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My last article on this profile

Raphael Briner

As you may have noticed, the HyperWeek community hasn't evolve at all from the beginning of 2009. We had planned to do a lot of things, but we decided to invest all our energy in creating a new platform that could be used by several leading medias instead to create our own media.

This choice became clear when we signed with the Swiss Television to create a magic network around the past of Swiss french-speaking people: http://www.notrehistoire.ch

This project received a lot of attention and deserved all our energy. We are very proud now with the result: content and happy super users

But what about this HyperWeek community ? Well, frankly speaking, we will unplug it in the coming months. We will transfer some websites that were using the platform for "tumblr-style" usages such as pierrehazan.com

And now, if you have a relation with swiss innovation, I invite you officially to register on inno-swiss.com, a project supported by IFJ , Gerbert Rüf Stiftung  and HyperWeek  !


You will find there key content for people that are involved in startups, research, industries, investments, as founders, engineers, designers, managers, investor, student...

So let's move there and you can follow me there directly
Subscription can be done with Facebook, linkedin, twitter connect.
You can also follow the company blog on hyperweek.net.

Any feedback can be send at raphael -at- hyperweek.com

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VentureLeaders 2009 - The program

Raphael Briner

HyperWeek is selected in the "national" startups team (20 companies) that will go in Boston in June. That's good and means certainly that I'm gonna meet very interesting people there and improving HyperWeek products, communication and network. 

The program sounds good and give a better vision of the tour :

In April , Kick-off Meeting in Lausanne, including a pitch competition within the venture ideas

June 9th, 2009, Arrival at Boston Logan AirportCheck-in at the Irving House, Welcome reception with guests from the Boston startup community, including introduction of the «venture leaders» winners (elevator pitches), Welcome and sightseeing tour

June 10, 2009, Reception at SHARE (Swiss House for Advanced Research and Education) in Boston, Visits to successful young companies in the Boston region

June 11, 2009 Visits to other high-flyer start-ups from the life science, IT/software and high-tech sectors, Meeting with business and science leaders, «Idea to IPO» case study by Ernst&Young

June 12, 2009 Start of entrepreneurship course at Babson College, case studies of real start-ups

June 13 / 14, 2009 Free weekend

June 15 - 17, 2009 - Entrepreneurship course at Babson College

June 18, 2009 Networking Day - Meeting with venture capitalists / business partners

June 19, 2009 Optional: Visit to Harvard University or MIT - Checkout and transfer to Boston Logan Airport

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From Alpha to Beta

Raphael Briner

Version française disponible 

We have received a lot of compliments on the user interface and the tools offered from our registered users. We have also noticed that a lot of people are easily joining the groups, but the conversations are still rare. We had several classic bugs: IE6 CSS and js, Flash10 photo uploader, GoogleMap for Events. Please accept our sincere apologies

While we were refactoring our entire code to be up-to-date with the new Django 1.0, we were thinking hard on the improvements we wanted to achieve. It's now time to be transparent on our status: next week we are going to correct those bugs and working on the key steps that we hope to reach as soon as possible:

Accessibility Turbo registration on HyperWeek with your external account and retrieving informations of your profiles from Google & Facebook

Connectivity Notifications of your HyperWeek’s activity on Facebook

Content In 2 months 4000 feeds, 1 million articles stored on HyperWeek

Full layout Complete personalization and branding of the groups/communities

Portability and Decentralization for a massive propagation of specifics groupmodules via widgets such as this one

Privacy enabling private groups and private content

Subdomains for partners, i.e.: yourgroupname.hyperweek.com

Video & Audio Rich content upload and distribution 

And, of course, social means people, the invitation system will be rich and powerful. you'll be able to invite people from Linkedin, Xing, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc

Volunteers We have a great team of faithful users helping us improve the project. If you want to join us as group editor, themes designer, translator, please do not hesitate to poke us here contact at hyperweek dot com

Stay tuned to this newsletter, follow the coming news on our Beta launch hereor on Twitter.

Hope to see you @ Lift closing party ! It's gonna be the coolest networking session of the year in Geneva.

And, of course, join HyperWeek, if you still haven't registered yet. Great people, great content.

Yours,

 Raphaël Briner 

My last posts
Groups of interest. What else ? 
Wikipedia gives a good explanation regarding various types of communities. As we agree that a group is a community. We may say that...

From socialgraph to socialgraph
The experience of Facebook and CNN showed that there was a real possibility of intelligent conversation during a live TV and there is finally a true competitor to SMS, the only participatory public channel with a stream for emissions comments....

My last presentation 
OpenWeb, new opportunities in socialmedia (FR only) 
Summary
• Quick overview on users needs and the two leaders on Social data portability
• Portability origin 
• From static objects (photos/videos) to dynamic objects (mashups) to social objects. 
• The Google answer to Facebook Platform success
• The Facebook answer to Opensocial development

My last groups
TechnoArk Mobile Mondays - Semantic

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HyperWeek and Fairtilizer are organizing the official party of The Lift Conference' 09

Raphael Briner

invitation
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From socialgraph to socialgraph

Raphael Briner

The experience of Facebook and CNN showed that there was a real possibility of intelligent conversation during a live TV and there is finally a true competitor to SMS was the only participatory public channel with a stream for emissions comments. 

Having spent more than two hours discussing the ceremony with a dozen groups of people, I can only endorse this fact: Facebook goes further than Twitter, in that it allows you to "jump" into new individuals'spheres and start conversations with their socialgraph. See my example for those who have missed the "Event". 

In short, the individual becomes a group in Facebook, while on Twitter, you must switch from one username to another to try to understand the messages. With Facebook, I can share with Paul's friends in Canada, then with Catherine's friends in France, from the time they have opened a discussion. 

The excitement comes from the opportunity to be able to speak with individuals who are not our contacts, but distant relatives. This gives a certain result: instead of talking to my "followers", I can talk to a dozen of socialgraphs and above all welcome their conversations. In the end, I find myself zapping from one discussion to the other. One just have to invent the appropriate keyboard shortcuts to: 
- Stabilize a conversation (the time to write a message without being disturbed by other updates) 
- Jump from one conversation to the other 
- Mark a favorite 
- Temporarily remove a discussion (leave) 
- ... 

Some may argue that Friendfeed allows commenting messages. This is not the same thing, since we are talking of a third-party service that is not belonging to Twitter, let alone to Facebook (When does Google will decide to buy them? A hard guess after what they just happen to do - stop profitable services, ...) 

I see an embodiment of the system of notifications of Facebook in real-time. Facebook thus offers two systems of conversations: the chat, ideal for 1to1 status which then turns into a lever to enable non-persistent discussion groups. 

If the costs of live streaming are exorbitant  and are usually reserved for major political events, the activation of a conversations widget is logically inexpensive. 

Some blogs like insidefacebook would like Facebook to allow this type of insert without passing through a partnership. They forget that Facebook has a strong incentive to start financial discussion with the largest media groups worldwide. The arrival in December, of a board member on the board of the Washington Post is also a strong signal. Facebook wants to be where it happens and sends us a clear message. 

The conclusion is now obvious: Google needs to react and to better develop its Google Friend Connect. Will they build something from FB's system of notifications? 

From HyperWeek's perspective these changes confirm the relevance of groupwidgets, except that we need to segment them, allowing them to be adjustable (including height) and above all we must completely rework our system of notifications. 

Will this help generating income? The future will tell.

translation: paradigme
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Groups of interest. What else ?

Raphael Briner

Wikipedia gives a good explanation regarding various types of communities. As we agree that a group is a community. We may say that:

Groups of Action exist in a situation that is structurally more open, where actors have the possibility of bringing about change (Cause community). See Reseau Humanitaire

Groups of Circumstance are driven by position, circumstance or life experiences rather than a shared interest. See HW Job Group

Groups of Inquiry are the social and educational context that leads to “questioning, reasoning, connecting, deliberating, challenging, and developing problem-solving techniques”  See HW big ideas

Groups of Interest are composed by people who share a common passion and exchange ideas and thoughts but may know (or care) little about each other outside of this area.  See HW Best views of Earth

Groups of Place (geoGroups) are for people who are bound together because of where they reside, work, visit or otherwise spend a continuous portion of their time. See HW geoGroups

Groups of Position are build around life stages during  particular phase of their lives (such as teenage years, university/college student years, marriage, or parenthood). See EPFL school group

Groups of Purpose enable and empower people to get stuff done. See HW GTD group

Groups of Practice help people to share their learning with others having common goals. See HW Social Banking Group

If it's clear that we have a lot of groups of interests on HyperWeek, there are also different types of groups, with concrete and specific aims.

Any suggestion of other type of groups ?
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Finding the right pitch

Raphael Briner

More than 20 revisions of this little sentence. Any suggestion ?


HyperWeek is an innovative social platform designed for Internet editors, publishers and readers to share, promote and distribute today’s best interests. 

Why innovative ?

 It allows authors to style, brand and promote their online group with magazine-style cover pages and multiple visual and functional possibilities. 

Among the number of unique features to note:

• A modular and versatile interface to give your group a stronger identity than other groups, with unique page structures that go beyond classic two or three column pages.
• Bloggers have the possibility to create a collective blog in which the content could come from a multitude of blogs across the Net.
• Widgets that allow you to add your group content elsewhere, such as your own blog, within comments of other blogs, or on MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, etc. There is direct access for different parts of the group like the latest articles or images that can be used to customize the homepage of your group.

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Londres, captivante (FR)

Raphael Briner

Début de journée au téléphone avec un ami qui m'explique qu'il est très difficile de trouver du wifi à Londres. Je confirme, il vaut mieux avoir une chambre qui dispose d'une connexion. Arrivée à Kings Cross, dans un quartier où les enfants semblent avoir une récréation continue. Et départ pour la soirée Techcrunch Seedcamp. Une heure trente de marche bien rythmée pour arriver sur les lieux. Pile à l'heure, la terrasse, face à la rivière, est déjà bien remplie. Evidemment, je ne reconnais personne dans les premières minutes et un sentiment somme toute banal me saute à la figure. Que fais-je là ? Heureusement, une personne s'approche de moi et nous commençons une conversation sur l'actuelle tension financière. Il m'explique que les investissements ont été divisés par deux dans le deuxième trimestre, alors que dans le cadre de la conférence SeedCamp, on y entend d'autres chiffres. C'est parti, je me sens "d'attaque" et je me rappelle pourquoi je suis monté, juste pour cette soirée. Bonnes discussions avec des personnes d'Accel et Wellington, mais aussi les fondateurs de Bebo et Rummble, qui font pression en cœur (les 4 !) pour que Mike Butcher m'accorde une interview, alors qu'il est déjà en train de publier une "story" et qu'il aimerait plus se concentrer sur sa pinte. Evidemment, il est sollicité par tous les côtés et sa story prend une demi-heure de plus pour être terminée. Démarrage du pitch, qui l'intrigue mais que je dois encore accélérer, puis démonstration de la plateforme. Et là, c'est juste extraordinaire, il s'envoie des mails avec des urls pour se rappeler les sections qui l'intéresse et me congratule, réellement estomaqué par les covers. D'ailleurs, c'est également le cas de Ryan Carson et d'une série de gens dans mon dos. La suite de la soirée est trop longue pour être narrée ici. 
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Have a glimpse in HyperWeek's features. Never thought you could participate to a digital collective magazine ? Well, it's time to.

Raphael Briner

COVERS ATTRACTION EVERYWHERE  

HyperWeek.com offers a new kind of mix between pictures and texts: the new cover format is here to attract new users to your groups, as magazines do in the real world. First you write title & caption, attach the picture of your choice, then you style it with a lot of possibilities.

 UPLOAD AND SHARE PICTURES       

What could we do without pictures ? This simple photo sharing application enables you to push them in several groups and create your personal library to illustrate your articles, microblogs and covers on HyperWeek.

ADD AND SHARE A PIECE OF WORK  

This rich work sharing application is a fantastic way to present your visual own creation and production - no audio or video here- . Invite your collegues to create your social portfolio and transform your group into a serious digital galery.

WRITE INTERESTING ARTICLES   

Our friends asked us for this basic application. We did it ! :-) A straight-forward text editor with the possibility to put images inside the text, like this article (no video, no javascript here for the moment).

BE A MICROBLOGGER 

HyperWeek.com has a feature called “Microblog” which allows you to easily create small messages, with or without picture associated, to send or not in a group. A basic input limitated to 140 caracters, an optional input limitated to 240 caracters. 


You can instantly convert any Microblog message into a discussion’s start, plus you can publish this entry directly into Twitter.com, the biggest microblogging site. 

READ YOUR FAVORITE FEEDS AND RECOMMEND ARTICLES  

You can call this social bookmarking or simply socialmedia. It’s a classic RSS reader enabling you to subscribe to differents accessible sources of informations through RSS standards, with the advantage to send articles to several groups. You can upload your favorites RSS via the OPML to have instantly all your subscriptions.

A GROUP, IT’S FREE !  

You can get a group in few seconds. All you need is an email adress and a name. You can invite as much people as you want, your group can be public to the world or On-request  for just your collegues, and our paid upgrades are completly optional. If you want to get extra traffic as other people interested in the same topics, do not forget to add tags.


CHOOSE THE BEST LAYOUT AND NECESSARY MODULES

No need to be a programmer to dispatch your prefered modules. Switch the layout according to your editorial priorities. The layout by default do not include all modules, like the widget module - see below-.

By clicking on  [edit], you will access the parameters for each module and may change the public name of each module- for instance here, the discussion module is renamed: Your love messages here...-.


INVITE PEOPLE, SURE !

A group doesn’t need to be a million people group to be interesting. In the real world, a lot of collective items are shared by a 3 to 10 people. Attract people you trust inside the group and you may promote them as editors. We are working on enabling the load of  your adress book file (VCards) or connect HyperWeek to your Google Mail to retrieve the quickest as possible the contacts you need.

CUSTOMIZE IT WITH BEAUTIFUL PUBLIC THEMES

You should not miss it. You can change the look&feel of your group with public themes, and you can switch them instantly. If you’re a CSS pro, you can also customize your CSS code and even make your own theme available for others groups creators.

A BRAND NEW SOCIAL BLOG NETWORK

HyperWeek.com is very tiny. But it may grows quite quickly and we want to make it easy for you to find groups related to the topics you care about. In the mean time, we prefer to reduce the exploration inside HyperWeek, as we have very few time for editorial, but do not forget to use our search engine. And connecting with your friends is the best way to find new groups.

EASILY TRACK FRESH ACTIVITY INSIDE YOUR GROUPS

When you’re signed and have joined a group on HyperWeek.com, we have a special Dashboard which notifies you of any new content so you can easily find new conversations, readings, pictures no matter what group they’re on.

GROUP WIDGET FOR ANYWHERE 

Definitly, that’s something they call a social application. Well, it’s just that you can past your group or others groups in the article you’re writting inside your blog. Bring your micro-community wherever you need.

ADVERTISING

To support the service we may occasionally show Google text ads on your group. In the future, you’ll be able to purchase a pro account to turn the ads off.

PREMIUM, ENTERPRISE, SPONSORING ACCOUNTS

We are preparing several premium features. Any idea or desire ? Do not hesitate contact us here.

Coming soon ? 

We are also fine tuning some other smart apps, like the Events one. The full API is ready, compatible with Php, Python, Ruby, P-list, JSP, but we need to prepare the wiki to explain the data accessibility. Volunteer to help us ?  Do not hesitate contact us here.

LOOKS GOOD? JOIN HYPERWEEK !



The painting on the homepage is an artwork from Thierry Feuz, a swiss artist with recent exhibitions in Vancouver, Santa Monica, New-York, Toronto, Berlin, Washington DC. 
Gala, 2006, private collection, Los Angeles.