2008 15
In a world of professionals I am a perennial amateur
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Of everyone I know I am probably the person who knows how to do the most things….badly. Allow me to explain. I am like a perennial amateur. Ok, one thing I seemingly do well which is to have original ideas, like Fon and turn them into businesses. And that I do well. Maybe not Michael Dell well, but well enough to have started and sold 3 businesses for over half a billion. But other than that I am an amateur at so many things that I love to do but others do better!
The list is enormous. I love to cook and I cook reasonably well, very fast, people enjoy my food but of course there are so many better chefs than I am. I was also a diplomat for 4 years representing Argentina during its worst crisis. And I did what I could, in the States some still call me Ambassador cause once an Ambassador always an Ambassador in the States, but frankly, how can an Ambassador be a blogger? I was not a good Ambassador because I like to tell what I believe in. So much for being a diplomat. And what about being a Jet pilot? Yes, I am a pilot with a private pilot license and I did my Citation Jet certification. I had to pass 11 exams, take many classes and I can fly a Jet. But of course I am a so so pilot compared to most jet pilots. I have no doubt that most jet pilots are better than I am, still I greatly enjoy piloting my plane. And how about sailing? I have sailed since I was a teenager, I sail around 30 days per year in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean and I am studying to be the skipper of my 92 ft sailboat that I have had for 8 years. And I do know a lot about sailing and my sailboat but I know very little compared with professional crews. Still I know enough and can sail my boat from an island to another island. And by next summer I will have my skipper title. Again an amateur.
And the list goes on. I write for newspapers, magazines and have been writing for them since I was in college when I was a correspondent for Spanish and Argentine media. But am I a journalist? Even though articles of mine have appeared in books and 300K people per month read my blog, I could hardly call myself a writer, even though in practice I am and I do spend an hour a day or so writing, like I am doing now.
Another job I have is to organize conferences and events including some very large ones like the ones we organized at my foundation, Safe Democracy or the Menorca TechTalk. But even though I spend a significant amount of time organizing events, I know many people who do that for a living, people like Klaus Schwab for example. And even though many heads of states have attended conferences that I have organized I am no Klaus Schwab nor a professional conference organizer. And as far as being a speaker I have been paid sums like 14 thousand euros for speaking for one hour. But I decided not to charge for speaking and only speak at events I enjoy and be an amateur speaker. Somehow I feel uncomfortable about getting paid to speak, I feel that my freedom to say whatever I want is restricted. So I speak in around 30 conferences per year but I would not call myself a professional speaker. I guess the common theme in all I do is not being a professional, that I am not except as an entrepreneur, but being extremely curious and being fearless about trying new things.
I also have this necessity to be the boss of everything I do which is probably a disease. So if I am in a car I want to drive, in a boat I want to steer, in a conference I want to speak, in a plane I want to pilot, in a kitchen I want to cook. I know I should just let go, rely on others, and to a great extent I do as I have pilots, crew, driver, etc. Being a blogger is a good example. I used to write more for newspapers and magazines and I know that if I continued to do so I would have more readers. But being my own editor and publishing what I want when I want is more important than being read by tons of people. I prefer to publish in the Huffington Post which gives me total journalistic freedom than writing for Newsweek as I once did and had to deal with an editor telling me to add or take away words and change my piece. And I do write for the leading news magazine in Argentina, Noticias but that is because they are crazy enough to publish articles that are sometimes 9 pages long unedited. And I guess people like them cause they are now complaining I have sent nothing for a few months.
In short, in a world of professionals I am a perennial amateur. I do what I do out of love and probably a sick desire to be the master of my own life. I don´t care about doing things perfectly well. I care about doing reasonably well and having fun in the process.
2008 8
Facebook launches in Spanish, French and German!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Facebook is the second largest social network in the world quickly gaining ground over Myspace. But if Facebook is number two as far as I am concerned Facebook is a distant number one as of my hundreds of acquaintances and friends only a childhood friend of mine who is a musician is in Myspace. Everyone that is…who speaks English. But the issue here is that I am Argentine/Spanish and so far a great part of my social circle has not been able to enter Facebook and nor have my French and German friends. This is a subject that I spoke about during my first visit to Facebook last year in which I was shocked by how well the company was managed and predicted that Facebook would be worth over $10bn (sorry I know its pathetic to think so much in terms of money). So back to social life and friends I have great news for my Spanish, Latin American, French and German friends and that is that Facebook will be in Spanish, French and German in the next weeks. In Spanish as early as next Monday! Moreover in Madrid, at Teatro Lara (disclosure I partly own the theater) Fon will host a developers event for Facebook to launch the apps platform in Spanish. This event will take place on Monday February 18th but it is in Spanish only as the purpose of the event is to recruit Spanish coders to come up with great apps in Spanish. We at Fon will present our plans for our own Facebook app at the event. If you are interested in attending the event please write to developergarage@fon.com. If you developed or are working on a Facebook app in Spanish, you are invited to demo it during the event, please write to Pietro Saccomani.
What follows is the press release from Facebook in Spanish.
Facebook lanza la versión en Español; Alemán y Francés en breve
PALO ALTO, California — 7 de Febrero de 2008 — Facebook ha anunciado hoy su primer paso en los planes de internacionalización, lanzando la versión en español. Las versiones en alemán y francés estarán disponibles en las próximas semanas. Aproximadamente 1,500 usuarios hispanohablantes de facebook decidieron formar parte del proyecto, traduciendo todo el website del inglés al español en menos de cuatro semanas.
Los usuarios que desean utilizar Facebook en español pueden cambiar desde ya el lenguaje en las preferencias de su cuenta. A partir del lunes 11 de Febrero, cualquier persona que acceda a www.facebook.com desde cualquier país de habla hispana accederá a facebook en español. Facebook tiene actualmente mas de 2.8 millones de usuarios entre España y Latino-América.
“Más del 60% de los usuarios de facebook vienen de fuera de los Estados Unidos y viven en países donde el inglés no es la lengua primaria,” dijo Mark Zuckerberg fundador y CEO de Facebook. “Nuestro objetivo siempre ha sido que la gente pueda utilizar Facebook en su idioma, así que hemos construido una aplicación que permite a los usuarios participar en la traducción de Facebook a sus lenguas y dialectos. Estamos muy agradecidos por todas las contribuciones de nuestros usuarios en la traducción de Facebook.”
Los usuarios de la herramienta de traducciones tienen la oportunidad de traducir el texto mientras utilizan Facebook normalmente. La comunidad de traductores decide cuales son las mejores traducciones vía un sistema de votaciones. Por ejemplo los usuarios seleccionaron “dar un toque” para traducir el término “poke,” creado por Facebook.
La motivación de muchos de los traductores es el impacto de sus contribuciones; estas permitirán que millones de personas que solo hablan su lengua puedan utilizar facebook. El mayor contribuidor fue responsable por 1.284 de las traducciones seleccionadas por la comunidad, o casi un 3% de todo el texto del interfaz de usuario de Facebook.
Facebook planea seguir dejando en manos de los usuarios la traducción de las nuevas funcionalidades conforme estén disponibles. Adicionalmente la herramienta de traducciones estará disponible para que todos los desarrolladores de aplicaciones en la plataforma de facebook puedan dejar en manos de la comunidad la traducción de sus aplicaciones.
Los usuarios de Facebook también pueden desde ahora acceder a Facebook en cualquier lenguaje soportado desde cualquier teléfono móvil con acceso a Internet. Cualquiera puede registrarse en facebook vía www.facebook.com
Acerca de Facebook
Fundado en Febrero de 2004, Facebook es una herramienta social que permite a la gente comunicarse de forma más eficiente con sus amigos, familia y compañeros de trabajo. La compañía desarrolla tecnología que facilita el flujo de información a través del gráfico social, el mapa digital de las relaciones existentes en la vida real. Cualquiera puede darse de alta en Facebook y comunicarse con la gente que conoce en un entorno seguro. Facebook forma parte de la vida de millones de usuarios, y la mitad de estos lo utilizan todos los días. Facebook es una compañía privada con sede central en Palo Alto, California.
2008 4
LenovoMac
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Following a tip from one of my readers (thanks Daniel!) I just got Apple’s Os X Leopard running on my Lenovo PC laptop, that same laptop that first got me into Ubuntu and then Mac, after it suffered a major crash while it was running Windows.
Now thanks to the fact that new Apple computers are based on Intel hardware I was able to install Os X on my Lenovo, which has the same CoreDuo cpu as my MacBook. If you have the right hardware you can try to do the same following the (quite) simple steps you can find in this useful post. The process consists in downloading a disk image, burning it to a DVD, making sure to follow the steps in the readme file before proceding with the installation.
The only things which are not working on this LenovoMac are WiFi, the integrated webcam and the Sleep function. A part from these issues this new Mac has been running fast and stable so far. The WiFi issue is clearly bad for me as CEO of Fon but I am sure I will be able to fix it.
What I wonder is why are there no more people turning PCs into MACs.
2008 4
Tokyo 80% covered!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
FON has been very successful in Japan. We launched only 14 months ago and have already the largest WiFi network in Japan with more than 31,000 FON Spots. The Japanese people are very civic minded and understand and love the concept of WiFi everywhere, free for donors and extremely affordable for everyone else. Japan is one of the most modern societies in the world and for the Japanese having WiFi everywhere is extremely useful as more and more gadgets now, including many made by large Japanese firms such as Nintendo and Sony, are WiFi enabled.
Now one of the criticisms that we had received in Japan is that FON was large and growing fast but still not in all the commercial areas where most people work. Well we at Fon listened carefully to this criticism and I am glad today that we have found a solution to this problem by teaming up with the commercial hotspot operation of Livedoor. Livedoor operates a WiFi network of 2,200 Access Points in the centre of Tokyo which in pure numbers adds little to our network but the key with Livedoor is not so much the amount of hotspots they have but how well placed they are. While we have not tested this yet it is likely that the combination of the FON Spots and the Livedoor hotspots that will send out a FON WiFi network that will be freely accessible to all foneros from anywhere in Japan and the world will give over 80% coverage in Tokyo.
Livedoor will FON-enable all their 2,200 APs in Tokyo, giving Foneros full internet access via these APs by using their FON ID and password – just like with any other FON Spot. Access to FON_livedoor will be free for Foneros at least until August 4, 2008. About 100 FON_livedoor APs will be accessible from today, and all 2,200 APs will become FON-enabled by February 11th. Have a look at our FON Maps to get a feel of how vast our joint FON / FON-Livedoor network is in Japan. I am sure that next time you visit Tokyo, you will have no difficulty finding a FON signal. At this point FON’s coverage is the greatest in two key economies in the world, the UK thanks to BTFon and in Japan.
Moreover, to celebrate this new partnership with Livedoor, FON will launch a 60-day “Free Access Campaign”: we’ll offer to all FON members, including Aliens, free access to all FON Spots and FON_livedoor Spots in Japan. We think it is time that all visitors to Japan and Japanese people get an opportunity to test Fon for free. If you live in Japan and you would like to have this free access extend beyond 60 days we recommend that you visit a Tsukumo shop or our own web site and acquire and install a La Fonera for only Y1980. That will be the only expenditure you will ever make with FON as with FON all donors have free WiFi wherever they are in the world.
Update: here is the first coverage from Japanese press
- アスキー
- Yahoo! ニュース
- IT Media
- CNET
- BroadBand Watch
- 新宿経済新聞
- インターネットウォッチ
- IT Pro
- NIKKEI NET
- 日経パソコン PC Online
Update: blogs and press from the rest of the world
2008 2
Freedom vs Prosperity
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I am concerned about the fact that ex communist countries such as China and Russia are outgrowing the USA and the EU by a big margin. USA and EU grow at a combined rate of around 3% now rapidly falling as a result of recent financial turmoil while Russia and China are growing at a combined rate of over 7%. At that rate former communist economies double in size every decade. As the democratic West accumilates debt the former communist countries pile cash and grow faster. Watching Russia for example moving away from democracy with most Russians actually in favor of Vladimir Putin´s consolidation in power reminds us that it was not lack of freedom that brought communism down: it was lack of prosperity. Many of us were simply wrong when we thought that the fall of the Berlin Wall was about democracy. People who were leaving Soviet Russia and its satellites were not really looking for freedom, they were trying to make a decent living. At the same time as recession approaches it is sad to remember that it the main driver of Nazism was rapid economic decline. And while in the EU and in North America there´s little risk of moving away from democracy it is in the swing states of the world where we now see that given a choice between prosperity and freedom most choose prosperity. The latest example of this trend is Serbia, a country in the heart of Europe that has chosen to align itself more closely with Russia than the EU.
2008 1
Eolia plans to go public
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Eolia, the alternative energy company founded by my dear friend Miguel Salis Canosa and in which I was an early investor, is going public on Madrid’s stock exchange at a valuation between 800 and 900 million euros (according to the newspaper Expansión), an impressive success in less then 3 years.
Eolia was founded in 2004 as the first investment fund in Spain in renewable energy with financing from the investment bank Nmás1, Bankinter, BBK and Fonditel. In October last year Eolia completed the roll up of over 22 independent wind and solar development companies into a new company, which together with the assets of two previously launched funds (Eolia Mistral and Eolia Gregal), has resulted in the creation of the largest Spanish independent wind and solar electricity generation company, Eolia Renovables de Inversiones, of which Miguel is co founder and CEO.
Eolia controls 45 wind and solar projects in Spain and Mexico totalling around 1200 MWs in addition to a less developed project portfolio of close to 2000 MWs. They have recently signed an agreement to incorporate 150 MWs of French and German wind farms from a European company.