Sunday, August 19, 2007

Burning for the Burning Man!

D-7 for the 2007 edition of the Burning Man! Something like a 4 years old dream coming true, that happened like these things happened. 4 weeks ago it was not even in my mind, and then...diner in SF -while I was over there in business - with an old friend, his GF and a workmate of mine, the idea was thrown in the air...and Here We Are!

Feels like the king of plans you dream about when you are a teen and it does only happen in your mid-thirties.

What thrills me the most is to go to place that has no name! If there had not been the Burning Man there for the past x years, in wouldn't been on Google Earth or Maps...still on the latest the best way to find it is to look for Gerlach - the closest town - zoom out and then you can spot it....zoom in and you can almost feel like you are there.

And that's how you get there;-)

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

BloggersForaBetterWorld

Just attended leweb3 conference in Paris which ended up further to Shimon Peres intervention with a call to start a new movement: Bloggers for a Better World!.

While such intention to preach the gospel and do good around you is always generous - and I am giving it a go by starting this blog - I was quite amazed by Peres conclusions that new technologies and economics can do more than politics to change the world. My first feeling was that it was way to easy to throw the responsability of the future to entrepreneurs!

In particular when looking back at the very inequal quality of the panels/presentations during leweb3. Most of the speakers spent more time marketing their business rather than sharing insights (to the point of wondering if they have any) about the industry...nor the world and the state it's in.

There were still some very impressive minds such as Hans Rosling whose presentation (the one linked here is the same as the one he gave at leweb3 but was recorder earlier this year at another conference) gave food for thoughts to everyone. Go and listen to this video if you want to enjoy the feeling, it's definitely better use of your time than reading blogs about Sarkozy's visit at leweb3.

What gave me a particular perspective in attending this conference, is that the evening before I watched for the first time a film called "Darwin's Nightmare". I never felt so deeply the inaquility and injustice that inhabit this world at this very moment in history. - hence "Mauvaise Conscience (Guilty Conscience)" as the title of this blog.
It is such a tough reminder that one half of the world's well-being exits thanks to the misery of the other half, with the benediction of institutions and a good conscience. It's hard to imagine how things can or will change...still... let's follow the wise man's advice and have the Internet community embrace this problem, imagine solutions and use its strenght to invent a better future.

As he said "Optimists and pessimists die the same way but live differently"!