We have awesome news for you bees! We’re so excited to announce that our very special guest at next Hive53 meet up will be Joel Spolsky. Yep, that Joel - the guy behind StackOverflow, Trello and FogBugz :)

Together with our friends from KGD.Net we’ll be hosting Joel on the 17th of May at The Stage, Lobzowska 3. 

We start at 6pm - please save the date and don’t be late!

Joel is coming to Krakow to speak at the GeeCON conference and he also really wants to meet our biz and dev community so it will be a great chance to talk, ask and find out more about his entrepreneurial journey.

Joel Spolsky is the founder and CEO of Stack Exchange (company behind StackOverflow.com), is a globally recognized expert on software development. His website Joel on Software is popular with programmers around the world. In 2000, he founded his first company, Fog Creek Software, which creates project management tools for software developers and most recently launched a group project management sharing tool, Trello. Prior to this, Joel worked at Microsoft, where he designed VBA as a member of the Excel team, and at Juno Online Services, where he developed an Internet client used by millions. He has written three books, including "Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent" and worked as a contributing editor for Inc. Magazine. Joel graduated from Yale University with a Computer Science degree and is also a world-renowned speaker. Before college, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a paratrooper and helped found Kibbutz Hanaton.

If you want to participate let us know and join on our Facebook event!

bzzz

The TED and TEDx fans travel and meet up club, which was announced as a community announcement at TEDxWarsaw, is having a joint meet up with Couchsurfers on 23rd April in Artefakt fron 1830. This is the first time that such a meeting has ever happened anywhere, so this is a Krakow Start Up

We are using the registration system of Open Coffee Krakow which now has registration by Facebook and Linkedin, If you use this, we will know if we have more TEDx-ers or Couchsurfers.

Please just register on the Couchsurfing or Facebook events.

What is the big idea ?

Bringing the world of Couchsurfing and TED/TEDx together.
a start up movement that can change the lives of those involved for the better.

People who are into TED.com and TEDx are pretty cool. The goal of TED and TEDx is spreading great ideas. More than a billion TED talks have been viewed on the internet since TED went viral, and some famous TED talks are about
Couchsurfing and similar movements. If you have never seen a TED talk then watch and listen to Amanda Palmer – The Art of Asking

Ralph Talmont, Paul Klipp, Ewa Spohn Krystian Aparta and hundreds of other volunteers have got the TEDx and TED movement going in Poland, and put in a huge amount of work in organising the first TEDx events and Open Translation project.

People who are into Couchsurfing are pretty cool too. There are over 17,000 Couchsurfers in Krakow, and 6 million people belong world wide. Couchsurfers hang out and stay with each other for free when they travel, and organise regular meet ups.

Both groups are early adopters of the new world order of trust, giving and co-operation. The TED.com and TEDx Fans Travel and Meetup Club aims to bring the good things in these communities together.

This meetup will be a chance to watch TED talks, learn share and integrate. Will it turn into a regular event, will it spawn spin offs and copies. It’s very much in the hands of those who attend.

If this works you can be anywhere on planet earth and get to hang out with people who have the values of Couchsurfing and the optimism and mission of TED This group was launched on Couchsurfing in January here went public in March with a launch on the TEDxWarsaw stage.


Neither TEDx nor Couchsurfers tend to be shy but we will be organising ice breaker and introductions.

If anyone attending the meeting wants to make a non commercial community announcement, we will try to make it possible. here is the programme

Tuesday 23rd April from 18:30
Where Artefakt-cafe Cellar Dajwór 3 31-506 Kraków
Programme:
19:00-19:45 Informal Networking ice-breakers
20:00-21:30 TED talks and discussion in English/Polish subtitles
21:30 Calls to action/Summary
21:30 AFTERPARTY til whenever
Price: Free
Door Policy: Positive Mental Attitude

More information about the groups from the From the “about us” on Couchsurfing and on Facecbook

It is important to understand that this is not a TEDx event or a TED licensed event.. Anyone can show TED and TEDx talks under their Creative Commons license. I’ve checked with TED and provided it is non-commercial, not promoting a commercial agenda, and it is clear that this is not a TED or TEDx they are happy.

TED and TEDx are non profit, and have careful and strict rules about their brand and logo, which I support and respect. I don’t want this group to be taken over by corproate interests or do anything that TED and TEDx-ers would disapprove of “en mass”. If in the future TED start asking or requesting changes this will happen.

TED has a community section here

http://www.ted.com/profiles

and a conversations section here

http://www.ted.com/pages/569

an official Facebook page here

https://www.facebook.com/TED/info

At a workshop as part of the BOSS festival this week I asked
my group if they had experience/training in networking and it turned out that no one had ever been taught to network.

Aliaksei's blog post below helps set the tone of how to behave at a networking event  and it is relevant to the whole Krakow Startup community

http://blog.ockrk.co/post/46857285656/no-one-can-read-your-thoughts

No one can read your thoughts

Back to 2011 I was working as a consultant for Ericsson. I’ve joined team based in Stockholm, Sweden. We passed a deadline already and wanted to do a small amount of job over the weekend just to deliver functional as soon as possible. Friday evening my team lead was packing his work-laptop and was saying that maybe he will do the job remotely from his home. I said - “Wow, that’s cool, it is nice to have this possibility”. He replied: “Yeah - but you can have the same, did you ask them?” I replied: “No, no way, I’m just a consultant here”. I went back to my desk and thought - “Gosh, he is right, I even did not ask anyone, but said “NO” to myself already”.

I realized that I had this mind set for a long time - I grew up in Post-Soviet country - Belarus, I was scary to ask direct questions, I felt kind of fear at the face of management. I became a team lead in a few weeks, and since that moment I was saying the same thing to people I was working with:

“Look, people can’t read your thoughts, I can not read your thoughts, if you don’t like something, want to get something, have an idea - you have to say it.”

A lot of things got changed in my career because of this understanding, and I got a remote access by the way ; ).

The story with OpenCoffeeKRK is similar. People can’t read your thoughts. If you are keeping silence about project you are working on - no one will learn about it even if it is 1 billion dollars idea. If you came to the meeting, and you see investors or people you wanna work with or someone who able to help you, you have to make first step and ask them direct questions.

Will you work with me? Can you help me with media/PR ? Can you introduce me to the right people? And so on.

You are able to see what people could help you with on our main web-page, and we are working on improving this experience, and make finding people you need easier. But it is you who should make first step and ask a questions, we can’t make this step for you.You will be surprised how many people may help you. How many of them will say to you “YES” while you was thinking they will reply “NO”

Aliaksei Kulbei


Hive Open Coffee (www.ockrk.co) meetings have really taken off. All positive 

It's getting more and more exciting!

We'll have 2 more speakers at our next hive53 meetup which will take place in The Stage, Lobzowska 3, Wednesday 17 April. We start at 6.30 pm!

Whom are we going to hear?

Aitor Garcia Rey is a founder of Linking Paths, a web company creating simple and useful web services. he founded Pro Bono Publico, the main advocate of Open Data in Spain and he’s an organizer of AbreDatos, a 48h hackaton to develop open source public services.

Aitor will explain why the "old" approach of "business", "profits" and "responsability" is perfectly valid on the web and tell us more about bootstraping, side-business, side-projects.

Natalia Berdys an avid gamer and computer tinkerer, earned a degree in Beat Generation poetry, but then decided to become a developer from scratch. Her first ever iOS app for toddlers, Wesołe Warzywa (Jolly Veggies), has had an exciting launch and won a Generation Mobile 2013 award. She loves quaint logic, oddball indie apps and power pop, and is about to found her own super-cute mobile development company, Coconut Frog.

Don't miss it:)

Despite the fact that Women’s Day was almost a month ago we decided to celebrate it a bit later. Well...winter decided to stay with us a bit longer too...but that will not stop us from meeting you guys!

Next Hive53 swarm will take place in The Stage, Lobzowska 3. We start at 6.30 pm on Wednesday 17 April.


Together with our amazing guests, partners and friends from webmus.es we will show you the girly side of our tech world.

Who’s gonna talk:

Jana Boruta is passionate about marketing and building communities. She pursues her both passions at startups like Engine Yard, StackMob and Prismatic - newsfeed based on your interests. Jana is also a social and dance addict. She lives in San Francisco and will tell how to do a good PR and marketing. True story based on her Silicon Valley’s experience:)

After Jana’s presentation we’ll host the screening of She++: The Documentary directed by two Stanford female technologists, Anya Agarwal and Ellora Israni.

She++ accumulates facts and statistics, and most promisingly, personal stories of different women in techworld (well, not only).

If you don’t want to miss it - click "I'm attending" at our Facebook event page.

For those who were afraid of snow on monday and couldn't join us at amazing Bart Kiszala presentation we have another meet up next week!

We meet for a "regular" swarm that will take place in The Stage, (back to The Stage, yay!) Lobzowska 3. We start at 7pm on Monday 4 February (don’t be late we want to start on time)

Together with U.S. Consulate General Krakow we invited two amazing social entrepreneurs, co-founders of Personal Democracy Media - Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry. Andrew and Micah will talk about the role of technology in civic and social innovation and how technology
is changing the dynamics for politicians, governments, and non government organizations. They will also speak about the challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurs building businesses at this moment in time.

You already cannot wait? Click "I'm Attending" on our Facebook event page.

Find out more about the speakers:

--

Andrew Rasiej, Co-Founder at Personal Democracy Media
Andrew Rasiej is a professional doer, futurist, social entrepreneur, and Founder of Personal Democracy Media, which produces Personal Democracy Forum and other events about how the intersection of technology, politics, and civil society is empowering new levels of citizen engagement. He is also the Founder a not for profit organization called MOUSE.org focused on 21st century public education, Co-Founder of Mideastwire.com, which translates Arabic and Farsi news and opinion pieces into English, and serves as Senior Technology Advisor to the Sunlight Foundation a Washington DC focused on using technology to help make government more transparent. Andrew is the Chairman of the NY Tech Meetup, a 24,000-member organization of technologists, venture funders, marketers, representing start up and more mature companies working in the technology industry in New York City which is currently experiencing a renaissance.
You can follow Andew on Twitter at @rasiej

Micah L. Sifry, Co-Founder at Personal Democracy Media
Micah L. Sifry is co-founder and editorial director of Personal Democracy Media, which produces the annual Personal Democracy Forum conference on the ways technology is changing politics, and techPresident.com, an award-winning blog on how politicians are using the web and how the web is using them. In addition, he consults on how political organizations, campaigns, non-profits and media entities can adapt to and thrive in a networked world. He is a senior technology adviser to the Sunlight Foundation. He is the author or editor of six books, most recently Wikileaks and the Age of the Transparency (OR Books, 2011), and in the spring of 2012 he began teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Micah was an editor and writer with The Nation magazine for thirteen years. You can follow him on Twitter at @mlsif.

Well, that's all for now bees but stay tuned because we’re planing a surprise for you:)
 
Let us know you're coming by clicking "I'm Attending" on our Facebook event page and see you there! 
Bzzz

Speakers Partner:

Hello busy bees! 
Long time no speak, huh? We are working hard to serve you many different (entrepreneurial) flavors this year.

As you already know we have kicked off Join Hive and we have a few communities that want to organize their very own Hive! They are now assessing how much work it’s going to be and what they commit to. Yay, fingers crossed!

More importantly, we also have a new bee - Marek - in our team. He’s joining the core team and will do his best to make some noise about Hive in the world. It’s actually me writing this post, so - HELLO EVERYONE!!!

But enough about us, it's high time to meet and find out how you are doing!

We decided to organize not ONE but TWO swarms for a good start into 2013.

Check the details about the first one which will take place in Klub Studio, Budryka 4, 6pm on Monday 28 January.

If you don’t want to miss it - click "I'm attending" at our Facebook event page. 
--
The idea of organizing Swarm at the university and for students was born in our heads long time ago but we knew we needed someone like Mateusz - an Uni-Bee to make it happen.

Just like we promised we’re now focusing on know-how and startup education.
So what are the metrics your startup needs to track? How can they be influenced? How should you think about you startup’s growth?

To learn about all that and more we invite you - together with our friends from AGH -  to Uni Swarm. 

Our guest will be Bart Kiszala, co-founder of Applicake, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Future Simple - startup based in Krakow and Chicago that builds Base - the first Post-PC CRM. Base raised $6.8M in Series B funding led by Index Ventures - VC firm behind companies like Dropbox, Skype, Soundcloud and Last.fm. Bart will share his experiences and learnings of growing the business from an 0 to tens of thousands of customers. 

Follow Bart on Twitter at @kiszal

Don’t forget to attend! Bzzz

Together with Małopolskie Studenckie Forum Business Centre Club - the most active pro business student community in our region, Hive are proud to invite you to our Christmas party

Tuesday, 18 December
Kitsch Grodzka 1 Start at 19:00

Sign Up on Facebook here

We will be featuring... Free Prizes, Cheap Drinks, Great People, Incredible Personal Secrets

a free welcome shot before 20

a "5 zloty beer" 10 zloty vodka drinks

a "find your partner/share a success/failure win a prize" ice breaker competition.

Color coding of guests as Students, Entrepreneurs or Investors

Xmas Party HIVE + With SFBCC - Nowy Kitsch - .

Razem z Hive Startup Community i Małopolskim Studenckim Forum Business Centre Club zapraszamy na naszą przedświąteczną Imprezę!

Specjalnie dla was:

- welcome shot (przed 20:00)
- 5 zł piwo (!!!!)
- 10 zł drinki na wódce

+ gra integracyjna z nagrodami!

Zasady: wchodząc do klubu otrzymujesz połowę karty do gry. Gdy znajdziesz swoją drugą półówkę i podzielisz się z partnerem swoim największym sukcesem lub największą porażką otrzymasz od nas prezent-niespodziankę!

Czekamy na Ciebie  we wtorek 18 grudnia w nowym Kitschu (ul. Grodzka 1)  Jeśli jeszcze tam nie byłeś/byłaś  przyjdź koniecznie- jest to miejsce wręcz kultowe i po prostu nie wypada go nie znać ;)

START: 19:00

Let's rock around the Christmas tree!

Do zobaczenia na miejscu, liczymy na Waszą obecność!

You must have seen the "Krakow Gangnam Style"  - a tribute to Psy's original "Gangnam Style" and Krakow!! It went from 0 to over half a million views in a few days!

The awesome Norwegian medical students who made it agreed to make a quick appearance tomorrow around 6:45pm to answer a few questions about the process of making things happen on the internet--riding a wave of what's going on in the pop culture being one of them.

Guys have to be somewhere after so we WILL start on time. Get to The Stage (this time upstairs) at 6:30pm and get your beer before we kick off. Gangnam style of course ;). The updated "Santa Swarm Gangnam Style" Facebook event is here, RVSP por favor!

And here we ago again. We have another knowledge and inspiration-packed Swarm ready for you. Our special guest that evening will be Vincent Vergonjeanne who will share his experiences of building one of the biggest European casual game studios. 

Vincent Vergonjeanne is the former CEO & Co-Founder of Kobojo, a European leader in the Social Gaming industry. Kobojo currently hires 70+ people, and was backed by top European VC's in 5.3M€ Series A in April 2011. He just moved to Krakow, where he is founding a new startup specialized in Mobile Gaming for a midcore audience.
Vincent is also a Business Angel, Free-To-Play consultant and a Lean Startup lover.

In addition to Vincent sharing his story we'll have participants of the Startup Safary among us, fresh after touring startups based in Krakow. Check out what TheNextWeb had to say about this initiative and see the video from Berlin Startup Crawl.

But hey, that's not all... There's one more thing... you will however have to come and join us to learn about it - it's surprise :)

Make sure to bring good spirits and your Santa hats :)

It'll take place Thursday December 6th at The Stage, Łobzowska 3. This time we'll start at 6:45pm and the meetup will be in the gallery on the first floor. Afterwards we'll come downstairs for an afterparty!

Join us and see you on Thursday! Bzzz...