- Tweet This!
- Share this on Facebook
- Submit this to Binnacle
- Submit this to Wiggle me
- Share this on Wikio
- Share this on del.icio.us
- Add this to Google Bookmarks
- Send this page to Print Friendly
- Email this to to friend?
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Basic course of Blogs
Basic course of blogs View resides presentations from franciscopolo.
I have just come of giving a Course of two hours to approach the exciting world of the blogs. Since I have promised my pupils, here there is the presentation that I have used to explain myself. If you have had left some doubt or you want to know something you already know that you have only to write to me a mail.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Blogs for All
In 1860, in the first national census it was reflecting that only 19,9 % of the population could read and write. The literacy had been always a little reserved to the wealthy and powerful classes. It could not be otherwise: the reading is the door to the information and the information is to be able.
But in 1879 the Spanish Working Socialistic Party was born. Especially from the beginning of the XXth century, this party contributed to the cultural emancipation of the workers from the Houses of the People. In words of Justo Martínez Amutio, direct disciple of Pablo Iglesias and, deceased Franco, Senator of the Spanish socialist party for Valencia:
We knew the existence in Spain of these Houses of the People from boys, still almost children, when at the age of twelve we begin frequenting in our Logronio the Working Center and the school that in the same one existed, ruled by militants emphasized from diverse professions in the one that was completing the instruction and the education that we had received in the primary schools of the epoch. Between those who were helping there was good number of illiterate workpeople anxious to obtain the necessary conditions to know books and leaflets or newspapers of the deficient press of the epoch and to communicate to his relatives, almost always also illiterate, and to other partners quite what was allowed that the worker was reading and knew, that was not abundant and of quality, precisely.
In Spain, the Houses of the People settled not only to lodge and to assemble the workpeople and his resistance societies, but to fight the ignorance and the negligence that existed between them, which it was doing to them to be easy instruments of development, submissive to a morality and to a few absurd conventionalities that were imposed in that society retrógada and ignorant. They were established to announce to those who were coming to them his real condition and place in the society like free men and women, like hard-working that were producing and turning the resources of the nature into wealth of the nation, but of that they were not perceiving anything. This condition was announced to them and that the faculty to work was not a favor that they were receiving from his owners.
Today like yesterday, the Spanish socialist party keeps on fighting against a new illiteracy: the digitalis. There are great the persons who have not had up to recent epoch, or they do not have yet opportunity to approach the new technologies. Those who yes could have done it overcome in several decades of age the native digital ones. They know, how persons who share a vision of progress, which one comes a new time provoked by a technological change as important as there was in his moment the machine of steam or the television. But they need to learn. They want to learn.
For this motive, today, tens of Local Groups of the Spanish socialist party give courses of digital literacy for the whole territory. To bring over our biggest persons (and not so major) to the use of Internet and the New Technologies; helping to reduce this way the digital divide. One of them is the Socialistic Group of the District Center of Madrid, which has invited me to give one of these basic courses. A course for to learn to create and edit a blog.
I feel very honest.
Hernán Cortés 9 invited you to share the course with me today to 20:00h in the street.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
You have an appointment with … The Biblioburro
The last drops of the thunderstorm were still striking the sheets of the forest like the redlobar of the drums of the war he announces the danger. The guerrillas and the paramilitary ones were still controlling this part of the Colombian forest. Luis Soriano, a simple teacher of language, knew to the danger to which it was exhibited crossing with his two donkeys the bordering footpaths to the village of La Gloria. It was not mattering. Luis was determined to take the goods that he was keeping in the saddle-bags up to his destination …
East might have been the history of the day in which Luis decided to begin his project to take books to the children of the remote peoples of his region: the Biblioburro. Every weekend, for already ten years, Luis mounts in his donkeys - alpha and Beto - and down the sun covers kilometers loading storybooks, novels and encyclopedias to bring them over to groups of children who wait for him exasperate.
“It began like a need; later it turned into an obligation and later in a custom” Luis says. “Now, it is an institution”. An institution that was born of Luis's admiration for the force transformadora of the reading on the children. Reading books, the children contact, not only other countries, other cultures, other ways of thinking; but also with “rights, obligations and commitments”. The children learn that routes exist to solve the conflicts that do not happen for the violence and separate from her. A little especially important in this region of Colombia.
Today, Luis has managed to assemble more than 4.800 books and financing to create a small center that finally remained to half for lack of resources. The books that have more success are the stories for children but Alpha and Beto also loads with novels, books of medicine or the Dictionary of the Real Academy of the Language. Sometimes, the books that it never gives return. That happened with a sexual guide and the book Like water for chocolate of Laura Esquivel. Perhaps the loss that better Luis will remember is a Bridle of Paulo Coelho that a few bandits took on having held it up in the middle of a way and to leave bundle bundle to a tree on having seen that it had no money, only books.
Fortunately that did not wrinkle to Luis who keeps on covering every weekend the villages of the surroundings of La Gloria taking the reading to hundreds of children and girls. There is no payment that costs the work that this young teacher is doing although perhaps he feels sufficiently rewarded when he leaves a village and someone asks him: "When will it return, teacher?”
Reportage on Cyberactivism
A few weeks ago, Jordi Baró of the program of radio Polièdric de Catalunya Informació interviewed several persons to prepare a series of small reportages on Cyberactivism. Ricard Espelt, Ismael Nafría, Marc López and I myself we appear in different cuts. To see what seems to you; o)
Interview Catalunya Informacio
Protect them: Buy imitations!
Yesterday I was in Fake Market of Shanghai. Namely on the Market of the Falsifications. After entering they do not stop offering him after one buys a Rolex for a few yuanes or a purse Prada at laugh price. To walk between his shops is to see one without end of "Mini" Iphones (yes, Iphone Mini exists … in China!), games of the Wii, sneakers Paul Smith, scarves of famous Scotch pictures and Vuitones of all the models and colors. Quite false, clear it is.
I remembered of what in the Free book: The future of a radical price of Paul Anderson (#recomendado) was written on the concept of the copy and the intellectual property in the Asian giant: here in China the intellectual property is free. The only one pays for the things that he buys but not for the ideas that exist behind them. What in Occident him can look like to many a scandal is had by it, contrary to what often they tell us, a few causes and a few consequences more than subtle …
In China the false copy has several causes: it is related to the situation of a developing country, with a quite lax legal system and, at the same time, with a conception confucianist of the life in which the knowledge is reached by means of the imitation of the teachers and, therefore, copying is something socially recognized.
Namely what in Occident is considered to be a crime for which a person can spend in the jail more time that for giving a drubbing to a person in the street, in China is assumed by full naturalness and, in fact, he thinks about how to give answer to the need for some segments of the population that cannot allow themselves acquiring the original products. It is a question of a form of understanding the social justice.
Since it is foreseeable, in economic terms, the proliferation of false copies provokes a “effect I replace”. Namely the people stop buying authentic things to buy the same copied and much cheaper object. Nevertheless, at the same time, the distribution of these false copies also provokes the “effect stimulus”, for which the products of a certain mark come to the knowledge of the population that in other places they them acquire in his authentic version. The question is: Which of these two effects is stronger? Is destroyed the market of the luxurious objects in China or on the contrary is it growing?
The reality is that the market has not been destroyed but it has prepared it for a consumers' emergent middle class tide. In accordance with Anderson:
The revenue per cápita there is more that doubled in small stone in the last 10 years, happening from 663 dollars in 1996 to 1.537 in 2007, and it gives few slowing down samples. At present there are approximately 250.000 millionaires in China, and the number grows every day. Today, China (including Hong Kong) is the third world market of legitimate articles. From an economic point of view, the piracy (sic). it has stimulated a demand major than the one that it has satisfied.
Despite what it could seem, ésto it is not new at all. The idea of that the imitations can help to sell better originals was already formulated like the Paradox of the Piracy. We might say then that in China the motorbike is: “It protects the creators buy imitations!” Not only it is surprising but, also, it works.
The discussion is opened, if billion six that we form the planet buy and sell false copies …: What must we do? To copy or not to copy?
Friday, March 12, 2010
You have an appointment with … the Popular culture China
If you want a year of prosperity, cultivate grains; if you want ten years of prosperity cultivate trees; but if you want hundred years of prosperity, cultivate persons.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
We deserve ours something better
Some of us, independently of the color of our ideas, believe in a way of doing different politics in which the preparation, the rigor and the respect to the institutions are a real values and not mere rhetoric.
Yesterday, Maria Dolores de Cospedal made clear that is in our opposite end.
We deserve ours something better.
VideoSábado: Mar de Bolsillo
The principal tank of “Kuroshio Sea“ shuts 7.500 cubic meters of water up and has the second biggest panel of acrylic crystal of the world, measuring 8,2 for 22,5 meters with a 60 centimeters thickness. We go, a pocket sea. Attention to the shark whale.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Have you no clients? Construct them!
He imagines that you want to tackle in Internet. Instead of developing a product and seeing if the people use it and buy it: do not you believe that it would be better to ask the people what problem it has really and to do something to solve it?
The Development of Clients or Customer Developement is a skill that some Startups uses to design and testear every part of his business plan. How is this Customer Developement executed it changes according to the type of company. Steve Blank is one of the persons who better has explained this way of creating a startup in his book The four steps to epiphany. Nevertheless his scheme is based on the example of a company desarrolladora of software. Now, Ash Maurya, CEO of WiredReach, has adapted the Blank work to the creation of a Startup of Internet. Bearing in mind that many social entrepreneurs we are taking the network as a basic camp, I believe that it is interesting that we throw an eye.
The first step of Customer Developement is the Discovery of the Clients or Customer Discovery. For a Startup of Internet, the intention of Customer Discovery is to identify the problem that we are going to try to settle, define the suitable viable minimal product that we must construct and testear the business model.
Let's see, considering bird, the flow of clients' discovery and, later, every step separately:
Click to increase the image
1. He writes your hypotheses
Before putting itself to the test what you believe that you know, you have to put it in writing. It is normal starting working and trying to shorten this step but it is a question in fact of an exercise that is worth while. In this paragraph, scarcely there are changes with regard to the raised for Blank. Most of the hypotheses that raises us in his book they fit well in an Internet startup.
2. Put yourself to the test the problem 
In what it refers to Customer Discovery, it continues and there is nothing better than “to go out to the street” Maurya says. In the Internet startups it is usual creating a page of beginning of pre-throwing he gives birth to gather e-mail addresses and to measure the generated interest. Although it is encouraging to have interested users, in little occasions this information serves to know something about the problem that they have and we try to resolve, does not say to us who are, what is what it would be necessary to develop first or how much can recover for it. To insert forms on the beginning pages pre-throwing can be an alternative but debits of that time to ask you if you like refilling these forms …
Really, to construct a good beginning page is difficult. Unless you have a lot of information of your clients or you are your own client, to advance without speaking with the clients is slow and painful since the only thing that you are doing is to put a page along with other one with very little initial traffic for testearlas. Seemingly, to look for the people to have a conversation of 15 minutes with you seems to be a lot of more work, nevertheless it provides more confirmed knowledge than the information that you could start to your web statistics.
During the “Presentation of the Problem” in these conversations, first it synthesizes the three biggest problems and later he is quiet and listens. Ésto is key so that the matter works. And it works because this is not the process for which we want that the clients validate or design a solution based in “the clients do not know what they want”. It works because you are not trying convercerles. On the contrary, they are they those who try to convince you in what his real problem is. When in your conversations someone speaks apasionádamente “about his” the fact is that you have met on the key of the problem.
A way of structuring this “Presentation of the Problem” can be this one:
3. He constructs your MVP1. He states which are three principal problems
2. Ask the client to prioritize these problems and to identify other priority problems
3. It achieves that the client describes you as they solve to today the problem
4. It describes very briefly as you would settle the problem
5. Ask the client what he thinks about your way of solving the problem
6. Ask him if it would use your solution if it was free
7. Ask him if he would pay for her of costing a million euros (and if he says to you that not: ask him how much he would pay!)
8. Ask him to say to you of other persons who might be interested in listening to you
The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) or Viable Minimal Product is the version simpler than you want to do and that allows to put it in funcionamento. The Internet startups need to concentrate on this small set of necessary characteristics to be able to learn of the contributions of his first and most staunch users. After the first confrontation with the reality (reality check), you should have a list of three problems arranged by priority to develop your MVP. Maurya underlines the importance of which the MVP should be something similar to a "demo". According to his criterion, it is difficult that the clients visualize your solution without seeing it. The pantallazos and the mock-ups can serve only if a demonstration version is out of our scope (this is my case, for example).
4. Put yourself to the test your MVP 
With your built MVP, you have to go and it put itself to the test again with your first interviewees and some more that you must add to the list. A way of structuring this “Presentation of the Product” might be the following one:
5. To advance or to Retire1. He affirms the problem
2. It uses the demo to count a history on as your solution solves the problem
3. There proves that thing about again the price that we saw earlier
4. He asks for references of other possible clients
5. It ends with a call to the action: to be discharged or to obtain the commitment to be discharged
The last step in Customer Discovery is the simplest and at the same time the one that needs more honesty with one himself. It is necessary to sum everything learned up and to decide if there has come the moment to advance or to retire.
If we advance, we go on to the following step: Customer Validation or Clients' Ratification … but this will be an object of another post.
Anyway, since you can see, this exposition is interesting not only for Internet entrepreneurs but also for social entrepreneurs who look in the network for the way of starting his projects, since also the social entrepreneurs must look over the viability of what they are trying to construct. The social entrepreneurs, therefore, we must wonder, contrast and re-design the times that are necessary our projects in order to which our emprendimiento solves problems. Problems really.
You have an appointment with … Cristóbal Columbus
Hello, I am Cristóbal Columbus and I come from the mental hospital with a group of madmen to mount a company.
With these words there presented before himself this entrepreneur (whose name really is Cristóbal Columbus and that has had the deference of calling his son Juan) before the Mayor of Olot. His target was to start a social company to give employment a group of persons with mental difficulties of the mental hospital at which it had been employed in the previous years. Today, The Fageda gives employment to all the persons with some disability of the region of the Garrotxa and he is the third producer of yogures of Catalonia.
Yesterday, who we were in Innosfera we could be inspired thanks to his history. Today I offer you here another intervention of his in the one that, to big features, counts his long journey and the sense of what it is doing.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
To be a leader means not to be a girl
Let's remember what the established powers have taught us: that the compassion clouds the thought, which intervenes in our way; that the vulnerability is a weakness, which we must not entrust in our emotions and which supposes that you do not have to take the things to breast (which is one of my favorite things).
I believe that the entire world has been raised not to be a girl. How do we raise the boys? What does mean to be a boy? To be a boy means, truly, not to be a girl. To be a man means not to be a girl. To be a woman means not to be a girl. To be strong means not to be a girl. To be a leader means not to be a girl.
Sincerely, I believe that to be a girl is a little so powerful that we have had to educate everybody it not to be.
Eve Ensler
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)