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Wisequeen Donna Jackson
Social Communications Specialist.
Those of us who live or work in CH or deal with Swiss banks will know that the credit crisis that was sparked in America and infected the whole world, has caused the legislators in the States to cast their beady eyes over Swiss banking. Both Maydoff and Stanford who scammed millions out of their hard earned money, had some links to Swiss banking as well as offshore banking centres. The discovery of UBS clients with Swiss accounts who were American citizens, and whose past couldn’t easily be investigated, gave them all the reason they needed to push for change in the current legislation about client secrecy, and opened up a proverbial can of worms.
The easiest way to force the hand of the resolute Swiss government to change their position on client account secrecy, was to play nasty, and by that I mean, to declare a repatriation tax amnesty on Swiss neighbours Italy and Germany. To declare a taxation amnesty on monies repatriated from whence they had come. Under the straightened current economic climate with the spotlight on the formally discrete and “safe as houses” Swiss banking establishment, this is making bankers and investors squirm and cringe across Europe.
Should all those rich Italians driving beaten-up cars and posing as middle class poverini to avoid highjackings, bring their money back home into the Italian banking system? Switzerland was the safe haven of the Savoia family, when they were kicked off the throne in a referendum and run out of Italy, Switzerland took them in.
It is the place where famous Italians like “Berlo” go to have face lifts and give birth to their babies, escaping the rabid Italian paparazzi. Ticino, speaks the language they love, so it’s the perfect utopia. A mere 30 minute drive from Milan just across the border. Clean, organised and safe, where you can gamble to your heart’s content and the police can and will protect you, Everything they wish they had control over in Italy. How will they change, why should they indeed?
Will the steel curtain of Swiss banking secrecy be torn asunder? Can America make them pay for not actively assisting them with tax evaders?
Have an opinion on the crisis, send us a comment, we’d like to hear it.
Donna Jackson
Social Communications Specialist
Wisequeen
I was at the webmonday in Zurich last night organised by amazee and held at the Amazee office in Technopark with some great presentations, firstly, The Blind Association online, this presention put us sighted people to shame, the presenter, Jürg Cathomas, whipped through vocalised commands like lightning and showed us how to navigate the web and how to develop for the blind and partially sighted. The question session was lively and really interesting, great eye-opener for all of us.
Also on the bill was new Soc Media start up Minsh, who are doing something “fishy” with twitter, watch this space. My twitter page came up, and yes I got a minsh preview of me as an angelic white fish…
Ok, the usual networking took place with some really interesting techies and developers and then at the end of this evening, I met with a developer to discuss platform dev but we spoke about this iphone cut and paste option
You can’t get us away from talking about new iphone apps. And now Skype for iphone Woot!
follow me on twitter
Got something to say? a question maybe? leave us a comment
Donna Jackson
Social Communications Specialist
Wisequeen
Those of you who follow my blog and my Swiss Tech posts will have heard of the gadget I’ve written on often POKEN, the social media networking tool thats set to take the world by storm. I’ve been blogging on founder Stéphane Doutriaux and the Poken team since they launched in Laussane in 2008. Poken’s recent expansion to UK, Italy, and now the US (as it was the most talked about device at Austin SXSW) means people will be pokening each other everywhere.
The Poken video will tell you how to highfive people and get rid of all those business cards on your desk that you can’t remember where you got,or who they belong to. Just buy a poken a bee, panda, monster or skull and start smart networking. Then register online and take your contacts with you wherever you go. The corporate version will be released soon, a slick USB pen size. The Poken conference badge was launched at #LIFT09 and will soon make interactive conference badges the smart choice.
So do you Poken? Interview with Stéphane Doutriaux
If you’re in Ticino Switzerland or Italy, tweet me or mail me at wisequeenmail (at) gmail (dot) com and I’ll get you one. If in the USA You can buy them online at www.gotpoken.com or in UK at www.firebox.com
Swiss start-up Camp Basel Poken Team
Leave us a comment and let us know what you think
Donna Jackson
Social Communications Specialist
Wisequeen
Revenues from social networking, dating and personal content delivery services will increase from $572m in 2007 to more than $5.7bn in 2012, with social networking accounting for 50% of the total by the end of the forecast period.” Juniper Research.
Industry leaders, social networking, technology brands and media gathered at the two day event held at Olympia London and organized by Mark Johnstone and his team at Six Degrees.com. The gold sponsors were Xing, Reality Digital, Buongiorno, Blinko and Social go, but everyone who was anyone was there.
There were excellent speakers from every sector of business and every continent from Ogilvy PR to Cadburys, BMW, Sapient,Tempero, Endemol UK, Colibria, WebJam, Adknowledge, Vodacom, Proctor and Gamble Qube, Cisco Media, Linkedin, MTV, CocaCola, MySpace, Nixon McInnes, Ecademy, INSEAD, Omnifuse, Lithium. The list is long and the presentations are now online at the link above. WileyBooks (who were promoting “throwing sheep in the boardroom” among other books).
This was the conference not to be missed, and the press were out in force. The evening networking Reception in association with Mashable, was held at Sugar Reef.
Next year’s date has been set for 15th-16th March 2010, so mark it down.
I attended at Olympia London and brought back a taste of the conference for you to enjoy. Leave us a comment or tag yourself in the photos.
CLICK ON PHOTOS TO VIEW
Donna Jackson
Social Communications Specialist
I’ve always been curious of the top ten sites visited in Italy, ever since I was told they had static internet use per capita.
They certainly buy cell phones and tech gadgets like crazy, so here it is, the list. Italians love Facebook too.
1. GOOGLE
2. FACEBOOK
3. WINDOWS LIVE
4. YOUTUBE
5. YAHOO
6. GOOGLE.COM
7. LIBERO.IT
8. MSN
9. EBAY
10. WIKIPEDIA
There’s no news site listed in the top fifteen even, these are beaten by pornsites like YOUPorn, surprise surprise.
IlCorriereDellaSera (Major newspaper) and even Microsoft and Wordpress can’t beat this.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Gazzetta dello Sport was at 25.
According to Alexa.
Got something to say? send us a comment
matt-hamm-media-bandwagon
Last night a large group of friends and collaborators came together at Salento Gourmet (an Italian Deli packed to the rafters with delectable Italian treats and oozing with character), near Technopark in Zurich to party. Wisequeen attended and had a great time, the band “palkomuski” was awesome and the party, wine and the multi-national guests memorable.
Here’s a picture of what a time we had. Good networking, with fun thrown in.
Gustavo Salami and Russell Quinn who represented Spoiled Milk’s Zurich Branch, were right when they said it was not to be missed. I’m glad I didn’t miss it and will be back for more at the next one. click on pics to enlarge
Those of you who blog, tweet on Twitter and connect on FB, Linkedin , Xing, ………… you have probably seen all of these crimes.
So here we go….
matt-hamm-media-bandwagon
1. Not engaging before driving off.
Why do you think anyone would follow you if you don’t contribute? Top of the pile in this crime are those who say they are passionate about social media and put three hearts of exclamation after it, and yet follow 20 people, are followed by 3, and protect their updates.
Now, unless you are Bill Gates or Barak Obama and have top secret stuff to protect, don’t do this.
If you want people to follow you, why would they if they can’t see what you have to say?
2. Don’t go to the party if you don’t want to mix.
Yes this is for you … the guy with the cocktail in his hand checking out the crowd and rating them all beneath him. You have no idea where your most dedicated followers and enablers will come from.
Does this mean you must follow everyone who follows you? No, but would you go to a cocktail party and snub 99% of the people there who greeted you? If so, you’re much better off picking the fluff out of your navel.
3. Asking bloggers for guest posts and then not posting them.
Now this may be one of the tricks to get more people to read your blog or tweets, but where I come from it’s fraud. If you want someone to write for you based on their content which you like, then at least pay them in traffic.
4. When someone interviews you, or features your product in a post and then tells you when its up, LINK to it!
You’re getting free press, that doesn’t happen easily. In my experience, and I’ve interviewed quite a number of startups and established people, the higher the influence, the more likely to link. It doesn’t make sense if youre Mr. nearly-nobody and someone writes on your company, to not link to them, especially when they have three times the traffic you do…DOH!……
5. Playing policeman on Twitter, FB or anywhere else.
Now if someone’s link is broken, sure be nice and send them a DM. But, these boring people leap out at you to correct your spelling on an abbreviated tweet written at a precarious angle on an iphone with a tiny keyboard, while holding your handbag and running for a train. I have two words to say to them, and they are both short!
6. If someone expresses an opinion that may differ from yours, that’s their right.
It’s called democracy , freedom of speech, or whatever other name you want to give it. It’s a conversation, not a legal document. Attack them and you will probably get blocked, and not benefit from the network of the person you where following. Get over yourself!
7. If you are building your social media empire see the post here, then don’t copy other peoples content and shadow them in every follow. RT them and always give credit where credit is due. There’s lots of it to go round.
8. Don’t send auto DM’s nothing gets peoples’ goat more than being spammed.
Twitter is not passive, why would I ever want to open the DM of another affiliate spammer who never reads my tweets? Bots will be outed.
9. Twitter, Facebook, blogging, writing content, it’s a community, a very big community 200 million plus, so give and take.
Find your niche and then give something. People are writing amazing things for free always respect that and give back.
10. So you want comment but you don’t give comment?
This is the easiest way to contribute even if you’re a boring git whose never written anything original in a lifetime. Bloggers ,tweeters give out vital information, they entertain you for free. You print out their content to go and buy that new smart phone or camera, you go to that site to see your pic which they took and uploaded for free and you can’t even write a comment.
Do you steal books from your library, read magazines for free or slip them in your bag when no one’s watching?
Bloggers entertain you, the least you can do is leave a comment.
Small businesses are catching on to Twitter
Now, bloggers go and leave comments everywhere on other blogs, it’s the best way to build a presence. I comment on at least five blogs a day.
So there you are, have you committed any of these crimes? Are you ready for rehab?
Go forth and multiply the love and information.
Donna Jackson
Social Communications Specialist.
Wisequeen
200 cities and towns around the world took part in this initative to raise money for those in the developing world to have access to clean water due to the work of CharityWater
Throughout the day of the 12th Events large and small kicked off. Celebs and twitteratti put them selves up for auction to raise money with great success and fun. Big Shaq o Neal donated one of his sneakers.
Media all over the world reported on the TWESTIVAL with an interview on SKY news and the Guardian UK mentioned the Cape Town Event .
I got involved, at the request of Dorette @metameerKat @capetown, the cape organizer, at the 11th hr, for a city very dear to my heart, CapeTown and assisted in raising the profile of their event on the twitterverse by tweeting my followers 155 times about the event CAPETWESTIVAL. They had a good evening at Doppio Zero Cape Town with local perfomers who put on a great show. South African startup Zoopy has recently lit up the start up scene with their innovative site where video clips and photos can be shared.
I really enjoyed tweeting up a storm and look forward to the next CapeTwestival.
The twestival was a resounding success worldwide and is testament to the fact that Twitter can motivate and bring together people in a cause globally quickly and very effectively. Thanks to @amanda for her innitative in raising the bar high at a $million plus. The events were put together in a mere 2 weeks.
Dorette - metaMeerkat (online) says: it was a good experience… all in all.. and many of the who’s who in social media in Cape Town was there, even though it was not a big crowd - I think it was important that we did it! sleep well!!!
[13/02/2009 00:08:06] Dorette - metaMeerkat (online) says: i look at the map of the twestivals and i am glad Cape Town is on it.
Me too, glad I could help and that I could make a donation via tipjoy.
Today on Valentines day its not too late to support Water the charity that gives life. Donate in the name of your lover.
Keep donating
Donna Jackson,
Social Communications Specialist
Wisequeen
Wisequeen un-commonsense discussion about global business,branding, startups, web 2.0, social media, money, tech, entrepreneurs and everything in between. Small consistent actions overcome big problems
