Venture Kick and the iPhone

Venture Kick and the iPhone
Today I had two premiers: my first Venturekick (www.venturekick.ch) jury session and my first encounter with the iPhone. Venturekick is the result of an idea that came up during the SF START UP TV show. Beat Schillig, head of the Institut für Jungunternehmen in St. Gallen, and an old friend of mine (since I learned how to start up a business at his institute) was able to find two foundations willing to support scientists with makeing business out of their inventions. As Venturekick jury members we attended and assessed presentations by 8 teams who have a business idea each, with university background and who want to take their idea to the market. It was a fascinating job to learn about all these innovations, discuss their potentials and whether we as jury members believe these teams and ideas are going to fly. Or at least if they should get a second chance. Those who got the best results receive 10'000 CHF and will be invited to the next round where they can receive 20'000 CHF. All in all they can make 130'000 CHF, because the finalists receive 100'000 CHF onto their company's account. By that point they need to have founded their company at least on the paper. I can't help but dealing with start-up challenges is always inspiring to me. The presentations consumed the whole morning but unfortunately I can't give any more details. Everything is confidential - again, like so often in my work.
Not confidential however is the jury composition and their equipment. I met another Mac use, Mehdi Jacques Aminian (on the picture next to me) who asked me right away if I had this thing that was lying on his table. «Oh my gosh, it's an iPhone!» was all that I could say at this moment. I tried it out and now it is clear, despite of hesitating for a while: this is going to be my next phone.

The picture shows Dr. Silvio Bonaccio, director of ETH transfer, Mehdi Aminian, Innovation and Valorisation EPFL and me.

CAS Public Affairs Management.

CAS Public Affairs Management.

Ich unterrichte natürlich wieder Campaigning. Dieser Beitrag dient vor allem dazu, den Teilnehmern zu zeigen, wie man per Handy einen Weblog Beitrag live veröffentlicht.

Venture Challenge Kurs in Basel

Venture Challenge Kurs in Basel
Venture Challenge Kurs in Basel

Wieder mal ein Einsatz als Coach im Rahmen des Venturelab Programms, innerhalb eines Venture Challenge Kurses an der Uni in Basel. Wie üblich kann ich leider nicht mitteilen, an welchen Businessplänen die Studentinnen und Studenten arbeiten. Die Fotos sollen dennoch einen kleinen Eindruck geben. Zu sehen auch Flavio Agosti vom Institut für Jungunternehmen aus St. Gallen, wie er meine Feedbacks zur Teampräsentation eines Kommunikationskonzepts im Laptop erfasst.


I'm Back

I'm Back
I'm Back
I'm Back
For all those, who wondered why there was such a long break, a reminder: I was on holidays. Five weeks, as every year. «If you don't manage to get a proper summer holiday, then something's going wrong in business˚, that's my attitude. I started working last week again but had to catch up with too many projects, so that there simply was no time to post something here, and also no real content. For the last week of my holidays I rented a Harley in San Francisco, where I visited my sister- and brother-in-law and my nieces. They live in Silicon Valley, so I go to know the area and also cruised south of it. A beautiful area, very different from the rest of the USA, and very inspiring. Only the fog can be a pain in the a... from time to time.

When you go south you pass a lot of universities from which many important impulses in modern physics and cosmology have recently been coming: Palo Alto, Stanford, Santa Cruz. That alone is impressive. But then there are Apple, Google, eBay and many others. The whole area is breeding place for innovations. I wonder where our world would be without that actually small region... Anyway. I started to understand the attractiveness of the area and will definitely go back. But for now I have to focus on projects like orbit-iEX, implementation of new core values in a big company, teaching, NDK Campaigning, strategy wokshop facilitations, etc.

Herzliche Gratulation Frau Dr. Ursula Gut (FDP) zur Wahl in den Regierungsrat des Kantons Zürich

Perron Campaigns feiert die Wahl von Frau Dr. Ursula Gut (FDP) in den Regierungsrat des Kantons Zürich. Was die Medien als „Kopf an Kopf Rennen“ beschrieben entpuppte sich am Wahltag als 57% - 42% Sieg für Frau Dr. Gut und die FDP Kanton Zürich. Die Dienstleistungen von Perron Campaigns beinhalteten Kampagnenplanung, „Strategy & Message Development“, „Opposition research“ und Schlussmobilisierung/Get-out-the vote. Wir wünschen der neuen Regierungsrätin eine glückliche Hand beim Regieren und der FDP Kanton Zürich viel Erfolg bei der weiteren Arbeit.

Perron Campaigns celebrates the election of Dr. Urusla Gut as Governor of the province of Zurich, Switzerland. What the media described as an “extremely close race” turned into a 57 % – 42 % victory of Dr. Gut in the richest and most populous province of Switzerland. Main services provided by Perron Campaigns included campaign planning, message & strategy development, opposition research and get out the vote. We wish the newly elected Governor good luck.

How To Measure Creativity

How To Measure Creativity

South France on a motorbike trip. Not much time to think. The following thoughts however crossed my mind as a follow up on the Best of Swiss Web Award Night. About the magic word "creativity". How can you measure it? To answer that question we first need to understand what it means. To bring about something new. To measure creativity this definition is difficult. There can be on newer than new. So, are there other criteria? Yes. And they even make sense. The impact of the new on the existing. And the sustainability of the changes as consequences of the impact. These three criteria could have been used for the award rating. Or any other rating process for creativity.

Herzliche Gratulation an Andreas Rickenbacher zur Wahl in den Regierungsrat

Louis Perron und Perron Campaigns gratulieren Andreas Rickenbacher zur Wahl in den Regierungsrat des Kantons Bern. Rickenbacher hat - in einem sehr schwierigen Umfeld - überraschend deutlich gewonnen. Die Dienstleistungen von Perron Campaigns beinhalteten "message & strategy development" sowie "get-out-the-vote"/Schlussmobilisierung. Wir wünschen dem neuen Regierungsrat eine glückliche Hand beim Regieren.

Impressions From Work

Impressions From Work
Impressions From Work

I'm working 50% again, mainly doing coaching work while Markus, David and Christian have taken over a lot of the operative stuff that has to be done. On the pictures you can see Beat Ghilardi from Evangelisch-reformierte Kirche Zug, a church organisation in Central Switzerland for which I work as a workshop facilitator, coach and consultant. With the help of the business campaignign® tools we develop a strategy for the church for the next four years. Most of the input comes from employees, council members, volunteers and members through specific workshops. Here you can see how we assess the strategic goals which were defined. This project is one of my favourites at the moment because everything is done precisely to the theoretical requirements. There is support from the top level, the council members and the president come to the workshops and they are very open to new ideas and inspirations. In this way the project is already creating changes within the organisation towards the strategic goals. Maybe this is no coincidence. Beat did the Postgraduate Course Campaigning (NDK Campaigning).

The other picture shows Jürg Roffler from Mathilde Escher Heim, a hospice specialized on the treatment Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Due to their cooperation with science and improvement in care the life expectation of their patients has risen from around 25 to up to 35 years. As a result the hospice needs a new building for which we are now developing a fundraising strategy. On the picture you can see us at the moment when we have defined the different target groups and specified how much money we think the different segments can be expected to contribute. Here, too, we work with the business campaigning® tools.


12 Tipps für politische Consultants

Die folgenden Tipps hat mir Heike Scholten (economiesuisse)
geschickt. Vielen Dank, Heike. Sie sind nicht nur erheiternd, sondern
lösen manchmal auch ein "wie wahr, leider..." aus. Am besten gefallen
mir die Nummern 1, 5, 7, 10 und 12.


20060310100103938.pdf

Vorstandsmitglied in Kirgisien verhaftet

Soeben hat mich folgende Nachricht erreicht:

«Michael Laubsch (Vorstandsmitglied pro:campaigning und Certified Campaigner; d. Red.) wurde am Dienstag von Sicherheitskräften in Usbekistan verhaftet mit dem Vorwurf, Aufständische zu unterstützen. (Er ist als Campaigner tätig und betreibt hier den Zentralasien Weblog; d. Red.) Die Botschaften der OSZE, von Deutschland und der EU sind bereits informiert und nach einem gestrigen Gespräch mit dem OSZE-Botschafter wurde uns mitgeteilt, dass Michael wohl am Donnerstag freigelassen und dann abgeschoben werden wird. Wahrscheinlich kann er dann über Kirgisien die Region verlassen, die OSZE hat für ihn einen Flug am nächsten Dienstag gebucht.» Michael sollte am kommenden Donnerstag im NDK Campaigning zum Thema Online and Mobile Campaigning unterrichten. Das wird wohl nicht möglich sein. Wir werden eine Alternative finden müssen.
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