Stritar's chronolog

Cool Slovenian brands, part 3: The rise of the Slovenian hardware startup

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 08:55:53 GMT

I've been writing about Slovenian startups for years now. In a post I published in the beginning of 2012, I've highlighted a few Slovenian companies there were able to gain global traction, and as you can see, all of them are focused on software. About a year later, I wrote on the topic again, and this time, the spotlight was on a new generation of companies, which were fueled by Kickstarter and the crowdfunding movement. These businesses were able to find their market with niche products that were interesting to the public mostly because of their innovative design. This year, I'll focus on the third generation of Slovenian technology startups, represented by companies that were able establish something that actually seems so logical today: the rise of the Slovenian hardware startup.

This is basic evolution. Slovenians know how to make great software. We were always known to have had exceptional designers. Besides, there are plenty of outstanding engineers from previous and current generations that were able to produce global success stories with high-tech products such as exhaust systems, ultra-light planes, solar panels and even sailing yachts. Put the three together, and what you get, is a modern hardware startup. Because most hardware startups that want to compete globally, require these three components:

awesome software (1st generation)
awesome design (2nd generation)
awesome hardware (3rd generation)

Currently, there are at least 16 hot Slovenian hardware startups, who managed to reach global audience, receive funding via Kickstarter or investors, or have great potential to disrupt specific industries. Most are focused on uprising technologies, such as the Internet of Things and Quantified Self. Others are simple gadgets that help fuel the mobile revolution. All of them are focused on niche markets that did not exist five years ago.

I'm really glad Slovenian entrepreneurs were able to focus on these new fields, because the modern hardware market is not something anyone can compete in. You need specific skills from many fields, especially software, design and engineering. And Slovenians are exceptional in all of them. This is why this third generation of Slovenian startups perhaps has the biggest potential of them all. The community is strong as ever, heck, some are already joining forces in making cool mashups. And they need your help as well: know them, like them, support them, buy them!

Here they are, the hottest Slovenian hardware startups, together with a few highligths of their stories so far:

Beezinga

Beezinga is an early warning analytical system about events in remote apiaries. Beezinga - Google analytics for beekeepers.
Highlights: Wins ImagineCup 2013 (Apr '13), gets covered by TechCrunch (Jul '13) and others (Jul '13).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~500
Links: beezinga.com, @beezingahive, FB: BeezingaHive

Bellabeat

Hear, visualize and share your unborn baby's heartbeat with our pocket size heart rate monitor and a mobile app.
Highlights: Joins Y Combinator (Feb '14), gets covered by ABC News (Mar '14), raises additional $4.5M (May '14), introduces 3 new products (Sep '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~9.700
Links: bellabeat.com, @GetBellaBeat, FB: bellabeat

CarLock

CarLock is an affordable and easy to use solution for monitoring your car's location.
Highlights: Joins StartLabs (Jan '14), gets featured in Auto Express Magazine (Apr '14) and Top Gear Magazine (Jun '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~6.150
Links: carlock.co, @Carlock6, FB: carlock

Chipolo

Chipolo™ is a Bluetooth item finder for iPhone & Android. And it comes in 9 gorgeous colors.
Highlights: Raises almost $300k on Kickstarter (Nov '13), appears on TechCrunch (Nov '13) and TheNextWeb (Dec '13), is available on Amazon UK (Jun '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~4.300
Links: chipolo.net, @Chipolo, FB: ChipoloTM

CubeSensors

CubeSensors are small, cordless and connected devices that help you maintain a healthy and productive indoor environment.
Highlights: Wins TechCrunch hardware battlefield (Jan '14), raises $700k (Jun '14), appears on HardWired (Jul '14), is shipping from stock (Sep '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~2.000
Links: cubesensors.com, @CubeSensors, FB: cubesensors

Daisy.si

Daisy.si is an amazing new independent portable all-in-one design smart plant watering device.
Highlights: Raises $26k on Indiegogo (Jun '14), gets covered by multiple sources (Apr '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): N/A
Links: daisy.si

enolyse

Platform for family winemakers to improve fermentation and save time.
Highlights: Wins start:Cloud 2013 (Oct '13), becomes Slovenian start-up 2014 finalist (May '14), Joins LAUNCHhub (May '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~650
Links: enolyse.com, @enolyse, FB: enolyse

FlyKly

FlyKly Street Smart. Smart tools for smarter urban transportation.
Highlights: Gets covered by Engadget (Oct '13), CNET (Oct '13) and others, Raises $700k on Kickstarter (Oct '13), appears on PopSci (Feb '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~23.500
Links: flykly.com, @flykly, FB: flyklybike

H2O-Pal

The Hydration Tracker That Works Perfectly With Your Smartphone.
Highlights: Gets covered by TechCrunch (Oct '13), appears on CES (Jan '14), becomes Slovenian start-up of 2014 (May '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~5.300
Links: h2opal.com, @H2OPal, FB: h2opal

Lumu

Lumu is a light meter for your smartphone. It helps you create powerful memories anytime, anywhere.
Highlights: Gets covered by The Verge (May '13) and TheNextWeb (Jun '14), Raises $244k on Kickstarter (Jul '13).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~6.250
Links: lu.mu, @Lumu, FB: lumu.meter

MESI (Qualcomm Tricoder XPRIZE)

Our solution is to bring the doctor into your home. It consists of a wristband, wearable shield, mobile app and 4 modules.
Highlights: Becomes finalist of XPRIZE (Aug '14), appears on TheNextWeb (Aug '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~800
Homepage: mesimedical.com, @MESImedical, FB: MESIdoo

Monolyth

Monolyth is internet connected device for your AC unit, optimizing air temperature & quality for your comfort and energy savings.
Highlights: Gets covered by Digital trends (Jul '14) and others (Jul '14), tries with Indiegogo (Aug '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~650
Homepage: monolyth.co, @MonolythCo, FB: monolyth.co

OIVO

Oivo is the smallest charger on the go for iPhone. No cables, no AC power, no fuss. Just add AA batteries.
Highlights: Gets covered by TheNextWeb (Sep '14), starts great on Kickstarter (Sep '14) but cancels campaign to reiterate (Sep '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~1.300
Links: oivo.pw, @OivoPW, FB: oivo.pw

Red Pitaya

Red Pitaya turns your smartphone, tablet or PC into many amazing instruments.
Highlights: Gets covered by TechCrunch (Jul '14), raises $256k on Kickstarter (Sep '13), appears elsewhere (Dec '13).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~1.900
Links: redpitaya.com, @red_pitaya_, FB: redpitayaspark

Swich

A unique Smartphone Wireless Charger. Sophisticated energy transmission and elegant design in sustainable materials.
Highlights: Raises $45k on Kickstarter (Jul '14), appears on GigaOm (Jul '14), FastCo (Jul '14) and ZDNet (Jul '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~1.600
Links: swichwicharger.com, @swichwicharger, FB: Swich.wireless

Visionect

We're deploying the next generation of digital signage by applying electronic paper where glaring, energy consuming and heavily wired LCDs can't do the job.
Highlights: Raises $1,5m (Sep '12), gets covered by TechCrunch (Feb '14), launches development kit (Feb '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~2.000
Links: visionect.com, @visionect, FB: visionect

Interested in more stories about Slovenian startups? Check out this magazine.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Check out the complete Cool Slovenian brands series.

The end of recession or the coolest Slovenian billboard of 2014?

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 07:41:51 GMT

A few days ago, a billboard captured my attention. Actually, we're talking about many billboards, since this metallurgy company called Bučar put them all over Ljubljana. The weird thing is, they are using them to recruit new employees. Wait a minute, there's something wrong with this picture! While everybody is aggressively trying to sell us stuff we don't really need, these guys are actually looking for new workers with billboards? In a country with an unemployment rate of 13%? Is this thing for real?

Let's try to understand what just happened here... The company itself seems to be the development of a capable entrepreneur Drago Bučar, whose business is growing like mad. Judging the billboard's design, I would guess the campaign is not a professional act, but rather something done internally, without much involvement from a marketing agency. But that doesn't change the fact the effect of the billboard is brilliant. While trying to find 10 new workers (as posted on their website), I believe Bučar actually managed to produce one of the most effective branding campaigns of this year in Slovenia, which already granted them an apperance on the national radio. Everybody wants to know who these guys are, and they were targeting somebody completely different. Can you believe the irony?

Of course, there is always the possibility that this billboard is a work of a mastermind genius, whose plan was to capture attention with false pretense, but I don't think so. This thing looks legit, and it's always nice to hear about prosperous companies from Slovenia. Good luck, kick ass!

Please help me curate a magazine about Slovenian startups

Sat, 01 Mar 2014 12:07:41 GMT

I don't know if you've heard, but the past year has been very generous to Slovenian startups. A new generation of companies like Layer, CubeSensors, Databox and Povio introduced innovative services in the technology sector, while products like FlyKly, Lumu, Musguard and Chipolo rocked Kickstarter with their fashionably designed solutions. If you take into account the veterans that have been around for years, you can see are slowly reaching a point where it's becoming hard to mention everybody worth mentioning. The scale of the Slovenian startup ecosystem can be understood by checking out this infographic provided by Yougo.

The supporting infrastructure and community that's emerged around these startups is thriving as well, and I'm proud to be a part of it. Even though I've started working on new things, I still don't have a huge success story of my own to tell, but I'm doing my best to support those who do. By spreading the word, blogging about it here and on other blogs (Whiteboard, Inventures), by collecting news about great solutions and people. And this is where I need your help.

Magazine

You've probably heard about Flipboard. Their new service offers anyone to create his/her own magazine, which combines articles from various sources into a single journal, and the results are pretty neat. By now, I've managed to collect more that 150 articles about Slovenian startups, which cover the following companies (some have already ceased existing, and some have pivoted into a different brand): Azumio, BabyWatch, Beezinga, CallWith.me, CarLock, Celtra, Chipolo, CubeSensors, Databox / Zeppelin, Dawn of Play (Dream of Pixels), DORA, DoubleRecall, eBeat, Equaleyes / 2ndsight, Fieldoo, Flaviar, Flowr, H20-Pal, Iddiction, Iptvbeat, Layer, LLStol, Lumu, Lyst, Koofr, JollyDeck, Mediately, Motiviti, Musguard, Ondu, Oust.me, Outfit7, Peekster, Povio, Red Pitaya, Toonia, Toshl, Vert, Visionect, Vox.io, Xvida, Zemanta. Check it out.

While I'm trying to make this magazine as relevant as possible, there are surely many others I have missed, and here's where you can come in. What I am looking for are other interesting articles about Slovenian startups in English (so non-Slovenians can understand them as well), preferably published by foreign media. I am also looking for other successful startups and go-getting people which I've missed, so I can put them on this list. All of this will help me keep the magazine fresh and up-to-date, creating an online news hub accessible to anyone.

So, if you know something, ping me on Twitter, contact me or make a comment below. Become a part of the ecosystem, our startups surely need all the exposure they can get. Thanks.

https://flipboard.com/section/startup-slovenia-bt6WAR

Cool Slovenian brands, part 2: The stars of Kickstarter

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 22:25:28 GMT

Kickstarter got my attention back in 2010, when Diaspora successfully raised $50k. This is the amount they required to develop an open source alternative to Facebook, where people would have full control over their posts and multimedia. It was a good idea, but too complex to easily implement, and the guys never managed to make it fully work. But there are other projects who did manage go big, making Kickstarter and crowd-founding an everyday thing. Today, numerous ideas, products, and even movies are financed this way, while statistics tell an amazing story: in 2012, Kickstarter pledges topped $300 million.

Besides getting financial resources which help people to build their products, crowd-funding has many other interesting benefits. For young entrepreneurs, this platform provides an option to validate their ideas which can help them reach product / market fit. They can start selling their prototype or MVP before they have a fully developed product. The (viral) marketing component is important as well, great Kickstarter projects spread around the (social) Web in minutes. People who get involved in something, have a strong tendency to become advocates and share information about it. These are just a few reasons why there are so many individuals and startups who are choosing such approaches to enter new markets.

I'm very glad to see crowd-funding being used in Slovenia as well. Since 2012, when LLSTOL managed to raise $18k+ on Kickstarter, other projects used the same strategy. In the last month alone, we've seen two new superstars emerge, bringing the total number of successfully funded Slovenian Kickstarter projects to 4 (two of those are still ongoing, the third hasn't reached the goal yet). We must mention two other projects (My name is Janez Janša and Namazi na mizo) which managed to find funding elsewhere.

LLSTOL

Time: Aug-Sep 2012
Received: $21,956 ($18,000 goal)
The LLSTOL (LL Chair) is a modular piece of furniture you can use in many ways; as a chair, a table, shelving or a drawing board. These multi-functional properties make it a very interesting product, which enabled LLSTOL to get featured in many local and international blogs. Thumbs up for paving the way for other Slovenian projects on Kickstarter!

XVIDA Boomerang

Time: Nov-Dec 2012
Received: $50,667 ($40,000 goal)
The all-in-one iPad stand went a step further, with a funding goal of $40k. Again, we are seeing a product with a modular structure, with a variety of beautifully designed holders for different occasions. Boomerang managed to turn quite a few heads, and is already shipping.

ONDU

Time: May-Jun 12th 2013 - STILL ACTIVE
Received: $92,876 ($10,000 goal)
Currently the most successful Slovenian Kickstarter project, ONDU pinhole cameras already raised more than $90k, out of $10k required. I like this project a lot as well, since it offers a beautiful, simple and unique product, made from local materials, by an enthusiast who likes to work with wood.

Marko B.'s story

Time: May-Jun 20th 2013 - STILL ACTIVE
Received: $1,843 ($20,000 goal)
Marko Baloh is an ultra-marathon cyclist, who he has written an autobiography about training for one of the hardest races ever, RAAM. With the help of Kickstarter, he will try to translate and publish that book in English as well. Hopefully, he can get a bit more exposure that will help him reach that goal.

Musguard

Time: May-Jun 22th 2013 - STILL ACTIVE
Received: $25,323 ($10,000 goal)
The foldable rear bycicle fender is simply awesome, and it weighs only 35 grams. The hipsters will probably take this product for their own, and thanks to Kickstarter, we will be seeing it in many colors. Musguard is one of the few projects who made it to Gizmodo.

Other projects

There are other Slovenian projects who were financed or marketed with the help of crowd-funding as well:

My name is Janez Janša: A documentary movie about three artists who changed their names to Janez Janša managed to raise more than €7k on Verkami back in April 2012, which makes this film the first successfully crowd-founded project in Slovenia!
Pelicon Beer: While Pelicon beer didn't manage to raise $100,000 to expand their production line, their Kickstarter campaign was successful anyways; they gained so much exposure, they will be opening the brewery on their own anyways.
Namazi na mizo: The cook book about different spreads managed to raise enough money to be actually published in real life. This was achieved locally, by accepting donations.

Your turn

I admit I gave the projects that used Kickstarter a bit more weight than others. I strongly feel that such cool ideas should try to aim for global markets, and Kickstarter is the platform that can help them achieve just that. Besides, there are three Slovenian projects who are still active on Kickstarter at the time of writing, and I think they need any help they can get.

It's fascinating that pretty much all internationally successful Slovenian crowd-founded campaigns are about real-life products with unique and creative designs. Slovenia definitely has to start actively developing this industry, I know so many talented designers around here, and there is a lot of legacy from the previous ages. These projects deserve to join other Slovenian success stories, don't you agree? What are you waiting for, become a part of the story, apply with your project or back someone up!

(Special thanks to alivea for compiling the list which helped me write this.)

UPDATE (23.6.2013): In the mean time, Lumu Light Meter managed to set a new standard, reaching its $20k goal in hours, and is already at $140k+ after six days. This is already the fourth Kickstarter project in cooperation with Niko Klanšek (after LLSTOL, Ondu and Musguard), and Lumu is so cool it got TechCrunched!

Check out the complete Cool Slovenian brands series.

Thinking about Silicon Valley? Did you hear about the Slovenian / Slavic startup house?

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:41:17 GMT

I can't believe it's been more than half a year since I went to the Valley. Good times, a lot has happened there, even more has happened since. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are a place every developer and / or entrepreneur should visit at least once, to get the idea about how things work on a larger scale. To receive another orientation point, to think outside the box. All roads in technology lead there, and if you are planning on ever doing something major, this is definitely the place to be. Startups, developers, investors, enthusiasts, geeks, technology corporations, everybody's there. Good news: it's easier than ever for you to be a part of it too.

At the time of my trip, I stayed at vox.io's Bay Area HQ, which has evolved to a full-blown startup house since then. The loft was simply calling for this expansion, since there's room for at least 10 people to stay there at once. It was packed with entrepreneurs at that time as well, but financing such a place is simply too much for a single startup to bear. And since there are so many disruptive technology companies in Slovenia, some of them decided to help, recently transforming vox.io's into a real Slovenian / Slavic Startup house. Slavic, because the initiative is also supported by a startup from Croatia, which means that the Slovenian startup ecosystem is connecting even stronger with other startup communities from the Adriatic region. Respect to the guys from ShoutEm, Toshl, Zemanta, vox.io and Hekovnik, who are partners in the project!

Work hard, party harder, networking included. More pictures here and here.

I'm not fully acquainted with the criteria and terms for staying in the Startup house, but this is surely the easiest, most inexpensive and welcoming way for Slovenian technology freaks to discover San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Don't worry, these guys are really nice and helpful, so don't be afraid to contact them for more information.

The Slovenian / Slavic startup house. More pictures here and here.

Thinking about going? Here's the deal: going there is really easy, you just need to decide to go. Making something out of your visit is really hard, but you can get prepared, besides, you can learn a bit from my adventures. Bottom line, if you feel the need to go, you should go, also because you've never had a better opportunity, and it's not perfectly clear for how long this opportunity will stay available.

So here's what you can do: think about what you have and what you are trying to achieve. Prepare your pitch, pimp your sites and Linkedin profile, plan your visits and schedule your meetings. Open your mind. And just simply go. San Francisco is a crazy place, and even if things turn out totally different than expected (which they probably will), I promise you, visiting the Valley will be an unforgettable experience. Don't miss it.

http://ssh.si

A case study in agile development: the algorithm for Ljubljana Realtime's event discovery

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:01:16 GMT

When we started working on Ljubljana Realtime, we decided to approach it in an agile way. Amongst others, we wanted to use a few interesting lean concepts such as rapid development, Minimum Viable Product and the Build - Measure - Learn iterations. Less than two months later, the results are in, and they are very pleasing. The MVP in the shape of an activity map was developed in a few weeks, only to show there is a lot of social noise which will somehow need to be taken under control. But that's currently low priority, since the first pivot is already taking place, slowly shifting the focus from the rich map application towards an event discovery algorithm and stream. That's where I see the most potential of Ljubljana Realtime, and in the last weeks, that's where the most work was done.

Launch

Ljubljana Realtime event discovery engine uses Foursquare trending venues and geo-tagged posts from Twitter, Instagram and Flickr to discover what's happening in real life. At least 6 people checked-in on Foursquare or two different people tweeting or posting photos in a single hour could mean something is going on. These events are posted to Twitter and Facebook, with links to the posts. A few versions of this algorithm were already deployed, each one solving new problems, resulting in a few micro Build - Measure - Learn cycles in a single month.

Iteration 1: Foursquare, no duplicates

The first version of the stream (bot) was a simple one, at that point it was meant to work as promotion for the map. The only thing it knew how to do was to wait a few hours until it posted the same thing again. I think Foursquare checkins are alive for three hours, so if a trending venue was still trending after that time, new people had to checkin and the venue was still buzzing.

Problem: Plain, no real added value.

Iteration 2: Adding activity from other sources

When we were trying to make some space on the crowded map, we started grouping posts from Twitter and Instagram by the nearest Foursquare venue, which meant having less boxes on the screen. This turned out to be quite a complex thing to do properly, but it was worth the effort. On only a few occasions, one venue would have multiple posts in a single hour, and in most cases, that meant something was happening there. This provided another very interesting potential for the activity stream. Actually, it made the stream bigger than the map could ever be.

(I love it when such things happen, when you are trying to solve a problem, and it turns out there is much more hidden behind the resolution.)

Groupping posts by a venue. Did Ljubljana Realtime just discover an athletic meeting taking place?

The next problem: Activity in some venues, specially generic ones such as "Ljubljana" would trigger the stream almost every day. Similarly, some large venues, such as supermarkets, would be trending too many times on Foursquare.

Iteration 3: Balancing the posts

The algorithm needed an update, which would lower the amount of times when a venue would be recognized as an event, either on Foursquare or on other channels. At first I though about an upgrade which would set the amount of people or tweets needed to trigger the "event discovered" action for a specific venue. This would enable us to reduce the importance of some venues, but it would also require manual work. Luckily, we came up with another brilliant idea: the more times a venue is trending, the harder it is for it to be trending again, at least for the next few days. Automatic balancing.

Venues with the most discovered events. Generic ones, besides massive places, such as train stations, cinemas, squares and shopping centers are too dominating.

The next problem: At this point, we have launched other test instances of Ljubljana Realtime (Maribor, Zagreb and Zurich), to see how the system behaves in other environments. Some cities are bigger, some are smaller, which means they produce different amount of activity. Besides, different services are used differently in different cultures.

Iteration 4: Supporting local instances

Foursquare is big in Croatia (Zagreb), but not so much in Switzerland (Zurich), which means Zagreb Realtime's stream had a lot of Foursquare trending posts, while Zurich's had a lot of "Increased activity on Twitter and Instagram" posts. It was obvious that local instances needed different algorithms. While having an option to set the amounts which would trigger the post on a specific venue would be too much to moderate, having the same logic on a specific region could work. And it does. Zagreb now needs more people checked-in on Foursquare, while Zurich needs more unique people tweeting or sharing photos.

Number of discovered events by type (Foursquare vs. Twitter + Instagram) on each day. Foursquare trending venues are dominating Zagreb, while social streams are dominating Zurich Realtime.

The next problem: The basic algorithm requires two different people to tweet/post from the same location in one hour. In case of Zurich, this amount was set to three, but it turns out this situation happens rarely, around 10 times fewer than with two people, or only two to three times a day. Obviously not enough.

Iteration 5: Improving the "increased activity" weight

You can only have a whole amount of people tweeting in the past hour. Two or three. In our case, we needed something in the range of 2 1/2. The modified solution adds the number of posts divided by ten to the number of users, which means that currently, at least two people making at least three posts in an hour will determine a trending event in Zurich. This is not a perfect solution from the event discovery view, but it does what urgently needed to be done: prevent having too many tweets in the stream.

The next problem: we currently have four Twitter accounts that tweet events for these four cities. Our target was for each of them to make around 10 - 15 tweets a day, which seems like a number that is not spam. But how can a person see which of these events is THE event?

Iteration 6: Going super venue level 2

The latest version of the algorithm now recognizes two levels of events. An event (mostly 6 people on Foursquare, mostly 2 different people tweeting), and an outstanding event (around 12 people on Foursquare, around 4 people tweeting). Our goal was to make this super event happen only once a few days, on rare occasions two times per day, and it has already happened a few times.

Sometimes super events happen, with tens of posts in a single hour, such as the one for Philips Fashion week. These events definitely require more exposure.

The next iterations

At this point, I'm very satisfied with how the algorithm works, even though a few other modifications need to be done (specially to support different days of week specifics and behavior). By measuring what is happening, learning from that information and building the next releases based on that knowledge, the activity stream logic has come a long way from the initial version. Measuring is crucial, and rarely we have went to such extent to enable this in the widest way possible (e.g. the update to balancing the posts based on the previous events would be trivial by itself, but we wanted to log things that would happen but didn't happen, besides things that actually happened).

These cycles of Build - Measure - Learn can be a lot hard work, but they provide great results, which are also very fun and rewarding. Some people simply need to see how deep the rabbit hole is. Do you have any other interesting cases or experience with this approach?

Discover what's happening in Ljubljana in real-time

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:37:29 GMT

I've always been a big fan of the power of the crowds. When a mass of people can achieve much more than a few skilled individuals can. And ever since we've started playing with Twitter's API, I've been think about the possibilities of this magnificent data source. Besides Twenity, we've done a few other Twitter mashups like Twitter walls, but this wasn't enough. We wanted something more - geolocation. Displaying information on a map in real-time. But since there aren't that many tweets equipped with GPS coordinates, we needed to include other services for more diversity as well. Which we did, and Ljubljana Realtime, a social event discovery application, was born.

Launch

Data and services

Ljubljana Realtime currently feeds on four different services: Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram and Flickr. It would be great if we could add other services as well, but Facebook doesn't allow public geo search, Google+ doesn't support geo search at all, and other services either aren't appropriate or don't offer an API which would allow us to get their data.

These four services are visited once a minute, and all posts in a radius of around 5km from Ljubljana city center are found: tweets, Foursquare trending venues, pictures from Instagram and Flickr. A variety of information created with different purposes on different occasions.

The area covered by Ljubljana Realtime. Different services require different searches, based on maximum allowed radius.

The application

These posts are displayed on a map, which was the original idea for the prototype. The last hours of posts on Google Maps, which can be zoomed and filtered at will. But the whole display felt a bit chaotic (still does), since there are many posts in vicinity of one another. That's why we knew we need to group similar posts, and we did this by the post's nearest Foursquare venue. Then a funny thing happened: this simple solution enabled something magnificent, something that could be much bigger than the whole posts-on-a-map application.

Anyways, since geo location is heavily connected with mobile devices, the application is responsive and fully compatible with most smartphones. Perhaps there will be native apps as well at one point.

The stream

Back to the magnificent. Originally, a Twitter bot was intended to come with the application (I love making those), which would tweet all trending foursquare venues to promote the application. But this seemed a bit lame, we needed to add something cooler. Something that would add more value and detect an event before a 4sq trending venue would happen. This is where the mentioned grouping of posts by venue came in handy, and the logic is as follows: if two or more people publish form the same venue in a single hour, this could very well mean something's happening there. And in most occasions, this turned out to be true. Read further for more details.

Discovering an event before a trending venue on Foursquare.

The event discovery stream is available on Twitter and Facebook.

The problems

Besides unstable APIs, the biggest problem we are currently facing is the geolocation itself. GPS chips in mobile phones are often not accurate enough, so people are located tens or hundreds of meters from their actual location. Combine that with the amount of Foursquare venues out there (imagine tall buildings), and you can understand Ljubljana Realtime sometimes has problems with connecting a post to a venue. Not to mention duplicated venues. We've eliminated some of this effect by only using venues with a certain amount of checkins and different users, but this will surely be the greatest challenge the project is facing in the future.

An event which is not.

The results

Problems aside, in most cases, Ljubljana Realtime event discovery works great. In a week or so since it's online, it discovered many events that were happening in Ljubljana (night run to the Castle, an athletic meeting, one of the first iPhones 5 in Slovenia, a public garage sale in park Tabor, etc.), and on many occasions, it discovered these events before a trending venue happened on Foursquare. Which is great. The potential is obviously there, and newer, improved versions and algorithms will surely behave even better.

A few of the great discoveries Ljubljana Realtime made.

The plans

This project is being developed in an agile way, where the application's behavior is constantly being monitored and changes deployed rapidly according to discovered strengths and weaknesses. The MVP (minimum viable product) is there, and with a few minor modifications, Ljubljana Realtime will soon be ready to expand to other cities and regions. Now it's up to you to help us, and it's pretty simple. When something magical is happening on and you are tweeting about it anyways, be a sport and click the arrow to include your geolocation in the tweet. By doing this, you will help others to discover what's going on in our beautiful city.

That's it for now, party on.

p.s. for all the Slovenians out there: the coordinates embedded in a tweet are pretty accurate even though Twitter will say you are in Italy. If you look at the picture of the map below the tweet, there's a polygon around Italy which sadly contains Slovenia as well. Hopefully, Twitter will remove bug someday.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 8: Lessons learned, time to reevaluate

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:01:36 GMT

It's been about month since I've returned from Silicon Valley, so I've had plenty of time to think about what happened there. This time I went out of curiosity, hoping to get the idea of how things work in the global center of technology. The next time I will be there for real business, approaching the situation more systematically. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are a great place to visit for profiles such as myself, so there surely will be a next time, when a wiser version of me will be able to do some serious shit. And I'll be wiser also because I've learned my lessons this time.

Ideas are worthless, but execution also isn't all it takes

When I started being an entrepreneur, I thought The idea was everything. While innovation may be important, it's mostly worthless by itself. No matter how good or revolutionary your idea is, hundreds of people probably have a similar idea at the same time. As Oren Michels puts it: "Stealth mode is stupid, execution is what matters.". Ideas are worth nothing if they're not executed properly. But wait, we've done a pretty good job with Twenity, but that still wasn't enough to make it abroad. It seems execution isn't enough as well.

At this point I think the hardest thing to do is the next step, putting the product on the market, making it recognized. At least that's where we are now, that's the obstacle we are currently facing. But I can already predict that the next hardest thing would be to find the investors, and the next to scale the business. Idea > Execution > Marketing > Financing > Scaling is a complex lifecycle, and you have to control every element before you can say you've made it. That's why you should try (and fail) as many times as possible. With every new project you do, it will be easier to dominate the prior steps, allowing you to focus more energy on the next ones.

Competition is fierce, but the market is big

The (Seedcamp) startups I've met on my trip really do some seriously crazy shit. Some of the things were so awesome I've almost lost faith in being able to do something similar. But I managed to somehow get back in the game. Neolab may not be cutting edge (yet) on the emerging fields such as mobile, HTML 5 or responsive design, but that's really not that big of an issue, since we make things that do what they're supposed to. That's the Execution phase, but luckily, the Market has the capacity to absorb many things, if approached properly. Face it - there will always be companies who do a better job than you, but it's the Market who'll decide who makes it or not.

I attended a Salesforce conference for a few hours (thanks Davorin!), which attracted thousands of visitors. In case you don't know them, they are the leading provider of Software as a Service CRM solutions, offering a service and a platform for other developers. Their product is really awesome, but that doesn't mean similar products can't find their own market. Researching on this issue, I found a review of the 10 best known SaaS CRM solutions, all of them obviously able to survive, even though Salesforce dominates this segment. And I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands more that are able to coexist at the same time on the huge global markets. Which brings me to my next point:

Highlights from a massive Salesforce conference

User experience is the new competitive advantage

You need to find your Unique selling proposition and competitive advantage. Most of the above mentioned Seedcamp startups found it in superior user experience. Take something that works, and make it work even better. Today's users are quite willing to migrate to a new product / service if it turns out to be better than the current one. A great example of this philosophy is vox.io, which offers a similar service than Skype (online calls and chat), but simply does it better. And by better I mean using new innovative approaches to make something more simple and intuitive to use. The user experience segment will only become more important and challenging in the future, since new ways of interactions with software are emerging (touch, voice, thought?).

vox.io's chat with embeddable content proves chat can be reinvented

Selling and pitching is ok

When you mention Sales, many people get the impression of a door-to-door salesperson trying to sell you books. Or company phones ringing with people who make it hard to say no to. These things give sales a negative connotation. But it seems that's a cultural thing. In San Francisco, everybody is trying to sell you stuff, everybody's pitching all the time. When you ask somebody "What do you do?", the person is already showing you their product on his/her iPhone. Maybe not for the actual sell, but just to get some decent feedback. You shouldn't feel bad about trying to sell something, that how the system works. Just make sure that something is worth selling.

One of the parties at vox.io's. Everybody was pitching.

You're nothing without the contacts

I admit I was a bit naive this time. I hoped the fact me being a blogger and a representative of two startups would open a few doors, but this turned out to be wishful thinking. It's true I did manage to find a few contacts on the spot, which enabled me to do great things (such as visiting the technology bluechips and the Internet archive), but my way to the influential blogs was closed. I heard that they receive a few hundred submissions a day, so you need to make sure your pitch is awesome and you have backdoors to deploy it. Do your homework, the next time I take on a similar adventure, I'll try to schedule as many meeting as possible in advance. I've finally found a reason to pimp up my LinkedIn profile, and I was lucky enough that:

The Slovenian (startup) scene is alive and kicking

One of the most fascinating things that happened to me was the chance to meet the Slovenian diaspora in Bay Area, and the startup scene around it. Thanks to a few individuals, such as Jure, Tomaž and Andraž, a lot of things are happening around Stanford University and vox.io's San Francisco headquarters, and everybody is very welcoming to the new generation of Slovenian immigrants and other startups, trying to make it abroad. Thank you for your kindness, I feel Slovenia!

The Slovenian diaspora meeting at the Stanford University

Foursquare is the ultimate travel guide, so get a local data plan

Forget maps, Foursquare has become the ultimate travel guide if you're looking for companies, tourist attractions or happening. That's why you'll need a local data plan, which costs a few bucks a day. Pretty much everything is on Foursquare (besides, physical addresses are often very hard to find online), and trending venues can point you to the events worth visiting. I've never used Foursquare in such a way, and the critical mass of users reached around here surely provides massive value beyond the game.

What now?

That pretty much sums it up. This trip was a great experience, but it's time to get back to the drawing board. Rethink my strategies. Redesign Twenity's user experience. Reinvent Neolab's business model. Stay in touch with the people I've met. Find new contacts for the next visit. Adopt new technologies. Research new markets. Think global.

Well, at least I won't get bored.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 2: vox.io's San Francisco HQ aka the Slovenian hall of tech

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 03:19:06 GMT

There's this very cool place in San Francisco, a place where I'm staying while I'm on my Silicon Valley tour. vox.io's Bay Area headquarters, where not only people from Slovenia, but also from a few other countries currently live, work and play. This giant loft now gathers individuals from technology startups into a giant hub of solutions, people and ideas. Filled with hopes and expectations, this is definitely something I'm proud to be a part of.

There are currently 8 people living here, from vox.io, Zemanta, Oust.me, the Austrian startup blossom and me, representing Twenity and Neolab. A pretty wicked bunch of people having both productive and fun sessions.

The place is huge, with a giant living room, kitchen, dining area, working tables everywhere, and a very cool chill-out zone on what used to be a stage. There's a separate bar and a DJ area, besides a few rooms for sleeping. An awesome hackspace, probably few times better than my flat.

I can't describe how important this place is. Besides giving me and others shelter, the opportunity to hang out here and share knowledge and ideas with other people from the industry is crucial, I've learned so much in a few days, it's unbelievable.

These kinds of things should be subsidized by the government. In our case, vox.io is doing more for the Slovenian technology startup scene than most other public projects are, for a much smaller investment. By allowing people to be here in Silicon Valley, trying to find investors, exploring new ways of doing business, or just learning about the culture around here, the reach of Slovenian startups has widened by miles. All thanks to a few individuals with great ideas.

A huge living room, the center of our everyday lives

The kitchen and the dining area

The chill-out zone, where you can work or relax

The bar and DJ area

Highlight from the Slovenian party, to which we've invited everybody from Slovenia that lives around here

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

Cool Slovenian brands, part 1: Technology startups making it big

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:23:10 GMT

Slovenia has a surprisingly high level of technology companies that made a global impact. These startups are an inspiration to everybody, and we hope more of us will be joining them soon. Some made it with the support of different incubators, such as Seedcamp or Y Combinator, others made it on their own. They all share an innovative and outstanding product or service, proving that Slovenia is a place of very talented and ambitious people. While there are probably even more successful startups I haven't heard of or mentioned, I think these eight Slovenian technology organizations created the most hype in the recent few years.

Celtra

With the recent domination of smartphones and tablets, mobile advertising is sky-rocketing. And we are not talking only about ads inside apps, we are talking about multi-platform mobile rich-media ads. These ads go beyond the direct effect of clicking, they enable mobile branding, attracting top-level multinational companies. Celtra has developed a platform for publishing and tracking such ads, and it is so hot they've received 5 millions in investor funding.
http://celtra.com

DoubleRecall

DoubleRecall is a company that might as well save the printing industry. The internet made information more accessible, and people are willing to pay less and less for it. Banner ads don't generate enough revenue for online editions, so newspapers are trying other options, specially content paywalls and tablet editions. In the mean time, DoubleRecall "invented" a new type of ad, where you have to type-in in a few words to access the article. High recollection of something you read and type make this type of ad very effective, and advertisers are willing to pay a lot for it. DoubleRecall got picked by YCombinator.
http://doublerecall.com

Flowr

Even though Enterprise 2.0 has been around for a while, we haven't seen it penetrating business on a large scale. Flowr addresses this issue, offering a simple and effective service for online collaboration between coworkers and teams. Call it Facebook for the enterprise if you like, these types of applications surely are the future of work. The Flowr managed to become a finalist in the Enterprise 2.0 conference.
http://theflowr.com

Oust.me

The latest Slovenian Seedcamp winner, Oust.me, combines two fascinating and trendy technologies: location based networking and gamification. The game supports Foursquare and other geo platforms, and its main objective is to conquer as much territory as possible by checking-in to places, becoming an ouster. Recently, they've also introduced a risk-type game that you play in teams. Your life should be a game? Can't agree more.
http://oust.me

Outfit7

Thanks to a series of talking friends available on most smartphone platforms, Outfit7 has become one of the most successful mobile development companies, and its founder one of the wealthiest Slovenians. At this point, more than 200 million downloads of Talking Tom, Talking Santa and other characters have been made. One of the most fascinating facts about Outfit 7 is that they have identified a totally new target group - children on (parents') smartphones and tablets, which is shown by their vision: we compete against Mattel and Disney. Ingenious.
http://outfit7.com

Toshl

Toshl is a fun app that helps you track expenses on your smartphone. With more than $250.000.000 expenses tracked on different mobile platforms, Toshl managed to became a finalist on SeedCamp New York in 2011. The competition there was fierce, so they didn't receive any funding, but that didn't stop them from moving to Silicon Valley, where the real magic happens. We are standing by to hear about the results.
http://toshl.com

Vox.io

Vox.io is one of the hottest Slovenian startups at this point. After winning Seedcamp London in 2011, this company is on it's way up, being covered by influential magazines / blogs Wired and TechCrunch in the past weeks. What is it about? It's VoIP (Skype) in your browser, without installation. Besides being cool, Vox.io also introduced a few interesting new concepts, such as using an URL instead of a phone number.
http://vox.io

Zemanta

Zemanta is the original Slovenian startup success story, the winner of Seedcamp in 2007. It offers a service that allows bloggers to enrich their writing by adding pictures, links and related content to their posts. Zemanta is very important because it showed other companies they can think big, and since then, they have been paving the way for other Slovenian and East European startups. A few days ago they've announced a strategic partnership with Federated Media Publishing.
http://www.zemanta.com

The impact

These companies are not only successful, they are also very important for other Slovenian startups trying to make a difference. They've become the foundation and mentors of a new mentality that's coming to this part of Europe, and they deserve all the respect. We are trying too, with Neolab and Twenity, and hopefully someday we will become members of similar lists. Until then, it's only fair we support them, by using their services, helping them, or just spreading the word about their awesomeness. We should be proud some of us have actually made it this far.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. Martin Strel image courtesy of Martin Strel Swimming Adventure.

Check out the complete Cool Slovenian brands series.

I feel sLOVEnia. I really do.

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:25:27 GMT

Not that it's the best slogan ever. I always preferred "Slovenia, on the sunny side of the Alps", which was somehow forgotten / lost / stolen in the mean time, but "I feel" it's still much better than the previous "Slovenia invigorates" we've been seeing. Each slogan tells a story, but together they tell another, wider story, a story of a nation looking for its identity in these confusing times of globalization and recession. But we may not be as confused as it seems, these past weeks have shown there is much determination around. Much love, displayed in the huge amount of support and sincere wishes I received after we've launched Twenity. I felt sLOVEnia, finally!

Even in the making of Twenity, people were helping us, commenting, blogging about it and lending us their Twitter accounts for testing. The launch went great, the whole wwwh community and others took Twenity for its own. We've made contact with successful Slovenian startups (more on them some other time) and exceptional individuals, all prepared to help and support us in any way they can. Everybody's curious about what's happening and where we are going. And quite a few think Twenity could be it.

But why the surprise? Well, even though Slovenians are very capable, they are traditionally also a bit protective and envious, not really wishing their neighbor would succeed with something or have a bigger car. We often lack the ability to find unity (as displayed by the current political crisis in the worst time possible), but at the same time wish we could stand united the way some other cultures can. But it seems new values have finally come around, backed up by ideas that Slovenia could truly be the next Silicon Valley. Ideas brought by a new generation of technology entrepreneurs, experiencing them on their own skin in San Francisco.

Tomaž Štolfa from vox.io said that the entire IT sector in Slovenia couldn't form a corporation as big as Apple or Google, and he is more than right. We shouldn't compete between ourselves, 5 mobile operators are more than enough for 2 million people. We should think big, and technology is where I FEEL we can make it, it's where i recognized LOVE and wider thoughts. I see capable people everywhere, and it's overwhelming. Together, we could do something special, bypassing the current political and economical fuckup. And I know you feel it to. Thank you for that.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Twitfluence is dead, long live Twenity! Launching December 21st 2011.

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 17:41:51 GMT

In three days, a new type of online influence measuring service will be launched, an exciting new version of Twitfluence on steroids. Unlike Klout or PeerIndex, Twenity won't try to set a new standard for calculating social authority, it will rather behave as a game on top of your social activity, which will allow players to go through quests, unlock levels, badges, compare themselves and compete with each other. A project made by Neolab and IlovarStritar that will try to combine the elements of gamification and social authority measuring. Who's hot and who's not, the game.

Launch

The algorithm we'll use is the v0.60 of Twitfluence, but on an improved engine, and that's pretty much everything that will stay the same as the prototype. Twitter is the original source for data, but if there is enough interest, new quests based on Facebook, Foursquare and other platforms will be designed and developed.

On Wednesday, December 21st, at 7 PM CET, Twenity will be presented and officially launched as part of the last wwwh of this year. We will stay in beta at this point, since there will surely be problems with some (influential) users and further patches will be done in the next few weeks. But after that, the sky is the limit. You're very welcome to join us in Kiberpipa, or you can watch the live stream online. Here are a few resources:

the official Twenity page
the v0.60 of the Twitfluence calculation
the event invitation (in Slovene)
the live stream where the presentation will be broadcast on Wednesday
the event on Facebook
our Twitter profile and Facebook page
more info about the Twitfluence calculation

"Twenity is an interesting new game that helps you discover your social capital while competing with your friends. This real-live RPG enables you to play without the need to actually do anything."

That's right: Vanity is the spice of life.

Twitfluence received some media attention. And almost went to Seedcamp.

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:05:04 GMT

Lately, a lot has been happening with Twitfluence. We've finally decided it's time to go out of prototype mode and make Twitfluence a fully working solution, a joint venture between Neolab and IlovarStritar. A fine combination of great technical expertise and amazing visual experience. We've even applied for Seedcamp Ljubljana, but only made it as runners-up (which is actually not that bad for the first try). But that won't stop us – we are more certain than ever to make Twitfluence a complete product, and we'll try even harder the next time.

There are quite a few challenges on our way, the biggest one being the technical difficulties the calculation is having when analyzing large accounts. We had to rewrite it pretty much from scratch. Besides other small upgrades and patches, we will also be doing another major thing: rebranding it. Twitfluence sounds too generic, and most service built on top of Twitter are Twit-something. You will see what we have in mind, and we're sure you'll like it.

This will probably be the last post about Twitfluence on stritar.net, since we'll be moving to the official blog. It was fun while it lasted, but Twitfluence will be retired soon, to make way for something even greater. Hopefully you will be able to see the results in about a month.

What made us pursue the idea further, to think beyond the current ugly mode? A lot has had to do with bloggers that were covering us, which gave us amazing moral support (and a kick in the ass). This coverage went way beyond Slovenia and we are proud to have made it so far. It has also shown us we are on the right track – if we were able to get noticed with the current version, the broad potential of such a service must be great. See for yourselves, here are a few great articles that we've seen floating on the internets:

My Community Manager: Different authority measurement applications review (in French)
had blog: Twitfluence review (in Slovene), by @had
SocialEast: About Slovene Twitter tracking software solutions
Toronto Star Blog: Politicians on Twitter, and how to determine their influence and social capital

Thank you for your support and patience, we'll be seeing you around. Bigger, better, prettier and of course, more playable. Stay tuned.

Neolab in 2009

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:38:32 GMT

2009 was a hard year for everybody, specially for start-ups such as Neolab. Greed and wrong decisions of global financial institutions and their leaders turned the world upside down. Luckily we were able to survive, to stand tall against all the challenges that await for us next year. Projects have been confirmed, so the biggest issue that we face now is consolidating our inner organization and finishing our software framework that we put so much time and energy into.

A few weeks ago, Neolab celebrated it’s second birthday. The first two years are supposedly decisive for the survival of start-ups, so if this unfriendly situation won’t last too long, looks like we’ll make it. To sum it up: for us, 2008 was the year of checking out the scene, where we were observing if it’s possible to make it on our own. The second year, 2009, was the year of marketing, where we presented ourselves to broader audience.

Our presentation was quite successful. After a few years of building and optimizing our design and marketing concept with IlovarStritar, we finally launched our web page, a thing we are very proud of. Until this post we (they) have already received two awards for Neolab’s broader corporate identity, Brumen award and Taiwan international award. This confirmed we made the right decision by doing something special with our image.

The whole story of our design identity is built around a fictional ecosystem of pixelized mutant animals, representing connectivity of people, organizations and processes using information technology. Different animals are used for different documents and people so the whole concept is scalable, artistic, interesting and fun. If you like, you can check out the whole showcase on the IlovarStritar website.

We are becoming one of the biggest slovenian experts in IT. In april we received an award on the Slovenian IT conference for best paper on the subject of IT 2.0. If that wasn’t enough, we were also named the Emerging web agency of 2009 on Slovenia's biggest web authority, Netko. The barriers between organization, marketing, IT and web are obviously getting thinner and thinner, and Neolab stands strong right in the middle of it.

We may look good on the outside, but we are also healthy on the inside. At this point we employ six people, which actually brought a bit of organizational confusion. By adopting stronger approaches in project management, things are turning for the better. Besides, our big investment into our framework, which now stands stable, scalable and promising, will soon be complete, so we are more than ready for all the projects that are coming upon us.

Hopefully this year will be more welcoming. As we and our services mature, new challenges for our clients, suppliers, partners, supporters and ourselves are on the horizon, so you better be ready for all the things we have in store. To a successful 2010!

Made in Slovenia

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:57:42 GMT

Friends tell me I am usually too naive and romantic, but sometimes I just can't help myself being an optimist. Even though Slovenia is one of the most taxed nations in the world, I still envision Slovenia as an emerging country with one of the highest potentials around. Breakthroughs are possible, f.i. Ireland became one of the most successful countries in the EU (second highest GDP in EU!) even though their economic model was hit really hard by the recession. I'm sure Slovenia will do even better when her time comes, so be ready.

Perhaps the greatest competitive advantage of Slovenia is insight, intuition and understanding others. It started with Yugoslavia, probably the only country in the world fully embracing three major religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim). Sadly, that story ended in bloodshed, but some positive heritage remains. With great geographic location, bordering Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Italy, all the major cultures of Europe are influencing Slovenians. By being a post socialistic country with not too exploited capitalism adoption, Slovenia was the perfect playground for new era negotiations between Bush and Putin. Neutral ground between north and south, east and west, understanding motives and interests of many players, small enough not to be a threat.

Cultural diversity and high information flow made some Slovenians outstanding, and the Adriatic see being the window to Europe probably helped too. Quite a few companies were able to produce global success stories, specializing in high-tech products and services, such as IT, technology, aeronautics and alternative energies (more on cool Slovenian brands some other post). Not bad for a country the size of a large city, taxed to the maximum.

Taxes. They work really contra productive, but they're caused by our greatest flaw - our size. 2 million citizens. Everybody knows everybody and projects become political way too soon. Another thing that happens is that the government becomes the only buyer big enough to afford things. Our startup Neolab is developing innovative IT solutions and trying to make it abroad, with some success. Because I understand that building the Slovenia brand plays a really important part in achieving this, I'm blogging about it and doing everything in my power to promote Slovenia (and Neolab, I admit...). Hopefully others will follow and "Made in Slovenia" will have higher value soon. I think it deserves it and most of us probably need it.

Exporting high value-added specialized products and services is what we do best and what we will hopefully be able to continue on a larger scale. This is the strategy Slovenia has to keep and support. Our scientists are amongst the best in the world and can make innovative, creative, useful and modern goods of the highest quality for a fair price. Besides, people here are cool, most of them are faithful, fair, loyal and unconflicting. Come see for yourself, nice people, tasty wine, good beer and beautiful nature will do you well.

The world of the globalized tomorrow will be moderated by the neutral and objective. This is Slovenia's hidden expertise that still has to be recognized, even though we've already been doing it for ages. And because we are too naive, we won't even take advantage of it. We will rather work hard and wait for the indirect, long term benefits. It may sound irrational, but I fully support that approach.

My inspiration for this post is an online civil initiative about development and future of our country that's actual right now by taking full advantage of Web 2.0 (Facebook, Twitter, Noovo, LinkedIn). Thumbs up for that, but we will probably need more than just good ideas. This time my contribution goes for motivation and realization that we have the potential to make it big if we work together and cooperate. Made in Slovenia.