Pitchers
George Probonas
Ancient Island
George Probonas is from Naxos and lives in Aigaleo and despite his condition (he is deaf and he has usher syndrome that allows him to use only 40% of his sight ), he has the patience and perseverance to fight for what he wants and to transmit his vision of a better Greece, and to live in a society without prejudices, stereotypes and social discrimination.
He was president Chairman Committee on Youth Federation of the Deaf from 1995-1999 and he participated regularly in seminars and conferences which concerned deafness’s education inside and outside Greece
In 1999 he was hired as a permanent teacher in public schools for the deaf. The last 2 years he works in a regular school near its house, since he cannot be transferred he has visions problems that do not allow him to be transferred far away from home.
A Greek island that will portray the ancient cities of Athens, Sparta, Knossos, Delphi, Mycenae and Macedonia. The ancient island will depict the history of Greece and its purpose is to enhance tourism.
Its guests during their stay in it will have the unique opportunity to live in the conditions that the Greeks lived at the ancient times.
On the island you can reach people primarily through an airport which will be constructed to connect it with the rest central international routes.
Dimitris Moraitis
mist.io - down to earth cloud computing
Dimitris is the co-founder and CTO of unweb.me Ltd, a consultancy that builds and maintains state of the art information systems, on the web and beyond, since 2009. He studied Computer Science at the University of Athens and has worked for several IT companies and non-profits worldwide as a Developer, Software Engineer and Project Manager. He is currently based in Athens, working on interesting open source projects like Plumi, the video sharing platform.
Lately, along with the rest of the unweb.me crew, he has been trying to solve the problem of managing and monitoring cloud servers with just a mobile phone or tablet. The solution is called mist.io and is about to be released as an open source app and a freemium service.
Mist.io is a freemium service that helps you manage and monitor your virtual machines across multiple clouds using your mobile phone, tablet or laptop.
There are several public cloud providers with different advantages and disadvantages. There is also an increasing demand for private cloud solutions. Each cloud provides its own API and management tools. There are no tools or services that can help you monitor and address problems in virtual machines (VMs) hosted in different clouds using only your smartphone or tablet.
Mist.io provides a unified interface that allows you to manage virtual machines hosted in different popular public and private clouds including Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, Linode and Openstack. It allows you to create / destroy / reboot / tag VMs and to send batch SSH commands through the web, even from your phone or tablet. The interface adapts to your client device, allowing you to administer your infrastructure and to address issues while being on the road.
For a small monthly fee, the user can enable monitoring and alerting in order to get notified by email or SMS whenever there is need for human intervention.
Eleytheria Zourou
Doctoranytime
Eleftheria ‘s first interaction with a “customer” was in the small toy shop of her grandfather, where she understood early enough that sales increase when you sell what consumer needs.
She studied Business administration and marketing in University of Piraeus and started her career in Procter and Gamble, where she learned that a good marketer should be in touch with the consumer and get in his shoes, a more formal way to put what she had early enough understood. Then she moved to ΔΟΛ, where she did marketing for women magazines and having acquired interesting experience from the media world she moved to L’Oreal.
Nothing compares to her entrepreneurial life, which has just begun, bringing into life a new fresh idea in the internet/health sector, DOCTORANYTIME.GR. It’s the idea that brings her closer to what she dreamt for: an easier, faster and more patient friendly access to the Greek healthcare system.
Eleftheria is now working with Konstantinos Papalexandris to ignite the healthcare sector in Greece. Remember healthcare starts from the appointment booking.
Doctoranytime.gr is the internet site that aspires to make a step change in the medical market by addressing real needs of patients and doctors. Patients need to identify the doctor that will offer them the medical treatment they like based on their own criteria for free. Doctors on the other hand are looking for new ways to expose their background and attract new patients. Doctoranytime.gr offers the platform where the patient not only identifies the ideal doctor for him but transforms this piece of info into action, in other words the patient books instantly an appointment with the doctor online. This platform makes the life of both doctor and patient easier, and of course allows both sides to save useless costs.
Doctoranytime.gr aims to make doctors’ and patients’ lives easier, by always simplifying and adding value to the process that makes those two ends meet.
Doctoranytime.gr is the largest service provider in Greece that can offer this unique type of service and thus offer the subscribers the opportunity to increase their clientele especially at the first steps of their career.
George Tentes
Anyplace (quest for the environment)
George is an environmental scientist. Born an engineer, in Athens/Greece, he completed studies in the School of Mining & Metallurgical Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He moved on to complete an MSc in Environmental management of water resources, in the School of Civil Eng. NTUA. Since then, he has been working as an environmental consultant in a leading greek environmental firm, specializing in studying and managing the environment. Parallel to his work, he is trying hard to finish his PhD in Environmental Economics, under an EU scholarship with a strict timetable. As a professional he always keeps an eye on innovation, applies for grants for progressive projects and seeks for smart solutions to difficult or unthought-of problems.
Environmental consultants try hard to promote sustainable development, while trying even harder to save the environment from individual and corporate indifference. At an early stage George discovered that the state was almost totally absent from environmental problems at the local and the regional scale and that environmental inspectorate was weak and powerless to be in so many places at once; so, one day he thought that if the state cannot do it effectively, then the citizens will. That's when 'anyplace' came up. It's role will be double: to inform the public on the state of the environment in their area and to allow the public to rate and value the state of the environment in anyplace they go. Get it? 'anyplace'.
The rest is not history yet. Much effort and a lot of work will be required for George and his partners to make 'anyplace' a real web & mobile app, supported by a reliable geodatabase, valuable to the public, to the state, to the NGOs, to environmental and economics scientists and to the part of private sector that benefits from 'green economy'. But the team is patient and always optimistic. . .
Penny Kotrotsiou
What type of tourism are you? Discover yours by just a click!
My name is Penny Kotrotsiou and I currently live in thessaloniki where I work as an accountant in an accountancy firm which is a family business. I have studied tourism enterprises and right after graduating i decided to seek a business opportunity abroad to practice my profession which also happens to be my passion. Initially i moved to london where i stayed for 2,5 years and worked for one of the most well known tour operators in europe. It then followed Milan and Paris, where i lived for a total of 4 years always working for the tourism industry. My living abroad helped me enrich my knowledge in tourism. It also gave me the opportunity to discover new aspects fo tourism along with the internet itself. My working experience as well as my multilateral personality led me dream of a project that promotes my country and its culture abroad being at the same time a great source of income. It's about an on line tour operator that offers prestigious services in ten different kinds of tourism highlighting the beauties, the culture and the hospitality of Greece. My love for sports, history, art, fashion, along with my business spirit and my alternative way of living impeled me to vision an on line travel "machine" where even the most pretentious can organise and live an unforgetable experience with just a click.
As it is well known , tourism in a country like Greece is of great importance since it has always been one of the main sources of income for many people and consequently for the country itself. However in my opinion the strongest industry that Greece has to display and for which was initially widely known, is its culture. Therefore, my idea is based on this: a combination of those two industries, that is tourism in combination with greek culture. The basic concept is to offer vacation based on quality and not quantity. That’s why the target group we refer to is the upper economic class and the countries of our interest are the European ones, America, Israel and Russia. The idea is to create an on line tour operator, which will offer 10 different kinds of tourism, the ones below: 1) ART TOURISM ”The art’s purpose is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but to explore their deeper and inner significance” (Aristotle)
Singing, acting, dancing, painting…Art is a way of living that forms the portrait of every human being...It is endless and progressive…An artistic discovery is always interesting…Isn’t it better when travel experience could be the motive of inspiration ?
2) FASHION TOURISM
Lights, flash, catwalk…Fashion is a way of expression…Isn’t it interesting to know the fashion trends being in the source of the creation? Designers, models and fashion lovers have the opportunity to meet all over the world…be inspired from the place and the breeze of the people…We all deserve and need to live a fashion experience…
3) HEALING TOURISM
Heal your body, your soul and your spirit...Everybody deserve this…a relaxing environment in specific centers fully equipped next to natural Greek water sources...A great escape for friends or couples to find the balance that the dairy life deprives…
4) RELIGION TOURISM
Faithful or not…devoted or not to a religion…the motive to have a trip to the Greek religion and to feel better the way of life could offer you an unforgettable experience…Monasteries, churches and chapels of Greece allow everybody to know much better the orthodox doctrine…
5) FOLLOWING THE ROADS OF WINE
Are you wine lovers or just lovers of tasting? Wine is not only an alcoholic beverage made by grapes that differs from the variety of the grapes…Begging from the Greek mythology and thinking about god Dionysus and following the civilizations of the Minoans and the Mycenaean the “juice of god” as it was named attract our interest to take a journey of taste…Greek history is closely related and deeply affected by wine production as it is a part both of our religion and tradition…Would you taste one of our roads?
6) ARCHEOLOGICAL TOURISM
One of the greatest and most ancient civilization is to be explored…Relies on a combination of archeological sites and museums that express the ancient Greek spirit…The places where King Philip and Alexander the Great had acted could be only the begging of a new and adventurous trip to antiquity…Follow their steps…in Greece..
7) ALTERNATIVE TOURISM
Imagine living for a few days in a farm, waking up and after having an energetic breakfast…How about riding a horse or becoming a lover of nature and its creatures…Imagine having the opportunity to follow a route by tasting a high quality Greek wine accompanied by traditional products… How alternative are you?
8) ATHLETIC TOURISM
Discipline and ideal environment of training are the ingredients of an athlete’s life. Mountain or sea? Lake or river? Imagine of visiting the kingdom of Olympian gods and get connected to Greek mythology…There are many places in Greece to practice sports or to try new ones…It does not matter if someone is professional or amateur. The important part is to love sports and having new experiences through athletics…Vaglia Calda, Metsovo, Olympus and so on…
9) BUSINESS TRAVEL
If time is important…if you don’t have any to lose…if work is so important for somebody to organize the details of a business trip, it is ideal to have organized and particular proposals based on every occasion. Conferences, meetings, exhibitions can be arranged in every detail taking into consideration every preference. Why not in Greece? It can bring out an ideal dual option that is work and entertainment. Enjoying a little bit during a business trip can become the core of better work performance. This is the clue, isn’t it?
10) TAYLOR MADE PACKAGES
Desire and preferences are the basis to enjoy important moments in life like wedding and anniversaries. If you inform us about your wishes, it could be organized something extremely special for you, the trip of your dreams. If you could spend in order to feel unique and special, fill in the questionnaire. Would you be our inspiration? The purpose of the project is to promote Greece not only for its seas and islands but also for places and activities less known. For example, did you know that northern Greece is ideal for creating luxury packages based on highlighting the wine roads along with wine tasting and several other activities? Moreover, promoting the low seasons gives us the opportunity to ensure better rates and availability. It also helps us provide better services. There is a wide range of people that seek an alternative way of holiday and they don’t enjoy being with the crowd. I have lived in three different countries in Europe and have worked in the tourism industry. I realized that there is a quite large amount of people that would choose a different kind of tourism and not the common one. Greece has a lack in promoting alternative ways of tourism even though it has a lot to offer. The aim is to combine pleasure and knowledge along with exclusive and luxurious services, such as private chefs, organization and access in exclusive events and places. That’s why we refer to individuals and groups of max 15 paxs in order to be able to provide them with the best of the services and benefits. There will always be assistance during their stay and available personnel for problem solving. Whichever kind of tourism one may choose, we will offer one or maximum two alternative packages. The idea is to focus on offering few and fully organized packages per kind which will be of the highest standards and services and not a large variety of mediocre and poorly organized options. The tour operator and its personnel have to be qualified and specialized and must not alter the quality of packages in order to make more profit. The profit should be an outcome of the quality and not of the quantity. We refer to clients that are able and willing to pay in order to obtain exclusive services. The aim is to become specialists in those 10 kinds of tourism by offering few and maybe expensive but at the same time worth trying and attractive packages for each one of them. Our desire is to let Greece be known for all its beauties and not only for some of them, and why not, increase that way the economy which nowadays is in high risk. Do you trust experts to organize your daily or business life? Let us be your experts for your holiday one. For us tourism is not just a business plan, is a way of living. So, what type of tourism are you? Discover yours and let us do the rest!
Alexios Ballas
Innovating in Greece, is it possible? A Fashinating case study.
Alexios is the founder and CEO of Fashinating.com. Prior to that he had been the founder of Cytopia Records (0.5 million minutes of sold music) Nestle Cereals Global Account manager and has worked for companies like OgilvyOne and Upstream. He is also a postgraduate of London School of Economics with distinction. His current project, Fashinating, has received 95,000 EUR in angel andseed funding and is growing rapidly. Fashinating aims to change the way consumers discover new fashion products online. The service gathers 150,000 fashion products and then allows its users to find what they want based on their unique taste.
The safest way to make money in the Greek market was copying a successful model from aboard. The Greek market though is and will be in decline for the years to come. Exporting products and ideas comes to one's mind, but is this possible? Fashinating is a great example of a company that tries just that. Having experimented in the obscure Greek market, the company is ready to export a very mature and unique product to the word. The presentation will provide an overview of the steps so far and the possibilities available for International expansion.
Fashinating has a pending US patent for its business process, five times better engagement of users compared to the industry, 250 agreements with Greek and International eshops (like GAP, FCUK, Esprit) and five co-branding solutions with publishers like Microsoft, Liberis, Star.gr and Pegasus (with traffic of over 15M visits).
Although the project started with the Greek vertical, it recently launched its UK version on Fashinating.co.uk as it aims to export its innovative product internationally.Fashinating has a pending US patent for its business process, five times better engagement of users compared to the industry, 250 agreements with Greek and International eshops (like GAP, FCUK, Esprit) and five co-branding solutions with publishers like Microsoft, Liberis, Pegasus and Star Channel (with traffic of over 13M visits). Although the project started with the Greek vertical, it recently launched its UK version on Fashinating.co.uk as it aims to export itsunique product to the world.
Michael Synodinos
Iwannaget.me
Michael is the Co-founder & Director of iwannaget.me a new dynamic startup that aims to go Global. He holds a B.Sc. in Business Administration from Corvinus University, Budapest, Hungary (formerly Karl Marx University), and an M.Sc. in International Business and Economics from the joint Corvinus and DePaul University program. He is on the advisory board of the Hellenic Start-up Association, and is involved with the iforU association as a mentor. He has also served as a special advisor to the General Secretary for Industry at the Ministry of Development, Competitiveness, Infrastructure, Transport and Networks.
Previously, Michael has served as a financial advisor to a number of international and domestic companies, as well as for the Government of Mongolia for which he helped complete the successful IPO of 975: HK in the Hong Kong Stock Market exchange. Michael has further experience in financing, public offerings and corporate governance which he gained working for Citigroup while representing the bank’s private clients.
Buy what you want and for how much you want it..let the suppliers match your price..
Athanassios Hatzis
From WWW to GGG
Dr. Athanassios I. Hatzis is a health IT professional and the founder of HEALIS an independent, non-profit agency that promotes Medical Life Guard. MEDILIG application has an extensive continuous health care record schema built into popular RDBMS with multilingual, international health coding standards linked to RAD environments of MicrosoftOpen Office. MEDILIG since its first release, two years ago, has been on the top ten list of the most popular EHR and EMR software at SourceForge. Athanassios has realized that the future of complex information systems is on a common path with that of the Semantic Web evolution. He is now active in the research of ontologies, noSQL databases, and information visualization aiming to apply new methods and techniques in the health industry. The neurorganon web site hosts his perspective on a web of linked concepts
Dr. Athanassios Ι. Hatzis has been Health Information Managing Director of the Department of Neurosurgery in the University of Athens situated at “Evangelismos” General Hospital, one of the biggest in Greece, for four years. The adoption and use of electronic medical record and clinical decision support systems, surgical teleconferencing and out-ofhospital clinical monitoring were his major achievements. He also managed quality reports to assure funds of 250000€ for the running of IT activities and proved to be effective in communication and cooperation with many different groups of people such as neurosurgeons, nursing staff, administrative personnel, technicians, hospital IT, telecommunication companies, and health vendors. This fruitful collaboration resulted in a fully modernized, fully operational, hospital clinic, the first in the history of “Evangelismos” General Hospital and a model clinic for others to follow in Greece.
Besides his Health IT management skills, Athanassios has a strong research background in clinical applications of Speech Technology. He spent ten years on research and education in top U.K universities. Most importantly he was the initiator and workpackage technical leader of Ortho-Logo-Paedia (OLP) project (2.67M€, QoL, FP5) and the principal investigator of Speech Recognition for Severely Dysarthric Speakers (STARDUST) project (EUR 275000€, NEAT, NHS, U.K). Based on these projects and his PhD (Optical Logo-therapy) Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, (assessment grade 5/5), founded CAST (clinical applications of speech technology), a multidisciplinary group. He has also published both in Speech Technology and neurotechnology sectors in peer reviewed journals and conferences
Eleftherios Moissiadis
Retweet Greece
Journalist - Communication Consultant
Lefteris Moissiadis was born in 1978 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
He studied journalism and communication in Thessaloniki.
His involvement with journalism started from his student years, participating in the editorial team of his high-school newspaper, which won the first prize in the first national competition for student publications, held by “TA NEA” newspaper. His first interview was with the Minister of Education at that time, Mr Georgios Papandreou (1995). At the same time, he became involved with the radio and TV media, working for the Municipal Radio Station of Katerini and for “DION” regional TV station.
From 1996 to 2004 he served as elections correspondent in Pieria for “MEGA” TV station, while he cooperated with local newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, and magazines.
In 2004, he returned to “DION” TV station, presenting for three seasons the weekly show called “ANALYZE IT”, where his first guest was the Mayor of Athens at that time, Ms Dora Bakogianni, followed by Evangelos Venizelos, Vangelis Meimarakis, Katerina Mpatzeli, Kiriakos Mitsotakis, and Giannis Magkriotis, among others.
He also participated in the task group for “Press and Mass Media” (2007-2008), held by “Konstantinos Karamanlis” Institute for Democracy, while he has delivered a significant number of recommendations to scientific and professional conferences.
He has served as the head of the press offices for the Union of Hoteliers and for the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, while he has undertaken successful campaigns for candidate Mayors, Prefects, Presidents of Chambers and MPs.
He is a member of the Union of Journalists, of the Institute for Communication and of the International Organisation “Reporters Sans Frontiers”, which is seated in France.
In 2008, he established NOVA MEDIA, providing support services for Social Media to businesses and organisations.
Since 2009, he has been serving by virtue of a unanimous decision taken by the Municipal Council of the Municipality of Katerini as the Managing Director of Katerini Municipal Radio Station, and as the Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the Municipal Information and Communication Company of the Municipality of Katerini.
Web: www.retweetgreece.gr Twitter: @moissiadis
Nasos Gavalas
All it takes is to be inspired
Nasos Gavalas lives in Athens. At the age of 19 he started publishing the first niche free-press magazine in Greece. Afterwards it came naturally to work on Ad agencies but where is the joy on that? He eventually discovered creativity in designing and developing real living places for real people for over a decade. Finally he found himself a habitat and a vision; a global network where creative people from all over the world are able to get the attention they need from people who are actively seeking unique and creative art of any kind through a unique rating system that enables the best creative works to be ranked the highest. With a team of artists and IT specialists he recently launched Picklist.me. A social-commerce platform which aims to instigate inspiration and creativity; to anyone. Because we can all be creative as long as we are inspired..
I want to talk about how we envision -and currently developing- a global network where creative people from all over the world are able to get the attention they need from people who are actively seeking outstanding and creative art through a unique rating system that enables the best creative works to be ranked the highest. But most of my talk is focused on how significant it is nowadays to be inspired and creative.
Vasileios Vlachos
PROMIS - A PROactive Malware Identifications System based on crowdsourcing
Vassilis Vlachos is a lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Telecommunications of the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Larissa. He holds a Diploma of Engineering in Electronic & Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Crete, an MSc in Integrated Hardware and Software Systems from the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics of the University of Patras and a PhD in Information Systems Security from the Department of Management Science and Technology of Athens University of Economics and Business. Vassilis is a co-founder and director of the (no publicly funded) Non Governmental Organization DART-NGO (www.dart-ngo.gr), an open source advocate and a complexity scientist. He is desperately trying to save the world from computer viruses using epidemiological models.
Let's talk about crowdsourcing crowd·sourc·ing. to utilize (labor, information, etc.) contributed by the general public to (a project), often via the Internet and without compensation: Crowdsourcing has proved to be particularly effective in solving difficult and/or complex problems. From estimating the exact weight of an ox or the number of beans in jars to locating missing submarines in the ocean, crowdsourcing has achieved remarkable results. Crowdsourcing is being used in various domains, but not in Information Systems Security. Our goal is to introduce you to PROMIS, a Proactive Malware Identification System, a platform for making intelligent estimation on the threat level of the Internet based on the observation of individuals users.
Vangos Pterneas
Touring Machine: Sightseeing reimagined
Vangos is a software engineer, passionate about mobile application development and natural user interfaces. He is currently working for Microsoft Innovation Center and is also the co-founder of LightBuzz Ltd, an innovative startup company. In 2011, he won the first place in Microsoft's Worldwide innovation competition held in New York.
Touring Machine is an award-winner cloud-based platform, whose primary goal is to provide its users with an all-around city guide.
Touring Machine contains no pre-written information. Everything is composed on the fly by our innovative Natural Language Generation Engine. This engine is running on the cloud in order to be highly available and transmits the information to the corresponding web, mobile and tablet clients. Since the text is created dynamically, we can define its various properties, such as the description language, the amount of information included, and the phraseology used. For example, descriptions addressed to kids are simpler and use less complicated phrases. Moreover, the visitor’s tour path is taken into account. As a result, the system avoids repeating itself and composes comparisons between the POI / exhibit that is being described and those previously described (e.g. "Like the statue you saw earlier, this sculpture is also created from marble"). This way, touring becomes a special, personal experience. The visitor’s path uniquely defines her guiding. Our system also generates descriptions that include spatial expressions depending on the visitor’s location (e.g. "In contrast to the temple on your left…"). Along with the dynamic descriptions, multimedia content (video, images, 3D models, audio) is provided as well.
By keeping history of the visitor’s tours and preferences, Touring Machine is able to make suggestions for other places to visit based on her characteristics. This is why Touring Machine is the ideal companion for a tourist. When she arrives to her destination, Touring Machine proactively suggests a unique tour: places to visit of archaeological, cultural, architectural significance, places to eat and shop and hidden diamonds that cannot be found in a mainstream tour guide. All these are offered through unique descriptions. Touring Machine, however, is not restricted to the macro-touring of a city. As soon as the visitor reaches an exhibition, Touring Machine continues its guiding by focusing on the micro-tour. The visitor learns about the various exhibits with a delightful and interactive way. Suggestions is a powerful mechanism we use to help a tourist define her desired path and spend her money only on what she's really interested in.We are envisioning Touring Machine as a platform of a tour network around the world. It will offer all types of tours including tours for permanent or contemporary exhibitions, for archaeological sites, city tours, even tours concerning large building complexes (university campuses, airports). Visitors will download our application once and they will have access to all of our tours. What differentiates Touring Machine is that evolves touring into a delightful, exhilarating, personalized, self-driven and interactive experience according to the visitor’s age, language and preferences.
Touring Machine won the first place in Microsoft's worldwide competition, Imagine Cup, held in New York (2011).
Georgios-Marios Papadopoulos
Studoland: The Student's Dream
George Papadopoulos was born in Athens, Greece. Lasts years being undergraduate student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Patras, he has been busy with projects, team management, and academic responsibilities. He enjoys his leisure time with Robotics, Engineering Projects and... Problem Solving. Furthermore, he is currently Member of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Student Branch and Chair in the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) Student Branch Chapter of the University of Patras. Last but not least, he is an Entrepreneurship Lover and Unpredictable Mind.
The Student’s Dream=Studoland, It is an online platform and simultaneously app for smartphones (iOS, Android, WP). It Includes: internships, sponsorships, success stories, student groups news… etc and it tries to connect student and university. Its advantage? It eliminates misunderstandings of educational system in Greece and provides everything a “hi-tech” or a “newbie” wants to find
Andrew Bitros
Internet as a Socioeconomic System
Andreas is a management consultant, entrepreneur enthusiast, geek and systems thinker. His background is in Management & Business Administration and he also holds a master's level degree in e-business and Systems Thinking. His academic and professional research "Holy grail" is the analysis of the external environment of companies that operate on the Internet. During the last five years he has been working with big enterprises and startups, in Internet related ventures, in order to assist them in better understanding unexploited opportunities on the Internet ecosystem
My talk has as a primary objective is to provide a new -holistic- perspective to the Internet Ecosystem, using a "Systems Thinking" approach.
The main points of the talk will be the following:
- Internet is a system and as a system it has a purpose. It's purpose is "To provide value to direct and indirect users". Also as a system it is characterized by some specific principles and laws: - Internet is a system with two major groups of essential parts.
- What are the essential pats that create the Internet Ecosystem.
- The properties of the essential parts
- Lessons Learned & Applications
The presentation style is storytelling, starting with me as a young graduate, trying to make an analysis of the external environment for a web startup that was seeking seed fund. The task was so intriguing and difficult at the same time because the existing "tools" of business strategy couldn't present the complexity, the opportunities and the threats of the WEB environment.
I gradually got a grip of the system and started to have a couple of "Aha moments" that were and are fundamental for my research. The first was a map of strategic points for the WEB and the second was the decision to use Systems Thinking. Those two were the basic theories that fueled the development of the rest of the model, and lead to the identification of the essential parts presented above. After these "Aha moments", I started innovating useful applications for the model, with a continuous outlook for improvement in order to better fulfill several purposes - such as those on the Lessons Learned section.
Now, almost after five years of searching, creating and applying models that were trying to manage the complex Web environment, I believe that my research has reached a critical point and that I can share useful information with other "igniters". Of course at no point do I consider that my research has reached its end. The exact opposite, I expect the feedback from this event to be a first big milestone and perhaps an opportunity to find others that might want to join my quest.
Katerina Stroponiati
Twitter for sports
Katerina holds a Production Engineering & Management degree from Technical University of Crete. After graduating she worked in engineering and construction projects for 2 years. By realizing the importance of combining engineering with Architecture in order to achieve innovation, she attended various architecture courses at UC Berkeley. This is where she had her first contact with the world of startups and without a second thought: She jumped in!
weendy is her second StartUp, previously she has launched frogetit(a social reminder tool) and she also works as a UI/UX designer with several international teams. If you're looking for her, head on over to popular windsurfing spots and you'll see her fighting with the waves. Her nickname is "the questionmark". You don't want to be there when she starts asking you about something she found interesting.
weendy is a social network for (water)sport addicts where they can share the fun, action and conditions from beach spots as it happens. It started as a tool between friends, some months ago, to share wind conditions, but the community immediately expressed the need to connect with each other to share their experiences, explore new places and talk about weather conditions. weendy quickly evolved from a simple weather tool to a whole new experience.
George Oikonomidis
Gobanknoteless
You declare you want ideas that can change the world. Well here it is:GOBANKNOTELESS ! e.g. abolish the use of banknotes and stop their circulation, while keeping coins. I'm mainly speaking for Euro zone, but of course it can be implemented at whichever country has a minimum ICT infrastructure and a minimum of its population digitally literate.
The consequences will be awesome:
Full and real time state tax earnings.
No possibility for corruption, bribery etc.
Even more impressive: Elimination of the violent money-related crime! No more thefts, robberies, breaking ins, no extortion, no kidnappings! Consequently diminishing of gun and drug smuggling and human trafficking. Last but not least: total discouraging of illegal immigration towards Europe!
All the above are up to now possible due to the "tool" of banknotes. If it disappears they are all gone. The coins will make the whole situation much more easier to work than it would be if they also would be abandoned.
You can find a full description of the idea plus the answers to the well awaited objections at http://gobanknoteless.wordpress.com/.
Themistoklis Tsoufis
The Branding of Greek Traditional Products
Themistoklis is from Halkidiki . He studied Civil Engineering and Quantity Surveing, currently he studies Business Administration and he holds an IB certificate in Mathematics, Physics, Economics, Modern Greek. Now he is the owner and founder Melita Greek Traditional Products, a Greek company which aim is to offer extraordinary Greek Traditional Products in order to give its consumers the chance to consume healthful, tasteful and rare products from Greece in premium packaging, the first retail shop of the firm is located in Mykonos island since July 6th 2012 and it’s the first Boutique Food Store of Greek Products worldwide. Along with Aktis Facilities Management, a Greek company which concentrates in the Management of Facilities in whole Greece, application development for smartphones and social media research.
Greece is full of history and tradition which is able to support the branding of its products in worldwide level.
There is a whole generation waiting to grab this challenge.
The world's new trend called premiumisation may be Greece's opportunity to the way out of crisis.
Yannis Mavraganis
software for the public by the public
Yiannis received his diploma in Computer Engineering from Technical University of Crete/Greece. During his postgraduate studies he was occupied as technical project manager for European Research projects mainly in the area of video on demand services. He has worked for more than 15 years as software engineer in banking, telecom and online gaming sectors where he designed and developed mission critical systems (web based customer relationship management, rules based decision systems, online payment services, mobile games). Yiannis is an enthusiast and practitioner (Certified Scrum Master) of agile and lean methodologies in software development. He is technical advisor for a business advice and start-up funding consortium (www.theopenfund.com) and believes in the effectiveness of the lean startup movement philosophy to create successful products and services. He is also co-founder of a social recommendations platform for local service providers in Greece (www.laloon.com). Yiannis has a great passion for the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu martial art and believes strongly that the current financial crisis will give us the chance to learn to collaborate better.
The idea is this: an initiative for volunteers, mainly unemployed knowledge workers, to develop open source software that improves public services, using agile and lean management methodologies.
Our civilization runs on software. Public services run on software and as we all know better public services is the key to economic development. Due to current financial crisis the Government cannot find resources to improve its public services. Also, nowadays there exist many unemployed knowledge workers, at their majority young people just after graduation, who stay inactive for long periods of time. We must give them the opportunity to stay productive, apply their knowledge, learn to collaborate and at the same time exploit this unutilized human capital for social good.
We propose that a portion of government projects must no longer be closed projects. They must be developed, based on the successful open source model, by mass collaboration of volunteers. The tools and methodologies already exist. Projects such as Linux, Apache and Wikipedia have demonstrated that many individuals who work together for a common cause without direct monetary compensation can produce very complex and useful systems.
If this idea succeeds it will be a win-win situation for all actors involved. Government will get applications for free to transform itself. Unemployed knowledge workers, especially programmers, will have the opportunity to practice their knowledge, gain real experience and stay competitive. All citizens can contribute by providing administrative or coordination support, donating money or by participating in the service design process. Let's turn the financial crisis into an opportunity to learn to collaborate, improve our life by improving public services and help unemployed people to work for social good until they find a job.
Michalis Vafopoulos
Linked Open Data in a nutshell
Michalis Vafopoulos (vafopoulos.org) is adjunct professor of Web science at the National Technical University of Athens. He has studied Economics and Computer Science in undergraduate level and Economics and Web Science in postgraduate level. In 2006 joined the faculty of the Department of Cultural Informatics at the University of Aegean.
In 2009 served as local chair of the 1st Web Science conference and co-founded the Master in Web science at the Mathematics Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has served as member of scientific committee in conferences addressing issues about the Web (e.g. WWW2012) and his work has been published in well-known journals. It is focused on Web economics and business,economic networks, open data, Web philosophy and didactics.
We will present the first daily updated Linked Open Data application (http://publicspending.gr/), which aims to promote transparency and enhance citizen awareness regarding public spending in Greece. The information is based on intelligent and semantic real-time processed Open Data that are derived from the API of “Diavgeia” (Clarity) Program (http://diavgeia.gov.gr/en/) and TAXIS - Taxation Information System (http://www.gsis.gr/), and served through easily consumed visualization charts and statistics.
We will also demonstrate how this information can be used in decision-making and how can be interconnected to Open Data in Greece and worldwide.
George Delaportas
ALPHA Script - A unified meta-language over the Cloud
«The impossible is a word that does not exist in my vocabulary…»
I am programming in various programming languages since I was 14 years old. Today, I am an IT manager and a software architect with a long experience and deep knowledge in the field of computer science and engineering. What distinguishes me, among the others, is the fact that I have a deep understanding in operating systems and programming languages. My point of view is that hard work and creativity in conjunction with knowledge is always more efficient than cleverness. I can adapt very fast in new environments and I have a strong analytical and organizational background which helps me solve difficult problems effectively. I believe that nothing is “impossible”. All it takes is to be diverse in order to be able to find other methods for solving a problem. I love my work because I like challenges. Software development has always been a challenge for me because in order to find more efficient and innovative ways to optimize the final results I had to hack deep inside to the core of each application. That is why I find reverse engineering fascinating and one of my hobbies is to reverse engineer patents in order to make them open source and freely available to everyone. Finally, I am an active member of the Open Source Community with three major projects and I have helped in the past with the Linux Kernel development.
Elias Pantelakis
Renovating eCommerce / We change the way people buy online
Ilias is from Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied Business Management in Bocconi University, Milan. Then he did his Masters in Marketing at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. While exploring the corporate world working in the marketing dept. for a FMCG multinational, he decided to help people buy their favorite products cheaper!
Being an entrepreneurial spirit since he was a kid, he managed to find his way into the start-up industry. Being part of a very innovative team, with dealingers.com, they are willing to change the way people buy online! This is why they created this platform in order to turn everyone's desire into reality. They are here to solve the major problem of wanting to buy something new but not having the money to pay its full price!
After taking part in the largest internet start-up event in San Francisco (TechCrunch Disrupt), they are here to disrupt the e-commerce industry!
With dealingers.com we redefine the way people buy online. We present the innovation of e-commerce and we modernize the way e-commerce is today. Combining social media, and consumer power we offer, for the first time in the world, a selling platform of hot products at huge discounts that can reach up to 100% off of retail value.
Eleni Krietsepi
Suibee is an application that collects inspiring posts by people like you!
Eleni is born in Athens, Greece, have studied Management Science and Technology at Athens University of Economics and Business and has an MSC in Operational Research from London School of Economics, followed by working experience as an IT Consultant.She went in Music School and she is a DJ with “Teardrops” djing team. Also loves swimming, lifeguarding, contemporary art, photography and entrepreneurial activities. Today she runs an e-shop with parapharmacies and cosmetics www.healthbebeauty.com, but her real passion is to make Suibee ( www.suibee.com ) the talk of the world
Facebook News Feed is not surprising enough? Got a thirst to explore new hobbies, books, concepts, ideas, content and/or people from all around the globe?Suibee is a content discovery app based on your personality traits! Either you are extroverted or introverted, easy going or uptight or you have unique personality chacteristics, Suibee will match you with users who share similar traits and let you know what they post!We have the mission to motivate people explore new hobbies, new business ideas, extraordinary lifestyles, come across new exciting things that are happening around the planet, have a look to what other users similar to you are interested in and publish.
Takis Karalivanos
Changing the way we commute, one buddy at a time!
Takis was born in Athens, Greece. His first achievement was to fix a broken VCR at the age of 3. Seeing that, his father brought home a Commodore 64. From that point on, Takis fell in love with all things digital: computers, video games, mobile phones, the internet, social networks, mobile applications and everything in between.
Working for the past 13 years as a business and management consultant, his passion with the digital world was rivaled only by his constant need to help startups and major companies attain sustainable growth in the real economy.
Takis and his great team, want to disrupt the way people commute with BuddyTraffic. The team believes that traffic is a major problem, with economic and environmental costs. The team believes that gridlocks can be avoided with the help of your buddies. The team also believes that you and your buddies should be rewarded for time spent in traffic jams and for helping other buddies.
Katerina Pappas
One Bite at a Time
Katerina Pappas is from Athens, Greece. After graduating from the American Community School of Athens, Katerina moved to the United States, where she received a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Tampa in 2005 and a Juris Doctorate from the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law in 2010. Her interest in mobile technology was sparked in early 2011, when her idea for Healthster took root.
Katerina is currently a licensed attorney in Washington, D.C and resides in Arlington, Virginia. She enjoys visiting her family in Florida and Athens multiple times during the year. Katerina is very proud of her dual heritage as a Greek American, as there is nothing that compares to the sage wisdom of the Greek way of life and the entrepreneurial spirit of America.
Combining her passion for public interest with healthy living, she aspires to make Healthster a household name through which people will create communities to share and live healthier lives together.
Roberta Gogos
Roberta is co-founder of Greek start-up, Gnostix - a social media monitoring and analytics platform developed in Greece.
With close to 20 years of experience in Asia and Europe, Roberta is responsible for Product Design and Marketing at Gnostix. Motivated by the lack of satisfactory social media monitoring and analytics tools in the market, Roberta decided to take matters into her own hands (with the help of a pretty awesome team!) and design the tool she wanted to use as a Social Media Strategist. Roberta is contributing author to a number of blogs and focuses on social media, culture-specific communication, collaboration, elearning and social learning.
Prior to Gnostix, Roberta worked for a number of technology start-ups, where she developed and implemented social media strategies resulting in demonstrable increase in traffic, engagement, lead generation and brand advocacy.
Stella Kasdagli
Woman on Top
Stella Kasdagli is a journalist, writer and translator who has been developing the idea of a mentoring network for women for the last 2 years. She has studied French Literature in Greece and has a MA in Media Studies from the University of East London. As a managing editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, she has been working with and writing for women for over 9 years and is especially interested in the ways their creativity and professional development can be encouraged and sustained all through the different stages of their lives. She has written a book (Koilitsa.com) on her personal experience of pregnancy and motherhood.
