Hochzeit in Wien

Had a wonderful time this weekend for a friend's wedding. We went on Friday and started with lunch at a cousin's place, then later had dinner at Albertina with Madrid friends and enjoyed drinks that night with the wedding party at Palmenhaus. It was lovely to meet all the IE Business School gang again! The next morning there was a walking tour with a colombian tourist guide organised by bride and groom and finally the big event at the Organgerie of Schloss Schönbrunn. Not a big fan of monarchy but having grown up with Sissi's stories for children, it was pretty incredible to attend the special moment of a couple there! And it was a very cute mix of viennese waltz with bolivian passion and salsa of course. On Sunday we went swimming on the Danube with cousin Harriet! It felt pretty cool to swim across the legendary river.

Women in tech

I have to say I loved the Berlin Geekettes panel yesterday at the Apple Store about women in tech that make positive social impact. I choose not to go to all events happening in Berlin because you can get dizzy with everything that is happening in this city, but would love to go more to this type of community events, missed them actually, as I am in part a woman in tech and I am trying to have a positive impact. ;-)

Jess Erickson (@jessjerickson, Founder of Berlin Geekettes) did a seamless moderation and all the panelists answered from the heart, crisp and straight to the point, no long boring answers. They were: Daniela Schiffer (@changerscom, Cofounder of Changers), Keyun Ruan (@ruankeyun, CRO for XENSIX), Ida Tin (@idatin, Cofounder of HelloClue) and Jeannette Gusko (@jeanneraffut, Senior Campaigner, Change.org).

Got to know that according to Deutscher Startup Monitor there is only a 13% of founders that are women still. I have experienced this in Spain where I co-founded HUB Madrid and having coordinated the Women, Enterprise and Technology (mentoring program at IE Business School at that moment -now no longer there- in partnership with Research in Motion), but wasn´t aware of the situation in Germany yet.

I loved the questions posed to the panelists, which made me think about them myself like who is the source of your inspiration, when did you realise you wanted to be in tech, if you got encouragement or not, the financial issues, etc. I loved the comments about Keyun Ruan about how she loves pink and just cries a lot (being myself one of the latter), and being confident and concrete in here contributions to show what she is worth at her job by action, instead of words. Enjoyed also the remark about having a supportive partner, whether you are a lady or a man, something very important! There were some extraordinary women in the room as well, a pitty I could not stay longer, but for sure there will be more opportunities!

Lunch 'n Learn

Invited by Meritxell Sala Taña from the Ezeep team, went to have lunch with them on Friday to their event called Lunch 'n Learn, a simple, yet nice idea to have one guest and a dialogue during lunch to share experiences and learn from each other. I loved the idea of this being something small where you can really have a dialogue.

They asked loads of really good questions about the HUB, my journey as HUB Madrid co-founder, our journey as a network, the technology platforms that we use, the global governance model and decision-making processes,  knowledge sharing, our social impact, etc.

They also explained how Ezeep works and their founding story as well which started with Sascha Kellert, Fredo Haitz and Marian Zange. We had some spanish tortilla and enjoyed the views from their lovely office by the canal. By the end I experimented with their App and how easy it is to print!!! I got to know about several facts:

• Its a cloud-printing web and app that works with any printer in the market without an enabled password
• The cost is around 75€ per month for about 50 people using the system 
• It can work both, per invitation by email or just by being logged to the local network (with a server or a 24/7 computer via wifi if you don´t have a server)
• You can include a certain amount of pages for free for users monthly, weekly or daily
• Once that is used, anybody can purchase credit from them (you set the price and by the end of the month get the money from Ezeep)

I enjoyed talking to their team manager Lea Böhm, Gabriel Escalona from Marketing and Leon Schabel from Sales and everybody else. Thanks for the invite Ezeep team! The next step was to connect them to the team developing the HUB Berlin and finally with our own HUB Global Partnerships Manager to see if there is something to explore there. Happy HUBbing! ;-)

Almanya

Watched the movie Almanya at the Deutsch Orientierungskurs, a lovely story of family, identity and migration from Turkey to Germany but that can be applied to any country in the world!