I was last night at the “Geeks on Beer” event, listening to investors, startups and entrepreneurs discussing about the Brazilian market, the challenges and opportunities.
It was a crash course in Portuguese, but it was fun
I met really cool people that had innovative ideas such as Flavio Pripas from Fashion.me, a 10M (15% of total Brazilian connected market) fashion social network.

Brazil is definitely behind in terms of knowledge and experience, but local entepreneurs are developing their skills really fast.

What’s next?

Tonight at 7PM (9PM GMT), I will be on stage to share about “Building the next big thing” with the Campuseros.
I’m a bit anxious as this will be the first time I’ll share that exact presentation.
Well.. to be honest.. it’s always like that, cause I never show the same presentation twice…
Of course, I do tell stories more than once, but then again… I have only lived once

If you feel like it, you can follow live from the “Campus Chanel Live” but keep in mind it’s still a Beta. So don’t get annoyed by the glitches…
If you do not speak Brasileiro, just click right to “Linguagem” in the top bar and select “Inglês”.

Even if you’re not interested in the topic, you might want to watch for the entertainment value, as I will be stripping off on stage

Bye for now!

It’s been really fun and I’ve started to feel like a Campusero myself.
But it hasn’t been that easy…
Let’s rewind and look at how things went!

Campuseros lining up at Anhembi Parque - 2012

I got to the venue on Monday early afternoon.

Campuseros where lining up to get in the venue with their computers.
Some had been sleeping over night to be the first in line.

The lines were pretty long and the weather was so good that it was a bit of a challenge for the campuseros to queue outside.

I met up with Gui, who is my contact for the event.

We took a tour of the venue, registered my computer, to make sure it was safe, and met some of the officials.

It was then that things got a bit challenging…

With so many people around me, not speaking the language and being on my own, it was definitely overwhelming.

But then I saw something familiar!
The great Fox of fire!
I had been doing some stuff with the Mozilla Fundation and the guys were quite welcoming.
They were setting up with the Wikimedia Fundation and Garoa Hacker Club.

Few minutes of chit chat and I was invited to join the group, to set up my computer at their table and hangout with them.

@lucatoledo, @nigini and me hanging out

That’s the Campus Party spirit!
A bunch of people who are here to share and meet new people, who are open to “foreigners” and curious to learn from them.

Of course I’ll be meeting tons of other people during the next days, but now I feel a bit like home.
We’ve been doing some cool stuff with the guys from the hacker’s club.

The founders are launching a company to spread the use of rapid prototyping machines: Metamaquina.

I’ll share more about their venture in a next post!

Thanks again Campuseros!

So what is the Campus Party?

The Campus Party is the reunion of thousands of individuals, coming together for a week in the same location and doing stuff 24/7.

Started in 1996, the event takes its roots in the LAN culture.
Originally focused on games, it became, in 2000, a Technology event, regrouping thousands of Campuseros and improving sharing of information and know-how on various technology topics in fashion at the time as well as upcoming trends.

Campus Party has been organized in various locations: Valencia, Quito, Mexico, São Paulo and Bogota.
Full details about the event can be found on its Wikipedia page.

São Paulo 2012, Campus Party camping - 7000 tents AP Photo/Andre Penner

One peculiarity of the event is the fact that Campuseros come from all over the world, and of course need to camp there.
Sponsors provide tents and use parking garage, conference halls or any other large indoor facility to host the Campuseros.

As you can see from the picture, it’s a lot of tents!

This week is the 5th edition of the Campus Party São Paulo, Brazil.
The venue is huge and will accomodate the 7,000 Campuseros.
Alongside the main venue, the “Public Zone” will give an opportunity to the people from Sao Paolo to discover more about the latest technologies and digital services.
Expecting over 200,000 visitors, it is definitely a good opportunity to spread the knowledge and get people excited about new opportunities.

Panorama of the venue

What am I doing here?

I have been invited by Futura Networks, the organizers, to come and share my experience with the Campuseros.
I will be speaking on Friday and will share about entrepreneurship.
Besides that, I am spending time with the Campuseros and giving them a hand.
I’m planning to participate in BarCamp sessions and am available for any Campuseros who wants to know about Mobile, Tech, Entrepreneurship and Europe. For other topics, am happy to give my point of view, but can’t guarantee the results

I feel really lucky to be here and I definitely want to give as much to the community as possible.
That’s why I decided to dedicate few minutes of my presentation to groups, people and anyone who wants.
Of course, it is hard to be putting people on stage, so to make it a bit easier, I decided to use the T-Shirt medium

So if your group/club/association/company has a T-Shirt, I’ll wear it for few mins on stage
How am I going to do that?
Well… it might involve a lot of layers and a lot of stripping.
Just for the fun of seing me being ridiculous, it’s worse getting me all these T-Shirts.

Up for that?
Look for the hat, and don’t forget to retweet this post with the #Stage4ALL tag

After 2 years working on products, I was lucky enough to be brought to Mobile World Congress to be on the floor, “selling” the N97.

It was a really good experience and I learned a lot.

I received a good training, helping me understand what to do, what not to do and giving me couple of tips on how to handle questions.
We didn’t have a “clear” story to share, so we built it as we were going along.
It was quite exciting.
We were listening to each other’s product presentations, including bits and pieces in our own.
By the end of Day 1 we had a compelling story.
That story was getting even stronger when people would realise we were actual engineers working on the product, not only “booth babes”

Because of being French, I became the “go to” guy for French interviews.
I built my skills on the watch of a senior PR guy, looking at him once in a while to make sure I wasn’t making too many mistakes.I can really thank him for supporting me and if he reads this blog, he’ll recognise himself.

One of the reason I moved to the Symbian Foundation was because I was offered not only the opportunity to bridge the gap between Technology and Marketing, but also because I was to become one of the spokesperson of the company.

It was a difficult phase though. Really.

Becoming “Official” spokesperson carries some responsibility.
“How is my private life going to affect my company? Can I be completely open to the public? What should I wear when presenting?”

Well.. quite many of these questions were just me thinking too much.

I decided to make my private life public, as I don’t have anything to hide.
And if I would do something that the community doesn’t like, they would help me to learn and grow.
Everyone makes mistakes.
When it comes to the dress code, I was told by an exec: “Julien, just wear whatever you want. You’ll set the trend for the company and we’ll follow!”

The Foundation being an open source, open community and pretty honest with its opinion, it was quite easy to be in tune with the messaging.
I also spent more time writing on my blog, sharing my own experience and interests.
At the beginning, there was no policy, but then we needed to craft one to make sure the basic rules were understood.
Writing blogs, sharing on twitter and participating in events were encouraged by the management.
We were spreading the love of the Symbian Foundation and giving it a human face.

When starting my company, I ended up spending even more time blogging and sharing.
It was a great time.
I met a lot of great people and am still engaging with a lot of them.

So what did I learn these past couple of years?

Policies and rules are good!

As long as they are build with the people that will follow them!
It is good to have a restricted amount of people speaking on behalf of the company, and especially for high profile media.
But it is as equally important to enable employees to share about their work and their passion.
After all, you spend most of your time at work, if you can’t speak about it, it’s going to be hard to speak about anything

Nowadays, with such a highly connected world, anyone can share anything.
It doesn’t matter if you have a schedule interview with the press, or you just go on at a bar, the information will travel.

So why not educating people, providing them a frame that they can follow, and make sure that people who have the skills are helping the company spread the word?

Of course, there are companies such as Apple where speaking is not possible.
I bet it wasn’t like that in the past, when Apple was built.
But nowadays, why on earth would you take the risk of loosing your job when you’re working in one of the coolest companies in the world?

And then you have Google, that pushes their people to events to spread the word about how cool their company is, how well employees are treated and so forth.

So how is it for you?
Do you think that it’s better to have no policies and let things go organically or would you prefer to have guidelines that help people to get educated and feel more empowered?

Had an amazing time with the guys as usual.

Hard to explain the feeling, and am sure this video will not give the full picture.

His dream has been to land a wingsuit without parachute.
He has been practicing flying and has done amazing videos, pushing the envelope.

Today the bucket of luck emptied dramatically.
Jeb was jumping in Cape Town, at the Table Mountain, flying wingsuit.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t clear the ledge completely and touched the edge.
The bucket didn’t empty completely and he is still alive, although suffering multiple fractures.

I know that this is just a set back.
Jeb will get back on its feet and fly again.

In the meantime, I wish him a speedy recovery.

But that is the exploit that Xavier Niel, CEO and owner of Free, #2 ISP in France, has achieved last week.
In launching Free Mobile, Xavier has not only created the 4th mobile operator in France, but he as also put on the market the best offer possible:

Less than 20€ for:
- Unlimited calls to 40 countries (USA & Canada) included
- Unlimited SMS
- Unlimited MMS
- Unlimited Internet (3GB on 3G/4G and unlimited on Wifi)

Their offer is 2.6x cheaper than the cheapest comparable offer, and without any contract!
Xavier has, once again, disrupted the market!

Once again because Free has been disruptive since day 1.
Offering free landline internet connection without surcharged number in 1999, Free moved towards ADSL and in 2002 was the first worldwide to launch the “triple play” offering with the Freebox.
Since then, Free has been pushing the boundaries both in terms of business model and technology.

We’ve heard a lot about “social media” and other ways to “engage” the consumers.
Well, Free has been betting everything on providing the best product at a price way below their competitors.
It’s been paying off and it created a lot of “following” from their users.
And of course, Free rewards their Freenauts (name used for Free users), with a free mobile connection (60mins+60sms) and a rebate of 4€ on the full package.

Now that Free opened the “pandora’s box” in France when it comes to the real costs of mobile, it will be hard times for other operators in France.
The interesting thing is that it seems that the French market has been quite isolated and international media have kept fairly quiet about the company until their mobile announcement.
Being featured in international magazines such as The Wallstreet Journal will definitely bring more spotlight on the French company.

Interesting times for the global mobile ecosystem!

It has been 6 months that I have not contributed to my blog…
Where have those 6 months gone? What have I done so important and time consuming that I would not have time to update my blog?
I’ve been busy doing stuff, making things happen at Rovio.

Since I’ve started working, I’ve always given myself 100% to my job.
Working at Nokia, projects would come and go, giving some time to breath in between.
When joining the Symbian Foundation, I jumped in the world of startups, in which time is the most important value a company can have.
100% was good, but I wanted to give more.
When starting my consultancy, quite much of the work was social: meeting people, organizing events, speak, leading teams of developers remotely and more.
I could take a break here and there, as projects would have a certain length.
Joining Rovio 10 months ago, I was not only given the same responsibilities as I had already carried on before, but now I was building a full product.
The Bad Piggy Bank, Rovio’s payment processing and handling platform, is not a 4 weeks project. It’s a long-term investment.
And I made that commitment.

So let’s have a look at what happened in the past 4 months in my life, so that I can focus on what’s coming up next!
People like numbers, let’s explore some!

6 months
16 speaking engagements
• MeeGo Conference – San Francisco (via NYC)
• Festival of Games – Utrecht
• iStrategy – Amsterdam
• Israel Mobile Summit – Tel Aviv
• Orange “Hello Demain” – Paris
• Launch48 – Kensignton
• Campus Party – Valencia
• Game Jam – Turku
• Intel App Up – Seattle
• Verizon Developer Conference – Las Vegas
• Mac World Asia – Beijing
• Smart & Mobile Seminar – Seoul
• EFMA “Mobile Banking” – Paris
• TEDx “The Magic of the Game” – Las Palmas
• LincUp Live “From Monopoly to ARG: How games can make a city popular” – Lincoln
• PAX – Seattle

11 Countries: Finland, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, USA, Korea, China and Belgium.
27 Cities: Helsinki, Tampere, Porvoo, Turku, Tampere, Tallinn, Stockholm, NYC, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, London, Birmingham, Lincoln, Paris, Lille, Geneva, Zurich, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Valencia, Tel Aviv, Munich, Garmish, Brussels, Beijing, and Seoul.

Train: London<->Geek Trip, London->Paris, London <-> meego event, Paris -> Lille
Car: 2000km
Motorbike: 2000km
Cycling: 500km
Plane: over 100h => more than 4 days…

That is a lot of traveling.
But that was necessary.
First of all, it gave me a better perspective of some of the aspects of our industry.
Rovio is not a mobile gaming company anymore. Rovio is an Entertainment company. Discovering the gaming industry was needed to understand where the company is coming from. Speaking about its past and what it did to succeed gives me the opportunity to analyze and digest its DNA.
Engaging with mobile operators has also been contributing to steepen my learning curve. Discovering their challenges, their needs and their assets was a good way to build a vision for our entertainment business that would include them.
So now what?
We’ve been executing!
And since December, I’m not traveling anymore for business.
We’ve entered the eye of the cyclone and it’s amazing!
Of course, a lot of work to execute on the strategy we’ve set up.

The good thing about the new situation is that I have some more time at home!
I’ve been now taking care of my home, my friends and myself.
New hobbies, new fun stuff and cool people in my life.

2012 is going to be an amazing year!
It already started and you’ll hear all about it: am back to blogging!

Last Friday I was invited by a friend to join an event at Premier Park, a driving track in southern Finland.

The event was quite interesting as we got a chance to discover the different tracks around activities such as off road driving, emergency braking and traction control discovery.

We also got a chance to spend some time with Heikki Kovalainen, F1 driver for team Catheram.
Heikki is definitely a nice guy and although he is one of the most famous Finnish sport’s men, he has kept the humility of his debut.
Funny thing is that Heikki lives nowadays in Geneva, 50kms from my parents place.

Here is a video of one of the laps at the track.

See you in our mountains Heikki!

For once, Nokia has managed to create a lot of buzz behind an event that used to be unnoticed: Nokia Connection 2011

Nokia is known to host its events on the sidelines of major events.
Nokia Connection 2011 is happening at the same time as CommunicAsia, a major mobile event for the Asia region.

I will not go about commenting on the device itself, we’ll know soon enough how it looks and what does it do.

My interest is about the impact that such a device could have on the mobile industry, and especially the MeeGo ecosystem.

Stephen Elop promised a MeeGo device from Nokia this year.
With the current smartphone strategy, Nokia is set to put its volumes on Windows Phone 7x.

So where would that leave a MeeGo device?
First of all, how much of a real MeeGo device would that be?

Announced last year, the first “MeeGo” device from Nokia will use the “Harmattan” platform.
Harmattan is the evolution of Maemo 5 with some compatibility with MeeGo.
It does not support the MeeGo core libraries and differs from certain technological aspects.

In order to be successful, any new smartphone ecosystem needs to have a strong dynamic between device, developers and consumers.

And that’s where the Harmattan platform fails.
The MeeGo community has defined a set of house rules, to protect the consumers and developers.
The MeeGo Compliance program is the guarantor of a consistent user experience across all MeeGo devices.
Harmattan does not qualify to these rules and therefore should not be called MeeGo.

How will that impact the consumers?

First, let’s talk about applications.
Nokia will most likely have a store on the device.
Because the platform is unique to Nokia and has been developed in house, Nokia had to provide it to a selected amount of developers.
The store will have a certain number of applications, depending on how many companies Nokia has been able to partner with before launch.
The limited catalogue will be a challenge for a consumer base which is used to 300k+ application store.

Because of the uniqueness of the platform, upcoming developers will have to jump new hurdles to develop applications for it.
Although it is close to MeeGo, existing MeeGo applications will not necessarily run straight away.
More work needed, more challenges and so forth.
For what return?

Nokia is aware of all the challenges the Harmattan platform will come across.
So aware that they hosted a session titled: “Harmattan in the MeeGo Community” at the MeeGo conference few months ago.

It is easy to understand why Elop decided to kill the MeeGo line of products.
Of course, this device will be disruptive for the industry.
But the only reason why this device will hit the market is because it will show the world what Nokia can do:

• Great hardware
• Advanced electronics
• Advanced UIs

These are the reasons why Elop did not cancel this project.
Because it puts Nokia back in a potential technology leadership role.
Enough to reassure the market.

So how does that impact the MeeGo ecosystem?
Hard to say today, we’ll be able to understand more on the long run.

It will definitely:

• Boost MeeGo awareness
• Give developers an opportunity to get access to “MeeGo compatible” hardware on which to start hacking and run MeeGo soon

That’s for the positive aspects.
But it might have couple of negative impacts:

• confuse the consumers
• break MeeGo’s promise of cross devices
• upset the developer community

I do hope that Stephen has thought things through and will be able to address these concerns straight from the beginning.
Please… not an other February 11th with the need of a second press conference to resolve the first one.

Image credit: Texrat