Back in the digital jungle

Written on 5th February 2009                                                                                                              18 COMMENTS
Jim Stolze,

As you may know I took part of an experiment last December. An experiment to see wether or not you can live without the internet in modern society. And of course, you can. We’re not talking about living without food or water, however it seems that more and more people feel that a wireless internet connection is as important as running water.

But to function at work and in my personal life without the use of Internet, was quite a challenge. In fact, it was a big challenge for the people around me too.

In this article I would like to share my experience with you. These are just simple observations that I wrote down in an old fashion diary. Keywords for this article would be: attention, addiction, inspiration and relief.

The first week
This was the most exciting period. I got a lot of calls and warm (hand written) letters from people who heard about the experiment. To go “cold turkey” by cutting my digital lifeline over night was a funny feeling. Have you ever heard of phantom limb pain? There was something missing and all I could think about was just that.

Everytime I was writing a story or article my left hand seemed to have a mind on it’s own and tried to push ALT TAB after every paragraph. That was my common behaviour when I was online, to see if there were any new emails. In many occasions I would wander off and open my RSS-reader or check out the most recent comments on blogs that I was following. But being offline made those actions completely irrelevant, so I had to go through with writing. Then I found myself walking to get a cup of coffee instead. It seemed that I was constantly looking for excuses to interrupt my work. Only later this month I could concentrate better and finish the document before I sought the interruption. (more…)

attention, diary, distraction, internetics, presentations

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Internetics – the oldest Romanian web festival

Written on 30th October 2008                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr

Continuing the series of articles about European Web 2.0 events I will stop again to Romania to present the oldest web festival there: Internetics.
(maybe I should stop using the word “Web 2.0″ once it’s declared dead now)

Internetics web festival  was started 8 years ago and it’s held annually (this is the 8th edition). For this year, the festival started on 29 of October and it will end today, 30 of October. The registration of the web projects ended on 14 of September.

Internetics is structured as a competition between the best romanian websites in three main categories: Publishing, Services and Advertising & Communication.
Each of these categories have sections (examples: Publishing has Business, Sport, Lifestyle, News and others… Services has E-commerce, Financial and others… Advertising & Communication has the most sections like Corporate Promotion websites, Viral Promotion, Innovative Projects, Politics, Advergames, Banner Campaigns, Email Campaigns, Interactive Campaigns and others).

The winner of each of these sections will get a prize named “Internetics Icon”. They have two special more prizes for Publishing category (Publisher of the Year) and Advertising & Communication (Agency of the Year).

Another special prize is given to the Webvertiser of the Year and recognize the innovation and visionarism of the clients regarding the Internet as a communication medium. This last prize is given in cooperation with IAB Association from Romania (a subsidiary of IAB – Interactive Advertising Bureau).

The jury is formed by over 40 professionals from various industries which have ties with the Internet (GECAD Software, Rompetrol, Adobe Romania, Kanal D, Clickio, Grapefruit, Yahoo Romania, Totalsoft, ARBOinteractive, PCfun & FIT Distribution, Orange, Neogen, Trilulilu, Publimedia and others including independent professionals).

The festival has some powerful partners like Hostway, Microsoft, Cosmote, IAB Romania, iNES Group, Realitatea, Guerilla Radio, The Marketer, Business Standard and others.

Unfortunately, the website doesn’t have an English section. I know it’s a local event but still, I don’t think letting non-Romanian speakers know about this event would hurt.

In the next two months two more conferences will take place: RoNewMedia (web design) and NetCamp (web entrepreneurship).

Eastern Europe, internetics, Romania, web 2.0, web festival

4 Comments »