This year the Safe Democracy Foundation has elected not to organize another conference ,to commemorate 11M’s Second Anniversary.

Instead, we are building a collaborative blog and inviting well respected and prestigious authors from around the world to write articles about the resolution of conflicts and strengthening of democracies.

We have received the first three articles, two of them written in English and one in Spanish.

Reconsidering the war on terror By George Soros (for Safe Democracy)

The Palestinian political earthquake: a suggestion for breakthrough By Walid Salem (for Safe Democracy)

España y Naciones Unidas, cincuenta años después Por Javier Rupérez (para Safe Democracy)

I am staying at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. This hotel design is great except that the walls are very thin and both of my neighbors are watching TV. I can hear them well. I am annoyed. I realize I practically never watch TV. I don’t watch TV in America. I don’t watch TV in Spain. When I read statistics on the amount of hours that other people spend watching TV I see how uncommon my behavior is. Interestingly most of my friends also watch very little TV. And they do very well in life. Is there an inverse correlation between hours spent watching TV and success in life?

As a result of yesterday´s announcement about FON there have been tens of thousands of new readers coming to my blog. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome these new readers and say a few things about myself and my blogs. First of all I am a blogaddict. I keep 6 blogs, three in English and three in Spanish. These blogs are Safe Democracy. Safe Democracy is one of my foundation in Europe. Safe Democracy and Club de Madrid organized a very large conference on Democracy and Terrorism attended by 1300 experts and over 20 heads of States as well as Kofi Annan. The result is that blog. Then I have the blog of the Varsavsky Foundation which as opposed to Safe Democracy is not a collaborative blog. I am the only writer in that blog and it is there where I speak about my (many times controversial political views), I keep those away from this blog as this blog is my blog as an entrepreneur. This blog tells the story of FON and also of many ideas that I have that never make it into companies. Now in my blogs I reserve the right to not accept commentaries. I also reserve the right to delete or change posts should circumstances arise that make me do so, for example if pressed by my lawyers or other people´s lawyers. I also reserve the right to ammend posts for the same reasons. Lastly this blog tells my views on FON, they reflect the spirit of the entrepreneur but FON also has its own blogs and fora and for official FON information you should go to the FON web site.

Carlos Manuel Varsavsky, my father, was a great man. Yes I know, everyone thinks his dad was/is great. But believe me, mine really was. Although I could only enjoy him for 22 years this astrophysicist from Harvard taught me more about life and science than anybody else ever will. My father died in 1983, way before the birth of the web. Lately however, he keeps showing up on the web, more and more. Why would someone bother digging up scientific articles from the 60s and listing them online? I guess what my father did must be somehow relevant today. I don´t know. I can´t understand his articles except of course the one on the Nine Day Week, a simple, brilliant idea. I have only words of appreciation for the people who are doing that recovery job. The web can bring great thinkers back to life.

Some people have one blog. I have 6. Yes 6. It sounds crazy but I do. I basically have this blog in Spanish and English which I use mostly to write about technology and my own experiences building FON. Then I have Safe Democracy in Spanish and English. Safe Democracy is the blog that remained as a result of the March 11th Conference on Democracy and Terrorism. This is a collaborative blog with many different authors. While it´s been dormant for a year this week the Safe Democracy Foundation which I manage has started accepted new contributions by many different authors both in both languages. Lastly I have my political/social blogs. They are the Varsavsky Foundation blogs in Spanish and English and in those blogs I write my political/social views. Interestingly I rarely translate my blogs. I don´t believe in translation. I believe in cultures and I say raise different issues in different languages something that frequently annoys my Spanish readers many of whom believe everything can be translated.

Why do I have the feeling that Bill Gates is making a “been there done that” T Shirt to send to the people at Google? Been there, been trashed, been there, fought the US government, been there, fought the Chinese, been there done that. At Davos when Eric Schmidt said that Google thought long and hard about its choices and decided to offer most of its search capabilities but not all in China, Bill Gates replied, that´s “do less evil”. He was having a ball. Still my heart is with Google. To me and I think to most, there´s still a huge difference on how Google succeeded vs how Microsoft succeeded.

Today the Financial Times Rankings came out and I was very pleased to see that the school where I have been teaching entrepreneurship for 9 years, Instituto de Empresa, has been ranked first in Spain, 3rd in Europe and 12th in the world. Congratulations to everyone at IE!

Just came back from DLD 06. Americans may have the best technology companies but Europe gets the upper hand on great technology conferences. What I like about the European events is that they take place in beautiful cities, DLD in Munich, Les Blogs in Paris and SIME in Stockholm, that they have fantastic nightcaps, and that they bring the best selection of American participants. Why are the best speakers in the world American? Is it because the American speakers are just great or that the ones who make it over here are chosen by Europeans? Mine was an all American but me panel, and it was a pleasure to be part of it.