Watching Steve Jobs from Seoul

I just woke up – 2:30 am here – because of the jetlag after one of the worst flight in recent memories. Some guy – apparently drunk – started to demand to move to MY SEAT in the middle of the flight despite the fact he was supposed to be in a completely different part of the plane. We almost had to land (while flying over Siberia…) as nobody could control him. But when he finally calmed down he started to threaten me because I was sitting at my place. Very funny afterwards but this ruined my already slim chances of sleeping during the flight, and Lufthansa didn’t have a solution for me.

I arrived in Seoul, promptly went to a meeting to see the LIFT evening room and organize the drinks (free beer from LIFT if you are in Seoul).

I am currently watching Steve Jobs announce the new phone-less iPhone. I think I will learn korean faster than I thought now that my only choice to get one is to browse the local yellow pages.

On my way to Seoul

I am going to South Korea to prepare for our first LIFT evening. I won’t be alone this time as beside Bruce Sterling and his wife, Adam Greenfield, Nicolas Nova, Julian Bleecker, the Bread and butters, JD and a few LIFTers from around the world will join me. I will soon deserve a medal from the Korean tourism office it seems

Ping me if you are around (I am staying in Gang-nam). My mobile should be working but email is the safest bet as usual. And I will try to post pictures on Flickr here.

Dave Winer on the Silicon Valley

Dave Winer probably created a slight decrease in the number of participants to the US Green Card Lottery, breaking a few myth about Silicon Valley.

The truth is that the people of Silicon Valley toil to find security in money, never getting there, while avoiding the pleasures of life, including the mythological creativity, spinning on a treadmill, doing nothing but striving to make money, but it’s never enough.

“Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent.”

Link

My own partial and subjective experience was that the valley itself (Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc..) is a social desert. Buildings separated by long and deprecated roads (it seems the infrastructures haven’t been refreshed since the 60s). But there is still something special, and the concentration of people and companies makes it a must for most young (and ambitious) entrepreneurs.

It is maybe time to move the valley somewhere else, just like the Koreans are moving their capital to a completely new site?

Visa forms: Korea vs USA

I am convinced that some small details can be much more indicative of a country’s development than GDP. Think of number of working hours per week, length of paid rest during pregnancy, or even public toilet’s cleanliness (think about it next time you travel).

Visa forms are one of these informal indicator I like to check, usually indicating a country’s worries and capacity to adapt to actual threats. Here is a small comparison between the US and Korean form:

Korean questions
Are you bringing:
5. Fake goods or other item that infringes Intellectual Property Right
7. Pornographic material (book, CDs, photos, etc…)
12. Any goods or fact that you are to declare to Customs

American questions

• are you a drug abuser or addict?
• are you [...] seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?
• Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities: or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved , in any way, in persecutions associated with NAZI Germany or its allies?

The differences in approach are quite obvious. The Koreans are asking 21st century questions, the US are still thinking about World War II.

In Paris

Ping me if you are around!

Pro MS Vista demonstration marketing

Pretty funny demonstration outside a train station in Seoul.

These guys were screaming something like “say no to XP, yes to Vista”.