Noaptea Alba a Celor Mai Cool Localuri – Bucharest KoolHunt 2012

Pe 14 iulie, Raluk.ro ne invita sa descoperim esenta Bucurestiului cool, acea parte a orasului care nu e de gasit in Centrul Istoric, dimpotriva: coolhunterii plimbareti ai Raluk.ro stiu pe unde sunt pitite localurile cele mai de soi si pe 14 iulie esti si tu invitat sa devii coolhunter pentru o noapte! Vei vizita cele mai cool localuri si vei primi la fiecare popas cate un preparat (bautura sau mancare) GRATUIT, cel mai bun din meniul localului respectiv!

 14 iulie, 22:00-04:00 – Noaptea Alba a Localurilor Cool!

 Bucharest Koolhunting

Pe 14 iulie, de la 22:00, Raluk.ro da startul primei editii KoolHunt, o noapte in care cele mai cool localuri din Capitala vor sta deschise – pentru insomniaci, gurmanzi, hedonisti si connoisseur-i ai Bucurestiului cool! Cafenele, ceainarii, baruri, restaurante, toate au fost selectate pe spranceana dintre cele notate cu un punctaj mare de coolhunterii Raluk.ro. Traseul de localuri participante poate fi consultat pe pagina evenimentului, AICI.

Harta Bucurestiului a fost impartita astfel pe trei zone mari: Floreasca-Dorobanti, Victoriei-Lahovari si Mosilor-Foisorul de Foc. Localurile participante vor oferi un item din meniu gratuit participantilor la KoolHunt, care vor primi si o stampila in fiecare local – la cinci stampile adunate, deci cinci localuri vizitate, participantul va putea intra la Marele Party Final din Madame Pogany, care va incepe la final de KoolHunt, de la ora 4 a.m. De asemenea, aici vor fi organizate concursuri in care vor fi automat inscrisi participantii care au acumulat un anumit numar de stampile (la fiecare 5 stampile acumulate, creste nivelul si premiul oferit – prin tragere la sorti)

Cele mai COOLocaluri participa la KoolHunt

 Oricine va putea participa, urmarind harta sau “meniul de Bucuresti”, pe care sunt semnalate clar localurile participante:

ZONA AMUSE-BOUCHE: HOBBY CAFE, CEAINARIA TABIET, CAFFE TABIET (Avrig), CAFFE D’ARTHE, RESTAURANT XANADU, LENTE & CAFEA (Noua Sufragerie)

ZONA PLAT DE NUIT: CAFE VERONA, THE HARBOUR, GRADINA OAR, ZVON CAFE (Rosetti), THE EMBASSY, BOHEMIA TEA HOUSE, SERENDIPITY, LENTE & CAFEA

ZONA DESSERT A MINUIT: CHOCOLAT (Dorobanti), OSTERIA GORGIA, RENDEZ-VOUS AMBIANCE (Floreasca), MADAME POGANY - MARELE PARTY FINAL

Bucharest KoolHunt 2012 – desfasurarea pas cu pas

Incepeti traseul KoolHunt din orice punct al Bucurestiului si vizitati cate localuri doriti… sau cat va tin picioarele! In fiecare din localurile participante, veti primi un preparat din partea casei si o stampila. Cand vine ospatarul cu preparatul gratuit, intindeti o mana, un picior, orice, stampilati-va oriunde pe corp – fiecare stampila conteaza! Nu va dati batuti pana cand nu sunteti “tatuati” cu toate cele 5 litere: R, A, L, U si K. Puteti aduna si mai multe stampile, dar doar cu un set de 5, doar cu “RALUK” stantat undeva – oriunde! – pe corp veti putea intra la marele party final, din Madam Pogany.

Acolo, in creierii noptii, dupa ce-ati petrecut pe traseu fiecare in ritmul vostru, veti petrece impreuna cu echipa Raluk.ro la Marele Party Final! Aici voi, coolhunter-ii pentru o noapte, veti fi premiati – toti cei care au raspuns provocarii, au batut strazile Bucurestiului si s-au infiintat in cat mai multe localuri vor intra in concursurile serii, in functie de numarul de stampile acumulate!

Entry Level, Cool Amator sau Pro?

Deci pe 14 iulie, pregatiti-va sa rezistati pana la ceas tarziu in noapte, caci va fi una alba-n Capitala, de calibru must-party! Fie ca va tine adrenalina pe baricade toata noaptea, fie ca bifati doar cateva localuri de pe traseu – ca sunteti coolhunteri aspiranti (entry-level), in devenire (cool-amator) sau de cursa lunga (pro) – veti intra in gratiile Raluk.ro, la petrecerea finala si in concursurile noptii albe!

Dar de la KoolHunt iesim castigati chiar si fara sa fi fost premiati: vom avea in sfarsit o imagine de ansamblu a Bucurestiului ospitalier, care inca se mentine la acel nivel de calitate, a serviciilor si a preparatelor, intrinseca unui Mic Paris.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 34,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Micro-contracting – a creative and cheap concept – Sign-up for Gigyit.com

I think it’s best to start this article with a simple explanation on what exactly micro-contracting means. I had the surprise to find out that not many people heard of this at Start-up Weekend in Bucharest. So here it is, Micro-contracts: small tasks that people are willing to do for a fixed amount of money. The best way to understand is to show you, so you can find below a print-screen from the leading web-site of this sort, Fiverr.com.

The idea is simple, people post gigs (the name of the jobs that they are willing to do) and people pay 5$ to hire them. The vendor gets 4$ and Fiverr gets 1$. Pretty easy and simple and very easy to copy it.  So this sounds like a familiar story, GroupOn anyone, and pretty soon many copies were launched and the business model was replicated not only locally in the USA, but also in Brazil, Italy, The UK, Romania and others as well.

The range of things that you can buy on these sites, is huge, Fiverr alone has over 500.000 gigs (as they say), and they range from Advertising gigs to weird and funny ones. I for one strongly believe in this type of business model, not only because it’s easy, but because it puts a fair price on many gigs, that otherwise would cost you greatly. For example, if you are the bakery from the corner, you can have your own logo for a decent 5$, instead of 50$ or even 100$.In my opinion if you have a little patience to look for the great gigs you can find very good ones that will surely help a start-up that is counting every penny.

As part of the Start-up Weekend Romania, we started developing a great aggregator for all of these types of sites, so that the person that wants to buy a gig can take the best possible decision by comparing gigs from all the platforms. If you want stay updated, or just find out when we’ll launch leave us your email address @ gigyit.com

Creative Monkeyz – RObotzi – To Ad or not to Ad

Well i had to write about this. I admit i waited a little before doing so, not because i doubted the quality of the show, but because i wanted to see if the guys could keep up the pace. It must admit this one of the most successful Romanian social media project ever. The numbers speak for them selves, almost 150k fans, millions of views, and the records just keep on adding up. So this is for the stats, and the things that everybody knows.

Now let’s talk about the problems, the site has. Well it’s gorgeous, it’s fresh and it’s constantly updated but it has blank ad banners, why that might be? Normally this would be an advertisers dream ad space. I can only think of one reason and that is the bad language of the robotzi. It’s true they censor some part, but what brand would want to associate their image with this kind of language? Certainly not the scared Romanian brands, that only discovered Social Media only after the rest of the world did.

Market advice? Yahoo.ro, Internet Corp, Intact, Media Pro, or other big money companies, should really start listening to what these guys are saying, and should maybe try to buy it cheap right now. Just imagine RObotzi.yahoo.ro, or RObotzi.intact.ro. This should really be looked into.

Further more i don’t understand why the big boys from telecom especially the one named after a color, did not jump to the occasion to advertise or buy it. This would certainly be a great flag ship for the internet race. But who knows maybe all of these things will happen sooner rather than later.

How do you think should advertise on this site, or how should try to take a swing at buying it?

The death of a Legend – Elizabeth Taylor

There aren’t many things left to say about one of the legends of the Big Screen. She was just one one the great ones, along with the likes of Grace Kelly, Audrey, Katherine, Meryl, Beth, Jane and others that i can’t think of right now , and simply put she will be a terrible miss, but maybe this way she will take her sit at the table of immortality with the likes of rest of the greats. Richard is probably waiting for her, and so is Michael.

There a re few things left unsaid, and in times like this maybe the best thing is to cherish one’s life than to mourn her death. So find below some of her best moments, for me she will always remain in black and white, perfect.

How not to get caught in the bragging trap

Well this subject that I have previously treated is basically a simple one. Chances are that if you are a bragger in real life you will most likely be a bragger in Social Media (used as SM from now on) as well. But as they say, all is not lost, fortunately for you, Twitter, Facebook does not have (yet) the dynamic of a real life conversation so you might wanna take a second a read back what you are going to write, and also ask yourself sincerely, if you would slap yourself.

The secret to any SM interaction is being the most human possible; the same rules that apply in real face2face conversations apply to SM as well. You can’t expect to be arrogant, or to brag, or to try to sound familiar and people not pick up on that. Maybe they will let one- two slip, but in the end they will unfollow or unfriend you.

What I’ve learned at Go USA!Roadshow – Bucharest Hubb

Today i attended the above mentioned conference in an attempt to better understand the American culture and at the same time try to find more things about the boring administrative things that are involved in opening a US business from Romania. As all Hub events, this was one was no different, it started with the regular half to one hour delay and this is starting to be such a wide accepted thing that they even put a tag on it, beginning networking.

As for the show, i can say it was professionally organized, the people present there knew very well what they were talking about and the same time they were able to explain every possible scenario in a way that everyone could understand. I must say that it was refreshing to see Americans talk with warmth about the capacity and the potential of the IT industry in Romania. I even enjoyed the tax part, mainly because it made me realize that i am totally unprepared for this part, and i will definitely need an expert in this field when I’ll launch, but also becsue o the speaker, he must be the single most passionate man that talks about numbers and taxes.

Last but not least, i liked the fact that i got many contacts,and got to meet real Americans, Romanians that lived there and especially real examples, situations that really happened, not just generic things, or advices, many of the things that were told happened to real human beings, they showed us photos and all. This for me was the best part, and I for one think this is the most important part.