ARTs, IDEAs, ENGINEERing, NETWORKing

Mikro-Credits

Two days ago I visited the talk by Damian von Stauffenberg from MicroRate on "Kapitalmarkt und Mikrofinanz-Sektor - Trends, Chancen und Perspektiven fuer Kommerzbanken". I believe, I was the only one who did not represent a large bank or was a VC or owner of an enormous company, sitting among the listeners.
The talk and the following article from Die Presse all speak about Microfinancing Institutions (MFIs) for 3rd World countries. I believe that there is also a big opportunity for MFIs for 1st World countries through Redwired Ideas!

Die Presse article over Mikro-Kredite:

Muhammad Yunus (Winner of the Nobel Peace Price):

Redwired Ideas - Brainstorming and Creativity

Saving the Spark (from A List Apart by Mark Boulton)

What can Creativity do?

All of us are creative and have ideas and everyone needs ideas!

Redwired - Ideas: A new forum in Redwired, where users can post any ideas they have and create discussion and brainstorming circles around these ideas to make them happen!
The most talked about and best rated Ideas will then transform into Redwired - Projects and these projects will be financially supported through a micro-financing model!

Redwired Ideas will try to harness the power of crowds ("Crowdsourcing") and through the creativity and talent that is among all of us will seek to find ideas that can change the world of everyone of us.

We are currently in touch with the HTL Wolfsberg, the Lavanttal Haus - Entwicklungagentur Kaernten, a financial organization in Carinthia, as well as Iqbal Quadir from the Legatum Center for Development & Enterpreneurship, who has led similiar initiatives (Power to the People, Microloans,…) and has given the motivation for this new project and shown interest to help.

It has been two weeks since I wrote my last blog, I cant believe it! The last week flew by! 4 days of last week almost seemed like one day!

Tuesday morning I flew to California, where I visited the Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) from Volkswagen of America! There is a 3 hour time difference between Boston and California. The next day I spent the entire day at the lab and met with all project leaders and all engineers of the entire lab. The ERL and Palo Alto were great places to see! - more to come on that!

Wednesday night, I flew back to Boston on a so-called "Red-Eye" flight, departing at 11pm and arriving in Boston at 8am on

Thursday. This day also my 15 OLPC laptops arrived! They are amazing - again, more to come on that, as well! Same day, I packed all my things and flew to Austria at 7:45pm.

Gladly, I finally arrived in Graz on Friday, at 2pm, having spent the past two nights in planes instead of a bed.

Since then, time has flown again and today is already Tuesday and I am now in Eisenstadt, close to Vienna, where I met with INITS yesterday. Furthermore, I visited ICEP and listend to the talk by Damian von Stauffenberg von MicroRate zu "Kapitalmarkt und Mikrofinanz-Sektor - Trends, Chancen und Perspektiven fuer Kommerzbanken" - more on that, as well! ;_)

Other things to come:

I took another INvenTERVIEW, with David Merill, from the Media Lab, at MIT, who I collaborated with on his PhD thesis working on Siftables, throught this years i-teams class - soon to be posted on this blog! ;_)

Again, I got some cool links for you that I came across, over the past weeks:

Control your PC with your Voice
on the same topic: Use your Voice to Power Microsoft Word

Trying to sublet my apartment I came across the following:

20 Unusually Brilliant Bookcase and Bookshelf Designs
Apartment Therapy

Other:

A List Apart
Tag Galaxy
and for all of you, who like listening to OE3’s Fruehstueck bei mir and many more: Podster

PS:
The OST* featured a short paragraph about me and the 2fast4u exhibition in Hickory, North Carolina.
* TheOffice of Science & Technology (OST) is  "Building bridges of knowledge and expertise between Austria and North America" - this is the mission of the OST at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC. The OST is the strategic interface in the sciences, research, and research policy between Austria and North America.