Traveling Geeks

An Interview with GroupSpaces, UberVu and School of Everything

Below is an interview with the founders of GroupSpaces, UberVu and School of Everything at Seedcamp in London earlier this month.

An Israeli’s Take on UK Startups

Ayelet Noff of Blonde 2.0 and contributor to TechCrunch Europe, The Next Web and Social Media.biz, talks about her experience on the Traveling Geeks tour to London as well as some of her favorite startups. Below, we’re chatting outside the TechCrunch Europa Awards event in London.

Wonga’s Short Term Loan Solution

Wonga’s CEO and Founder Errol Damelin talks to me about their short term lending solution.

Wonga, an Accel Partners funded company based in the UK, focuses on short term cash advances, which is also suitable for mobile. Over 100,000 loans have gone through their system already and it’s growing.

People are using Wonga today to solve short-term cashflow problems. One of the things that is making people adopt it so quickly is that it’s fast, easy, convenient and easy to use.

Within an hour, you can have short term cash in your hands and the whole application process only takes a few minutes. Tune in for more below.

Skype and the Social Web

Perhaps a little known fact outside Skype Headquarters is that the social web is fundamental to its product development strategy.

During the development of Skype 4.0 for Windows, for example, over 50,000 individual pieces of feedback were gathered from users around the world, from blogs, forums and Twitter as well as direct surveys.

Skype’s experience team, which consists of a mixture of designers and researchers, reviewed and analyzed the data they received, and their findings had a direct influence on the way the product grew and matured from beta to final versions.

Functionality and user interface were both greatly influenced by the views of Skype users, but not, of course, without the expert knowledge and experience of Skype’s engineers and designers.

For Skype, however, this wasn’t a one-off; it’s an everyday way of doing business. Peter Parkes, Skype’s blogger-in-chief, works daily with product teams to gather, collate and pass on feedback. And it doesn’t just go to the engineers and designers who build the software itself.

The feedback also helps their customer support team provide better answers to users’ questions, and helps their marketing team produce more compelling copy. Remember, every tweet counts.

Refer back to the video interview I did with Parkes and community manager Dobb.

Skype was a sponsor of the Traveling Geeks UK tour.

Staying Put for a While

I'm about one-third of the way through my 18-month death-march around the world seeking its best entrepreneurs, or as I call it in polite conversation, work on my new book. It's time for a break. Aside from a few day trips here or there I'm sticking in San Francisco for the next six weeks where I'll try to be a better blogger for TechCrunch, a more reliable columnist for BusinessWeek and get more actual writing on the book banged out. I'm going to keep working on learning Portuguese and Mandarin. I'm going to cook dinner for my husband. I'm going to reintroduce myself to my much-stood-up Pilates trainer. And I may even attempt to have a social life again.

I feel mixed about it. Most of me is screaming out for a break from 20-hour flights, endless meetings and the frustration that comes with interviewing someone from a totally different culture, who is frequently speaking a totally different language. (See photo to the right– just moments before a speaking gig. See sadder photo below. Human rights groups are investigating.) On Thursday as I was packing up to leave my hotel in London, scouring for every stray sock or earring, wondering what I'd leave behind this time (sunglasses as it turned out), and hoping I'd allotted enough time for customs, security and the like– I had a crushing feeling of I desperately, desperately need a month off!

But as I reflect on everything I've seen and experienced during the 10 weeks I've spent in Israel, Rwanda, China and London, another part of me can't wait to get back on the road. When I set out to write this book, I didn't totally know what I was getting into, aside from the hope that it'd be important and the certainty that it'd be life-changing on a personal level. The first few months I felt a bit lost and concerned, but now, six months in, it's coming together. I've written several thousand words, discovered stories so dramatic they could be made into films and the big macro themes of book are shaping themselves in my head every day. The book is becoming less of an epidsodic travel narrative and more of a, well, book. As much work as there is ahead, I know now I've got something, and that's a huge relief. (See photo to below taken in a happier, more rested moment. Although note my sad, tired computer is missing an "R" key.)

So as I pause for a bit, I wanted to thank everyone who's made the whole thing possible thus far: Dan Nova for introducing me to Rwanda, Roi Carthy and Orli Yakuel for being my den mothers in Israel, Tom Limongello for, well, everything in China, and Paul Carr for being my unofficial personal assistant in London, while Rachel Bremer set me up with some of the most impressive companies I've seen in the UK to date. Huge thanks also to Endeavor– the experts in emerging world entrepreneurship, and to BusinessWeek and TechCrunch for being endlessly supportive of this suicide-mission. And, of course, Olivia for taking care of the kitties in my absence, and Mr. Lacy for somehow putting up with all of this.

After the break, I'll finish the year with Brazil, China, India, and back to Israel. As always, let me know anyone I must meet.

[PHOTO CREDITS: Ayelett Noff, JD Lasica, Craig Newmark]

JD Lasica’s 6 minute interview with Howard Rheingold about 21st century literacies

If you want the 6 minute version, rather than the 40 minute version of my talk about 21st century literacies, check out the interview JD Lasica did in front of King’s College, Cambridge, UK, during the last part of the Travelling Geeks tour:

Sam Opens Falafel Stand in Brick Lane

I ran into Sam El Abd in one of my favorite parts of London, Brick Lane.

We’re close in age and his background is IT, but like so many I know, got laid off because of the credit crunch.

He talked to him about his dream of opening a falafel Stand in Brick Lane, the first stall in the area’s well known curry mile. (think: best curries in London. They’re hot, but they’re amazing). Listen to his dream. He officially opened it last week.

Inside of the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare’s Round House in :22 Secs of Video #TG2009

Econsultancy, for you “Yanks,” is the equivalent of our Jupiter before they were eaten by Forrester. Ashley Freidlein and Clare Laurie hosted a round table discussion with their top-notch clients and the Traveling Geeks. Then they took us on a tour of the Globe Theatre, which is just gorgeous.

In this short video, you can see a 280 degree pan of the Globe Theatre in London where they are changing the set for the next play.

Here’s a link to pictures from this event on my Flickr page.

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Moby Picture: What Matters to us is Your Story

Mathys van Abbe from Moby Picture was in London during our latest geek tour.

I didn’t have enough time to put their app through the test on the Nokia N79 we were using on the ground, but I plan to load it up on whatever new phone I end up with in the next couple of weeks. It’s most definitely time for a new one.

Their mission is to enable users to share their adventures as easily as possible. Says Mathys, “it’s not about the technology. What matters to us is your story.”

Moby Picture adds as much context in the background as possible to enrich your content. They also match your location against other content taken in the same timeframe, determine whether there’s a popular spot nearby, or an event going on.

Groups enable you to aggregate content about specific interests, events, hobbies, etc. Using this feature, you can post to a group in a variety of ways, but the simplest is to just add the group hashtag (like #moby) to the title or description of your posting.

They are working on closing deals with publishers and are encouraging third party developers to use their APIs. More after I start playing with it.

“I come from 5 generations of Cohen merchants …” Joe Cohen

Joe Cohen, Founder, Seatwave.com

“I come from 5 generations of Cohen merchants thus love the marketplace; I also have non-genetic love of sport and music = best job ever,” Joe Cohen. #WDYDWYD? #TG2009 @SeatwaveJoe

My Traveling Geeks Meme: WDYDWYD? What is it?

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