Tag: api

Swedish API legends with Berghs Interactive

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Screenshot 2014-01-19 18.42.56I am very happy to be holding a API week for the interactive students at Bergs School of Communication this week. (above, image of Ted Valentin, se text below).

As the communication landscape changes rapidly, API’s have become the bread and butter for expanding startups and organisations that wish to reach outside their own sites as a part of creative interactive strategy. The students will have theoretical lessons but I will aslo have them get their hands work together with some of the best profiles from Sweden and abroad. We will look over the monetiszation that API’s support, how to use them, and learn more about when to use, when to build them.  I am looking forward to working with case specific presentations from some of the most interesting startups in Sweden currently to help widen the perspective of the API landscape.

A legend within the field is Ted Valentin, a coder and entrepreneur who has launched more than 40 websites during his career. Currently he runs a network of review websites (Restaurangkartan.se, Hotellkartan.se, Pizzakartan.se etc) with more than one million visitors per month in Sweden. He is also the founder of SocialaNyheter.se, Boutiquehotel.me, and PopularaBarer.se – just to mention a few of his latest projects.

ellenEllen Sundh who runs Coda Collective is another Swedish legend, also called the Queen of Code due to her internationally recognised interactive installations. With campaigns like “The sound of Football” Creative Technologist Ellen has won a Golden Egg award, as well as serving on their jury, and often expert quoted at Resume. Many speak of interactive events today, but Ellen definitely takes things to new levels like few before her. She is one of the sharpest minds in code and concept today.

The week will aslo include speakers from:
• Rebeca Meritz, Developer at FundedByMe
• Mike Burns, Director and Techie at ThoughtBot
• Ellen Sundh, Creative Technologist at Coda Collective
• Birk Nilsson, Developer at Tictail
• Erik Akterin, Engineer and founder at Qapital
• Ted Valentin, Cafekartan.se and co-workingspace Knackeriet.

 

 

High-five Spotify #StudentTechFest

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Earlier this year I spoke about the ABC of API’s at Spotify’s event #StudentTechFest in Stockholm, Sweden. It was a brilliantly arranged event by Sofia von Celsing from Spotify who also curated the experience.
After more than five years of making GeekGirlMeetup events around the world, it was a pleasure to participate in something so aspiring and inspiring for students. Over 100 students were chosen from the several hundred applicants from the Swedish (tech and media) schools as Spotify is aiming to work with best developers and talent in the world as a growth and recruiting strategy strategy.

I high fived my wonderful moderator Navid Modiri on stage, right here and the presentations will be here shortly (Slideshare.)

Finding new ways to give with Charity API’s

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I recently started working on an autumn project with the the amazing team at TheGivingLab, an R&D department at a charity aiming to find new ways of giving with Charity API’s, a project funded by NESTA amongst others.

When it’s a given that chuggers (charity muggers) hasseling you on the street for a signup doesn’t really work, and neither does starving babies on posters, we need to go further than choosing between several old-fashioned ideas of giving, making place for contemporary ideas.

By early 2013 we aim to have 5 launched ideas proving that charity API’s is the way to go and we are inviting developers, designers, UI/UX and idea-creators to a series of Hack Days we are running this autumn.
We aiming to hack together asquirky and loving ideas as possible like last week we already worked with Windows8 Code Weekend and Dev4Good, read more about the ideas here.

TheGivingLab has 3 more hack days coming up this autumn, here are the confirmed ones:

  • Mark 13+14th of October in you calendar. Eventbrite - GeekGirlMeetup Hackathon with The Giving Lab
  • Games 4 Good, with TIGA (International Gaming Association) at Birmingham University 17+18th of November.
  • TheGivingLab Charity Hack days at GoogleCampus on the 24+25th of November. The Theme is #holidayHack Eventbrite - TheGivingLAB - Hackdays 24+25th of November

Links to the previous and already hosted Hackathons:


London calling + SkrivaPå = Scrive.com

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. I’ve moved to London.

. I´ve joined the Stockholm based startup SkrivaPå.se to internationalize the service with the new name Scrive, opening up the London Office, yet we are still a highly boot-strapped, lean start-up developing in Haskell. SkrivaPå & Scrive.com do digital signatures for contracts and legal-papers.

I first met lead-developer Gracjan Polak, while presenting my last startups RunAlong API at Disruptive Code conference in Stockholm autumn 2010 (post from Programmable web). The Startup community is Sweden is a close knitted newtork and we know eachother, and here was this new guy asking excellent questions, who was he?
Gracjan Polak, the Polish technical co-founder of SkrivaPå, introduced me to the Swedish founder and Stockholm School of Economics student Lukas Duczko. We ended up talking all evening about API´s, scrum, web-strategy, and how to manage distributed teams and other fellow founders startup-issues.

As we continued talking  about business and strategy during autum 2010 and spring 2011. To make a long story short, i moved to London, the UK working on opening up the RunAlong.se API publicly, and letting go of that for a bit. Lucas was fast to ask me to join SkrivaPå, after all the discussions i knew the product well, understood the business model and had no doubt when i said yes to working with this garage startup.

The fun part that i discover what it is like working with a highly effective distrubuted team. Scrive has 3 people working in Sweden, 3 in Poland, 3 in London, one in Turkey, and one travelling. We have things like the Tibetan Patches, pieces of code that our developer Eric Normand wrote in Tibet and Xian, and pushed up to the dev server when accessing wifi in the Himalayas. How wonderful insn’t that. Let me put it this way, i feel like I work for the most modern startup i can ever imagine, giving co-workes and co-owners freedom to do what they love.

As part of my work with Scrive i can also continue my work with GeekGirlMeetup.com, an un-conferance about web, code and startups aiming to create more female role-models in tech, new networks for women in tech and active knowledge exchange. Conclusion, Scrive gives GeekGirlMeetup.com an active sponsorship, it’s the first of the organisations sort.

Dialogue and API´s as a tool for change

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The Swedish Institute asked me to go to Alexandria in Egypt, to host a keynote talk on tech tendencies in we that i see, for the *Young Leadership Visitors Programme. I chose to talk API´s as enabling tools for social entrepreneurship and user-driven services, and the benefits from opening up information for the users, for society, goverments and for entreprenurs. This way users and programmers/entreprenurs could create possiblities for change, and solutions for their direct needs faster, and hopefully serve other citizens needs, and possibly earn money on, in this case, as we see it, apps or new user-driven services.

Meeting the participants in the YLVP programme, a creme-de-la-creme of young future orientated players from the MENA region have given me a reality check, due their hard work to keep blogging, communicating and creating democratic possibilities for young people in the region.

I also talked about GeekGirlMeetup, and the organic growth of the organization in Sweden, it’s loose organization, holding the flag high with organizers and sponsors. After my stay in Egypt I’m off to Copenhagen where the first GeekGirlMeetup.com outside Sweden is being held by Henriette Weber.

* The Swedish Institute Young Leaders Visitors Program
The Swedish Institute Young Leaders Visitors Program (YLVP) is an intercultural leadership program with focus on social media as a tool for positive change. The program invites young opinion makers from Sweden and selected countries in the MENA region who are actively working for social change in their respective contexts.

#entrepreneur #unplugged by Disruptive.nu

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Christian Rudolf asked me to tell my story about RunAlong and our new API at his entrepreneurial tweetup along with Jonas Lejon of Bloggy.se and Stefan Mahlstein from Wordon. Rudolph wanted to tell the stories behind us entrepreneurs, to inspire other future bright minds of tomorrow, but also to create a spot for entrepreneurs to talk amongst ourselves about the topic. We ended up re-naming it to Entrepreneur unplugged.

The first time I met the other co founder of the blog Disruptive blog Peter Sandberg, it was at 2008 Sime.nu, it was my second Sime and i had decided to continue with my idea for RunAlong.se. I met him with a few friends, an i remember not daring to tell him what the idea was. He told me to start talking about it so that i could polish it faster. Some very good advice, and that i want to keep pushing for, share your ideas faster. Its a good way to test your idea, and not only have the yes sayers tell you it´s fantastic.

Other observations…
Im still struggeling with seeing myself on film, i dont know if its ever going to feel completely comfortable, but its ok, i had an audiance, i got the message across, and the intresting dialogue afterwods was all worth it. IVA thought so to.