L’idée du film « As you like it » ne peut pas être décrite. Il faut voir le film.

« As you like it », « Dupa fel si chip » en roumain, a été choisi à Cannes. Quelle bonne nouvelle, je me disais. Mais Paula Onet, la réalisatrice, n’a pas l’argent pour y aller au festival. Je trouve ça pénible quand je pense aux sommes investies par l’état français dans le cinéma. En même temps, je sais que nous, les Roumains, n’avons pas d’état en ce cas.

Pour rester optimiste je le prends comme une chance. Avec le crowdfunding, nous avons le futur dans nos mains. C’est à nous de faire pousser les idées qui dépasse nos frontiers. Comme beaucoup d’autres porteurs de projet, Paula Onet fait un appel aux contributions en ligne.

En participant je gagne deux fois: le film et le sentiment d’avoir participé à la création d’un monde où les bonnes idées n’ont pas des frontières. Je crois vraiment que ces plateformes nous donnent une chance de soutenir les idées émergentes capables de changer notre perspective sur la société.

1. Book your tickets online

If you really want to visit the touristic places, you might want to buy your tickets in advance from the websites of the museums. Like this you save some more time to spend in the museum and you are not already pissed off when you get to get inside.

2. Choose something different

Although mainstream, the Arts and Crafts Museum is not so crowded all the time. This museum is perfect for finding out more about how things work. Besides the variety of permanent collections about science, energy, transports, communication, mechanics and constructions, this place never stops amazing me with their witty exhibitions. From the most advanced robots till the packaging history, here you can always find something ingenious to learn here.

3. Explore the secret museums of Paris

If you are open to new discoveries, you should think about visiting the small, not very well known museums in Paris. For example Parfume Museum is one of the best places to get a special sensorial experience for free. Here you have an entire map with lots of secret places in Paris.

4. Try a new place

I am sure nothing compares with Louvre, but when you are more of a curious mind with a taste for newness, you can think about the following places:

Gaite Lyrique – digital culture museum

Le comptoir general – a ghetto museum with a very good vegan resto

The Museum of Everything - a mobile museum, « for the undiscovered, unintentional and untrained artists of our times », in Paris until the end of March

104 – a creative factory for contemporary arts

5. Wander the streets

My favourite places in Paris are those I’ve been coming across accidentally. Start walking and get lost. You’ll see, Paris itself is a great museum that needs to be rediscovered all the time. And if you like street art, you can follow this map.

Enjoy!

I advice you to try Color Forecast a web-bijou with smart tricks for you to discover the latest trends. The ingenious site is a Pimkie make-up mix of weather forecast and colors. In a click you get the ultimate live trends from the streets of fashion capitals of the world like Paris and Milano.

Coming back to me, newly awakened after Florin Dobre Show during F/W Fashion Week in Paris, I now wonder if seasons are not too much has-been for the digital connected fashionistas?

Perished food, ugly vegetables and leftovers are not an interesting subject. They look/smell horrible and we don’t wanna have to deal with it. Despite this, some people make their living out of it.

Installation Palais de Tokyo
Artist Fabrice Hyber – Organique nature

Making a healthy business out of garbage

Take for example Culinary Misfits, a vegetarian a catering service in Berlin or this collaborative supermarket in London. In Paris, I know some people who have been organising groups to recycle food waste by collecting and giving it to the collective gardens « les jardins partagées » in the city or to the farmers who deliver them some bio-products in exchange.

Europe launches a campaign against food waste 

I laugh at this campaign, knowing from experience, that in my hometown in Romania we used not to throw any food. Not even a piece of moldy bread. My family gave every leftovers to our uncle’s pigs and chickens. Now, my uncle is not allowed to have a pig anymore, after the EU standards. Not mentioning about the lost in the taste of food with a piece of great meat coming from my uncle, I try to see what we’re losing now when we talk about food waste.

Emerging markets = waste markets

In Romania, where old good practices are not cool anymore, a new behaviour overpasses common sense. There you have this new consumer, a greedy, limitless one, willing to buy everything.

Sales are a phenomenon everywhere. People even die to buy. But if you’ve missed Black Friday and you want a freaky shopping experience, you should try Romanian markets during winter holidays.

23th of December. That is the true end of the world day. You will see how everything must disappear (without any push message). Just hungry people who buy everything they see, NOW, because later it’s like they will not find anything, anymore. I don’t doubt, there is probably a psychological effect of not having access during a long time of communism to all this food and products, that makes Romanians buy so much.

We need to indulge a healthy consuming behaviour to our children  

Because Christmas is coming and every Romanian will fill the shopping cart with more than we can put in a back of a car, I encourage you to think. How can we stop this generation from influencing the next one to do the same?

I will now call my mum to ask her again, like every year before the holidays, not to stay 5 days in the kitchen to prepare a ton of food for four people for Christmas. That is the occasional exception, when she forgets about not buying more than we need. Either way she says we should never buy more than 2 days quantity of perishable food.

The thing is everyone can find an occasion or an excuse. But throwing food away is a big problem. And if you wait for Santa Claus or EU to solve it, forget it. Try to do something on your own!

For example: a woman told me she puts the waste to her flowers during the winter, so they can grow faster and stronger in the springtime. you can do that also!

At Mutinerie - the very cosy and always eventFULL coworking space in Paris, people organize a party for recycling Christmass in hyperconsuming times. Maybe you wanna join it on Facebook Réparons & Re-Parons Noël !

My friend JB who posted the video of the campaign on his fb determined Aurélian to send a message to EU Commission. I’m also curious to know what EU will do beside this pretty visual campaign. If you have any other suggestions, tweet @EU_consumer / EU_Commission.

For any other ideas or examples, leave a comment. I’ll be glad to read it

At the beginning this question haunted me everywhere I was listening to all sorts of comparisons. I was sick and tired to hear that « we are not good enough », « we are so far from… ». It reminded me I’m coming from a country where people and most of all studies show the fact that we are always at the end of the list.
And yes, I was hoping not to hear this in France also. But…there was, still, a big difference.

Being the second on the list, for french people, is as bad as being the last for the romanians.

At the moment I understood this, I realised what the expression « las-o ba, ca merge asa » in my mother tongue did to me. Once you go out from the top 3, you can die. You’ll never be noticed anymore.

By complaining about the delay « le retard » they have, French people struggle to maintain their top position

This 1st on the list thing is just a way to ensure themselves, they will not go out of the game. And with that, I started to admire this way of thinking. For 3 reasons:

1. By comparing yourself with the best, you’ll keep doing better and better

2. It gives you the opportunity to learn from the other’s mistakes

3. Competition makes you stronger while lack of hope puts you out of the chessboard

FrenchWeb which is a french webzine I recommend, has lauched a series about digital trends.Sort of a Canadian TrendsHunter for the french masters of the web. So if you look for the future trends in Europe, you know what to watch now.

Sans retourner le couteau dans la plaie, la première sortie sur la vidéo dans le monde, même si ça ne me semble pas révolutionnaire, ça va. Et…j’ai hâte de voir la suite!

TRENDS 2012 les nouvelles tendances dans le… par frenchweb

If you want to know more about this event, you can follow the event on twitter #coworkingeu.

If your’re interested to visit any of this places and you look for an english speaking company guide, you can contact me anytime. I’d be happy to guide you!

Here is the challenge of the game : a cube, floating in the virtual is waiting for you to destroy it. If you manage to arrive at the center, your life will change. Let’s see what’s inside:

Wait. Is this serious?

We know how curiosity and games are able to help us make new discoveries, but how far is this going to go? Even if it turns out to be mockery or the greatest game ever, Peter Molyneux’s a facetious idea is genius.

Curiosity is not a game, it’s a playground for human research

As the author says here:  »inside the cube really is an incredible, amazing, life-changing thing, and it’s taken me years and years and years to get the centre of the cube right. The power of our experiment lies in me not giving any clues at all about what it might be. » That sound to me like a very serious game.

The application developed by Peter Molyneux and 22Cans for android and iOS is testing the power of a game on a global scale. After reading some impressions about the game, I found out that most of people find it boring. Nevertheless, the fans of the cube image all sort of ways to have fun with this app. As far as I’m concerned, I can’t say if it really is so, because after 20 trials of launching the app this message keeps pissing me off:

It certainly makes you question

What is this ridiculously simple app, free and extremly inquisitive in numbers?

• 100,000,000 cubelets in the first layer
• today more then 200 000 players and still 99 million cubelets to go
• 1 coin reward for each block you tap
• 3 billion coins the cost of Diamond Chisel - the ultimate tool for massive intervention costs

I still try to find how much the development cost and whether they intend to make a real money exchange in the future.

Anyway, knowing that each of this layers hides something, you wanna chip to see it. Probably addictive, curious for sure, I feel this experiment it’s not made for looking on what’s in the centre of the cube?

A world-wide troll app about you and me and everyone else

From outside, curiosity looks like an experiment about connecting people.I personally take it as a piece of geek art and I think the cube might be revealing lots of answers about human participation, eagerness, understanding, creativity and people’s expectations.

If it works, this concept may change the way we collaborate today. If not, it is still an excellent research about games, apps and web culture.

You think I have too much expectations? Well, I can’t help myself asking… what if curiosity is a thing about the human nature and it can help us use it to change the world and solve problems?

To be curious or not be curious? This is the question!

Curious and willing to read more?

Twitter On the Cube

The Next Web - Curiosity: Why veteran game designer Peter Molyneux is going mobile with his new startup

Gizmodo - Bizarre Cube-Chipping Multiplayer Game Curiosity Now on iTunes

Techcrunch – With Curiosity, Peter Molyneux Explores Whether A Cube Can Capture The World’s Attention

Wired – Curiosity Killed the App?

Game Industry - Curiosity attracts 158,000 tappers on day one

Pornind de la aceasta idee am realizat o cercetare despre politici culturale si antreprenoriat in industriile creative din Romania. Pentru ca nu stiu sa codez, va scriu un pic mai multe despre cum vad eu aceasta aplicatie.

Mentalitatea romaneasca…

Analizand mult efectele comunismului si democratiei asupra mentalitatii romanilor am ajuns la concluzia ca obiceiurile, patter-nurile de gandire si Romania in general, nu poate fi caracterizate. Sau nu ca « afara ». Etichetele nu corespund. Iar cand incerci sa le schimbi, sa le adaptezi, nici n-apuci sa le scrii, ca nu se mai potrivesc. De ce?

In schimbare

De la politici si politicieni pana la pareri personale, haine si masini, Romania este in continua schimbare. Acasa credeam ca « this is the new generation spirit », ca digital natives aduc curentul schimbarii.
Acum imi dau seama ca Romania se schimba in fiecare zi, in fiecare luna si an. De 23 de ani isi cauta locul in economia mondiala si in sufletele celor care mai cumpara promisiuni « de mai bine ».

In Romania internetul poate schimba mentalitatea despre mentalitatea romanilor

Daca mentalitatea ar fi un soft instalat la bordul unui tren automat care duce oamenii rapid, acolo unde isi doresc, atunci schimbarea care caracterizeaza Romania, ne-ar permite oricand si oriunde sa gasim o alta cale.
Azi, din pacate, Romania este un prototip de masina automata fara sofer, cu un soft prost, instalat la bord. Ea nu asigura trasportul pentru toti locuitorii, ci numai pentru cativa. Masina asta merge din inertie pentru ca e programata sa mearga, dar nu are directie.

Next step: sa programam acest tren impreuna online
Transformarea problemelor in oportunitati suna ca o reclama proasta in ochii celor care nu mai cred. Dar nu ma adresez pesimistilor. Scriu pentru cei care gandesc diferit.
Scriu celor care inteleg un limbajul de programare al mintilor si sunt dispusi sa lucreze impreuna, sa testeze si sa codeze noile comenzi pentru Romania.
Celor care isi mananca painea din online.
Celor care viseaza mai mult cu ochii deschisi ca nu mai au timp de dormit printre projecte, joburi si evenimente.
Va recomand sa priviti documentarul asta timp de 45 de minute.
Pe scurt, veti vedea generalitati despre Romania, despre realitatea de azi. De aceea nu va recomand sa va pierdeti timpul
privind, ci reflectand
auzind, ci ascultand
cautand punctele tari din toate slabiciunile.

Astazi avem posibilitatea de a lucra impreuna, cei 4 milioane de angajati in Romania cu cei 2 milioane plecati afara. Accesul la internet ne da posibilitatea de a vedea ce se intampla dincolo de realitatea in care traim si daca suntem acasa si daca suntem afara. Aceasta imagine de ansamblu a lipsit mult timp romanilor. Dar generatia noastra poate face lucrurile diferit. Impreuna.

Daca va treziti dimineata cu mail-urile langa voi, stiti cat de important si cat de utile sunt aplicatiile pentru smartphones. Imaginati-va acum o aplicatie care va sugereaza toate legaturile posibile si imposibile intre ceea ce s-a intamplat si se intampla azi in Romania. Cum ar fi sa alegeti optiunea fara prejudecati sau fara limite. Sa faceti conexiuni si sa extrageti de aici avantajele situatiei.

Daca Romania devine o sursa de inspiratie pentru creativi, instabilitatea este primul pas pentru o schimbare in bine. Revenind la internet, ce-ar fi sa folosim toate instrumentele pe care le avem online ca sa generam un sistem de gandire pentru Romania, bazat pe incredere si optimism?

Articolul asta suna prost aici. Ar merge poate la TED in engleza. Sper ca ati prins ideea.

Source: Illustration: Iro Tsavala 

It’s been 2 years since I’m living in Paris. An adventure full of new people, places, ideas and ideals. A series of experiences that gave me courage and opportunities to learn and to grow. Lots of my friends get married now or make plans about babies. I’m 25 and I’m not feeling any excitement about this topics. But there is one thing I’m excited about. New projects.

Last time I wrote about my life here, it was about how you can do anything in Paris. At that time I had a feeling. Now, after 2 years, I have certainties. Fresh graduate from a second master in creative industries, I’ve started to look for a job. This last 3 weeks I’ve been seeing a lot of managers of web design and communication agencies, serious games and collaborative web start-ups. And that made me think about…creating my own job.

Today I’m on the verge of signing the papers to create my own business. Even if some say I might change my mind, I don’t feel like a family type. I don’t want babies. But I really, really want to create environments where ideas make babies. This is my life’s project and today I feel ready to take all the risks to make it happen.

Art and creativity are influenced by the unlimited technological possibilities. Today « everybody thinks they can make a movie. Everybody is a photographer, everybody is a writer, everybody is a musician »….and that’s great!  

The question is: are we living exponential times for our culture or we are deceiving ourselves?  

A film about creativity in the digital age available for free (or a donation for inspiration) at http://www.presspauseplay.com.

See on www.youtube.com