Maximundo : Rubrik:internet

YouTube Symphony

maximus — 2009-05-29T13:45:00Z

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.

Speed train

maximus — 2008-12-06T16:50:00Z

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.

YTSO Press coverage even in Austria!

maximus — 2008-12-03T00:09:00Z

Die Presse

derstandard.at

YouTube Symphony Orchestra

maximus — 2008-12-02T12:14:00Z

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 love YouTube

maximus — 2008-06-23T08:33:00Z

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...

WFP: Working from the park

maximus — 2008-04-25T13:38:00Z

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

The rebirth of reduce-to-the-max.com

maximus — 2008-03-11T23:14:00Z

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!

Elecciones08 on the YouTube blog

maximus — 2008-03-11T15:55:00Z

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

Google Reader

maximus — 2008-03-10T23:50:00Z

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!

Elecciones08 Wrap-up

maximus — 2008-03-09T16:21:00Z

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

Klagenfurt on YouTube

maximus — 2008-01-04T14:39:00Z

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)

Regala un vídeo in the news

maximus — 2007-12-19T10:54:00Z

My first national TV appearance!

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

www.youtube.es/regalaunvideo

maximus — 2007-12-10T01:38:00Z

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!

Reflections

maximus — 2007-08-18T09:23:00Z

Around four months ago, I had been at Google for exactly one year, I mentioned on this blog that I wanted to reflect a little on what I've learnt so far. Quite obviously, I got a bit lazy in the past months, but now that the summer is slowly nearing it's end, I finally can fulfil my promise.

Tomorrow it's been exactly one year and four months for me working at Google and I can't imagine a steeper learning curve. In the beginning, the challenge was huge - and it is still - but now I enjoy it while in the beginning it was rather frightening. From day one I was burdened with huge responsibility, especially as the marketing team in Spain was practically starting with Bernardo and me. (For God's sake there were also Javi and Nino). However, I literally got thrown into the cold water and I am convinced that this was the perfect way. I sat in external meetings in my second week, interviewed the first candidates in my third week and travelled half around the world to meet other Googlers in the fourth week. I have the impression that a lot of companies are very careful with their youngest employees in terms of responsibility and I am pretty sure that this is a big mistake. Either you swim or you drown, but you rise with the challenge and if you're too protected you won't go nowhere.

My first assignment was to do B2B marketing in Spain, in particular marketing of AdWords to small and medium enterprises. You might argue it's not too hard to sell such a product to people but there are definitely certain issues in this area that are hard to come by, especially as it's really hard to communicate to this segment in an efficient way. I am still very convinced of this product and believe that this system is the next YellowPages. If done well, it might be more time consuming, but without a doubt also more profitable and effective.

After the "strict school" of B2B marketing, I transitioned recently to the "fun part", Consumer Marketing, and will from now on be responsible for marketing of YouTube, iGoogle (and other search related products) and mobile products in Spain. It's a wide focus and it will be hard to be on top of each but it's also great products and it will be exciting to try new things. Most of all, what is most interesting to me, is the change from B2B to B2C. Not only that I hope to be able to apply some learnings from my former work, but also I will be able to complement my professional experience.

You notice, I am still very happy to work for Google. It's a company that's getting big and still growing at a fast pace. Surely there are things that don't work perfectly, but still a lot better than at other companies. There are so many people you can learn from and even if you are sometimes competing with others, it never gets personal and it's always fun. That's how I like it, I enjoy to be competitive but never want to get too serious about it.

To wrap up: Recently, this blog has become a bit of a video blog and this is for two reasons: First, I don't think I am a very gifted writer and second is that it is my plan to make this blog a bit more multimedia. I also have some other, personal plans for the internet and I will realize them during the rest of the year. I will keep posting about my thoughts on the internet world and I really would love to see this blog become more interactive - so please use the comment function to start some discussions!

In the meanwhile, keep using iGoogle and YouTube!

Hasta pronto!