Entries from July 2008 ↓

Image via WikipediaExactly a year after it hit SXSW, Twitter hit the coasts of Slovenia. It is tatally fascinating to watch a phenomenon like this get born, specially if you watch it twice, in different environments.
In Slovenia, it actually “happened” on one party. The groundwork was being built for the last two years on Spletne urice – weekly events, much like barcamps, that created and brought together a very strong web scene of companies, freelancers and lurkers.
Some of us here started using Twitter early on, but it turned out we weren’t alone: there was another crowd, from design / marketing space also experimenting with it. The two crowds met and mingled and twined on a NooCamp party, and created a critical mass that rendered Twitter unavoidable mean of communication. Kudos to Noovo for gathering all the amazing people to NooCamp.
The first impression was great, the scond was “argh, this doesn’t work”, followed by discussions about which company will go and do this properly. This week we got it, Domenca launched Slovenian Twitter clone Koornik and it seems both will catch on. We just have to get used to twitt in English and kokodajs in Slovene.

Image via WikipediaZnanstveniki pravijo da lahko človek vzdržuje razmeroma redne socialne stike z okrog 120 ljudmi. Ti ljudje so jedro našega socialnega kapitala. To so tisti ljudje, s katerimi najbolj računamo, ko organiziramo projekte in zabave.

Seveda je ta številka v dinamičnem ravnovesju – vse življenje vtopajo v naša življenja novi prijatelji in se vezi z drugimi rahljajo. To je naravna posledica razporejanja omejene količine časa – edine dobrine, ki je še ne znamo proizvajat. Ko ga zmanjka pač ne moremo it več na kavo.

Nekatere spletne storitve so glede tega precej revolucionarne. Ni več neobičajno, da imajo ljudje po več sto ali tisoč ‘prijateljev’ na Facebooku. Intenzivost teh ‘stikov’ je sicer neprimerno manjša od pravih, a vsaj v bližini ostajajo.

Twitter gre še korak dlje, s tem ko omogoči vsem prijateljem da poslušajo in ostajajo sproti seznanjeni z vsem kar se mi dogaja. Tako nikoli zares ne nehajo biti del mojega življenja. In če so slučajno v bližini ko Twittnem kje posedam se lahko oglasijo in se zgodi spontano srečno srečanje starih prijateljev. Take sobote se običajno končajo precej pozno in veselo

Twitter tako deluje kot platforma za podporo srečnim naključjem. Podobno Facebook skrbi za to, da nikoli več ne pozabimo na rojstne dneve, pa še ljubka virtualna darilca si lahko podarjamo, ne da bi morali hoditi na vse rojstnodnevne zabave. Če se na Twittru lahko kljub oddaljenosti pogovarjamo, se na Facebooku kljub zaposlenosti lahko igramo.

Te platforme množične intime nam omogočajo razporediti skrite zaloge prostega časa tja, kjer jih najbolj potrebujemo – med prijatelje. O temnih plateh pa prihodnjič…

Image via WikipediaEvo, uradno lahko potrdim da je Maribor super mestece za kafetkanje. Kdor me pozna ve, da je to precejšen kompliment, za katerega se morajo dokazat tako domačini z odnosom do kave in gostinci s ponudbo kot mesto s primerno atmosfero.

No, tu me je res presenetila izbira kavarnic, ki ne samo da jih je razmeroma dosti v precej razgibanem centru, še zelo pomenljiva imena imajo: “Huda kava”,”Cafe Cafe”, “Studio Cafe”, “Aroma”, “Čajek”, “Ilich”, “Ekspreso”.In vse to na tistih nekaj ulicah strogega centra. Čisti užitek…

Če sem še katerega pozabil  me popravite…

Image via Wikipedia@TomazStolfa followed up on a topic @Andraz tackled a month ago – Slovenia and the Valley seem closer than ever. I had some notes floating around my desktop on this topic for some time, and no, seemed like a good time to dispense them.
Tomaz summarized the foundations very well, and I completely agree that there is a huge surplus of knowledge and experience floating around in a very open and healthy manner and relaxed atmosphere I have only seen in SF until now.
There is another very important set of similarities between the places: climate, welfare, food & drinks. There is no reason anybody wouldn’t move over here, so I am not really worried about the lack of programmers. We at Zemanta are gettings inquieries all the time.
Slovenia is cosy, and this is what geeks in startups need – to feel safe and able to focus on fun work, because everything else works. (remembering the dreadful experience of getting broadband in London, argh)
The present scene is extremely inclusive, welcoming newcomers, but has very high expectations of everyone, creating a positive peer pressure.
We are lucky to be exotic enough to be rememberable, distant enugh to see the forrest, close enogh to Balkan to inherit the “just do it” approach towards life and ideas. So, in conclusion, Slovenia is very much like California, and you can swim in the sea too!

Image via WikipediaI’ve heard an old hit from the eighties I completely forgot about – “Sun always shines on TV” by AHA. I am still surprised by the honest love of the medium demonstrated here. How can something so technical be a central metaphore for happiness?
It was written in 1985, the high point of early MTV, which was born in 1981. Amongst the first videos shown there was of course the Depeche mode’s “Video killed the radio star” from 1979. It seems that that generation rediscovered TV, not as a place of information distribution, but rather an actuall lebenswelt in which they started investing their hopes and fears. It took over the status movies had until then, embodied in hits like “Celluloid heroes” by Kinks. A disillusioned contemporary version of that tematization is REM’s “Immitations of life”, while the TV is strong in becomming the central focus of every home.

Image via WikipediaTitle sounds like a list of strange SF movie characters right? It seems the oldest form of recreation is also somehow connected with our sense for future. Timeless.

I never liked running, I always lost my breath in the very beginning, suffered ’till the end. So it took me decade to try again, and it wasn’t that hard at all. Besides, mornings are meditation time anyway…