Status Update #4
In the light of organizing the conference, I have been getting feedback that the ticket price is too high. More importantly, we are not seeing the  kind of ticket sales that would give comfort to us. As promised, I want to disclose the budget of organizing a conference like this. Here is the link to the Google Doc that list all the expense items. I have taken personal responsibility for the contract with Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center. I have personally invited guests and Icelandair has been fantastic in working to get their schedules to fit the conference. So, if we cancel the conference because of poor ticket sales or not having enough participants for the workshop, I will have to explain to my wife and partners why I did this and personally be liable to pay Harpa ISK314.000+VAT  , thats cool it would be an interesting story to tell on how NOT to organize a conference. But we are not there yet and I am confident that I will secure enough interest to get this conference organized. Read More... |
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Tectonic Shifts in Economic Value Creation
We are witnessing a tectonic shift in economic value creation. We can attribute this to various things, but it is fundamental and real. Let me walk you through a simple example of my father-in-law, he has been an employee of an organization for over 35 years. The organization through its employees solved a problem and created economic value. This structure is how we had always thought about value creation. He is planning to retire from service in the next 2 years, he has been working on his hobby of Whittling for sometime now and he has gotten very good at it. He whittles all the time now a days, actually he has converted his garage into a workshop for machines and tools and showcase for all his work. What is fascinating is that, I pointed him to Etsy and he has become very intrigued about the prospects of actually creating some economic value for his hobby. Read More...
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Ásbrú – A Startup Profile
For those of you who don’t know the history of Iceland and US relationship, here is a brief history. The US Navy had a big base in Iceland until 2006, like every other base in the world it was complete with Hospitals, Warehouses, Wendy’s etc basically the infrastructure was big capital expenditure that was invested by the US. In addition, this base was built very close to the Keflavik Airport the main international airport in Iceland. The town of Keflavik, a small fishing town got a huge service business out of this US base. Everything was fine and dandy, until the Iraq War, when President Bush decided to re-allocate the personnel in Iceland to Iraq, so overnight the entire base was evacuated and we had a ghost town. It was devastating to the town of Keflavik, the Government of Iceland raised a lot of noise but hey a War is a War. As consolation to this exodus, the US Airforce basically left the entire infrastructure, I mean Hospital equipments etc in Iceland. Overnight, Iceland lost the service to 1200 personell, 600 local jobs and entire military defense of the tiny island of Iceland… Read More...
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