Release 4.0

Saturday, November 01, 2003

and now from the Budapest airport
I love providing tech support in airport lounges; it makes me feel so smart! I'm here in the Budapest airport lounge using properly workig WiFi after two days of frustrations with various half-working systems, including the most annoying hotel system I have ever used at the Budapest SOfitel. (When it was a Hyatt they had WIFi that worked perfectly; now they have some godforsaken system that - says a friend - detects you are not French and makes it tough for you. You have to reboot to start it, and then again each time you close your browser, (inadvertently) pull out the cable, put it on standby...

Meanwhile, my own mail server is down and I can't get into my friend Eric's hotmail account (can't blame the Sofitel for that!?!), so I've been sending meeting follow-up e-mails by using my new LinkedIn account and inviting in the people I partlcularly liked. I'm using LinkedIn both because I'm hoping it will be useful, *and* because I want to write about it for Release 1.0. It's interesting to observe my own behavior...but my flight is now boarding. SO please, anyone with experience with any of these platforms - LinkedIn, Spoke , Contact Network, let me know. I hope to be up again soon at edyson@edventure.com. Bon voygage!
posted by Esther 5:17 AM

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

I'm sitting here in a conference room on the second floor of the Marriott Grand in Moscow, enjoying the hotspot... And I'm realizing how hard it is to maintain a blog without frequent connectivity. I have WiFi in the apartment I'm staying in too, but by the time I get home I'm exhausted. Better to do it sitting on the sidelines at a meeting, near to the power outlet...

The meeting I'm at is for Luxoft, an outsourcing company pitching itself to the press, both US and Russian. "You're telling us business is great here and sucks [paraphrase] in the West, so why are you selling in the West?" asks one journalist. good question!

but the answer, of course, is that hard times make customers smarter buyers...and therefore they will buy from Luxoft.... [disclosure: I'm on the board of Luxoft's parent company, IBS Group.]

It's a pleasure to see the development in this country...even as the political tides continue to go in and out... I remember when it was a challenge to make a phone call here, and now I'm using WiFI...!!

Two days ago I went to see Yandex, Russia's answer to Google... THey are doing interesting things, and see the social-network aspect of links clearly... (And like Google, they are discreet about their technology!) Meanwhile, Russian radio is reporting Google's imminent IPO - small world!

posted by Esther 2:09 AM