Are you smirting with me???

Webisode 5,Season 1

Smirting is the practice of smoking and flirting outside public places such as pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants, and office buildings where smoking is prohibited.

Forget about speed dating, blind dates and the web? Smirting is the new way to bag a partner. This combination of smoking and flirting has taken countries with a fag ban by storm. Let’s face it, the concept of heading outside for a ciggie isn’t much fun. But with fellow puffers standing around, and three or four minutes of awkward silence to fill, smirting is the answer to an exiled smoker’s prayers. Always have a lighter; a decent lighter is an essential piece of kit for any self-respecting smirter. After all, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be approached by somebody looking for one. You can also pretend to need a light when required. It could be the spark of a beautiful relationship.Practice inhaling. Make sure you inhale with a touch of class. Think Marlene Dietrich and James Dean. Your chances of hooking up with someone will be smoking.

Wait for rain. Smirting gets a lot easier if there’s rain to contend with. It forces smokers closer together under canopies and umbrellas, making flirtatious small-talk more likely. Lads should also have their own brollies available. Rescue a girl from a hair-frizzing downpour and she’ll love you forever. Don’t cough. Nothing kills conversation like a phlegmatic smoker’s cough. The successful smirter suppresses the tickle in their throat until potential dates are at a safe distance. Have a drink on hand to calm the need to cough. Use one-liners. Standing around with a bunch of strangers can be a toe-curling experience. Nothing gets a conversation going like a cheesy smirting one-liner.

Be generous. Nobody likes a tightwad. If you’re happily smirting with someone and their fag runs out, quickly offer them another. It could buy you extra time together. If you’ve met outside a bar or café, casually suggest a drink back inside. Remember to blow smoke away from people’s faces, position your cigarette so it isn’t wafting in someone’s direction and stub out those butts properly. Mints at the ready. Smirt correctly and after finishing your fag you could be lucky enough to get a kiss. Make sure the moment isn’t ruined by the lingering taste of a cigarette. After quickly munching a breath mint, you’ll be ready to seal the deal.

Attributed to the best smirter A.E.G.

The Sun, November 19.2009.

The maven, the connector & the salesman

Webisode 4,Season 1

Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do. But who are the agents of this change? There are three categories of people that are responsible for such a diffusion of epidemics. Mavens, connectors and salesmen.

Mavens are "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information." They accumulate knowledge, especially about the marketplace, and know how to share it with others. They are "almost pathologically helpful". In this vein, "A Maven is someone who wants to solve other people's problems, generally by solving his own". Mavens start "word-of-mouth epidemics" due to their knowledge, social skills, and ability to communicate."Mavens are really information brokers, sharing and trading what they know".

Connectors are the people who "link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together." They are "a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack for making friends and acquaintances". These individuals are characterized by their social networks of over one hundred people. Moreover they are people who understand the concept of the weak tie. The social success of Connectors is attributed to "their ability to span many different worlds as a function of something intrinsic to their personality, some combination of curiosity, self-confidence, sociability, and energy."

Salesmen are "persuaders", charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, which makes others want to agree with them.

All three types of people above, are connected with "The success of any kind of social epidemic, which is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with these particular and rare set of social gifts."

References: Malcolm Gladwel's "The tipping point"

Bootstrapping

Webisode 3,Season 1
Usually nascent entrepreneurs facing a lack of resources, have no choice but to resort to non-market sources, such as family and friends, to finance the acquisition of their factor inputs. Using strategies that have been referred to as bootstrapping, these entrepreneurs manage to find solutions that for all practical purposes are closed to them. The important point about the entrepreneurial use of non-market solutions is that through creativity and imagination the entrepreneur keeps the price of the important factors low enough to generate a positive outcome for the venture. By leveraging their human, social, and limited financial capital, entrepreneurs acquire resources at prices well below what they would otherwise be, in the competitive markets under conditions of high uncertainty.
In other words, bootstrapping is to start a business without external help and capital. Startups that bootstrap their business fund the development of their company through internal cash flow and are cautious with their expenses. These bootstrappers, with very low resource endowments manage to create long lasting and successful firms from scratch.
-Painting, "Boots" by Benjamin Hope-

Hope.

Webisode 2, Season 1
Millions of thoughts are hitting my head...Every night the same story, going to bed at 02:00, getting up after 4-5 hours of thinking, still awake. Terrible pain...I can feel it in every cell of my brain.It feels like being swollen...What a freaky experience...Yesterday I thought that the end of the world will come soon, I got sweaty...Where is my optimism hidden?
I read that people will commonly die from stress...how true!! Ask me...
My coming back to family, friends and home has not brought tranquility and balance. I try to find my steps but still I have a false pace. I think I 'll fall all the time...
Going back to A'dam, maybe London, Dubai?? Where the f***? Or stay here and swim in the deep sea?? haha There is no deep sea in England or Arabia?? I guess there is.
Time for changes one way or another. Be quick or be dead. Things are fluid but so I have been my whole life..fluid as hell...capable for the best and the worst...Sometimes i feel empty...like Dexter the killer cop. At least I have some episodes left to watch...He is my night friend...

Good news came from next door...the web developer I was looking for lives a minute away from me...I know him since my 11. Life is playing again...Potential has been reborn. The guy looks like me, thinks like me, freaks out like me. The abandoned plan will happen. Sweet...

Hope, is the day of this week. No dictation for hope, just a case study. My case study. Hopefully I wont get any Nobel price for hoping...

Bricolage

Webisode 1,Season 1

Bricolage is the word of this week...it sounds like “making do with current resources and creating new forms and order from tools and materials at hand”. Most start-up entrepreneurs lack clear vision, they are adaptive and mostly they are experimenting at the early stages. With few resources, they are more likely to pursue an innovation path, looking for simple solutions, by recombining resources for new purposes. Bricolage comes to create products and markets where none existed, driving the discovery of innovations.

A bricoleur reuses all available resources in applications other than those for which they were originally intended or used. He likes to paste together a few components into ‘something,’ see how it looks like, play with it, check if it works, evaluate, modify or reject. He follows the “KISS” style, Keep It Simple & Smart, and discovers utility where others see only trash.

Levi Strauss, the first successful bricoleur was selling canvas for tents and wagon covers, when realized the miners' need for pants, strong enough to last in the rough tunnels. Denim was a matter of time to be born. Good idea, don't you think?

Ubiquity

Welcome to "The Ubiquitous Blog"!

Well...Ubiquity seems to be the state of being everywhere at once. A quality once attributed to Gods. Now, a quality attributed to humans in our global connected society.
Anytime, Anywhere. A condition without boundaries, based on speed of communication and diffusion of information. From this contradicting small corner of blogosphere, the pen of "The Maven" will be everywhere at once, plotting scenarios, criticizing and spreading words like bees do with the pollen.

To be continued...

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