I can't believe that it's over a month ago that this project has come to an end. It truly has been the best professional experience of my life and it has raised the bar incredibly high for things to come.

Check out this playlist to get an impression of the concert, which has been an amazing success: link

Alternatively, if you prefer UGC, you can go to my YouTube account and watch some videos filmed with my FlipCam: link

The YouTube Symphony has experienced such an incredible amount of press coverage, it surpassed even our wildest dreams. Although mostly positive, of course there also have been some critical voices (which are very appreciated by the way). What's most impressive though is that no one doubts that it has been the biggest thing in the classical music industry in years (some say even centuries!). I will abstain from linking to specific articles (I wouldn't even know where to begin) as I am confident that you can get a good impression by simply watching the concert on YouTube or googling the reviews.

For more data and fromal info, you can also go to the official press site.

It's weird. We launched the YouTube Symphony Orchestra on Monday and for the rest of the week I was congratulated and complimented. Nevertheless, I wasn't really happy, but just worried about the remaining bugs and exhausted...very exhausted.

Today, after another 14 hours of sleep I woke up and felt better for the first time this week and in the afternoon I went for a run and finally felt really happy. I think it takes a while until you realize what you've accomplished, because everything goes so fast. Fortunately, Christmas is close and I'll have plenty of opportunities to celebrate.

Die Presse

derstandard.at

After four months of hard work, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project launched yesterday with press conferences in London, New York and Korea. It's such an exciting project and I am really happy to be part of it.

Go to: http://youtube.com/symphony

NYT article: link

TechCrunch: link

I know such thoughts have no place in the business world (or only rarely), but I wish that media executives kept in mind the power of YouTube's enabling technology before they go on and say that it's a site full of "pirates and thiefs". For my part, I keep believing that sharing content, UGC or professional, is the future and that there is a fitting business model out there for it.

To underline this statement, watch Matt Harding's latest video. I signed up on his website but somehow I seem to have missed him when he was in Madrid - bugger ;-)



P.S: Doesn't help my travel bug at all...

Heyo everyone,

I got the feeling it's time to post something again, although there is no particular reason for it. Right now I am working, but NOT in the office but IN FRONT of it. God bless 3G! While there is no real Silicon Valley feel in Madrid, that's as close as it gets!

Actually, there is a pretty interesting study in one of the recent Economist about how mobile devices and technologies will change the way we work. Right now, it's probably not a reality for most of the people or ever won't make sense for a major part of the workforce, but I definitely can imagine that the share of working outside the office will increase steadily in the future. In the end, it's probably just a question of finding the right balance.

Talking about balance, I should probably start working again ;-)

P.S: I took a lot of pics recently:

Granada, April08

Sölden, Meltdown08

After years (!) of abandonment of my very first website, www.reduce-to-the-max.com, I made Tabula Rasa and "relaunched" the site last Sunday. Let's say it is an Alpha version, because there is not a lot to see yet, but I plan to add more content in the future. "Poco a poco"

I especially want to point out the "Favourite Photos" Section. I want to create a photo series in this format every now and then. Maybe galleries with a certain topic or just "Best Ofs" of trips or periods of time.

Hope you like it!

Hoooray, the Elecciones08 campaign made it to the official Youtube blog! Read the original post here.

I always had a special appreciation for Google Reader: Years ago, it was not very advanced, but still it was the best feed reader around. Then, the sheer fact that I knew about this product helped me in my interviews for my current job. In the meantime, I even had the chance to meet his inventor personally and Reader has evolved in a really cool and useful product.

I now use Reader a lot more often again, very rarely on the web though, but on my iPhone. It's fast, has a great design and most importantly, it gives me a chance to read my favourite blogs when I am on the move.

I think there will be lots of products in the future that will turn out more useful on mobile devices than on the web. It's just a matter of time until handsets and mobile versions of these products will catch up with users' needs. Reader and also Facebook have already taken a good direction (Google Maps too of course).

Pretty soon I want to write about my favourite feeds/blogs too and also about syndication of content (text and applications) in general, but for now I go to sleep. Good night!

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