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?

I had a pleasure to meet Alex Osadzinski at New Connect Club event organized by Ewa’s firm and moderated by Yours Truly. After the club meeting (catch a glimpse) we had a dinner and the next day we gave Alex and his lovely wife a tour around Warsaw. After hanging out for some time I can tell you that this guy rules!

(FYI New Connect is an AIM-like unregulated market run by WSE.)

So Alex is an experienced operational exec, very technical, now a VC with Trinity Ventures in Sillicon Valley. Before joining Trinity 7 years ago he’s created over 230 billion USD (!) of aggregate public market cap, or acquisition price, for the 6 startups that he’s been at.

But let’s allow Alex to introduce himself:

I’m a lifelong geek and lover of technology with a passion for building, growing and managing teams and companies. I’ve been fortunate to have been at five startups that created great products, employment and economic value. I was sobered by the sixth startup that taught me that everyone has limits to what they can achieve. Now I enjoy helping and nurturing early-stage technology startups as a VC.

Alex works in Sillicon Valley but has a broader and multicultural perspective compared to the California locals thanks to his British experiences. He was born in London and worked in the UK for a long time. Since we were looking for a rolemodel for young Polish entreprenuers he was the perfect guy for the job. That’s why we invited him for New Connect Club event where he presented his viewpoint on global expansion of European tech companies and differences between business cultures here and there. You can see Alex’s presentation on slideshare or below. It was featured on the SlideShare homepage by their editorial team.

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But that’s not all I have to say about Alex. With every passing minute I learned more about him and it’s quite a story, I tell ya…

While we were walking through the streets of Warsaw Alex made a point that some parts of the town look like in Half Life 2. That’s kinda true. And now you know that he’s also a gamer. How many VCs would admit something like that?

Half Life 2 scenery

Warsaw 2008 scenery

Unlike many future-oriented, technology-loving geek-VCs Alex is also very concious about his geopolitical surroundings, his Polish ancestry and Poland’s history. Since his parents had their share of the WWII effort we visited the Warsaw Uprising Museum (high-tech and industrial in its design - kind of like in Ravenholm basement, but as Alex noticed no headcrabs).

When we were passing the Wellington real-size model it turned out Alex is also a pilot. Turns out that many VCs (in California) are pilots. Alex also confessed that while he’s not burning fuel over the Pacific coastline he tries to save the environment by driving a hybrid car, recycling garbage and using solar-generated power from his roof. Only in California man… ;-)

Around that time we were passing the Warsaw University buildings and we bumped into Creative Commons guys. They had a conference and Alex confessed to be an acquaintance of Lawrence Lessig, Stanford professor and founder of Creative Commons. That’s all I needed to know so we crashed CC guys party. Alex gave a 3 minute speech on his point of view… and we left. So much to see, so little time… ;-) I just hope that Alek Tarkowski, the moderator of the CC event isn’t too mad at me.

CC conference in Warsaw - tourist VCs are always welcome

It was a lot of fun.

And if that wasn’t enough I found a couple of shared interests (besides Valve games) with Alex - namely pigs and one of my favorite movies (lately) entitled “Idiocracy” by Mike Judge.

Man, what a great guy!

Very mobile, well educated and trained, often workaholics, somewhat greedy and therefore effective in whealth creation and trade. They already invested quite a lot of their time in Western Europe, conquered America and then they came to Kiev. Very keen on beautiful local women. Who am I talking about? No, I’m not talking about VCs coming for TMT.Ventures’08 Kiev conference. I’m talking about Wikings known also as Normans or Varangians who established Kievan Rus’ in the 9th century and started the Rurik dynasty which ruled Russia until 1598.

Medieval Scandinavians had many of today’s VCs qualities. They were undertaking very risky projects using their reputation which often preceded them. Their investment vehicles (boats) used for value creation were very mobile and used for doing business around the world. Depending on the situation they either made business deals or resolved business differences in a more brutal manner using mercenaries (lawyers) and swords (pens). They very much appreciated charismatic managers able to lead small teams throughout expansion into large organizations capturing large markets. They were all about business.

Their managerial skills were developed in the 9th century under competition and pressure from older Western business cultures like Celts and Picts. They got some nice ROI results and quickly dominated in the region. Danish VCs established kingdom of York in England, Norwegian VCs started kingdom of Dublin in Ireland. Norman VC known as William the Conqueror conquered the English market in 1066. About the same time Leif Eriksson discovered America.

Kiev from the hilltop

When I was walking in the streets of ancient Kiev with blogger Alex Riabtsev I wasn’t quite aware of all this but he told me that the city was built on hills overlooking the Dnieper river. It kind of reminded me of San Francisco which is also built on hills and has some famous brigdes. And we all know that VCs like everything which looks like the Bay Area.

San Francisco from the hilltop

Present day VCs are re-discovering Ukraine which has been under Russian influence but now attempts to enter EU and utilize its intelectual potential using venture capital funds. There are some great startups over there and some of them are surfacing on the global market but the situation kind of reminds me of the 9th century. Back then local managers (Finnic and Slavic tribes) invited VCs (Varangians) to accelerate their companies’ growth and increase ROI. It proved to be the right decision and created (business) culture which lasts until now.

Are Western VCs going to make it big in Ukraine? Again? Sure unless…
Medieval VCs were so fond of the local ladies that the the Rurik dynasty after around 70 years turned completely Slavic. Since then there was nothing Norman about it. So VCs, watch out for those beauties. It is very easy to defocus. And I know what I’m talking about - I went out with Yegor to a club and didn’t want to leave. ;-)

So the future looks bright for the Ukrainian tech industry. I just hope that present day VCs don’t make a mistake of underestimating its potential. After all the Viking VCs made a quite spectacular error. Leif Eriksson discovered America around 1003 but he soon left. He had a Google or Skype of his times and decided to go back home. The rest is history.

It was great to participate in the “Web 2.0 Wave in the U.S. and Poland” event last November in SF. In case you were wondering - we keep on surfing that Web 2.0 wave with some success I must say. I wanted to share that news with you…

My friend Michael Sliwinski is coming to San Francisco next week to talk at Office 2.0 Conference about ‘Getting things done’ application (productivity tool) called Nozbe.com which he created. Michael had enough skill and persistence to become one of the leading providers of such services on the US market. Here’s the buzz: http://www.nozbe.com/page/buzz He also created one of the first such productivity tools for iPhone without even using one (it’s not available in Poland yet).

You can see a video interview with Michael talking about how he’s riding the Web 2.0, “Getting things done” and iPhone waves :

UPDATE 04/20/2008: The Guru of ‘Getting things done’ David Allen was in Warsaw and also met with Michael Sliwinski

Last friday I had the pleasure to attend a meeting with Pitch Johnson and mingle with senators, professors, American embassy officials, Polish government officials and the president of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal. What a company…

The meeting was hosted by USPTC which is a Silicon Valley based non-profit organization founded by a group of senior U.S.-based corporate executives and business leaders with professional, technical and practical working experience and accomplishments in both Poland and the U.S.

The goal of USPTC is to help companies and innovators make the right contacts to expand trans-Atlantic trade, investment and cooperation in the fields of information technology and biotechnology.

During that meeting Mr. Johnson talked about conditions which must exist for entrepreneurship and innovation to flourish. And the conditions are:

• Freedom
  • political,
  • economic,
  • personal
• Government support
  • stimulating commercial banks to support innovative SMEs,
  • indirect co-financing of innovative projects,
  • opening patent and information offices,
  • educating in the field of commercialization and e-ship,
  • moderate taxes
  • existence of public stockmarkets
• Entrepreneurial climate
  • role models like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates,
  • social acceptance of entrepreneurship as a lifestyle,
  • social tolerance for failure,
  • celebration of risk-taking and success,
  • support for informal social networks,
  • availability of talent, engineering and business skills
  • availability of capital for start-up and seed projects

After listening to Mr. Johnson with attention I concluded that the ‘entrepreneurial climate’ part is something I could help to cultivate. In fact I am doing that already.

After returning from Silicon Valley in December 2006 (I was invited there by USPTC) I started thinking about organizing a grassroots unconference for internet innovators. Tommorrow evening is the first such event called ‘innowatorium’ which stands for laboratory (laboratorium) of innovation.

There is no set agenda. Every participant has 15 seconds to introduce him/herself. Everyone may come and present. Everyone may interrupt and give comments or ask questions. Everyone may propose to change the rules.

Despite lack of media sponsors, advertising campaing or even set agenda the idea of such an open event was very well received in the Polish blogosphere. The number of participants is expected to exceed 150.

The response was so good I even got invited today to Polskie Radio to talk about innowatorium and inspiration coming from Silicon Valley and USPTC. You may listen to it on January 31st at 7.30 AM Polish time.

But thats not all folks! On 28th of February there’s going to be a little more formal event in Warsaw called TMT.Ventures ‘07 which I help to organize. The main topic is fostering innovation in Central and Eastern Europe. Special guests from Benchmark Capital and Index Ventures are going to add some global perspective while the President of the Warsaw Stock Exchange is going to talk about the Polish AIM - an alternative stock market for young and innovative companies. It’s called ‘Nowy Rynek’ and it launches in Autumn this year and will surely boost the entrepreneurial climate. Rafal Stroinski - US PTC Director - is one of the panelists at this event.

So there are more and more events building that nice California-style climate which is required for innovation to grow. But we still get lots of snow in the winter. I guess you can’t have everything in life. Anyway, it was great to meet Pitch Johnson in Warsaw.

Bio

Franklin “Pitch” Johnson, Jr is a pioneer in Silicon Valley venture capital and has been active in that field since 1962. He developed and taught a course in entrepreneurship and venture capital at Stanford for 12 years from 1979-1990. It was the first venture capital course taught in a graduate school of business.

Since that time he has been an advisor to students creating entreprenurial plans as Business 390 projects. He continues to work as a venture capitalist in his 41-year-old firm, Asset Management Company of Palo Alto. His most recent publication was a paper called “Entrepreneurship and Democracy” in the Hoover Digest, 2005, No. 1.

In the area of entrepreneurship and privatization, Mr. Johnson has served as an advisor to several eastern European countries since 1990. Mr. Johnson is an active jet pilot, is a close follower of the sport of track and field, and has attended ten Olympic Games. He is also chairman of the board of San Francisco Opera Company.

As I mentioned earlier I was in the San Francisco Bay Area recently. I went there to participate in a discussion panel at the event entitled “Web 2.0 Wave in the US and Poland” organized by USPTC and the Polish Consulate at Stanford University, CA.

I met many great people there trying to build bridges between the Polish technology innovators and the U.S. market. You can learn about the proceedings of the event from a former FT reporter Tom Foremski (who was late for the event but has some thoughts on it nevertheless). Most of the anonymous quotes of the ‘the Polish panelists’ are mine ;-)

The event was very smoothly moderated by Stanford professor Charles Petrie whos very simple introductory presentation you may find here. No Microsoft products were used to prepare this presentation as Prof. Petrie mentioned ;-)

The next day I went to another conference - this time on Enterprise 2.0. Many interesting people there - again. Had a great time, made some valuable contacts and discussed some very interesting concepts. It seems that enterprise software (also 1.0 ;-) is big over there. I guess they don’t make those Fortune 3000 lists for nothing.

I also found out that I really connect with ICT businesspeople from India. We both have an outsiders perspective on the U.S. market and it really helps when evaluating our products’ chances or the future of the U.S. market. And we don’t even live on the same continent!

For example we both recognize the same differences in the adoption barriers of some products/solutions in the U.S. and other parts of the world. Some barriers in the U.S. are lower making it easier to sell certain solutions. On the other hand some inefficiencies don’t exist making certain business models (working elsewhere) obsolete.

That lack of perspective leads people to believe that WiMax has surely a big bright future in Europe or that Poles are passionate about Skype for other reasons than relatively high telecom rates due to slow telecom market liberation.

Anyway it was an eye-opening experience and a I had loads of fun too. Later on I’ll be elaborating on the ideas and doubts that came to my mind as a result of this trip.

Below are some pictures to give you a flavour of what I’ve seen and done over there.

This is an opening slide of the US-Polish event.

Ewa Stepien of New Europe Events.

From the left: me going yadayadayada, dr Greg Badros (director of engineering at Google Inc.), Marcin Malinowski (director of the business incubator department at Onet) and Paul Bragiel (CEO of the Meetro social networking site)

Our little excursion to Google HQ (there IS such thing as free lunch - but only at Google!)

I also went to Intel’s tech museum

Anybody recognize this? :-)

I met some friendly chip-makers there…

…who attempted to check out my conductivity

American corporations love to show off their big… logos

I like this one ;-)

They actually do some kitesurfing in Santa Cruz even in the winter. I wish I brought my gear along. The conditions were like in September at the Baltic sea.

It’s a pretty amazing place as you can see. (I remember a movie “A view to a kill” in which James Bond fights on top of that bridge).

Ok, time to go home…