New Square

Hi everyone,

For the ones that didn't know, I'm moving to a new square at http://dsnows.tumblr.com

I hope you like it :)

P.s. More news very soon :)

New Life

Hi all,

How are you today?

-

It has been a while since my last post. Finally I have a great reason to write and I can talk about it :) I've been silent but really excited!

As a way of celebrating my 'New Life' I made some changes to the look and feel of my blog. I added my Stackoverflow profile (very supportive community), a simple way of giving feedback about what I say and made it easier to share posts, as well as some other updates. I hope you like it.

So... you're probably wondering what I mean when I say 'New Life', well, I said in a recent post I was "again ready to mess 'with the path'!" and that's exactly what I did.

I've recently started Wildbunny with Paul Firth. As a quick introduction, Wildbunny is a brand-new start up and we're focused on exploring different markets through technology-driven innovation. You will understand what all this means very soon, when we release our first service.

We're currently working on our first service called Kaaching, a place where you'll be able to make money while using Facebook.

There's a lot to tell about my (and Paul's) new project but I'll leave that for when we get closer to release date, after all having some surprises and managing the 'momentum' (word that I recently started using a lot) is very important. I'll leave that to another post, very soon.

Everything is going great with myself and especially with Wildbunny and I feel we owe that, in part, to the place where we are, Cambridge.

I discovered a new Cambridge (and a very good one) since we started Wildbunny, it is definitely a great place to start a company.

Everyone is very supportive here and I really mean everyone, from friends and the Cambridge Coffee Company guys to our Accountants and Lawyer. Every single time we speak about our new venture everyone shows interest. Most conversations end with a "that's amazing, you did the right thing, I wish I could do the same" independently of the person knowing or not what our projects are. The start-up spirit looks to be well respected and sometimes even 

admired in here, which is a great boost to our high motivation!

It is very impressive to speak with accounts, lawyers and bank managers and get loads of useful information with some feedback even before they knew if we're going to work with them. We spent a fair amount of time with our Account (Andrew Borland) and Lawyer (Alison Barr) discussing many details and possible traps of Kaaching with no initial commitment or payment at all.

As if it wasn't enough, for those like us that can't afford an office, Cambridge has plenty of cheap or even free places where to work. From many cafes to the Central Library, being the latter totally free and very close to the conditions of a very very good office (with loads of books and cheap lunches as well).

It's very acceptable, not to say expected, to spend the whole day in a cafe working on a Laptop with free broadband, plugs to charge your laptop and minimal cost (depending of what you want, a coffee and a lunch meal).

As for proper offices, I can't tell right now but there are many Science Parks in this city with nice looking stylish new buildings.

For now we've been working some days at home, some at the Library and one or two in a cafe.

Starting a company in Cambridge was an easy process, very easy actually. I felt that this gave us much more time for what really matters, the product!

Since this post is already long enough, I'll be writing other posts with details of what we had to do to open a company in here. I hope it can help you one day...

To finish, let me tell everyone that it has been a great pleasure to work with Paul and I believe the dynamics of our team (the two of us at the moment) is something very impressive and special. I'm very happy with the fact we're two patient but very different minds with the same goal. We're always looking for the win-win situation where both opinions match which, I believe, has an extremely high value to the company and to the future users!

Cheers to you Paul :)

I'll leave you with Wildbunny's links:

Webpage (under development): http://www.wildbunny.co.uk

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wildbunny/138268462866276

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Wildbunny_Ltd

See you later.

Cheers,

Diogo

Inspirational Time

Hi all,

How are you today?

-

I just want to share a thought.

"Great things can only come from inspired minds." Find your sources of inspiration and keep them safe, very safe!

I feel inspired by so many things, even simple things!

People (they know who) can inspire me in many different ways.

Films mess with my feelings in a good way.

Cities, especially really big and busy ones, make me feel free and are the source for the most diverse of inspirations. The simple fact of walking through people, being at new and strange (good) places, sitting outside of a cafe looking at the busy street and thinking of all things that might have happened there, where the people are going, why? My thoughts move faster than me and that keeps me inspired!

Some sources are even from my quotidian activities, things that I see/do every single day but in that moment they were "different" and made me feel different.

All of them make me dream...

Whatever your sources are, keep them! From inspiration comes motivation and from motivation you can change the World, at least yours!

P.s. Don't forget, to be able to see through them, you need to stop sometimes, relax!


See you later.




Cheers,
Diogo

No One Knows

Hi all,

How are you today?

–

When we're young our parents tell us “you need to study”, when we grow up they say “you need to find a good job and keep it for life”.

Although the grown up version might be different depending where you've grown, there's always a path that everyone will try to follow and make you follow it.

People pretend to know how we should be living our lives but truth is, no one knows! Not even us.

Most people have dreams (at least that's what I want to believe) and everyone is afraid of failing, if only a bit. Obviously it's much easier to follow what society tells us to do and blame the system if we fail than to take full accountability for ourselves.

Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue against the usefulness of our society's definition of good and bad, far from it. My point is that we can be responsible for ourselves and make a positive result out of most situations, even when we have messed up with “the path”.

For a while I was quite good messing up with it (“the path”) and I must admit, sometimes it made me think I wasn't going anywhere but lying to myself telling that “I was doing it for a reason that I believed in”. Then I got the amazing job people told me I could only get by following the right path, I was confused!

After giving it a little thought I realised “Wait! The path doesn't matter, not at all! What really matters are our dreams (some call them goals), values and the capacity to change and adapt to the present circumstances!” Am I right? I don't know. Unfortunately for some, there's no universal formula for success, this is just my today's equation.

I'm happy with myself today and I like to think that I only am who I am because of everything I did until now, even though I made some mistakes, I don't know if it would be better or worse otherwise. It's preferable to learn from the past but only think of what we can change in the present to make the future closer to what we imagine.

Lately I've been reading a lot about entrepreneurship, successful people and other related topics (good reading by the way). It's amazing the amount of times I read “To be truly successful you'll need to...”, sometimes even with opposing ideas and all written by successful people. Some of the articles even start by telling that “the path” doesn't matter but then finish describing the profile of the successful person, the one that succeeded against all odds. We can't fall for the anti-path, that's just another one and in this case it can make people believe the success is only for a small group of elite people (and hopefully they're wrong).

I don't want to sound pretentious, I do listen to all those advices and I really find them useful. I truly respect the people who wrote them but I need to be careful not to take as an absolute truth.

Well... I'm not trying to say everyone should create their own path, I don't believe it is the best to do (neither the worst), actually I don't even think it should be easier to not follow “the path”, after all that's just asking people to believe in us because we say so. What I am saying is that everyone is responsible by writing their own history either by following “the path” or not, your choice!

When we speak about success we usually start by listing some successful cases, I would start by the recent Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter... They are world changers in the technology field.

If someone shouts “I want to create something as big as Google” others will tell them crazy. We compare the craziness of one or two guys to the current state of a successful big corporation. Although starting a company with the single purpose of “being as big as Google” might not be the best idea, what we usually miss is that all those companies started small, from zero.

I'm sure there were other equally or even more special people in the world when Bill Gates started Microsoft. If asked, no one would have guessed, by looking at his profile, that he would change the world a few years later. In the end, Microsoft wouldn't have happened without the will, the will to make something different, outside of the box and take responsibility for it.

All this to say: I'm again ready to mess with “the path”!

This time my goal is to live an happy life, make my dreams come true and be the best person I can be! To inspire myself and never let the energy go away!

As valid as any other goal so, what's yours?

P.s. Just so do you know, initially this post was going to be about the importance of following “the path”, I proved myself to be wrong...

See you later.


Cheers,

Diogo

Am I risking too much?

Hello all!
How are you today?

A thought came to my mind today...
Some people ask me why can't I stay quiet and have a "stable" life, all fair questions.
Some people tell me "You're risking too much, you can lose money! You can lose your job! Don't do that!".

To those people I say "Waiting for a miracle, doing nothing, that's risking! I can lose my whole life!"

See you later.

Cheers,
Diogo

The Way of Living!

This is a quick post, some people will understand, some will even know the feeling, some won't.

8h - Wake up and get ready to go to work

~ - Read a book in the bus

9h30 - Start working while trying the impossible task of forgetting my second life as superhero at night

12h - Have a relaxed and tasty lunch, happiness is there and fulfilment is almost here, I can't stop dreaming about all there is to come

13h - Get back to work

18h - Leave work, tired

~ - Read book in the bus while switching to the superhero mindset, feel the excitement and energy grow inside

18h30 - Say hello to the special one waiting for me, at home

~ - Spend some quality time with the loved one, mostly speaking about future and dreams :) (ohh her patience). Take the opportunity to relax as much as I can and get even more excited and energetic! Ah, make dinner, obviously

19h30 - Have dinner

20h - Wear my special clothes and start my superhero tasks

2h - Look surprised at the time and think "I still have time for some more superhero action"

3h ~ 5h - Go to bed after the great battle of Excitement vs. Sleepy Head and have a great quick dream

8h - Wake up again, but still dreaming...

Have a great night,

Diogo

The Importance of Good Support!

Hi all,

How are you today?

It has been a long time since my previous post, so long that a year finished and a new one has started, welcome to the great 2010!

There were some reasons for staying away all this time but the main one is that something is going on that I couldn't talk about and believe me, it has been really hard not to speak about it! So I prefered to stay quiet.

Bad news, I still can't speak about it, what brings me here today is something else.

Some days ago I started searching for an online repository for some experiments I'm doing and I was looking for a free but high quality service.

I was being really exigent with the service because, although I'm still using it for free, the time will come when I'll certainly need to switch for a non-free service and, obviously, I don't want to start all over again!

I believe that having a free service and the quality of it can show a lot of the company's culture and it works well with me.

Ok, back to the story. After trying some services (some of them with really good conditions) I was starting to get frustated, I couldn't make them work. Ok, I admit, it was mostly due to my lack of linux experience (I am using Jolicloud remember) and that's already frustating for me but, above all, what was really driving me mad was the fact I couldn't get any help. Well, I got some in one of the services but I think they didn't have the patience for a confused “free user” (again, the culture).

I really wanted a good service and I was trying to start using Git (another new thing in the mix), so I continued looking for it and, guess what, I found www.indefero.net . Simple and very well done!

Because of my previous experiences I was a bit skeptical at first and I almost thrown my netbook against the wall when I realised it didn't work, again!

And then it all changed!

Ok, opening contacts (that were easily accessible)... I didn't realise it was a weekend day and late, I was distracted by my experiments, so I sent a quick e-mail to Loic d'Anterroches asking for help and went to bed.

On the next day, after some laziness, I turned on my netbook and didn't expect what was in my Inbox! An answer to my e-mail and sent just few minutes after I left on the previous night (and they're in the same time-zone as me)! - Blimey! Brilliant! - I thought.

After some chatting with Loic, we finally solved the problem and I was happy until I realised I couldn't check-in code!!! Back to Loic and he answered as if he was already waiting for it, brilliant again!

The problems continued, later on to realise it was my weird piggyback mobile connection messing with ports, but I was so sactisfied with the service that I really wanted it to work, so I decided to switch from Git to the SVN repository (yes, they have both).

It all works now and I own it to Loic an Indefero's amazing support (and patience)! I actually learned a lot in the process.

I'm not sure if it was noticiable on the other side but it was great having someone helping after so much frustration. They were great on every single detail and that's why they deserve this post and this new client!

I am still impressed. Thanks.

See you later,

Diogo Neves