What I liked:

- a chance to see people you generally read about;
- a chance to talk to the people above (I have had the opportunity to talk to @ChrisBrogan, whose blog I read almost everyday, because of all the ideas he shares about communication and social media);
- a great opportunity for networking
- hearing, by mistake, someone in Mike Arrington’s entourage saying “I’m a little flower” – priceless. Because I first thought he said it
- I got to ask Tim Ferriss if the conference is part of the 4 hours he works in a week and I got put down for asking a stupid question – which it was but I had to ask – btw, great presentation
- I greatly enjoyed the speaches of Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Queen Rania of Jordan

What I didn’t like:

- too many participants (just an idea, for future editions: put the participant’s country on the badge, since you really underline being international. Also, you could add 3 tags for everyone with their area of interest: #investor, #developer aso)
- less interactivity than I would’ve expected (allegedely you could have talked to the speakers after their speaches. Yeah, right! By the time you got to the stage, you couldn’t really see most of them – I know this from the guys at Money.ro, who had a hell of a time trying to locate them)
- I don’t get who the target of the event was: mainstream, developers? For me, it was kinda light. I would have loved more case-studies from speakers, more detailed information on platforms (which is obvious, since I want to know how I can expand RevvNation’s audience using all those)

While I still think the event is worth attending, I would try to be very prepared before coming:
- have a plan of action – since there will be around 2000 people, you need to know from the start who you want to talk to (LeWeb provided a list of participants with their twitter accounts – a good place to start)
- think really hard if you need to be there (at that moment). You might be using your time better working at your product.

Last: startup owners are the same everywhere: shy, scared, but doing their best to have as good a presentation as possible. And freemium is still a buzzword.

I’m not in a great mood, being awake way to early for me, but I expect things to improve during the day. I am not sure yet where to be in the following hours…

And Loic Le Meur just came on stage following 30 seconds of David Guetta and Akon – Sexy Bitch

First guest, after the introduction, Jack Dorsey, the inventor of Twitter. Real-time web all the way

Square is tool to pay using credit cards via a smartphone (demoed on iPhone)

Putting it on hold, follow @bobbyvoicu on Twitter

I always loved the Black Sea. I like the mountains, but I love the sea. I almost drowned at least once until I was 5 and that is the most vivid memory I remember from my early childhood. Me falling in a water basin and people looking from the top. And I don’t remember any fear, just curiosity.

At 6 I learned how to swim and since then, the sea has become my friend. I almost drowned several times since, never in the sea, though. It didn’t stop me from loving it.

Every time I go to the Black Sea for the first time in a year (around June, usually), the water is cold and I stay out for 5 minutes at least before going in…. but after that, the feeling is… I don’t think I can describe it, but feeling the water around your body, feeling like you belong to it, there is nothing in the world that can compare to it. Not seeing the beautiful mountains of Switzerland mirrored in the waters of Geneva Lake, not feeling the beauty of Istanbul by night, from the plane, when it looks like being alive, nothing. Just the first time you enter the sea and swim, after a long long time.

For me, the sea has become a friend. Sounds crazy, right? It may be. But it is a friend that doesn’t judge, that doesn’t offer advice, that doesn’t try to interpret. The sea just listens. It was there when I lost money and business, it was there when I fell in love, it was there when I wasn’t sure my decisions were correct. It was there when I just needed to not speak. It was there when I was walking up and down trying to find my steps.

Yesterday I went to the sea. As always when I need to just speak out loud. It may sound crazy, but this is the way I get balance in my life. Did you ever watch the sea during the storm and thought the turmoil of the waves is exactly what you feel? Nothing makes me calmer. Yesterday, the Black Sea was calm in the morning. Different colors for different feelings, but calm.

Sometime ago I started to dream on the shores of another sea. The sea told me: “The dream is over”. So I woke up. Things change. Times change. Decisions change. London, here I come.

I will die on the shores of the sea.

Foto credits: 1, 2

See pictures here.

I am at the Salon Auto in Geneva, writing for my autoblog, AutoUnleashed. In about a week, when I will get some rest, I will write about my days in Turkey, about the trip to Geneva and back and so on. So, stay tuned

In the meanwhile, read what we write about Salon Auto at Geneva, look at the gallery of unique photos we have taken and enjoy. We sure do!

click to see bigger

Just got to Istanbul, got a hotel room, tomorrow we go to Topkapi Palace. More to come.

So, what I did in the last almost 2 weeks, fast forward:

1. I visited Ankara (especially Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’ Mausoleum – Anit Kabir). Take a Turkish person with you to tell you about everything you see. It is interesting to see in their eyes what they feel for Ataturk. We don’t have the same kind of historic figure in Romania and I think that some of the patriotic feelings the Turks have are there especially because it is so much easier to feel closeness to a person in history than to a undefined concept like a country.

2. I visited almost every shopping mall in Ankara. These people, here, are crazy about malls: they eat there, they spend their time there, they shop there… What the hell is wrong?

3. I was the trainer in a sort of “Blogoree Workshop” ( ) I had for people here, a more basic one than the ones I have in Romania (the audience was different), but it was a great workshop for me (I hope it was the same for the attendees). The title of the workshop? “Basic Use of the Internet”. I talked about Firefox (best browser), about search engine operators, about feeds (what they are, where to find them and how to use them). Quite basic, right? Well, not so when you really get to it.

Other than that, some business opportunities came my way and, who knows, I might visit Turkey earlier than I expected (business not being the only reason).

I will get in details later on, because I have lots of photos and, more, I have to tell you about traffic here and their suicidal pedestrians. I thought traffic in Bucharest was bad… trust me, that is nothing compared to Ankara and, from what they are saying, Istanbul is worse (though I will be there from Monday to Wednesday).