Octav Druta

If you met yourself, what would you say?

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:58:00 +0200

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 would we learn from ourselves? What would we really like to see… if we could stand outside ourselves… and look at us?

from Another Earth.

Twenty seven

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:41:10 +0300

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.

Just do what you do

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:01:00 +0300

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 to Tommy Loughranbadly and fractured his right hand in several places. His performance and disposition suffered, his record fell.

In 1929, a severe economic depression spread worldwide. The history named it: The great depression. Millions fell into poverty. Braddock’s family wasn’t sparred. He had to give up boxing and worked as a longshoreman. He had to accept government relief money to survive.

He eventually restarted his boxing career. He defeated a highly regarded heavyweight contender, Art Lasky, and he was given a title fight against the World Heavyweight Champion, Max Baer.

He worked hard: “I’m training for a fight. Not a boxing contest or a clownin’ contest or a dance. Whether it goes 1 round or 3 rounds or 10 rounds, it will be a fight and a fight all the way. When you’ve been through what I’ve had to face in the last two years, a Max Baer or a Bengal tiger looks like a house pet. He might come at me with a cannon and a blackjack and he would still be a picnic compared to what I’ve had to face.”

Braddock defeated Baer. For the boxing commentator, Braddock’s actions may have appeared as a “miraculous rise”. For many boxing wannabes and boxing coaches Braddock’s actions might appear as the recipe to success.

But which of the excellent boxers cares about rising miraculously? Which of them cares about success recipes? An excellent boxer cares about boxing, period.

Focus on doing what you do. Train for the fight rather than success.

PS: Watch Cinderella Man, if you’re interested in Braddock’s story.

Please create

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:07:00 +0200

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 the comfort of my room reminds me that we live in extraordinary times. We have tools that enable self expression like never before and distribution channels that enable us to reach to audiences across the globe again, like never before.

I love people that have thoughts of their own, people that create. We are intelligent in our own way and we create on our own way. Please don’t say that you have nothing to say. Gather yourself, create and share with the world. People are waiting to be amazed.

Let the hackers hack

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:55:36 +0200

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 great opportunity to mingle and build cool stuff along with cool people - don’t miss out, ok?

Minds are like flowers

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:56:00 +0200

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. That’s why not everyone can excel at DJing, piano playing or singing.

Have you ever asked yourself what kind of food does your mind need in order to flourish?

Does it matter?

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:53:00 +0200

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 matter to our survival, obviously. What I wanted to highlight with the help of this example is that something that matters is something (food) that impacts a fundamental outcome (survival) in a positive way.

Now that we have a feeling of what “things that matter” means, why not ask a more provocative question. How do you know whether what you are doing has an impact?

To answer this question, imagine that you are a resource, let’s say: food. What would happen if food didn’t exist? We would die. Does food matter? It does.

Are you making an impact?

You are the dictator now

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:36:36 +0200

“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 the second one. What follows is my simple take on it.

During communism most people couldn’t get easy access to various types of food (such as meat, milk, etc), hot water and other resources. It was the president / the state who regulated their access to these resources. I imagine that living more than a couple of years in such an environment, teaches people that they can not be responsible about some fundamental aspects about their lives anymore.

Coming back to 2011, it seems that a large number of people (mostly the ones aged over 40) think the same. Even they all have easy access to food and other basic resources they still expect the president to provide better places to live, better jobs, more money etc.

Is there anything else than willpower that will enable these people to take their lives in their own hands (i.e: be responsible)?

Strive to be a bigger circle

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 01:28:00 +0200

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 he fails. He then decides to be a square.

He tries hard but he fails. During his life he tries to be each of the figures that he admires the most.

At the end of his life, Mr. Circle is completely confused because he’s not able to say who he really is.

“You cannot be anything you want to be - but you can be a lot more of who you already are”. Trying to be anything else than what you already are, is a waste of time.

Instead of wasting your time, create great relationships with the people that you admire and kindly ask for their advice. Figure out how their advice is useful to you. Adapt. Grow. Be a bigger circle!

PS: Think of the same story when you evaluate anything external to you as “inspiring”. Instead of trying to imitate something that seems to be successful, step back and figure out how that piece of inspiration can be applied in the context of your values and strengths.

The world is flat. Not!

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 11:34:26 +0200

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 hear a lot of people talking about taking the world with their businesses. I am referring especially to technology businesses. All of them get excited about the perspective that we are super connected, that information flows freely and reaching somebody at the other side of the world can be done in just a matter of seconds.

From a consumption perspective it’s easy to see why the world is flat. The Internet allows anyone to access any kind of website and other global distribution channels allow anyone to buy almost any kind of gadget no matter where it has been built.

But what about the perspective of innovation? Where is all this great technological stuff being designed? Take a look at the world map of innovation clusters. You’ll see that even though anyone can consume technology from anywhere around the world, the creation work is being done in just a few places.

The world is flat from the perspective of consumption but not from that of innovation - at least not yet (what do you think?)

Do you always use the same building blocks?

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 16:35:00 +0300

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 from YouTube, I thought to myself, you know - maybe I can find a bass and guitar and other players on YouTube to play with this drummer.”

You can explore more of Kutiman’s work over here.

Update: Check out Kutiman’s latest mashup over here. It’s beautiful

What's your passion?

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:25:00 +0300

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
Design Thinking
The Unconventional
Music

While I went through the four themes, I exemplified the things that I like to do, the things the inspire me and the things that I would like to do. You can find the slides below.

What a wheel can be

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 13:56:00 +0300

“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 type of steering control in vehicles and vessels? A tool that can be used to illustrate relationships between colors?

Can you think of a wheel like no one thought before? Can you use the wheel in a way that nobody used it before? Discover.

One year older, one year wiser (hopefully)

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 18:29:00 +0300

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 about your wishes and you gave me such a short answer. In this jar you’ll find everything that I wish for you - I wrote a wish on each sticky note.”

I opened the jar and read the wishes written on the sticky notes. Here they are:

courage!
playfulness
be healthy
personal and professional growth
pleasure
travel around the world together
improve your meditation
self control
enthusiasm
continue to be generous
love and be loved
devotion
open mindedness
positive attitude
continuous discovery of extraordinary things
humour!
be curious
confidence
continuous improvement of your values
be surounded by honest people
happiness from within
be yourself
be an excellent leader
determination
perseverance
affection
achieve all your goals!
continuous improvement
kindness
optimism
strength

Julia, you made my day - I feel inspired, thank you!

Learn to Learn

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:16:06 +0300

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, I’ve developed a basic set of heuristics that enable me to discover and filter interesting movies:

Before deciding whether I want to watch a movie or not, I check its imdb.com rating.
If a good friend recommends me a movie, I watch it no matter what kind of rating it has - it’s a good opportunity to learn more about the interests of my friend.
After watching a great movie, I seek to understand why I liked it and learn about the people (director, actors, etc) that worked on it.
Whenever I notice that I like a specific characteristic (mood, structure, plot elements, etc) of a movie, I seek to discover other movies that have the same characteristic using jinni.com
I rate the movies that I watch using criticker.com in order to receive better recommendations.
I try to watch movies as often as possible. No matter how good I get at discovering and filtering, I still get to watch movies that I don’t like. Watching movies frequently increases the probability that I am going to watch a great movie.

Last week I traveled to Timisoara and Cluj together with a bunch of friends. Each of us had the opportunity to give talks related to entrepreneurship in the context of the upcoming “How to Web” event. I gave a talk titled: “Learn to Learn”. There are many fundamental aspects to creating and running a great business. I believe that learning is one of them. In my presentation I made a parallel between how I learned to watch better movies and learning in entrepreneurship. You can check the slides below.

Learn to Learn

Similarity versus Compatibility

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 01:40:00 +0300

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 user. If the musical compatibility is high, the indicator turns green and if it is low, it turns gray. When I visited this person’s profile, the indicator told me that our musical compatibility was very low.

Image credits: njekaterina

Even though the indicator promises to show your compatibility with the other user, what you really see is the degree of similarity between your profile and his. It “confuses” the things that two users have in common (i.e: their similarity) with their compatibility.

The funny thing is that it’s not only the indicator that does that, we also do it. We often (unconsciously) think that being compatible with a person means to have things in common with that person.

By definition, to be compatible means to be able to exist and perform in harmony. Having things in common may increase the likeliness of compatibility but it does not guarantee it. That’s why, the efforts of those trying to achieve compatibility by strictly seeking to match the things that they have in common are usually useless.

While similarities allow us to fire up quick conversations with other people, a strong focus on compatibility can strenghten our courage and desire to learn from them. It doesn’t really matter that we only have a few things in common: a few artists, a few books, a few interests. What matters is that there is an opportunity for us to learn from each other.

PS: I wonder how this applies to movie/music/etc recommendation systems. If most of them are only based on a mechanism that identifies similar features between movies that I saw and the past and movies that I didn’t see yet, they’re missing a lot. I’d be curious to play with a great recommendation system combined with a great discovery system.

The addiction to Making it Happen

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:16:00 +0300

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 allows them to be determined and focused on gettings things done. On the other hand, the enthusiasm of doing may reduce awareness towards progress. It’s just like swimming against the current of a river: you’re focused on swimming but you don’t really know whether you’re making progress or not.

We all seek to strike a balance between executing and checking progress. In many cases, this is hard to achieve because it is often:

hard to define what progress means
hard to define the most relevant metrics to track and visualize progress
hard to do the actual measurement (takes time, effort, maybe even a considerable financial investment)

Being aware, in other words: knowing your numbers when and where it matters, is critical to make it happen. Together with a bunch of friends, I’ve enrolled on a journey to enable people and businesses to know their numbers when and where it matters elegantly and effortlessly. We’re just starting, so if you’re a practioner of “Making it Happen”, let’s keep in touch: I’d love to meet you, work with you and answer your questions. Just write me a line over here.

Beyond conventions

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 20:05:00 +0300

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 using a pencil”, “Write using a pen”, etc. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to allow yourself to do regular activities in a new way, even for a short while? You’d have one more alternative to break routine and create new opportunities to innovate.

PS: You can watch the “making of” over here.

Unboxing the self

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:28:00 +0300

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 work. Your own sense of progress, higher purpose and autonomy were concepts that didn’t resonate quite well with the thinking of the leaders of that time: “Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?” - Henry Ford. In many places around the world, educational and professional environments stil follow the same philosophy.

My belief is that self-expression is fundamentally connected to happiness. Unfortunately, even if the educational and professional environment allowed for more self-expression, it would still be challenging to trully be yourself. We live in a complex environment and there are many contexts that influence natural self-expression - most of the times in some of the most ugliest ways.

Discovery is an approach that fosters self-expression. Being in a discovery mindset allows you to expose yourself and the surrounding context to the light of awareness. Even though awareness is a huge shift that most of the time allows you to carefully craft a response rather than mindlessly react to a certain situation, it is not enough. Sometimes the response that you have to give requires courage, authenticity and integrity. Being a discoverer is about finding the path but also about walking the path.

You can quickly recognize people that express themselves naturally by simply asking “What do you do?”. They’ll answer your question enthusiastically, pasionately and authentically. They’ll tell you a story about their work or about their life and they’ll even share the lessons that they’ve learned along the way. They’re good “friends” with the status quo but they always take one step further, discovering, inventing - not for the purpose of fame and fortune but rather for offering better, more effective alternatives to what already is available. Healthy profits (or benefits - call them however you want) come along as a natural consequence of helping people to solve a problem more effectively.

I love these people. To me, their dynamism, their strong integrity and their authentic curiosity, is empowering and inspiring in the same time. They are people that are truly self-expressed.

Reality show

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:00:00 +0300

“Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one”. - Einstein

Image Credits: Octav Druta