Those who have a job and security also carry with them a great responsibility to do something about this social problem and make their contribution in a tangible and measurable way, and with a sense of urgency.

I propose an idea: let’s connect, on the one hand, those people who have (or see) opportunities and on the other hand, those who seek opportunities. The first group (people who have opportunities) consists of entrepreneurs, independent professionals, small businesses, NGOs and non profits, etc. These people always need human resources and talent to grow their economic activity. But they don’t announce their needs on job sites because they don’t have the financial resources to pay these human resources. In this depressed economy, the demand of these job creators also gets depressed. We need to help surface this demand.

On the other hand, the second group (people who seek opportunities) consists of the unemployed, fresh graduates and professionals looking for a change. This group is starting to become desperate because they can’t find work and there are already many qualified and well-educated people who would be willing to collaborate in a project they like without any retribution as long as there are good chances of generating future revenues. This gives the entrepreneur or the business person a margin of 2-3 months (or perhaps even more) to work/collaborate with his/her new team, create value and generate income by jumpstarting his or her economic activity.

At iWeekend, the events we have organized so far have been focused on entrepreneurs and professionals of the ICT sector. Many entrepreneurs have presented their ideas and have developed their projects through collaboration and teamwork with other restless minds, all in one weekend. We have created new projects, new companies and new collaborations that have led to the creation of new jobs.

The idea is to do the same thing but for a wider public with the objective of creating new collaborations, connecting the demand and offer of jobs in all the sectors, not just in the ICT sector. The event would be free for those seeking opportunities and would have a very reasonable price for those offering opportunities. This new format of iWeekend would be of one and a half days (Friday and Saturday) instead of one whole weekend, so that we can convert it into a regular monthly activity.

Any person would be able to participate with his/her idea/project or with the objective of collaborating in a project he or she likes. Clearly, we will have to do a matching before the event to ensure that the projects being presented will find the right kind of collaborators. We are giving final touches to the format and the first events will be a social experiment and serve as a “proof of concept”.

The more people we have collaborating, the more economic activity we will generate. Each collaboration will be like a seed for a new project, a new company or the creation of a new job.

We can stimulate the national economy in a relatively short time, with a sense of urgency, and in a cheap way, inspiring thousands of people to take the reigns of their own economic situation, while teaching them how to “invent their job” instead of looking for one.

We will call it “iWeekend – invent your job”. If the invent thing sounds like something imaginary, we can call it “iWeekend – innovate and create your job”. Which name would you prefer?

What do you think of this proposal?

What we need

Basically we need 4 things to do this social experiment and establish the proof of concept:

1. Financial resources – we seek companies who can support us

2. Time (time of the people who can coordinate and organize everything). In other words, we need collaborators and volunteers willing to give their time.

3. Venues to organize these activities regularly

4. Help with communication and spreading the word

How you can help

Organize this activity in your city:

We are looking for organizers across all the cities and regions of Spain. If you would like to organize this activity in your city/region, post a comment below or send an email to info@iweekend.org

If you would like to collaborate in some other way, tell us how you can help.

If you represent a city council, get in touch with us and we will work together to bring to your city this innovative way of generating collaborations and creating new jobs.

If you represent an organization/institution, foundation or company, get in touch and we can find a way to work together in this exciting and innovative project.

How will you contribute?

Thanks to Pablo Ramirez of Sin Palabras for helping us explain this initiative visually, to Pablo Almunia of UEIA for his help in defining the format and to Gour Saraff of Europe India Chamber of Commerce for his support in creating the business plan.

The post Proposal to stimulate the Spanish economy appeared first on iWeekend.

After various mails, calls and a couple of meetings, I’m happy to announce that we have reached an agreement that I think is a win-win-win for everyone involved.

On request of the organizers, I have slightly modified my earlier post which was a hard critique of Wayra. In this way, the facts will remain recorded for posterity but not the awkward feeling between the actors involved. In this post about the conclusion of the whole matter, it’s time to reflect upon the lessons learned for all the three parties. Of what good is making a mistake if you don’t learn from it?

First of all, the event comes back to being called iWeekend University Madrid. A small triumph for iWeekend and a triumph of the truth.

The organizers have admitted their mistake of not informing iWeekend that they intended to do another similar event and then doing a copy paste of iWeekend University Madrid to call it Wayra Weekend. I met up with them last week to understand the reasons behind this behavior. We are now more aligned and now they feel a part of the iWeekend community and understand better than before the philosophy of iWeekend.

Earlier this week, I had a one-to-one meeting with Gary Stewart, director of Wayra Spain, in the office of Wayra. I know him since a few years now, since he was an entrepreneur in Barcelona. He admitted that things were not done properly but at the same time didn’t take any responsibility for the matter. There I disagree with him: anything that happens under the name of Wayra in Spain is his responsibility and not owning up to it is simply avoiding responsibility.

Inspite of our differences, we have agreed to cooperate and collaborate. They have committed to not creating unnecessary competition to iWeekend while they focus on their core business which is to give acceleration to projects that they consider interesting. On our part, iWeekend is open to collaborating with any initiative that helps entrepreneurs make their ideas happen.

Here are a few conclusions that I have derived from this whole episode to improve iWeekend:

• We have to improve the communication with our organizers and ensure that they understand the philosophy of iWeekend : it is an initiative that belongs to the community and the organizers themselves, who usually are participants of some previous event, are the best representatives and ambassadors of the brand.

• We have to create an integral package that is much more attractive to the organizers so that they don’t feel that they haven’t received enough support. To keep spreading the spirit of iWeekend, we have to create a unique value proposition that includes our brand, our know-how translated to processes, tools and our community.

• We have not been able to send “official representatives” to all our events for lack of resources or because many events coincide at the same time. We need to create a network of mentors and facilitators that allows us to create more value for the organizers and for the entrepreneurs who participate in our events.

We need resources to create this system and maintain it. Hope that inspite of the difficult times, we will be able to raise the resources required to keep promoting the culture of entrepreneurship and keep making ideas happen.

This case has a happy ending for the moment. But I believe that such things are more common especially in the new economy of ideas, concepts and knowledge. Here’s an interesting article on the topic if you would like to delve deeper in the subject: http://alexiskold.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/patent-crisis-and-the-age-of-open-source-ideas/

The post Wayra Weekend back to being called iWeekend University appeared first on iWeekend.

In November 2011, we organized an iWeekend University event in the installations of Wayra in Madrid. They also sponsored the event by paying for the food. It was a runaway success.

Now, 5 months later, Wayra announces Wayra Weekend, a copy of iWeekend University. It is being organized by the same group of young people and the most shocking thing is that they are calling the previous event of iWeekend University as “the previous edition of Wayra Weekend”. Not only that, they are also using the video of iWeekend University and have done a shameless copy-paste of the legal terms and conditions and the agenda of our event in Madrid. Even the image and the photos are from our event. Due to this reason, it has been called in twitter (in Spanish) “an epic copy-paste by Wayra of iWeekend”. We didn’t have any news of this event until we saw it online.

iWeekend University Home v/s Wayra Weekend Home

V/S

Compare the below snapshots from Wayra Weekend with the content in our website of iWeekend University Madrid :

http://iweekend.org/uni/madrid/

http://iweekend.org/uni/madrid/2011/11/26/proyectos-seleccionados/

Clearly, Wayra is aware of all this and is allowing all this to happen. Can entrepreneurs trust in a company that shamelessly plagiarizes a project like iWeekend, born out of the community of entrepreneurs? No entrepreneur should present his/her idea to an accelerator/incubator whose values and principles are based on a shaky foundation. Something that is ethically wrong cannot be good for entrepreneurs or the society in general.

This message comes from an entrepreneur who has lived and is living the struggle of scaling up his project. Clearly, there is a lack of real support for entrepreneurs in Spain. If we continue like this, we will continue getting what we have got until now. The least we need are good examples.

The post Epic copy-paste by Wayra of iWeekend appeared first on iWeekend.

So answering the question of what is iWeekend, here’s the best reply: iWeekend is an event devoted to making ideas happen. A weekend full of ideas, inspiration, innovation and impact.

The post iWeekend: making ideas happen appeared first on iWeekend.

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We have just completed this year’s events. The last month has been intense, with a total of 12 iWeekends in 3 different continents that brought together over 500 entrepreneurs to launch a total of 32 projects.

Thanks to all participants, entrepreneurs, mentors, partners, sponsors and organizers who make it all happen.

We will be back in 2011 with more of iWeekend and keep improving and innovating to fulfill our mission: promote the culture of entrepreneurship in new technologies and help entrepreneurs get started in a record time. We hope to inspire more talented people to take the entrepreneurial path and more companies and institutions to support us in our mission.

We wish you a 2011 filled with moments of happiness and success.

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