living in slums, 35% of South Africans earning less than 1.5 Euro per day, an estimated 565 Zimbabweans that infect themselves with HIV every day. All these issues will continue to affect our physical presence and draw lots of energy. So if Casanova says that “Virtual worlds are on the path to becoming the most powerful source of personal meaning in the contemporary world (page 207)”, he’s talking about a very elitist phenomenon.
Casanova furthermore draws up a perfect dichotomy between the virtual and the real world – and ignores the rapidly growing importance of the virtually mediated real world (think of flash mobs) that is emerging as a strong competitor for pure virtual worlds. The good thing there is that you will not have to suffer the trade-off that occurs when spending time in pure virtual worlds: Loosing influence and standing in the real world.
So, all in all I can definitely recommend “Exodus to the virtual world” as an inspiring eye-opener. But always keep this German saying in mind: Es wird nichts so heiss gegessen, wie es gekocht wird.
Tomorrow: Carrotmob Berlin!
June 12, 2009
COUNTDOWN: Show up tomorrow, Saturday, Berlin, 16.00 Wiener Str. 40!
Don’t know what we’re talking about? Find out more over here
