Just got back from a movie theater after seeing James Cameron’s Avatar. Wow! What a ride, what a rush…

Right now I feel like waking up from a vivid dream about this beautiful, exotic, low gravity world populated by big, strong, physically fit humanoid creatures living the-simple-life in almost perfect harmony with their planet and thus enjoying every minute of it - like we never seem to do on this Earth.

I feel like I’ve been dreaming about eco-friendly Utopia, erotic and seductive Garden of Eden, andrenaline pumping Shangri la, a Paradise in every sense of the word. Just like Jake Sully I would like to go back right now…

James Cameron sure knows how to create magic and tell a story using available 3D technology. What he’s done is quite simple really but it sure is working for me.

Let’s go step by step through Master Cameron’s work.

First - since you’re about to put a milestone into moviemaking history you have to use available 3D technology to its full potential. So try to imagine a world rich in dazzling vistas and amazing lifeforms - both fauna and flora - and try to mix them so the audience can’t tell what’s alive and what’s just pretty-looking and glaring at night. It has to be in another planetary system so the moons and a huge planet hangs over the horizon which is quite a view itself. It has to be low gravity so everything’s huge and all structures - living or not - are almost impossible to imagine in our world. Low gravity also means incredible jumps and aerial evolutions, skinny yet agile lifeforms like flying dragons and all kinds of amazing stuff.

Second - since you’re introducing most viewers to 3D movie technology you have to make the main character - with whom everyone identifies with - put on his “3D glasses” and experience immersion just like the audience does. While we are being immersed in his 3D life he’s going for a ride with his avatar. It’s a 3D movie about 3D technology of the future.

Third - the main character has to be physically impaired so his 3D ride seems even more compelling and desirable. Compared to these blue humanoid cat-like creatures living in a low grav world we all seem physically impaired, unfit and/or old. I certainly feel like it with my 12-hours-a-day in front of a computer screen and resulting back pains. So beam me up Scotty, I’m ready for my 3D avatar movie or any personalized 3D technology which James Cameron seems to predict. I want mine 3D-kit now! But let me play the Avatar game first…

Fourth - populate the distant planet of our dreams with beautiful, slim yet powerful creatures we’d all like to be. Make them live a simple life with respect for elders and their planet, a life filled with joyous trips and exciting rituals embracing life and celebrating the simple yet astonishing fact of living.

Fifth - add a flavour of supernatural - a living and thinking planet connected with every organism inhabiting it through countless neuro synapses - a giant, unified, surrounding being. A deity, a fact of nature. Something to believe in, to touch, to talk to.

Sixth - gimme these big bad diseased corporations representing the wickedness of our world, a world deprived of values we’d all like to believe in, a world in which a man is just a tool for the money virus to spread and multiply. Because money - the ultimate goal and driver of all corporations - is like a simple DNA-viral-lifeform which requires us only as carriers to spread across the stars and distant worlds while it’s only goal is to wipe out everything and everyone constraining its multiplication. So let me bring them corporations down even for a moment. Let me win a battle at least, if not a war. Get some you corpos you…

Seventh - gimme some historical allegories from colonization of America by early-white-settlers, Africa and Asia by greedy-europeans or any other expansive civilization in human history. Show me some pain and suffering of native Pandorans so I can reflect on current affairs and condemn any resources-driven-expansion. Allow me to simplify and forget that one world’s downfall preserves another world’s prosperity and way of life.

Eighth - let me indulge in a love story out of this world. Make me feel young again and allow me to explore the unexplored. Let me go where no man has gone before… if you catch my drift ;-)

The critics will say that Avatar is a well-written posthuman story, a dawn of transhuman, a praise for openness, hybridization and diversity. They’ll say we’ve seen it all before in Blade Runner, Matrix, Star Wars, however Cameron’s form is quite refreshing. They’ll say that Avatar is a politically engaged, critically inclined opinion about imperialistic America, a protest against a philosophy of preemptive strikes against perceived threats, which in fact are waged to justify resource-driven-wars. They will also say it’s about America’s involvement in Iraq.

Well, I say stop your blabbering. Do not overthink it. Do not ruin my ride through Pandora. It’s entertaintent so let me wear my avatar Jake Sully so he can wear his so we can both live, fight, love and enjoy ourselves.

Let me address the question of “why there is evil in the world” tomorrow. Okey?

Investors are from Mars while tech and new media companies are from Venus. Lawyers are not so bad. Buyouts are like any other trading deals so it’s good to have an advisor who has more negotiating skill and experience then the buyer. We need The Founding Fathers of the Polish Internet not just because they were in the right place at the right time but because they had unique experiences of dynamic growth and solving complex interpersonal and business issues.

These are just a few of the conclusions drawn from the exciting TMT.Buyouts’09 Warsaw conference which was held on November 25th 2009 at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. This time the main theme of the event were buyouts after which previous owners get some capital to fulfill their goals and dreams – either disappear and live the good life or take on another business challenge.

More:

http://www.tmtevents.pl/conference-tmt_buyouts_2009_warsaw-12.html

If you often reach for your Blackberry, iPhone or G1 to check new e-mails, use GPS, Google Maps or Twitter – you may be infected with Generation C syndrome. If your favorite application if Firefox or even IE and you cannot imagine your life without Skype, Last.fm, social networking and torrents – you most definitely are infected. Bad news: there’s no cure. Good news: there’s more people like you. It’s the only real pandemic out there.

What is Generation C? It’s a group of people all over the world aged 15 to 45 choosing a digitally-enhanced lifestyle and thus empowering hardware, application and service providers but also grassroots organizations like creative commons or Piratbyrån. In the world of Generation C it’s all about content, communication and cooperation. And since the content is digital it doesn’t exist without a proper medium and your favorite device. It all ads up to a digital world where people are the most important component individually and form powerfull and influencial communities all together.

Generation C exerts enormous pressure on different content, telco and other service industries. What is the future of copyrights, what are tommorrows monetization models. Is the internet and media industry going to evolve providing on-demand services or are the users going to provide them to themselves leaving the intermediaries out? And breaking the law in the process?

Let’s discuss these issues on June 18th, 2009 during TMT.Communities’09 Warsaw conference in the Warsaw Stock Exchange HQ.

Check it out: TMT.Communities’09 Warsaw

Topics

• Success Factors of Starting up a (community empowered) Internet Business
• These are the clusters of the internet! How the netusers spontanously build a society of their own, defending the internet against lobbyists, laywers and governments.
• The Pirat Bay Trial - how would it play out in Poland?
• Portal, vortal or community? Is the old-fashioned portal business model outdated? Are niche vortals and brandnames the way of the future? Are communities the only way to grow?
• Evolution of copyrights, content distribution and multimedia business models
• Generation C – content, community, co-creation, control
• P2P search engines - back to direct democracy
• Specialized communities: family tree, location-based, entertainment, girl nextdoor…

(Among) Special Guests

Special Guest: Marcin de Kamiński | The Pirate Bay Marcin de Kaminski (www.dekaminski.se) is one of the founders of the pro internet lobby group Piratbyrån (www.piratbyran.org), aswell as the wellknown filesharing giant The Pirate Bay (www.thepiratebay.org). He has been coordinating projects at the Swedish pirate scene since the early 2000:s. Combined with a long and loving relationship to social networking through digital medias he has an unique inside knowledge of digital grassroot organizing. At the moment Marcin combines his experiences from his involvment in the progressive internet movement with social research in a large study called Cybernormer (www.cybernormer.se), concerning normative processes when youth cultures clash with copyright and internet legislation.

Gość Specjalny: Łukasz Gadowski | Team Europe Ventures Lukasz Gadowski is the co-founder and a partner of Team Europe Ventures. He studied in Paderborn (Business Informatics) as well as in Mannheim and at HHL Leipzig (Business), and in 2002 founded the company Spreadshirt (currently employing 300 people worldwide) and was, amongst other things, a co-founder of the social network “StudiVZ” (sold to Holtzbrinck in 2007, currently the most-viewed German internet site). At the beginning of 2008, Gadowski switched from his executive position at Spreadshirt to a seat on the supervisory board, which he now chairs. As of 2007, he has been active as an angel investor and was involved in the launch of a number of internet companies. Furthermore, Lukasz has made numerous investments, both domestically and internationally, and was distinguished as the 2007 “Internet Entrepreneur of the Year.” Lukasz has a personal blog at lukaszgadowski.com

Special Guest: Jakub Duszyński | Gutek Film Artistic director and head of acquisitions in Gutek Film, Poland’s leading art house distribution company established in 1994. Feature film expert of the Polish Film Institute. Creator and host of a weekly TV show promoting art house films in ALE KINO (Canal+ Poland). Co-founder, artistic director (2001-2007)and co-author of the film program of ‘Era New Horizons Film Festival’ in Wroclaw, Poland. Co-programmer of “Summer of Films” Film Festival in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland. Jakub holds an MA degree (“a” grade) in philosophy of law from the faculty of law of the University of Warsaw.

Check it out: TMT.Communities’09 Warsaw

Who is Morten Lund?

Morten Lund, (born April 3, 1972) is an entrepreneur from Copenhagen, Denmark. Along with Soren Kenner, Lund is founder and managing partner of LundKenner, a venture capital firm focusing on technology ventures.^[1] From 2007 he has also fronted the startup catalyst LundXY.

That’s what Wikipedia has to say. But who is he really?

Father of 4 kids and 60+ startups? Archangel investor, startup ideologist and visionary? Smooth salesman and marketer who excels at selling himself? Undeterred by failure and innovative DJ of proven technologies producing a smash hit every few years? Uber networker and connector leaving project management to someone else? Updated younger look-a-like version of Sir Richard Branson? Greatest fan of Steve Jobs who thinks you should always take ‘the first right’? Easy going but energetic personality who loves people just like his friend Bill Clinton?

Who knows. You be the judge. Here’s an interview from TMT.Ventures’09 Warsaw:

Last Wednesday, March 5th I had the pleasure to mingle with a spectacular community of smart people attending TMT.Ventures’09 Warsaw: innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, bloggers and so on.

What else would you want? Oh, maybe a networking dinner the night before, celebrity arch-angel investor straight from Le Web video, 7 minutes contest during the event, great speakers, great lunch and last but not least… flute playing lesson broadcasted via video stream.

So many memories, new businessfriends, old acquaintances refreshed, things to think over. I’ll be relaying those over to you during the next few days on this blog. So stay tuned.

Yes, we are experiencing a downturn. Yes, in the macro-scale it will probably get worse before it gets better. But let’s not worry about the broken financial system or gloomy future of some financial institutions. Let’s not worry about the economy while there are fat juicy opportunities to be harvested out there.

The airheads and smart-asses are gone back to their safe and warm jobs - says celebrity investor Morten Lund. The supply of new and innovative projects is lower so it’s easier to achieve first mover advantage - says Holtzbrinck Ventures CEO Konstantin Urban. Easy UE money is out there for the taking - says serial entreprenuer turned investor Rafal Styczen. Grab whatever is left from your bankrupt competitors’ assets - says Piotr Czublun of CMS Cameron McKenna. Exciting stuff.

So what the heck are we having these conferences for?

Remember what Friedrich Nietzsche said about The Financial System being dead?

The Financial System is dead. The Financial System remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?

And then good ol’ Friedrich tells us to get together and have a conference before we get to work:

Companions, the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks — those who write new values on new tablets. Companions, the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. … Fellow creators, The Entrepreneur seeks, fellow harvesters and fellow celebrants: what are herds and shepherds and corpses to him?

So let’s get to work and let’s not allow this crisis deter us from being creative and innovative. When the going gets tough only tough get going. And it takes one tough entrepreneur to build anything meaningful. Determination, hard work and lots of good luck - says Morten Lund. Also fellow harvesters and fellow celebrants - reminds Friedrich Nietzsche, famous management coach.

Stay tuned for another transmission from a memoir of TMT.Ventures’09 Warsaw participant.

PS. Here’s how we got into The Financial Crisis:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Guess what. Another New Europe’s most exciting conference for tech-entrepreneurs, new media and technology executives and investors - TMT.Ventures’09 Warsaw - is happening on March 5th at the Warsaw Stock Exchange, Poland.

And guess who’s coming…

Morten Lund is coming. If you don’t know who he is by now… you better don’t admit it. Better check out this post and videos.

Morten Lund, (born April 3, 1972) is an entrepreneur from Copenhagen, Denmark - according to Wikipedia.

At 36 years of age he is one of the most active seed investors in Europe, with an eye for turning existing business models and distribution methods on their head. His portfolio features over 80 companies spanning the Internet, telecoms, health and alternative energy.^[5] On January 13, 2009, Morten Lund was declared personally bankrupt by the Copenhagen Maritime and Commercial Court^[6].

Archangel investor, serial entrepreuneur, startup ideologist and visionary. He has founded and/or co-invested in more than 40 high-tech start ups including Skype, the Internet phone startup bought by eBay. At 36 years of age, his current portfolio includes over 80 companies, from internet technology, through telecommunications, to health and energy. Lund has additionally established a category of investments in his portfolio entitled WILD – Worldwide Investments/Involvement in Life Development which is currently investing in companies within the areas of water purification technology, water turbine energy, landmine detection and hunger/obesity.

He is one of the most active seed investors in Europe. Lund is a special member of Clinton’s Global Initiative (www.clintonglobalinitiative.org), he is a professor at Reykjavik University and frequent speaker at international conferences. His blog has more readers than a local newspaper, 40,000.

Lund’s investment model merges angel and venture capital with incubator support catapaulting start-ups into existence. He believes: “Startups need help from smart people – not takeovers from smart asses”. To Lund, being an investor is all about adding value. He doesn’t over-think and he doesn’t let himself get bogged down by institutional processes. He just does. Quickly. He falls in love with companies, and does what it takes to help them grow.

Tenacious, instinctive and viciously self-promoting, one of Morten’s secrets to success lies in his network activity which extends from honing the raw brilliance of young programmers to masterminding a sit-down with former President Clinton. He is not afraid to take risks and dedicates funds for high risk early stage investments. He is known for acting on the moment, focusing on people, timing, network and…luck hence the title of his blog: ‘Its all about Luck’.

SIME 08 - Morten Lund from SIME on Vimeo.

Recent activities include, co-founding Denmarks now largest newspaper, Nyhedsavisen, a free newspaper, where he intends to transform the nature of printed press today, merging this offline distribution with an attractive online presence. He also recently started 40+ companies under his boutique firm LundKenner and ignited international communications agency Hello Group founded 2006 and now employing 65 people, and currently the fastest growing add and media agency in Scandinavia. On top of all that Morten has started 3 funds – Chinese Property, Indian Tech Ventures and Middle East GreenTech Private Equity Fund.

Recent exits include:
VOIP star Skype (recently sold to eBay for $2.6 billion), Anti-virus consumer brand Bullguard,
Web Agency NeoIdeo (sold to Leo Burnett),
Chinese browser Maxthon with 72 million downloads,
Orolix the fastest growing on-line company in Brazil, Commisions free stocktrading Zecco.com (75.000+ clients in 12months)
PokerOffice the world leader in poker training.

Within his WILD investment portfolio, he is currently involved with WaterStillar, a company for water purification techniques; IJoule, a startup working to fight obesity and Aresa, a company that uses genetically modified plants to detect landmines.

At the heart of Morten Lund there’s something that drives him to go big. To Lund, big money means big power. It means Carl Icahn-style clout and activism. Something makes people listen to Lund, he has the clout, vision and disruptive ideas to fascinate and inspire. He will influence how we live, communicate, work and play tomorrow.

Gasp…

Any questions?

TMT.Ventures’09 Warsaw, March 5th - Warsaw, Poland

Saul Klein - Partner at Index Ventures, Founding Partner of The Accelerator Group (TAG), as well as the founder of OpenCoffee Club and Seedcamp - is super excited about Seedcamp 08 week starting today in London.

Saul says they have a great set of teams from across the globe - including Austria, Poland, Finland, Romania, Ukraine, France, Germany, Slovenia, US, India and Sweden, the UK, but not just from London - from Wales as well.

Check out this super cool Seedcamp application zeitgeist.

What are you creating?

How will you make money?


What tools will you use?

“The diversity is fantastic and shows how wide the talent pool really is in Europe and that killer teams can come from anywhere nowadays - although Zemanta, taught us that lesson last year by putting Slovenia on the Internet map.” - says Saul.

LOL you Westerners, you!

Maybe it’s time to get to know start-ups form Central and Eastern Europe a little better. Why not start in the Balkans - Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia…

Why not learn some more at TMT.Ventures’08 Zagreb conference, which will take place on October 28th in Zagreb, Croatia:

For Seedcamp-lovers we have a ‘7 minutes‘ contest for the most innovative regional start-ups. It was kinda inspired by local Easter European contest but VC-backed Seedcamp as well. In fact we did one of these contest with Reshma and it was great fun. But getting to the point…

‘7 minutes’ is a challenge for entrepreneurs trying to make an impression and deliver a convincing presentation in an extremely short period of 7 minutes. It is a test of self-confidence and charisma for the project-leaders standing in front of a demanding audience, their competition, world-class investors, bloggers and media people.

Just to show you that we’re for real and that ‘7 minutes’ works… Mapness - a finalist of ‘7 minutes’ held in Warsaw - was recently voted the European Startup of the Month - August at EuropeanStartups and also won the 3rd prize at London Startup Camp. Congrats guys!

See you at TMT.Ventures’08 Zagreb on October 28th.