• 26.5.2012: Watched the SF Arena discussion
• 25.5.2012: Published my Amazon review about the book

—

(Just posted on Google+)

When I first heard about the idea of a Basic Income Guarantee (Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen) from a buddhist monk in 2010 I was very sceptical. A spontaneous prejudice, without knowing a thing about it. Now probably for the first time in my life I started to really dig into a political initiative to form my own opinion.

I have just finished the official book by the initiators:

I have watched the movie:

Thanks to my low information diet so far I haven’t been exposed to any external (superficial) views or opinions. Yesterday I have watched a couple of minutes of the recent SF Arena debate and I was quite surprised by the occasionally unpleasant discussion culture. How about trying to make a stronger effort to apply the concept of Deep Listening and Loving Speech for such discussions?

I have to say that I am quite inspired by the Basic Income Guarantee. Surely it won’t solve all problems and surely it’s not perfect. But it’s of great importance to think deeply about those things and to ask oneself: Why do I work? What would I do when I would not have to worry about generating a livelihood? What projects would I start when my usual excuses (not enough money, not enough time) fall away? Why do we focus so much on consumption and economic growth today? How could our tax system and welfare system be simplified?

I have started to think about such questions when I started with my inner work of meditation and self-reflection in 2009. And it’s fantastic that Switzerland as a whole has now the opportunity to think about such things.

More information:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedingungsloses_Grundeinkommen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
http://www.grundeinkommen.ch
http://www.grundeinkommen.tv
http://bedingungslos.ch

I have also just printed the petition and signed it:
http://bedingungslos.ch/index.php?id=81

I will most likely post further updates of my thought process on social networks. I might also update this blog post to resemble my current view, so you are welcome to check again :).

Doodle was finally able to buy doodle.com which is now the default domain. Congrats to Paul and Mike!

Exsila.ch just reached 50’000 members and 300’000 items!

PS: We’re looking for more speakers. If you have something to talk about, sign up here!

PS: Help us spread the word!

Yesterday I’ve been to Techcrunch Meetup Zurich (see also my Trigami-post). It was an awesome evening on the 15th floor of the Bluewin-Tower and I met a lot of friends.

Congratz to the organizers Wuala, Doodle et al.

My list of interesting Swiss Startups:
Mydeskfriend
Cassiber
Optionrating.com
Poken
Webnode
–> all Startups from the Event

Recently I read this article about Alibaba.com‘s European Market entry. It summarized the very interesting Alibaba.com case:

• Alibaba.com is the largest Chinese B2B Marketplace (matchmaker between buyers and sellers of all kinds of goods, from T-Shirts to Trains or Factories) and rapidly growing worldwide (28M Users)
• In November 2007, Alibaba.com raised $1.7B in an IPO
• Revenue for 2007 was 200M EUR and profit was 87M EUR
• Alibaba.com recently opened an office in Geneva to push the Swiss and European Market Entry

(My roommate Roberto from Bashiba)

(4 day Entrepreneurship Executive course at Babson College)

(Case Study Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts: Coffee at Dunkin stays warm for 2 hours; Coffee at Starbucks only 15-30 min. Learning: An apparantly tiny thing such as a different cup material can have huge implications. The coffee doesn’t matter, its the cup!)

(Jessica Livingston – Author of the fantastic book ‘Founders at Work‘ – her next book will be published next year. And oh btw: I did get my copy signed ;-)

(At Y Combinator – one of the most famous startup incubators in the US)

(Very cool Airport Vending Machine at Logan Airport. There was a Sony-Machine and an Apple-Machine for iPods and Stuff. I almost bought a Sony Noise Cancelling Headphones for $199 but then backed off as I’m planning to buy Bose Headphones ;-)

The trip was very inspiring. If you are a Swiss Startup I highly recommend to apply for this unique opportunity next year.

Please note that the event will take place on a Friday (not Saturday) because we’ll do it during the “Computer Science Day” (Tag der Informatik).

Please save the date and register on www.blogcamp.ch.

PS: Help us spread the word!

PPS: Here is the official trailer :-)

[flash]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H7mKOCJ2wU[/flash]