Today I read a pretty interesting article from Jason Calacanis on his opinion about work/life balance when working in startup companies:

" (...) In fact, I was writing about technology while I was an IT consultant in the early 90s. Now, I did feel like my IT job was work--in the bad sense. Don't get me wrong, I loved the IT business but many times it felt like drudgery. So, I can feel Duncan on that front: when you don't love what you do it sucks. The solution to that is fairly obvious, go find something you love to do in life. It might take some time, but it really isn't THAT hard given how amazing the market is (at least in the United Stats). (...)"

Especially recently I thought a lot about this issue and I found two things to be true (in general, not just in startup companies):

1) It's important that you love what you do, but it's REALLY hard to find such a job. If you really want to succeed in your career though, I guess this is what you have to look for, although it might require lots of patience and effort.

2) Even then, you can run into problems. In the best case you don't see your job purely as work, but as a hobby that earns you money. It becomes tricky, however, when the job gets so time consuming that it takes away your private life and sucks in all your attention. Too much of anything is a bad thing too and establishing limits is important.

Conclusion: Even if you get what you want, life does not get easier ;-)

I think of myself as a very loyal fan of Twoday.net. Mr. Sierra's presentation at the WU sparked my interest in blogging a long time ago, I opened my blog over 1500 (!) days ago and in some way I like to think that all this influenced my career to a certain extent. After all, I ended up working in an internet company.

However, and this might be the first time that I criticize this platform, I don't understand that they have banned iframes from Twoday.net. There is so much cool stuff around that I would love to embedd on my blog and in my point of view it's a real pity that I can't use these functionalities. Unfortunately, it seems that this won't change in the near future: link

Some examples of embeddable iFrames:

Embedd Google Maps


Embedd Google Calendar

Only today Spaniards are going to vote their new president, but the Elecciones08 initiative already finished on Thursday, 6th of March. It has been shitloads of work, undoubtedly, but also a big success in terms of numbers. More importantly, I hope it has contributed to make the electoral campaign more transparent.

Some numbers:

- http://www.youtube.es/elecciones08 was visited by more than a million users and last week it was one of the most visited sites on YouTube worldwide

- 600 user questions were submitted

- 53 of these questions were posed on TV to the political candidates, including Rajoy and Zapatero

You can see all of these interviews here

As I said, it was lots of work, but an incredible experience to be part of such a huge project and I definitely learned a lot, sometimes the hard way. However, I think it was worth it and it makes me proud to have contributed to something that might even gain more influence in electoral campaigns to come.

Here are some other links to pretty cool stuff around the elections and politics in general:

- Election Mapplet: Live election results on Google Maps

- Politics gadgets: http://www.google.es/elecciones08

- Gadget Ad: "Which party am I" -> link

After months of hard work, it's finally there: the first RTVE/YouTube interview. It aired last night in the midnight news of La2 and honestly there are definitely better airtimes, but as the interviewed politicians will get more important, so will the airtime. There are still 5 other interviews scheduled (the last two hopefully with Rajoy and Zapatero)

But without further ado, here is the video:

It's Saturday and I just spent the afternoon on my balcony enjoying the sun. It's not hot, but it has about 18 degrees which is not bad at all. In Austria, you have to wait until end of March for such a day, if you have bad luck probably even until beginning of May. That's when the advantages of living in Spain become really obvious ;-)

For the past few months I've been working on a project which finally launched this week. It is the biggest project I have ever worked on and by far the most complicated as well. Please welcome Elecciones08 to the world!

On this special page, Spanish citizens can upload their questions and politicians will answer. We managed to partner with RTVE, the Spanish public TV, which will broadcast some of these questions on TV in an interview series with the political parties' candidates. Also, the political parties committed to post videos to answer the questions on YouTube itself. You can see the intro video with Lorenzo Milá and Mara Torres here:



Not to forget, we also have some really cool politics gadgets for iGoogle in place, which one can find on http://www.google.es/elecciones08

So far, so good. To be honest, I was not super excited when I started this project, but after all the effort I am very happy to have worked on it. At times, I felt like in a real-life business case, tough decisions had to be made which made me go through a steep learning curve - the way I like it best.

Most importantly though, this is not just a marketing campaign. This project does not only give users the possibility to speak their mind, but also to reach a huge audience, through the internet as well as on TV. It has the potential to change the way the politics game is played in Spain and that's what I am really proud of.

Update: the blog post on the official YouTube blog.

Just found a video on YouTube which I thought was quite original. It's a bus ride in Klagenfurt in fast forward. Probably not so exciting for one who did not use the public means of transport in Klagenfurt for more than 14 years, but the music is also quite cool.



Then, on www.mein-klagenfurt.at I found some more (unfortunately not on YT):

- route 20 (my route for 14 years!)

- route 95 (with a cool Soundtrack from a local band, the Liquid Glam Rockets)

I read a pretty interesting article yesterday in Fast Company, about how Publicis is transforming to tackle the new challenges of the marketing business. Also, they were extremely euphoric about their creative directors' new invention, Honeyshed. Just let me tell you, I just had a look now and the result is very sobering. The next revolution in internet shopping? I don't think so.

My first national TV appearance!



Don't forget, it's not too late to Give a gift on YouTube yet ;-)
www.youtube.com/regalaunvideo

Hi everyone!

I am back from vacations, relaxed and full of energy, ready to face the last two weeks of work before Christmas.

Two weeks ago, I launched my first Consumer campaign for Google. It's called "Regala un video" where you can post a "video gift" for someone and get the chance to get featured on the YouTube homepage for a while. Truth is, it's a small pilot project, but better than nothing, right?

Here is the introduction video:



Hope you like it ;-)

Merry Christmas!