Nicholas Nassim Taleb (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Just a quick status update on the Startup Iceland 2013 organization. We did our site testing in Harpa, worked with the Reykjavik University Events team to organize all the requirements for the Unconference and Hackathon. We wanted to test the Televideo link ie Facetime with Nicholas Nassim Taleb, I have to say I was very nervous and excited to finally talk to one of my virtual mentors. He was really cool and jovial and conversational. I glad to have got connected to him and get him to share his views on the Startup Iceland Platform. He had accepted to come on Video for Startup Iceland 2013, how cool is that? anyway, I am sure a lot of you are wondering who is this and why I am giddy like a kid in a candy store… well, what Mr.Taleb has written about in his 3 very popular, best seller books are gems of advice on how to live. Maybe not everyone sees it but I am a big fan. Anyways, we finally got through to Mr.Taleb who was actually in Northern Lebanon, his hometown. We really wanted to stress test the fragility of technology, to all our surprise everything went smoothly we were able to connect to his laptop, got him on video, he showed off how nice the weather was in Northern Lebanon and we talked a little about the format and schedule. Mr.Taleb is going to come online for 10 minutes talk about Antifragility and Entrepreneurship.
All the guests flights are confirmed, bought, hotels and accommodation booked. itinerary and other logistics planned, still have some loose ends like transportation within the city. We are still struggling to get more participation, i.e we are not selling as many tickets as we thought we would but I am sure everyone will see the value in this conference and participate. We are calling everyone today and do a hard sell. We would like all startups to setup booths in RU to present their startup during the Hackathon and UnConference, we want those startups that are doing anything with Software to publish their API and get others to build something using the technology. We want everyone to come to the Unconference and talk about how to build a sustainable and antifragile startup ecosystem in Iceland. Please note this is for the future of Iceland. There very few times in our lives we get a chance to redefine, transform and reshape an community or for that matter build one. We have been presented with that rare opportunity in Iceland, I think everyone from the community needs to contribute, volunteer and mentor the future generation on how best to walk the path. I am sure the message will get out, we have been doing a lot of media outreach and got coverage in the Grapevine, MBL, Arctic Startup etc We have the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch coming over and Renee Blodgett, a writer and columnist for Huffington post. We will get a lot of coverage post event but we are trying to get more coverage pre-event so people can participate. I don’t even know if anyone is reading this post but I think I should give an update on how I am thinking and here it is.
Related articles
- Nassim Taleb’s Six Rules For Succeeding In Life (businessinsider.com)
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Risk Perception (schneier.com)
- NASSIM TALEB: My Moral Obligation Is To Destroy The Economic Establishment, And I Will (businessinsider.com)
- Nassim Taleb Gets Into Historic Twitter Brawl, Proving To Everyone How ANTIFRAGILE He Is (businessinsider.com)
