Week 2 of e-business course held from 19-23 May 2008 produced various discussions, tactics and ideas for doing e-business in Kosovo. Also during the second week, Kosovo students had the unique opportunity to hear two days guest lecture from Prof. Jonathan Briggs, E-Commerce professor in Kingston University, London. Mr. Briggs engaged the students with activities using the online tools which helps e-businesses: Google AdWords, Shopify and many advertising models in internet. Students were given a task to analyse The Market Quarter success story to help them coming with interesting ideas during the week.

Ideas generated by students:
Classified ads:
Advertisements placed by people and businesses to let people know about renting, selling property and available jobs.
Tentenet
Online store selling traditional custom items, clothing, and decorations.
Kosovarja Company
Online service which helps foreign tourists while they spend time in Kosova, monetization through membership clubs and affiliation with partners whom services will be promoted online.
Restore Hair
Online shopping selling shampoos with immediate effects in hair development
PC-Kos
Web magazine for IT providing news about IT market and selling pre-paid mobile scratch cards online.

Congratulation to my friend Hajrë Hyseni for the Flare Award - Entrepreneur 2008.. I am really impressed!

I had the unique opportunity this year to visit CERN’s Large Hadron Collider a day after LIFT Conference 2008, an experience which helped me to understand better CERN and its innovation. I was in a group together with Bruce Sterling, Ben Segal, Robert Scoble (who did the video below), Aral Balkan and others. Below is a video which helps you understand what is happening underneath CERN research and scientific labs. Thanks to Robert Scoble for recording and putting it live in FastCompany.tv.

Its declaration of independence is the start of another chapter, not of a new book, says The Economist quoting my comment about technology opportunities in Kosovo.

Kushtrim Xhakli, an internet entrepreneur, says the problem lies deeper: stick-in-the-mud thinking and no tradition of letting private companies get larger than one family can control. “They are frightened of modern technology and losing control,” he says.

At DLD Conference Lufthansa asked:
In view of modern rail travel concepts, what innovative ideas and visions must the aviation industry implement in order still to be attractive in 15 years’ time?

A very good question to discuss, with all frequency of planes growing daily, unconditional weather, delays, and plus now double security checks, traveling has become a nightmare. What will amuse the human being in 15 years to still think that flights are attractive is technology and the use of it in costumer side. More analysis to come in this topic.

DLD Conference has ended yesterday, where 1000 individuals discussed about Challenges in Global World, Getting Social, Future Cities and Exploding Media. They raised up issues which were followed up in blogosphere, some of the participants tried even to Live streaming from mobile phones using QIK | Streaming video right from your phone.

DLD was popular this week, this shows an increase of Blog Trends report in the graph below.

I’m going to LIFT Conference 2008 with set of tools to create, share and present. I will create network possibly by increasing my Linkedin connections, I will share conversation and a presence during LIFT08 with Twitter, and will get much social with Facebook (physical contacts only).

Here is the trend graph of recent months popularity of these social networks:

Meanwhile I will have a possibly to present my open stage proposition: How innovative projects can transform education and ICT opportunities. (Your vote and support is highly appreciated at this stage).

And the most important part is to meet with network of people i created last year, compliments to LIFT team for making the event this year much more valuable to be part of it.

LIFT Conference is about to start soon, this time richer with program attached with preliminary network using social media softwares. As last year main discussion during the breaks was Twitter, this year it Facebook will dominate the field. The recent report provided by Glen O’Neil on Network Mapping shows the increase of network among participants, this time I expect an increase of 30% of contacts in Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

I do think that the more you travel the hardest it gets, I missed my flight to Prishtina, Kosovo today operated by British Airways. The reason was my fault, i did not make it in time, and I was 30 minutes late.

British Airways kindly offers flight deals but when you are in need they are well known to analyze the importance of your travel, so they start to increase fines and provide expensive solutions. That is how I got rewarded today. My travel agent managed to re-book me for 12 January, the only possible date to go back, it was fully booked. People are traveling but there are only 3-4 flights a week.

Update: I need to come up with something to solve this 3-4 flights a week problem. I have in mind something.