January 2012
1 post
If you met yourself, what would you say?
Biologists have managed to look at ever smaller and smaller things. And astronomers have looked further and further… into the dark night sky, back in time and out in space.
But maybe the most mysterious of all… Is neither the small nor the large. It’s us, up close.
Could we even recognize ourselves? And if we did, would we know ourselves? What would we say to ourselves? What...
October 2011
1 post
Twenty seven
Here I am, one year older. And here are some of you, creating a story in my timeline about this event. Thank you all, it was great to receive your wishes in person, via Facebook and email! May we all be happy, well and peaceful.
June 2011
1 post
Just do what you do
Jim Braddock’s rise from the soup lines… to number one heavyweight contender has truly been miraculous. - NBC Box Commentator (Baer vs. Braddock match)
Photo: Max Baer vs Jim Braddock in 1935
James Braddock was born in 1905. He started boxing early. At the age of 21 he turned pro, fighting as a light heavyweight and in just three years, he scored 21 knockouts.
In 1928, he lost...
March 2011
2 posts
Please create
I’ve been online for over 12 years now and this medium never ceases to offer me new things to learn.
I am a huge fan of music and the Internet enabled me to discover amazing new artists. Today I stumbled across a song by Young Galaxy which is a Canadian indie rock / dream pop band. You can listen it over here.
Young Galaxy
The fact that I could enjoy the music of Young Galaxy today, in...
Let the hackers hack
That’s what the YDN team is going to do on 14th and 15th May in Bucharest. Anil, the Programme Manager for the Yahoo! Developer Network just shared with me that Open Hack is coming to Bucharest.
If you’re not familiar with Open Hack, it’s a 2 days event where developers and designers gather to build great stuff. You can learn more about the event over here.
It’s a...
February 2011
2 posts
Minds are like flowers
Lotus flowers grow along lakes and rivers in wet soil. It is nearly impossible for a lotus to survive in deserts or in a harsh cold environment such as the arctic tundra.
Image credits: Geninne
Just like a lotus flower needs wet soil to develop, a musical mind needs to be fed with sound and rhythm to flourish. All minds are sensitive to music but some minds are more sensitive than others....
Does it matter?
How do you know whether something matters or not?
This is a simple question to answer if we look at survival. We all want to survive, right? All organisms want to survive. In order to survive, we have to eat. Hence, food is one of the things that matters to us. By eating our survival is impacted in a positive way and vice-versa.
Image credits: Sam Gross
There are many other things that...
January 2011
1 post
You are the dictator now
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi
I’ve been travelling in Romania in the past few weeks and overheard many conversations about politics and quality of life. There are two big patterns that I observed and wanted to share.
People complain
People expect that their lives will get better only when PersonX will be president
I am especially interested to understand...
December 2010
1 post
Strive to be a bigger circle
Consider that the orange circle in the picture below is a person. Say, Mr. Circle. All other geometric figures are people that this person admires. Even though there are similarities between these figures, everyone is unique in its own way.
“You can be anything you want to be, if you just try hard enough”. At first, Mr. Circle decides that he wants to be a star.
He tries hard but...
November 2010
1 post
The world is flat. Not!
If you read Thomas Friedman’s book: The World is Flat: A brief History of the Twenty-First Century, you’ll learn that its title is a metaphor for viewing the world as a level playing field in terms of commerce, where all competitors have an equal opportunity.
Leading Innovation Clusters. Source: Juan Alcacer, Harvard Business School and NY University; McKinsey analysis
Nowadays, I...
October 2010
5 posts
Do you always use the same building blocks?
Make a change, experiment something new. Ophir Kutiel (also known as Kutiman), a musician, composer, producer and animator from Israel creates his music using samples of YouTube videos. Here’s how he started:
“At first I took some drummers from YouTube and I played on top of them - just for fun, you know. And then one day, just before I plugged my guitar to play on top of the drummer...
What's your passion?
I had the opportunity to give a little talk about my passions at an Ignite event organized by the Bucharest Hubb team.
There are very few things in my life that I don’t do with passion (I can’t even actually think about one right now) so I decided to just pick the themes that immediately came to my mind at the time when I created the presentation. So, I spoke about:
The Extreme
...
What a wheel can be
“Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.” - Albert Szent Gyorgyi (Hungarian Biochemist, 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine)
Image credits: Zonifer Lloyd
When you see a wheel, what comes to your mind? Is it movement? Transportation? Make an effort to go beyond “what a wheel is” and explore “what a wheel can be”. A...
One year older, one year wiser (hopefully)
Last night, before falling asleep, Julia asked me what are my wishes for the next year of my life. I answered: I wish to be healthy, to give and to receive love. She asked this question because today at 8.45PM I’m going to be one year older.
Image credits: Twenty six. Octav Druta
This afternoon, she gave me a big jar filled with sticky notes and she said: “Last night I asked...
Learn to Learn
I started developing a passion for movies around seven years ago. One of the most memorable movies that I saw back then (in 2003) is “The butterfly effect”. This movie made me very curious - I actually went to my physics professor at that time and tried to learn more about the phenomenon.
I liked idea of learning while watching movies. That’s why, in the past seven years,...
September 2010
3 posts
Similarity versus Compatibility
A few weeks ago I met a new person that has a big passion for music. We had an interesting conversation and we connected our profiles on last.fm (if you don’t know already, last.fm is a social network which revolves around its music recommendation engine).
When you visit a user’s profile on last.fm, the interface displays an indicator that shows your musical compatibility with that...
The addiction to Making it Happen
People with a passion for “Making it Happen” are addicted to doing. There are books, manifestos, tools and wise words that enable and inspire us to do more and better.
Illustration Credits: Max Estes
For entrepreneurs, the huge enthusiasm that surrounds the goal of “Making it Happen” is helpful and deadly in the same time. One the one hand, it is helpful because it...
Beyond conventions
A Spanish artist by the name of Cesar Diaz used only a photo camera, a light table and sand to illustrate “Take it easy (No Corras Tanto)” - a song created by his band: El Combolinga. No added effects, no post production, just imagination, simplicity and 3 months hard work.
Since childhood, we’re taught that certain activities should be done using certain tools: “Draw...
August 2010
8 posts
Unboxing the self
Even though society has evolved a lot, most of its institutions follow a culture that confines the freedom of self-expression. That is sad, because not being self-expressed means not being happy.
Image copyright James Yang
The rise of agriculture and industry, shaped work and education as contexts that required individuals to be punctual, follow directions and tolerate long hours of tedius...
Reality show
“Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one”. - Einstein
Image Credits: Octav Druta
Shortcut to unhappiness
“I used to be on Facebok a lot, but found that it left me feeling bad about my life” - confessed a friend of Stan James. Spend time on Facebook “watching” the glamorous lives of your “not-so-close” Facebook friends. It will make you feel bad about your life.
Your “not-so-close” Facebook friends are the new TV Stars writes Stan James in a thought...
Unplug yourself, let go and refresh
“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.” - Lao Tzu
Image credits: noimpactman
Imagine living unplugged from the electrical grid, producing no trash, travelling exclusively by foot or bike and buying nothing except food (all of it locally grown).
This would mean:
no trash
no paper
no...
Why generosity is the new selfishness
We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for selfishness. When I say we, I’m talking about any kind of living organism. From an evolutionary standpoint, selfishness is fundamental for survival.
Image credits: Anonymous
So then, why is generosity the new selfishness? Or, why it isn’t but it should be? Explore the words of Stephen Hawking a bit: ”Our population and our use...
To climb or to flow? That's a good question
I’ve been thinking a lot about mountains and rivers. No, I’m not planning to go camping any soon, but it would still be a great idea. What I was really thinking about is the fundamental difference between two approaches to life.
Photo credits: Stuck In Customs
The first approach has to do with investing hard, constant, willful effort in order to succeed. Think about climbing a tall...
If you don't use it you'll lose it
We are what we repeatedly do. You know what I mean, right? If you do, you also know that the “picture” below is not the full one. So, if you want to add something to it, please do it in the comments section.
Enjoying your own actions
What am I doing now? It’s a simple question. I ask it myself constantly. Even though the answer is valuable, I find the “asking” in itself to be even more valuable. It’s a way to be aware of what I do and how I feel about what I do.
I thought of creating a visual of my most frequent actions. Being able to “see them” allows me to have a better connection myself...
July 2010
4 posts
Facebook friends visualized
I have quite a few friends on Facebook: 690 to be more exact. I use Facebook since 2005 when I was in college so, I was really curious to “see” how my network developed since then.
What you see in the left side of the image above is a visual representation of my friends (points) and the connections (lines) between them.
The core of my network (the red, circle-like shape) is made...
What does "spiritual" mean to you?
I think it’s a very good question and I had the chance to debate it many times with my friends and family. Recently, Vladimir, a good friend of mine posted the following on his Facebook wall: “do you consider yourself a spiritual person? and if so … what do you think makes someone spiritual?”
Here’s a visual summary of the topics that people used to reply to his...
On the power of violence
I am fascinated by violence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a violent person but I find it fascinating to see how easily can violence corrupt my mind. This makes me ponder on the power of violence.
Photo credits: Emmy Vesta Fotegrafe
I find that witnessing “unfairness” triggers the feeling of violence in my mind very often. It is enough for me to watch a movie that tells a...
Flying high
Today it’s the 1st of July, 2010. I made my blog public exactly one year ago. I believe that’s a pretty nice milestone so I decided to share something that I love with you.
Freedom, high mountains and flying are all sources of inspiration for me so in the video below you’ll have the chance to see a glider flying above the Swiss Alps. I find it amazing, I hope that you’ll...
June 2010
2 posts
Exploring freedom from attachment
“He who binds to himself a joy Does the wingèd life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
- William Blake: Eternity
Image credits: zik “Tây”
I see William Blake’s poem as a simple story about attachment: as long as you’re attached to something there is a high chance that you’ll become unhappy.
Everything...
See the world like never before
I spend a quite lot of time online so I get to stumble across new technologies often. That’s awesome. What doesn’t happen to me that often is to stumble across jaw-dropping technologies.
A while ago I’ve read about yellowBird, a technology that promised to deliver a product that would create the next revolution in online film and video. Remember the 360 degrees virtual tours...
May 2010
3 posts
Why is it expensive to be evil nowadays?
Jeff Jarvis might say that the answer has to do with the notion of hyper-connectedness: “In a hyper-connected world, the costs of evil explode”.
Umair Haque goes a few steps further and offers an interesting perspective on why the costs of evil and the benefits of good are amplified in a hyper-connected world. He argues that in a hyper-connected world there are six forces which...
Why DJs should use services such as Spotify
DJs select and play music for various types of audiences - they are curators. Each of their live performances is based on a playlist of songs which are mixed and matched with the help of various pieces of electronic equipment.
Armin van Buuren at Global Gathering. Photo Credits: ishootdjs.com
Services such as Spotify, allow anyone to be a music curator. You can easily create a playlist of...
Tribes rock. Which ones are your favorite?
I love to discover new tribes because I can learn about their distinct approaches to various aspects of life.
Photo Credits: cinci_juggalette, eggz, stevegreaves, dirtmerchantdigital
Let’s start a conversation about what tribes you like and why you like them. Do you like surfers? Why? Do you like bikers? Why?
Let me start with a couple examples:
Entrepreneurs. They can offer you a...
April 2010
5 posts
“Sharing is the new Search.”
– Octav Druta
Rodeo: On wild horses and crazy cowboys
Entrepreneurs and ideas are similar to crazy cowboys and wild horses. When looking at rodeo or tech entrepreneurship the obvious might not be useful. Why?
Well, here’s why:
you tend to think that holding on to the horse as hard as possible is ok, but it’s not: there is a very high chance that you’re going to fall.
also when you build a startup you tend to think that simply...
How do you see the world?
It might be useful to stop for a few minutes and observe the world around you. How do you see it?
Image Credits: Octav Druta
Ruth Bebermeyer wrote a song about how she sees the world. I’ll share it with you, let me know what you think about it!
I’ve never seen a lazy man I’ve never seen a lazy man; I’ve seen a man who never ran while I watched him, and I’ve seen a man who sometimes...
In what kind of world do you live in?
I wonder how often I switch from one world to another and why. Do you also have this curiosity?
Image credits: Octav Druta
Startups built to learn - lean startups
Consider that a lot of people invest an incredible amount of energy, passion and creativity to create products and services that eventually fail. One of the reasons is that they build their companies according to myths instead of guiding them with facts and knowledge to use those facts well.
The trends in the startup landscape change. The way people build startups today is changing, especially...
March 2010
4 posts
The Architecture of Innovation
In the past couple of months I followed various conversations about replicating Silicon Valley. It seems that many countries and regions have failed in their attempts to replicate Silicon Valley’s high-tech industrial growth.
Image credits: Zee Anna!
Mickey McManus, president and chief executive officer of MAYA Design Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania shares a couple of insights that can be...
The Art of Entrepreneurship
Graphic inspired by Craig Damrauer
Explore my entrepreneurship vision, a cool article on “grit” and an awesome presentation on grit (Thanks Catalin for pointing it out to me!)
What makes your heart sing?
I just finished reading an article by Claudia Wallis on happiness. You probably know already that happiness comes from having meaningful relationships within your environment.
Image credits: Sandra
It seems that one can only be happy by choice. Since wise choices require presence and in general a moment-by-moment lifestyle, it’s worth reminding yourself that the major sources of...
Contemplating on balance
Photo Credits: rebrance46
I am thinking about lifestyle balance these days. Here are some questions that popped into my mind while exploring this subject:
1. How do you know that you’re in a state of balance in life?
2. Is there a default state of lifestyle balance?
3. How do you create lifestyle balance?
Let me know what you think!
February 2010
2 posts
The Art of Focus
Graphic created by Octav Druta. Inspired by Craig Damrauer
How do you define focus by the way?
Stop Solving Problems For A Moment
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness. - Charles Spurgeon
Look around, everyone is seeking to solve problems. Take health care for example. There are over 40 drugs to treat Nausea, over 100 drugs to treat Insomnia, over 400 drugs to treat Pain - the list is huge.
I’m not saying that it’s wrong to have many alternative treatments for health...
January 2010
2 posts
Join my dream of learning GO
So simple, yet so hard. I knew about GO. I knew that it’s remarkable for its strategic complexity despite its simple rules.
I felt that I should experience this mysterious game some day. With time, this feeling turned into a quiet voice - a constant longing in my mind.
Photo credits: tasuki
My trigger for action was in the summer of 2009. I’ve read about my friend’s Daniel...
Power to you
What is power to you? Before rushing to submit your answer in the comments section, watch this cute little video. You’ll find it… well, you tell me how you found it - I am curious to learn about your opinion!
December 2009
3 posts
Looking in a mirror without using one
You smile, he smiles. You wink, he winks. You wave, he waves. You know exactly who I’m talking about, right? It’s the “Man in the mirror”.
Little Spy. Image copyright Vlad Dumitreanu
Listen to Michael Jackson’s song: “Man in the Mirror”. It’s both a source of inspiration and a great opportunity to take a look at yourself in the same time.
...
Please do get infected
Disclaimer: I am one of the advisors of Seedmoney
Striving to get infected with a virus isn’t the best thing to do, you know? Well, believe it or not, there are exceptions. How would you like to be infected with happiness? Or let’s say… inspiration? Maybe passion? Perhaps Motivation? Knowledge? Extraordinary results?
Photo copyright: nomoco
They say that your friends can...