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#scs09 Swiss startup camp Basel

I promised to take you to the Swiss startup camp in Basel this weekend.
The day kicked off with a really excellent keynote talk/interview of Suhas Gopinath CEO and president of Globals Inc a multi-million dollar international company that he started at the age of fourteen without any money in India and took global.
His truly inspirational story of how he used his pocket money to fund his first proposals in business at his local internet cafe because did not even have access to a computer had everyone enthralled.
Suhas Gopinath born in Bangalore, started his company at 14yrs old in 2000. He founded in San Jose California as the law did not allow him to set up in India. His story was trully inspirational. I asked him in question time where he got the guts from to approach and even take on big business at that young age, and he answered he had the courage of a young man who took the chance because no wasn’t an option.
Mr Gopinath was announced as the Young Global Leader for 2008-2009 by the World Economic Forum Davos. In this position he would be involved in development programs around the world, and would be studying leadership at Harvard University. He is the youngest Young Global leader in WEF history.

WATCH THE VIDEO OF HIS INTERVIEW at #scs09.

Watch FB video Startups networking at the event

Startups then gave their pitches and then presented in sessions on different subjects of which I was one, and I presented on “Personal Branding The face of your company”.
Successful Start-ups from 2008 were present Wuala, Poken and Amazee all of whom I wrote about as startups here, attended the event. Poken did great business selling their poken for eveyone to connect with. Tech Bloggers were in attendance and will no doubt blog on the event. Many Tweets were sent from the event #scs09 on Twitter.

It was a productive day with Nicolas Berg of Red Alpine who I interviewed here on wisequeen.com and other startup Angel investors presenting on what angel investors want from startups. Many meetings and much networking took place. The food and facilities were great, as was the wifi. People came from all over Switzerland, myself from Italy and some from nereby Germany. Thanks to all the sponsors and to Amazee, Sun microsystems and Amiando for the organization.
Leave a comment or ask a question.
Donna Jackson
Social Communications Specialist.

Tech Startups,Yahoo and Google, Swiss become new Silicon valley

Moving in small spaces with vision and vivacity. This is what start ups must do. Last month I had the pleasure of interviewing some of the hot new Tech startups at a meet up in Zurich at Techcrunch.
There were 40 startups there and some really stood out.

Wua.la social network storage solutions, Yattoo free TV on your laptop, W2ML a simple writing platform, Yes.com music sharing and voting for your site, and an opportunity to win 100,000 dollars by downloading itunes.
So many brilliant tech ideas from inside Zurich and Switzerland in partnership with American, French and German, companies from the sharpest minds in the business.
I’ll be featuring some of their interviews here over the following weeks. So subscribe to Wise queen on the RSS feed

Here’s my interview with Marc Mongenet of W2ML at TechCrunch Zurich

Where is your home town?

Geneva, Switzerland.

Where are you living now?

Bière, a village between Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland.

What were you doing before W2ML?

I was working as senior software engineer at ELCA Informatique SA
in Lausanne, developing document management software.

What did you study after school?

Computer science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL).

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Farmer, but only to drive tractors.

Tell me how W2ML came about

Since the invention of the Web in the early nineties, thousands of
different, incompatible, Web Content Management Systems (WebCMS)
have been created to let people write in web sites: guestbooks,
forums, wikis, entreprise CMS… Some of them are really complex,
but there is no standard solution.

So I thought: is it possible to create a simple and generic solution for
common content management tasks? Is it possible to be as simple,
and generic as HTML is for web pages? (HTML is the language
invented in the early nineties, and still used, to create web pages).

Explain W2ML to me.

W2ML is a computer language to create read/write web pages.
It is an open format: the specification is public and everybody is
free to use W2ML and write software to support it.

What is your vision for W2ML?

I hope that W2ML will be widely adopted by webmasters, that
a community appears, exchanges solutions, and that W2ML
becomes a standard language for read/write web pages.

What would you like to do next?

To found a family.

What do your family think of your job?

Very risky but I have to try.

What are you most proud of professionally?

Nothing until now, that’s why I created W2ML.

Which book are you reading at the moment?

I just finished “One Hundred Years of Solitude” but didn’t
like it much.

What other profession would you like to try.

None.

Marc Mongenet
Creator of the Web 2 Markup Language
http://w2ml.com

Yahoo announced in March 2008 that it will relocate its European head office from the United Kingdom to Switzerland. Yahoo plans to make the move to the shores of Lake Geneva within 18 months.

According to AP, Swiss media reported that Yahoo will benefit from a special tax break by moving to Switzerland.

Yahoo follows companies including EA and Cisco Systems that have relocated European Operations to Switzerland in recent times. The move would indicate business as usual for Yahoo despite Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid and rumored negotiations with other possible merger or acquisition partners.
Swiss info

Why Zurich well here’s the Google office there

Google boss
Google and the Queen

Why do some startups soar and others nose dive? Do you know? Have you initiated a startup and seen it succeed or fail. We’d like to hear from you good or bad. We learn more from failure than success
sometimes.

Write to us with your story we’ll publish your site and story if it’s useful.
Wisequeen