Author Archives: Liam Boogar

About Liam Boogar

Co-founder of The @RudeBaguette, I'm a Californian native bringing you French startup news in English.

[RESOLVED]

Look, it’s not you, blogosphere, it’s me. I thought we had something special, but really… well, there’s somebody else…

So I’m sure anyone reading this is already well aware, but for the closure, I thought i’d ‘wrap up’ this blog – or at least put it on pause (somehow I feel like you’re reading this two years later and going “wow… yeah he definitely never posted again”). Anyway, I launched the Rude Baguette with Roxanne Varza and, frankly, there just isn’t enough time for two blogs (plus guest posts on TechCrunch, and writing for Paper.li), so I’d like to formally close this blog thread down.

Thanks for all the good times we had, thanks for reading, and hopefully i’ll see you on the other side.


DidThis brings out our Me-Monster

As Facebook roled out its new Verbs tool, permitting developers to incorporate “high level social actions users can perform,” it became quite obvious that the war was on to capture up all that data from the ‘Action Space.’ While Foursquare lets you share where you go and apps like Staround let you share what you think, Denis Harscoat of DidThis wants to know everything – he wants to know what you do.

When I first met Denis back in September at the Pirate Summit, I was intrigued by what he told me. He said that people want to do things, and they want & need people to encourage them. When we go on a diet, we tell everyone and their mother about it, in hopes that they will encourage us and keep us on track if we should lose our way. When we share with people what we’ve accomplished, we feel validated, and we want to be validated by others that what we’ve done is important – we can all attest to having a bit of the Me Monster in us.

DidThis’s app is still in its early stages – bug fixes, minimalist interface, and a lot of seemingly unnecessary typing – but early adopters can be assured that there feedback suggestsions are being heard. DidThis is currently looking to be one of 5 startups that will pitch at Start In Paris on November 7th – you can vote for them and other startups here.

There is no doubt that the ‘action space’ will become an important one in the next few years. More and more apps will be looking to gather data on various aspects of our lives, now that our social lives are online. Apple’s integration of Siri into its iPhone 4S (yeah, i just bought one) brings us even closer to a fluid interaction between our real lives and our internet lives – the real question is: once I can effortlessly share my every action, who will be best fit to gather this data?

Download DidThis’s iPhone App

Follow Staround on facebook or twitter

Check out some other Startup Articles:

  1. Feedback @VizualizeMe – Where’s the Magic?
  2. An evening with LeLoop, a French Hacker Space
  3. First Impressions of Ignite …. The StartupWeekend of TED Talks

First Impressions of Ignite …. The StartupWeekend of TED Talks.

Last Tuesday evening I attended Ignite #12…

It never ceases to amaze me how amazing the buildings are, in which tech, startup, and hacker events are held. I wrote awhile ago about LeLoop, a Hacker Space located in a squatter space – a beautiful, abandoned office building. This evening I found myself down the street from The Opera, walking into what was clearly the carriage entrance to a wonderful courtyard at one point. Following the signs to Ignite, and joined by my ‘posse’ of tech-geeks (we had all come straight from the Silicon Students event across town), we entered a small class room.

Willy had explained to me what Ignite was on the metro as we had come over – speakers sign up and are given five minutes and a 20 slide maximum to share an idea. The ideas can be about whatever you want, but, more or less, it seems to be in the same spectrum as TED Talks. These aren’t pitches, or plain old life stories, but innovative talks – or at least, that’s the premise.
As we sat in the back of the classroom, I couldn’t help but be more interested in the document of various Wifi usernames and passwords that Willy was sending me than in the topics above. Talks started out with premises such as “the 20th century was the Pre-Google century…” – As if that made any sense.

“Enlighten Us…But Make it Quick.”

While I couldn’t help but make snide comments in the back about the presentations, I also could help but thinking “This is the best idea ever!” I have friends that are Startup Weekend addicts – they go every time one’s going on in France (which, by the way, is like EVERY weekend! W00t second most active Startup Weekend country after the US) – I can TOTALLY see people becoming ‘Ignite Addicts.’ I can tell you that I didn’t enjoy the first event I went to, but I went because it came with an awesome recommendation, and it left me wanting more.
My suggestion: spend the next week or so thinking about an awesome idea, and come to Ignite #13 and rock the house. I think that an event like this provides a great medium for people to bring great ideas forward. Who knows… I might even take the stage for five minutes next time.