Nothing Ever Happens

A great new book by Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class.

In Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, Florida describes how a ‘creative class’ of people is changing the economic landscape by congregating in a shrinking set of cities located farther and wider than ever before.

What’s more, different types of these creative innovators are sticking with their own kind, molding each city’s distinct demographics, job markets, and mating markets. So despite the technologies that now allow us to work from anywhere, choosing where to live is more important than ever before.

Pangea Day will harness the inspirational power of film on a global scale - a simultaneous screening to millions of people worldwide of powerful human stories from many different countries and cultures.
Over 1000 events take place around the world, with key events in Los Angeles, Kigali (Rwanda), London’s Somerset House, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and the Pyramids at Giza, Egypt. The four-hour show includes over 20 films, 10 insperational speakers, and live performances from different parts of the world by Dave Stewart, Bob Geldof, the Iranian band, Hypernova; Jazz legend, Gilberto Gil; Egyptian star Mohamed Mounir and Malian jazz singer, Rokia Traore.

I am supporting Pangea Day in Slovenia. It will take place on Saturday, May 10th at 19:30 in Ljubljana.

To register send an email to the Pangea Day Ljubljana team: pangeadan@gmail.com

On creating great companies.

Greg McAdoo, Partner at Sequoia Capital
(Video)

VS

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework and Partner at 37Signals
(Video)

Both are brilliant and eye-opening speeches, presenting directly opposite philosophies.

Which one do you subscribe to?

Update: when you register, enter the code iNOOVO2008 (in comments) and get a 20% discount.
Web.Start is THE Eastern European conference focused exclusively on Web startups. Web.Start takes place on May 8-9, 2008 in Zagreb, the beautiful Croatian capital (organized by great croatian geek Berislav Lopac and the Croatian Association of software and online entrepreneurs Initium.)

If you have never been to Croatia this is a great excuse to come - and meet the most radical, fresh and creative thinkers from an emerging region!

Apply today/ and get a special discount only for my blog readers.

http://webstart.ini.hr

Best twit ever (by Michael Arrington on Twitter):

“There’s too many good startups in Israel. I wish they would be more anti-entrepreneur there, like Europe, so they’d all move here.”

Recent U.S. court rulings may change the broad legal shield Web sites have enjoyed against lawsuits filed over material posted by their users, which has allowed the likes of YouTube and MySpace to flourish. The decisions could “inspire a wave” of new lawsuits and “create a chilling effect.”

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9911501-7.html

Dave Winer’s uber 1337 p057 r0xx0rz:

“..In tech entrepreneurship, repeat success is rare. Not saying it doesn’t happen, it does, but often, the second time an entrepreneur gives it a go, the venture flops. It’s happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen to a number of others, and I understand the reason.

The first time you ran, you had to sacrifice everything to win. Failure was something you visualized around every corner, but something you could never deal with, so you made sure you didn’t have to. You did whatever it took to make it work.

The second time is different. Now you expect success not failure. You’ve mostly forgotten the sacrificing you did the first time, but you remember some of it, the long hours, the lack of sunshine and exercise or a personal life. This time, you want success on your terms. It’s not enough to win, you have to win the way you (feel you) should have the first time.

Problem is, that’s not how success works. If what you seek is worth something, and as we can see from the Clinton returns, this job certainly is worth something, there will be competitors, and if they don’t bring the same conditions you do, if they’re willing to sacrifice the way you once were but aren’t any longer, well, you’ll lose. As the Clintons are losing…

Remember this when you’re plotting a comeback, you’re going to have to deal with this too, everyone does, or so it seems.”

[This is why VC visionary John Doerr was the only investor I heard saying that he is looking for first-time entrepreneurs only. Me: I feel like I’m starting the business for the first time, have to learn everything from scratch and invest significantly more effort and energy than I have ever done..BUT, however, ’success on your terms’ is honestly how we repeat entrepreneurs / veterans feel like. MUST be aware of it and always force yourself into the alpha mode. How? Allnighters, speed, fight for every client & user, skip holidays, sell something you are affected to (car etc.), use a notebook for all your ideas & keep next to your bed]

(VOTE for my i canhazcheezburger creation!)

- Stop using your phone!

World’s renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Vini Gautam Khurana, who previously launched the first awake brain keyhole surgery to remove a life-threatening aneurysm from a patient’s brain, on Monday published a breakthrough research paper, which says cell phones could have greater health consequences than smoking. There is increasing evidence linking cell phone use and brain tumors.

Download paper here - stop using your phone - start using your brain.