Category: Business

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August 29, 2008: tweakGrill @ informatica08

The innovative guys from tweakfest.ch will present what they call The first digital BBQ in Switzerland, aka the tweakGrill. It will take place on August 29, 2008, starting at 6 PM on the Turbinenplatz (that’s Zurich’s biggest place (*cough*) right in front of the Technopark building (which some call the “Swiss Silicon Valley” ;) in Zurich-West/entertainment).

According to the newsletter they’ll have several multimedia performances, serve sausages from USB-Grills (I wonder how that will scale ;) and open source beer brought to you by [project 21].

tweakfest group on Facebook

Flyer (PDF)

More information in German in this post on the tweakfest home page..

[UPDATE 20080802: I probably can’t be there due to military service :( At rather short notice as they managed to send the march order to an address that doesn’t exist. No comment.]

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TechCrunch Meetup Zurich

Well, there are quite a few blog posts with reviews of the recent TechCrunch Europe Tour Meetup in Zurich already. Instead of writing an extensive review about it, I’ll thus try to keep it short.

Personally, I highly enjoyed the TechCrunch Meetup in the Bluewin Tower in Zurich West and the gathering in the “Besame Mucho” lounge afterwards and met many interesting people. I wasn’t quite ready for releasing news about my company Printscreen GmbH (iG) yet, but it was nonetheless a great opportunity to network and chat with other entrepreneurs, organizer Mike Butcher, some of the co-organizers and media people. All in all I had the impression that a lot is going on again in the Swiss IT/web startup community (not limited to the roughly 40 startups officially presenting).

So, many thanks to the organizers (TechCrunchUK, Wuala, Doodle, NewsCred, Sandbox) and sponsors who made this all possible! Of course I hope there will be a second edition of the TechCrunch Meetup Zurich soon (it was so well organized and such a nice event, I’d like it to become a recurring, regular event in the Swiss IT and startup scene).

Links to some other posts about the meetup (incomplete and in no particular order):

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Citizen Space Zurich – home page up and more details

[UPDATE 20080720: See also the comment from Chris Messina (the co-founder of Citizen Agency, LLC (blog) and one of the two master minds behind the original Citizen Space in San Francisco)].

By now, the home page of the new coworking location “citizen space Zürich” (see my previous post) is up and gives some more details about the (currently) planned offers and pricing [1]:

An excerpt (in German):

[…] citizen space vermietet Arbeitsplätze an unabhängig arbeitende Menschen in den vier Meter hohen Räumen der ehemaligen Steinfelsfabrik in Zürich West. Tageweise, wochenweise oder unbefristet. Allein oder in Gruppen arbeiten? An fixen oder mobilen Tischen? In der Lounge? Alles ist möglich. citizen space ist von Montag bis Freitag von 9 bis 19 Uhr offen, ab 19 Uhr Barbetrieb oder Events, Infos auf www.citizen-space.ch
Tarife: Tagesticket für 30 Franken, Wochenticket für 170 Franken, flexible Monatsmiete für 450 Franken, fixe Monatsmiete mit Schlüssel für 680 Franken, Friendshipticket für 15 Franken pro Tag und Person.
Verpflegung: Kaffee, Getränke und Snacks im Haus. Take-outs, Restaurants und Bars in unmittelbarer Nähe. Zur Josefwiese oder zum Unteren Letten sind es drei Minuten zu Fuss. Öffentlicher Verkehr: Bahnhof Hardbrücke und Escher-Wyss-Platz befinden sich in drei Minuten Gehdistanz. […]

So basically, this boils down to:

  • Opening hours: Monday to Friday daily from 9 AM to 7 PM for work, after 7 PM, the bar opens or events are taking place
  • Offers and pricing:
    Day pass: 30 CHF (in about 30 USD, 19 EUR)
    Week pass: 170 CHF (167 USD, 105 EUR)
    Flexible monthly ticket: 450 CHF (441 USD, 279 EUR)
    Fix monthly ticket with an office key: 680 CHF (667 USD, 421 EUR)
    Friendship ticket: 15 CHF (15 USD, 9 EUR) per day and person
  • Coffee, drinks and snacks in-house (but there’s no hint whether these are included in the price of a pass)

At first sight, this looks quite pricey (more than double the price) compared to its namesake in San Francisco (citizenspace.us). Further, there doesn’t seem to be any “24h access”[2] option (not even for keyholders?) and whether coffee, drinks and snacks are included remains to be seen. Conceptually, there’s also a difference in that there are no free drop-ins (it costs 30 CHF for random drop-ins and 15 CHF for friends), but in addition to monthly tickets there are also weekly tickets. I wonder particularly what influence the “no free drop-ins” policy will have on the idea of mingling people (well, the mingling will probably be less spontaneous and less heterogeneous and coworkers likely more commercially oriented and less willing to contribute to the idea of coworking or do things for free. Which might well cost more in the end [3]).

BTW, office space in Zurich West isn’t as cheap as in less central and less trendy districts, but this also applies to many areas in SF. The thing that’s generally somewhat more expensive in Zurich is food and beverages.

Let’s see how this develops.. my guess is that these offers and prices aren’t carved in stone and will probably also depend on the feedback they get (i.e. on supply and demand). Will ask them ASAP..

Thumbs up for starting it, in the first place :)

[1] Please note that these figures have not been officially announced or confirmed yet. They’re just published on the public web site (which has not been announced yet either).

[2] Some coworking space providers even guarantee 24/7 access and are open for public access on Saturdays, too

[3] I’m currently reading a great book that, among others, deals with the very thin line between social norms and market norms. And it also discusses the (predictably irrational) appeal of anything that’s for “free” (knowledge that can be leveraged for marketing purposes and profit, of course). (Book: “Predictably irrational” by Dan Ariely; 2008; HarperCollins. I’ll probably post about it in more detail later..)

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Citizen Space Zürich for Digital Nomads soon to arrive?

Finally, Zurich starts catching up with its partner city San Francisco (and other Californian cities like Berkeley, Stanford/Palo Alto etc.) in regard to shared workspace for so called “Digital Nomads” and the like: According to these great news, a “citizen space” will soon be opened at Heinrichstr. 267 in Zurich:

11.07.2008 13:19: Ich bin daran ein solches zu eröffnen:
NEW: citizen space zurich. start: 18. Juli 2008
Auf 150m2 und einer Raumhöhe von 4 Metern völlig flexibel arbeiten.
Mietpreise ab CHF 30.-. Freie oder fixe Plätze. Komplette Infrastruktur.
Reingehen – arbeiten, besprechen, relaxen.
Im Steinfelsareal, Heinrichstrasse 267, 8005 Zürich

and

16.07.2008 11:36: Hallo
Das citizen space Zürich eröffnet am 24.7.08, wer Interesse an weiteren Informationen hat, kann ein E-Mail an [see below] senden, die Informationen sind natürlich kostenlos. Gruss in die Stadt. JR

The e-Mail is info at type and more remove spaces dot ch. The homepage of type’n more: typeandmore.ch

I really like this new groove here in “my” neighborhood.

Looking forward to it! :)

P.S. The domain citizenspace.ch is registered already, I don’t know though whether this is related to the citizen space to be opened in Zurich. Let’s see..

(Source: Ronorp.net)

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Per order vs. per volume

I like the new advertisement campaign by the Swiss bank MIGROSBANK. Among others, and that’s why I like it, it questions some of the antiquated banking practices which can hardly be “justified” in the age of e-banking, yet are still in widespread use.
For example, one of the advertisements questions why most banks charge commissions for stock market orders based on the transaction volume (or on a combination of volume and per order) instead of charging a flat fee per order.

The advertisement shows two identical pictures of someone hitting the ‘Enter’ key on the keyboard. The text below the pictures reads (IIRC, in about): “Do you see a difference? We neither. That’s why we charge the same fee for every order.”
Some people might argue that customers who potentially gain (or lose) more money (by having higher transaction volumes) should also pay more of the costs of the e-banking system. From the perspective of managerial accounting however, it makes more sense to break down these costs into costs per order rather than per volume. If no paperwork and no other per transaction costs are involved at all, it might even make sense to charge a flat rate per participating customer only (neglecting the fact however, that the software and the hardware infrastructure need to be able to absorb the peak number of transactions per time). This of course only applies to orders given using the e-banking system. For any other, more traditional services like consulting, wealth management etc. customers shall be charged for separately.

So why do most banks still charge on a per volume basis (or on a mix of per volume and per order fees)? It’s because they can. Some people might not be fully aware of  how much IT changed (and will further change) banking. And most people lose their flair for “small” numbers once they deal with “big” numbers. Besides, it’s also a question of how people value their time.

Nonetheless, I hope the above mentioned bank will be able to stir up the domestic market a bit.

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IT trends and IT governance in Switzerland

An interesting study by Accenture about “IT-Trends und IT-Governance
in der Schweiz” (unfortunately in German only):

cio_survey_1104.pdf

Security awareness and IT efficiency/productivity improvements are top topics among CIOs in Switzerland for the next 12 to 24 months. The fact that most CIOs prefer standard software in the back-office and custom SW at the frontend remind a bit of the “window polishing” phenomenon known from management accounting but are in accordance with general business developments in highly developed and saturized markets (like in Switzerland). The products’s cores become more and more similar while the “wrappings” make the difference for consumers.