A few months ago, I gave a very last minute talk at Barcamp Shanghai. I decided to try and walk people through what I think of entrepreneurship and why I recommend most people not to do it. I hadn’t prepared anything prior to giving the talk and had no adapter for my laptop anyway, so you get awesome last minute shitty drawings in lieu of slides. I’m no Elon Musk. I do have a business, a…
I was asked a few weeks ago to share my experience at Fuckup Nights Shanghai . Problem is: I’ve fucked up so many times since I arrived in China in 2005, I struggled to pick any specific anecdote. I decided to not choose and simply tell the many ways I fucked up on my way to creating and growing my company, Wiredcraft . Fuck up #1: Working for the wrong people Until 2009, I was the MD of a…
I am known for being disciplined and getting stuff done. If you throw shit at me, I’ll sort it out. While I’m officially the CEO at Wiredcraft , I usually refer to myself as the CJO: Chief Janitor Officer . There’s no real secret to it. It’s a boring mix of habits, behaviors and rules that I’ve adopted over the years. But since I often get asked how I do it, here is my 2 cents… Disclaimers I do…
There hasn’t been much time for settling in the past 8 years through which I called Shanghai my home base. Friends came and went, jobs changed, and so did apartments, but being a geek and taking part in local tech events hasn’t. Open Source has probably been the only constant along this near decade. Since I often get asked about OSS and China, I thought I would lay out my thoughts here (and, in…
As far as I can remember, I’ve been a fairly resolute (some may say stubborn) person. I just can’t seem to nuance my commitments: I either do something, or I don’t. I often think of the song Running At Full Speed from Venus when I picture my “strategy” for investment, or lack thereof, in both personal and profesional aspects of my life. The last few years have been fantastic for me in terms of…
This post sat unpublished on my website for about a year before I decided to simply let it out. I started playing with Drupal to build this very website around 2005. Starting 2006, I was using it at work. Over the course of the following few years, I took on gradually larger projects involving Drupal, working with CNN, the World Bank and the United Nations. I even briefly took part in the Drupal…
One small syllable shouldn’t make much of a difference after all, but it does. To me at least. I may be misled by arrogance, for I have not been successful enough in my ventures to claim the right to judge others. But still, it annoys me. And if you’ve met any of my fellow Frenchmen, you know that one way or another I’ll need to voice my discontent (“Sacrebleu!”). So be it. One more hop over the…
It’s Friday evening and I am sitting in my apartment, trying to fulfill my penultimate resolution for the year. A blog post a week, I don’t care where, on the company website or on your own blog, but I will expect that blog post by end of the week. I do that; talking to myself, threatening, demanding, kicking my own butt… The poor slob in me had it hard this year: I made him quit alcohol. I never…
I switched from being a vegetarian to the Paleo diet end of last year. I can’t tell how much I am pleased with that decision, so much in fact that I have happily converted a few friends to it (and I can’t remember ever trying to convince anybody of the benefits of being vegetarian). If you’re not familiar with it, there are plenty of sites out there doing a great job at explaining the idea. I…
I live mainly by two principles; kick you own butt and don’t think too hard . This is not an attempt to lecture people on “the good way to get things done”, just some ramblings about what works for me. I don’t consider myself especially gifted or smarter than the average; truth be told I was a pretty chubby kid, introverted and shy as hell. I guess I still am in some ways if you scratch deep…