Tag: swedish

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.

SSWC Social Swedish Web camp 2 – 2010

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Jaiku - the host(ess)

Social Swedish Webcamp is held yearly at Tjärö, an island outside Karlshamn i Sweden, where 404 (!) participants gathered this year to talk about the future of the internet, how we can use it as a tool to create a better society. Here are a few clips, rants and raves from an epic weekend that i have been a part of for the second time around. What I love about it most its like an eco system of its own, talks and camping, never has the startup and tech/media elite been so domestically downsized – and we liked it.

My highlights included:

  • Good company sporting the islands highest cliff: Johan Ronnestam, Tobias Brasilius, and Mattias Östmar. Thanks for the edit @martinkallstrom.
  • @skjutsgruppen who was kind enough to lend me his bike one day earlier in Örebro, i dont think i would have made it to the train to the island otherwise.
  • @piratforlaget created the book, thank you Mathias, for asking me to participtae in it. The SSWC 2010 book, buy it here, or read my chapter in the book here.
  • Also rediscovering that both @KimTaro and @Maria_s worked with with TSIS, tokyo style Stockholm, back in the days, konichiwa!
  • Tenting with @antrop and @mariarichardsson #domesticdonsize #domestic upgrade.
  • Meaningful talks with @kinnajohansson, @annaoscarsson, @paulamarttila, @inselhai @davidbismark and @hanneskirgård about what’s worth it – and whats not.
  • Having the @binero Erik Arnberg marketing director serve me coffe in the morning to guarantee their uptime. Copy-kitch or genious, probably the later, and the coffe got me UP.
  • Coding, unfinished thoughts, rants and raves with @KimTaro @detNya, @jakob and @chronix.
  • A standing ovation and kudos for making this happen again to the founders Kristin Heionen and Tomas Wennströms, and their dog Jaiku + everyonewho helped out.
  • I missed #mrkrax
  • This is an uncomplete list, there are a few more things that fit in here.

If i was to complete my wishlist for next year, it goes like this:

  • more detalied tech talks, preferably on Ruby on Rails or Sinatra.
  • A two day conf (i think we can agree on that to squeese out as much time for valuble thought, talks and sessions)
  • Al respect to the grid. It has its beauty, but when you reach over 300 people, a need for overview steps in. I suggest people sending in talks in advance, and then being ablt to show intrest for talks. This way also enables people to discower that if two peopl are talking about A, maybe one of then can go for thet slim and niched talk B, instead of using up airtime, giving another A talk. Check out Reboot for another way of doing it, solution in drupal. At GeekGirlMeetup.com we have used this way of working, with out the “showing intrest” talk, where @mariasoderberg has had the guidning role of handling contributions to the scheme and grid, guidning poeple with their talks and putting together a wonderful program.