A Perspective on Entrepreneurship, Technology & Locative Dynamics

I posted a blog entry on the LIFT conference community blog. It is about the characteristics and differences of mobile and web content, if you want to separate these two. Feel free to comment on these thoughts.

The Internet and its services play a more and more important role on mobile devices and thus I am interested in mobile application development and its chances for startups. Everyone is waiting for mobile killer applications for years but we are coming closer and I expect 2009 to be an interesting mobile year.

OK, shame on me, I haven’t written a blog entry for a long time. The break started with some long days and weeks of intense studying and writing exams. Fortunately, after enjoying Christmas with my family and meeting a lot old friends from school in my hometown, I had 6 weeks to do something exciting before my next term would start. With a Delta Airlines voucher from a canceled flight in my pocket, I decided to fly back to New Jersey for 3 weeks to visit some friends from my time as an intern at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton. The friend I was staying at approached me for a startup project in the fitness and health sector while I have been at the University of Waterloo in Canada in August 2007. This is already a long time ago but we used the time to think more about it and how much sense it makes to create a web application for an area that is very competitive but also very traditional and less innovative.

Sounds all complicated and confusing? I know, but it makes the situation also very interesting and it is a good chance to develop a product I really want to use. We will continue developing a prototype and experiment a little in all directions to see how everything can get organized and managed. The next weeks will definitely be the most important for making progress and analyzing the chances for a real startup. I make the process as transparent as possible and questions are always welcome, so maybe this blog turns out to become a founder blog with some insights.

After returning from the US I attended the amazing LIFT conference in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a conference about the challenges and opportunities of technology in our society. It is one of the major European web conferences and I got one of the student tickets sponsored by the Gebert Rüf Stiftung. A big thanks for this great opportunity to attend a conference that covers such a broad range of interesting topics, from user experience to sustainability. This makes it very special and unique. There will be a recap in the next post.

My last regular term with exams will begin next week and lasts until June. Hopefully there won’t be an overlap with the European championship in soccer which takes parts in Austria and Switzerland. After that I will write a six-month lasting diploma thesis which I want to write in a foreign country.

So far my future plans and the reasons for not blogging. I will try to blog more regularly from now on and if anyone is interested in specific topics just send me an e-mail and give me some ideas and questions.

P.S. The Thinc team, the student initiative for entrepreneurship at the University of Mannheim, is organizing a business plan competition called Thinc!Cup for May 2008. It is targeted for over 20 schools and universities around Mannheim. There will also be interesting speakers this term. Just visit the Thinc homepage for more information.