Three days ago Mathias Möller started a one-month-traineeship with Amazee and he is already carrying the battle-hardened nick-nickname Amatze (nickname Mathias and you get Matze, then merge with Amazee = Amatze). Matze is currently working for laut.de and has studied political sciences in Berlin. Welcome Mathias, we're happy to have you with us!

Adela, Space Invader, Cosmin, Markus and Simona discussing some last points at Amazee's HQ. Not even a month till we launch our redesigned platform. We hope that you'll be as excited as we are!!

It’s a great pleasure for us to welcome Daniel Truninger to the Amazee team! Daniel - by education computer scientist - has joined Dania's Marketing & Sales unit as trainee and will be working with us till the Swiss Army calls him for his compulsory army service starting mid October. Apart from supporting Dania in her Marketing & Sales efforts Daniel is a passionate handball player (member of the Maltese national team!) and a member of the youth organization Cevi Herblingen.

After more than 3 years of development our buddies from wuala successfully launched the beta version of their social online storage system. Their revolutionary web-desktop-combi-machine basically allows you to dump and share files with the world. But there are a few things that really make wuala stand out: All data is encrypted on the user's computer (not even wuala can decrypt the data) and split into fragments which then are stored on in the peer-to-peer grid and redundantly on wuala's servers. In terms of social features, the service offers file sharing, shared folders, groups, public folders, comments, notifications, and chat. And if this sounds like a sales pitch, it's because it is :) Register for Wua.la today!

Below some impressions from the launch party!

Co-founders Luzius and Dominik

The wuala team

Meet-up with kooaba, the Zurich based web start-up that's led by Herbert, the CEO who won an innovation contest with a speedometer for surfboards :) 

Marc, Joachim, Peter, Dania, Markus, Malte, Daniel
Gregory, Herbert

Yesterday the Swiss and the Southern German Web scene gathered at Cassiber’s Technopark office to have some beers and discuss two core topics: “How to launch in the US” and “How to make Zurich Europe’s Tech and Web cluster number one”!

Marc Bernegger from Amiando gave an impressive review on how Amiando made it into the exclusive Facebook Connect partnership as first European Company – with a current total of only 24 websites! Congrats from Amazee!

(Marc Bernegger, Amiando)

Ted Shelton, Partner at The Conversation Group gave an energizing speech on Zurich’s potential to become Europe‘s next Tech and Web cluster! A place where tech entrepreneurs from Switzerland and abroad come together to share their passion, where tech ideas build on tech ideas, where friction is reduced because everybody understands the opportunities of a risk culture – and wants to be part of it - from the entrepreneur to the masseuse :)

(Ted Shelton, The Conversation Group)

Together with Farley Duvall (Red Herring) and Jeremy Hulette Ted gave a comforting Silicon Valley view on what Switzerland already offers: Intercultural competence, an inviting tax system, high quality of life, a good educational system, money, some incubators like the Technopark in Zurich and last but not least a rapidly evolving Web scene!

(Farley Duvall, Red Herring)

Ted left the audience with the exercise to think about the top three things to keep the momentum growing and make Zurich the next big tech cluster to come... Create more role models to motivate high potentials to join us? Hold more networking events to create a strong and connected Swiss and German community? Spend more time in Silicon Valley to partner with “The Club” and navigate the current tastemakers? Use the comment function to contribute your experiences and thoughts!

Writing about the strong and connected network: Here two upcoming events: Venture Cocktail and Amazee Grill Mob. Don’t miss them!

We're happy to announce Amazee's first Community Angel Julie Koenig!
 
What are community angels?
Community angels are experienced Amazee users who have been selected as a community angel by the Amazee team. They are Amazee's power users who know all the tricks and are qualified to help other Amazee users collaborate and run public projects successfully. All you need to do is contact them - they will be more than happy to help with all your questions.

How do I recognize a community angel?
Community angels have two angel wings on their profile picture.
 
What does it take to become a community angel?
You have to be an experienced Amazee user who has shown an above-average collaborative activity and really likes to interact with other people. You have contributed to the platform development (bug reports, feature requests...). You are willing to help other Amazee users without pay - being an angel means being a mentor for other Amazees and answering their questions.
 
How does an Amazee user become a community angel?
Every registered Amazee user can suggest himself/herself or another Amazee user as a potential community angel (to editorial (AT) amazee.com). The Amazee team will then decide if they meet the above mentioned criteria. There is max. one community angel per 1000 registered Amazee users. Angel status is subject to approval after a yearly review.

What's in for community angels?
Amazee angels will be part of the extended Amazee team. Most importantly this means that they get to see and read more about Amazee's next development steps and other interesting happenings and job opportunities at Amazee.
We're looking forward to your suggestions and applications! And, as for Julie, we're looking forward to seeing the questions our pilot angel is confronted with :)