Once again we celebrate!
Details and registration via Facebook.
Link zum Event: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=114547471891251
In the last weeks there have been a couple of headlines around which cought my attention. Google’s PowerMeter is public since quite a while, so far that was nothing more than an opportunity for households to observe their energy consumption and possibly adjust their behavior to save money on electricity. Then in February another announcement: Google received a licence from the US Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) to sell Energy like a utility. Two weeks later Google opened up its application program interface (API). That means that any home networking vendor can link thermostats to Googles PowerMeter to control the devices. Some believe that the goal is to establish a channel to advertise energy efficiency services. I don’t think so. Google never really tried to slightly expand any sole segment of the advertisement market - they hunt big scale!
In this context I found another news very interesting. The launch of the long awaited bloom energy business. The so called Bloom Box is a fuel cell which works astonishing efficient and can be built from low cost materials. Currently several boxes run in trial on the eBay corporate campus and, according to eBay, already saved the company more than 100k energy costs in the first nine months. The idea is to create a new decentralized energy grid with bloom boxes all over place. Bloom also announced that within a couple of years a household-scale version could be brought to market for as little as 3.000 USD. Now you need to know that bloom energy is heavily funded by Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley VC firm which also invested in Google, Amazon and other www-heavyweights during their start-up phases. Kleiner Perkins is king when it comes to link formerly unrelated businesses among their investments to fundamentaly change the game.
Puting the pieces together: Clearly Google makes money with selling advertisement in the www. But their competitive advantage is the sophisticated algorithm which allows them to place the ads next to appropriate results in their search engine or other services. Let Google gain access to data about your private energy consumption behavior via power meter, allow them to steer the bloom box in your house and see how they will apply their core competence: the orchestration of information, the remote and intelligent balancing of energy supply and demand.
Peter Fox-Penner, former chairman of the Brattle Group, describes in his new book “smart energy” the concept of the Energy Service Utility (ESU). Maybe the story described above could be an indication that somebody is already putting the pieces together to see that vision come true.
“Was immer Du kannst oder erträumst tun zu können, beginne es jetzt! Kühnheit besitzt Genie, Macht und magische Kraft - beginne es jetzt!”
A son’s reply:
Mom, you’re the best!
One reason why I relaunched my website almost one year ago was that I wanted to easily integrate pictures, videos, links and other stuff when I feel it is something special ( okay, to be honest, the intention was a good one but I never really consequently put it into practice). The spark which made me switching from a static website to a wordpress-blog was a video of “His Airness” Micheal Jordan I really wanted to share. I thought like one of the most successful sportsmen of all times promotes my credo when I first watched the Nike Ad which then became my first entry of the new bigspoon.de-website. I still believe that any kind of failure comes along with a learning, that is true in sports, that is true in academia, that is true in private life and it is also true for business. I don’t say that this philosophy makes good planning or sound consideration before arriving at a decision obsolete, but we live in a world of uncertainty and failure is part of the game.
Somebody who has a very interesting and inspiring point of view onto failure is Randy Komisar. Randy is Partner at the famous Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and has definetly experienced first hand insights how business in a fast changing environment works. In the world of uncertainty, the world we live in and where failure is part of the game. I believe that you can easily make this a decision philosophy for life if it works like Randy puts it: big returns on winners and a lot of losses!
10 amazing days to say “goodbye” to 2009 and to welcome the new chapter: 2010. As usual in a multinational patchwork family christmas and new year’s came along with a lot of travelling. Furtunately this year distances were smaller and the route was Cologne-Zurich-Friedrichshafen-Zurich-Wiesbaden-Cologne. Some excessive parties with friends from old days like the traditional homecoming event in Friedrichshafen and new year’s eve celebration in Zurich were a perfect match with relaxing wining and dining at my father’s and my mother’s place at the lake of constance and the lake of zurich, respecively.
Below you can find some impressions how we (Lisa, Fabian, Michael, Kiki, Gregor, Anne and rund about 25 others) celebrated the start of the new year. Once again “Thanks” to Michael who hosted that amazing “Black&White”-Party above the roofs of Zurich.
Happy New Year 2010!
That year was rushing by! Unbelievable that it is already the first sunday in advent. I am sitting in one of my preferred coffeehouses in cologne, having my laptop in front of me, outside dusk is falling and in my nose I smell the sweets flavours of cinnamon and chai-latte. It must be true, christmas-time is coming. Since three three weeks now I am already back in Cologne. Hamburg and the internship at Arkwright was awesome - I mean the town poses one of the few real alternatives to Cologne in Germany and the work with Arkwright was agreat experience as well. Now, back in Cologne, I am busy organizing the last stage of my life as student: it’s thesis time. I guess anybody who has ever written a thesis has experienced the same, the phase of narrowing down the scope of the work and formulating the “problem” which shall be tackled is one of the hardest parts. I feel like I mede pretty much progress the last three weeks, many conversations with intelligent and inspiring people, many concepts I elaborated and rejected again - a pretty iterative process. Next week I think I will be at a point where I can approach my academic supervisor for first feedback on my thoughts. Speaking of my supervisor I have to mention that I believe to be well supported - just imagine, his major field of reasearch is “compexity reduction”. I will keep you updated as soon as I have the final topic of my thesis fixed. Let’s see when this will be…
Now I wish anybody to have a restful first sunday in advent (video related ;-). For those of you who don’t know yet where or what to shop for christmas, here is my personal favorit in the category “christmas market”.
Morgen isses soweit - die Post-Klausurenphase hat ihren nächsten Höhepunkt! Chris Martin und Konsorten in der AWD Arena Hannover.
As always during exam preperation time you are pretty much alone. with your desk. with your books. and, for gods sake: with the internet. I only can assume that my brother Fabian who sits in UK writing his master thesis experienced the same as he spotted the following video. watch, enjoy, be astonished!
Today was a good day. For a couple of hours I left my desk and my books, dressed myself in suit and bought a ticket for the ICE to Hamburg: Job interview at Arkwright Consulting for an internship in fall. After four hours ride on a crowded train I arrived in Hamburg which presented itself like you expect it: cloudy and stormy but with the scent of the big, wide world in the air. The office of Arkwright is located directly at the Alster next to the world famous Atlantic Hotel, the office building is a kind of art nouveau villa, short: quite an impressive location. The interview was conducted by two senior professionals and was quite challenging with all sorts of brainteasers, case studies, math testing and personal fit questions…all together I spent three hours there. But it was definetly worth the trip: on my way back home I held a “ready to sign” contract in my hands. YESSSSS!!!!
The spirit at Arkwright was appealing, the projects seem to be very interesting - I belive my decision will not be a hard one.
You can imagine how difficult it is after such a great day to get back to study for the exams on wednesday and monday. After the exams, believe me that, there will be reason to celebrate and there WILL BE CELEBRATION.
Today, during sitting at my desk studying for my exams next week, I received a phone call. A name from the old days appeared on my mobile phone’s display: DRAZEN.
I believe it must be four years ago when I played my last tournament on the national series when we paired up to participate in the Cologne’s edition of the “Smart Beach Cup” - as it was called in these days. We fighted our way through the qualification tournament and even won our first round in the main draw and eventually ended upo on the 9th rank. Not that bad for two hobby players that we already were back then.
So now Drazen called me and after the usual “how are you doin”-chat he popped the question: are you ready for playing again?…Many words, short story: On Sunday, August 16 we will celebrate the relaunch of the team “Karger/Slacanin” in the A-Series Beachvolley Tournament in Dortmund. Let’s see how that will work!?
btw: the picture below was shot during our 2003 training camp in Cervia (IT) the guy in the middle in Drazen, the guy on the right is Maarten, the guy I played in the Junior’s National Team for four years.
