Doriane Mouret

  • They Call It “The Matrix”, We Call It “Augmented Reality”

    on Nov 9
    in All, Technology
    by Doriane Mouret
    with 1 Comment

    Have you ever heard about GeoEye? GeoEye is one of the satellite imagery providers of Google Maps and Google Earth. Its satellite, GeoEye-1, makes 15 orbits a day and takes pictures of 700,000 square kilometers of earth, an area about the size of Texas. There are 12 imaging satellites like GeoEye-1 orbiting around the earth. It’s of course nothing compared to the 16,976 satellites currently in our skies, but it’s enough to provide our web mapping applications with recent pictures of any single part of the planet.

    It’s the Google team who first started to make those images available to the general public with the introduction of Google Map in 2005. Two years later, Google Street View launched, letting Google Map users virtually get around real places thanks to millions of pictures taken by the Google Cars. Microsoft caught up with the introduction of Street Slide, enhancing the experience by adding 3D street views.

    A week ago, Google went even further by integrating pictures of public “interiors” in their maps. Not only does Google now let you view streets, it also takes you into stores, malls, parks, etc. The project is limited to specific countries and businesses for now, but should expand in the near future. Thus, you will soon be able to visualize any public area of the planet on your phone, and will be able to visit the entire world without leaving your apartment. It’s amazing what technology can let us do.

    It’s maybe amazing, but it’s not true. Again, think out of the box: most of the pictures available on those applications are one to three years old! The world you visit on your Google/Bing Map application is the world of 2008, not the real time one. So how could we make this experience more accurate? By a combination of two genius inventions: Crowd-sourcing and Augmented-Reality.

    Crowd-sourcing and Augmented-Reality Maps

    First things first, what do we call Augmented-Reality? Augmented-Reality was first defined in 1997 by Ronald Azuma as a technique that “allows the user to see the real world, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world.” In other words, Augmented-reality adds graphics to the natural world as it exists.

    When applied to mapping technologies, Augmented-Reality can be seen as a technique to display information about the users’ surroundings in a mobile camera view: you point your camera in a certain direction, and the software will analyze the environment and add geo-located elements in the landscape like directions, altitude, temperature, distance to destination, or even pictures from other users taken at a different time. This technique can also be applied to pictures and maps that are not necessarily in real time. For example, to make our Google Street Views more accurate, we could let people add more recent pictures to the map as an Augmented-Reality feature.

    That’s what the Microsoft Bing Map team has been working on since 2009. Last year during a TED Conference, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Bing Map Architect, presented the Augmented-Reality Maps project developed by his team. As you’ll see in the video below, Bing Map will soon let you add virtual elements to your street views, from Flickr pictures to real time video. Check it out, it’s pretty amazing.

     The AR Bing Maps Project does fix the problem of maps accuracy. However, if the power of adding those pictures only remains in Microsoft’s hands, the impact will be very limited, and we will end up with an old map pimped with a few more recent pictures.

    Unless….. Unless we combine Augmented Reality Maps with Crowd-Sourcing! What is Crowd-Sourcing? Crowd-Sourcing is “the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people through an open call.” Basically, Crowd-sourcing is when you let the users of your products share information about it with other users. Your costumer becomes your provider. The best example of Crowd-Sourcing is of course Wikipedia, an Encyclopedia where the user not only consumes information, but also creates it.

    Thanks to Augmented-Reality and Crowd-Sourcing, we could create virtual maps that are very close to real-time realities, making the experience of getting around a city more accurate and closer to what it really is. You just built your house and it doesn’t show up on Google or Bing Map yet? Then just take a picture of your house from the street, add it to the map and that’s it! Now your house is in the landscape and when people will virtually visit the city, they will see it.

    And there is more! We could imagine Augmented-Reality Maps where a business owner could add a graphic to his store indicating that there is a promotion on a specific item. We could also add pictures of Foursquare mayors to each place… The possibilities are infinite. One of them is very cool: it’s called “Augmented Reality Cinema” and it lets you watch a movie in real life. You point your camera to a specific direction, the software analyzes the landscape, find a movie that has the exact same background and starts playing the scene. It’s like a real life movie theater, check it out:

    Next Step: The Matrix

    Each year, we push the limits of Augmented-Reality even further. Now not only can you “see” virtual elements integrated into the real world, but you can also smell them, hear them and even touch them. The imitation of the sense of touch is the most impressive one, and it’s called virtual haptics. Virtual haptics reproduce the feeling of touching an object by creating pressure on the user’s hands, usually through wired gloves. Coupled with Augmented-Reality, virtual haptics let you see and touch an object that actually does not exist.

    Let’s say you see a table on your screen and you hold out your hand to touch it. You will have the sensation that you really touch it and grab it, when there is actually no table at all in the room!

    So now the question is: what if we used virtual haptics on Augmented-Reality Maps? We could reproduce the feeling of actually walking in the street, touching walls, entering stores, etc. We could recreate a world that is exactly like ours and get around it without actually moving from our place… Doesn’t it remind you of something? A movie released at the end of the 1990’s? They called it “The Matrix“, remember?

    Don’t panic! Virtual worlds like that are still a fantasy that is far from being realistically implementable. But it’s interesting to know that we currently have the technologies that could make it technically possible. Now we just need to prevent artificial intelligence robots from getting control of those technologies. Fortunately AI robots don’t exist yet… or maybe they do?

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  • 3 New Social Networks You Will Hear About Soon

    on Oct 31
    in All, Marketing
    by Doriane Mouret
    with 6 Comments

    When Google released Google+ in June 2011, some were questioning the necessity of a new social network in the social media landscape already well-occupied by Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Foursquare. Indeed, the Google+ challenge to move an entire generation of Facebook addicts to a new platform where they had to start from scratch was ambitious.

    Today, 4 months after it’s launch, Google+ claims to have 40+ millions users and seems to do pretty well. However, the objective of cannibalizing Facebook did fail: the social media leader went from 687 millions users in June 2011 to 773 millions users today. Thus, the introduction of Google+ didn’t have any negative impact on Facebook or any social network already in place. The opposite actually happened: it had been the trigger of an intense improvement series for Facebook…

    It all started with the new Chat including “Facebook Video Calling” on July 6, obviously released to compete with Google+ Hangout. This first major change was quickly followed by the new sharing features, friends lists and subscribe button making management of your network on Facebook very similar to your circles on Google+. The saga finally ended on September 22 with the introduction of Facebook Timeline, considered as one of the biggest change of the Facebook App since its creation.

    So to the question “Do we need another social network?” my answer is yes, not just for us to keep exploring new ways to interact with our network, but also to keep our existing social media providers in the innovation spiral. Here are other challengers that could not only do that, but could also overtake the leaders.

    Lift, the New TwitedIn

    “Unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement”. This is how Biz Stone describes Lift, a new social network he invested in with Ev Williams and Jason Goldman, all recently-departed co-founders of Twitter. Lift could be seen as a mix of Twitter and LinkedIn. You first determine a goal you’d like to achieve in a specific field, and when you reach it, you can give yourself an award announcing your accomplishment. Your friends can then click “+1” to like your achievement and motivate you to go even further.

    For instance, in the field “Cooking” you can give yourself an award for cooked a chocolate cake without burning it and other users in the group can click +1 to like it and encourage you to do more – what about making it not just well-cooked but tasty?.

    This new social media channel will be the “Twitter of your LinkedIn achievements”: “our new advertising campaign just hit 20 millions impressions”, “our new product reached 5 million users”, “outreached my sales objectives by 10%” will be the kind of achievements that users would definitely show off on Lift. Of course, a lot of people will also use it for personal purposes – like the chocolate cake example I mentioned above – but most of us will use it as a showcase for potential recruiters/partners/employers/customers.

    Lift is still in a private Alpha, meaning that you can send an email to request an invitation to try it but you can’t access it directly on the website. I didn’t get any invitation: I found all my tips on rww.

    Whyd, the New Twitbook

    Whyd – pronounce it “wide” – has been founded by two French entrepreneurs, Jie Meng-Gérard and Gilles Poupardin. They just moved from Paris to San Francisco at the beginning of October to launch Whyd in the US. Whyd is “Twitter with a Facebook approach”. Instead of following people, it lets you follow topics and see what your friends are saying about them. That way, you can only select the type of content you are interested in.

    For instance, let’s say there is someone on Twitter that publishes great content about Apple, and you love Apple. The problem is that this Twitter user also publishes a lot of tweets about Football, and you hate Football. If you follow him on Twitter, you will have to see the updates about Football too. While on Whyd, all you need to do is to add this user as a friend and then follow the topic Apple to have all his updates filtered and only receive the Apple updates.

    Whyd is a really promising product as it resolves the problem of information overflows that we have on both Twitter and Facebook. It could be even better if you could not only decide which topic to follow, but also which people you want to follow for each of them. For example, if you follow the topic “Microsoft” and you don’t like what your “Apple” source is saying about it – only bad jokes about Microsoft technologies -, a good feature would be to be able to unfollow his updates about “Microsoft” without having to unfriend him.

    Whyd is also in a private Alpha, but I had the awesome opportunity to try it after I met the Whyd team a week ago at the Cloud Mafia Meetup. After a quick test, I can say that I am a big fan of the concept and UI. Keep up the good work, guys!

    Shaker, The Second Facebook Life

    I discovered Shaker when they won TechCrunch Disrupt on September 14, 2011, in San Francisco. This start-up co-founded by 7 israeli entrepreneurs brings The Second Life to Facebook: using your Facebook profile, it lets you get into virtual rooms where you can meet other Facebook users, and create new connections. You are represented by a virtual character that is “shaking” – I prefer “booty-dancing”. Each character has a little window hanging above its head with a picture of its owner’s Facebook profile and some informations that the user is confortable to share on Shaker. People in blue are your Facebook friends, the ones in Yellow are your friends of friends, and the others are in gray.

    Each room has one of its wall covered with all the topics that are of interest to the people currently in the room. You can click on one of them and see who in the room likes this topic. When two characters are talking, they are surrounded by a circle on the floor. You can easily join the circle and enter the conversation – like you would do in real life. Conversations are of course made through chat.

    Explaining it in words doesn’t reflect the richness of the Shaker experience. However, I am still convinced that as any social game Shaker is designed for a specific target. If you are used to online tools to meet new friends/dates, you will love Shaker. But others will see Shaker as a new threat to real social-networking. Personally, I used it only 5 minutes. I went in a room and saw that all the people there were gray (meaning I didn’t know any of them). It’s like entering a bar where you don’t know anybody. So I left. However, I really like the concept and I will probably try it again with some friends so I don’t feel like I’m all alone in the room.

    The application is in private Beta but you can ask for an invitation and try it now – Betas are much easier to access than Alphas.

    Innovative social media tools like Shaker, Whyd and Lift create new ways to interact with our networks, and remind us that there is not just a “Facebook” or a “Twitter” way of thinking. A big thank you to all those entrepreneurs/innovators for forcing us to think out of the box. And you, do you know any up-and-coming social network that will revolutionize our social lives? Comments are more than welcome! Thanks for reading!

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  • Enjoy Your Computer: It Will Soon Disappear

    on Oct 26
    in All, Technology
    by Doriane Mouret
    with 3 Comments

    The tech world will always remember October 2011 as a sad month in its history. We lost three of the most important innovators and computer scientists in the world, Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, and more recently John McCarthy. If we all have a good idea of who Steve Jobs is, not all of us will know Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy. A a quick reminder, John McCarthy is the inventor of the Lisp programming language and was also a major contributor in the field of Artificial Intelligence. In 2001, he wrote a story, The robot and the baby, that anticipated several aspects of the Internet culture and social networking field as we know them today. As for Dennis Ritchie, he is the creator of the C programming language, a language designed in the early 1970’s to implement system and application software. It is one of the most widely used programming languages of all time.

    Steve, John and Dennis changed the world. They thought out of the box and imagined new ways for us to interact with technologies and with each other. Before them, technologies were not adjusted to perfectly satisfy human needs. They created solutions that made technology closer to our expectations. Yet, however brilliant and innovative their findings were, users still need to endeavor to use the tools. And this is what the new century is going to change. The next innovations won’t require us to adapt to them: instead, they will adapt to us.

    One Device = One Task

    Let’s get back to 1975, a few months before the beginning of the “Personal Computer” era. While IBM is building the first consumer microcomputer ever – the IBM 5100 -, the common run of people has to use a bunch of different tools to get things done. Need to find information about a specific subject? Open an encyclopedia. Want to write a letter? Use a pen and a piece of paper, or a typewriter if you have one. Thinking about calling a friend? The good old fixed phone will help you with that. Thus, until the beginning of the 1980’s, each human need is answered by a single dedicated tool.

    But Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are working on it and while you struggle to catch your encyclopedia when on the phone with your mum, they are thinking about how to gather everything in one place. Bill works with Paul Allen at developing a software to put on the new IBM computers. Steve and his two friends Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, on their side, imagine something bigger: they don’t want to do the software only, they want to build the computer that will support it, too. It’s the beginning of the personal computer age, where a single device can operate several different tasks.

    One Device = Multi-Task

    Since the end of the 1970’s, technologies have known an exponential evolution in terms of accessibility and multitasking. From the creation of the Graphic User Interface in 1983 – Apple Lisa – to the brand new Mobile Operating Systems and Cloud-Based Environments, computers have become a tool that we constantly use to satisfy a wide variety of needs: finding information, communicating with each other, creating contents, etc. For the lucky ones with laptops and smart-phones (mobile operating systems), this computer can follow them absolutely everywhere.

    This high availability of information is not only drastically changing our behavior as consumers, but is also highlighting an interesting question: what else can be done? We have everything in our pocket! All the things we need can be stored in a device barely larger than our hand. Whatever we need, “there is an app for that”, right? Well, we can do even better, and the future “Steve Jobs” and “Bill Gates” are currently working on it.

    No More Device

    Yes, all our needs can be satisfied through our computers, laptops and smart-phones. Whatever question we have, Google and/or Facebook have an answer. Even more complex operations such as developing a website, or even an application, are made easy through WordPress, Dreamwaver, Appcelerator or Heroku. Thanks to your devices, you can even access this website and read this article. That’s great indeed.

    No, it’s not. Don’t you see the problem here? Try to think out of your box: what do you need to read this article? Your computer. Right. What’s the problem with your computer? Let’s say you don’t have it, how are you going to do? Well, you can not really do without it…


    Now let’s say you are in your living room, watching TV, and you suddenly want to go on dorianemouret.com and read an article. You say “Open Browser DorianeMouret.com” at loud and a screen appear on your wall, displaying the home page of this website. Then all you need to do is to move your hands in the air to browse the website and find something interesting to read about. Too futuristic? Not really. It’s called Natural User Interface, and it’s coming very soon.

     

    Natural User Interface, Motion Detection and Voice Recognition Technologies

    In 2008, while we were discovering the iPhone 1st generation and Facebook was barely arriving on the European market, Microsoft was working on a new concept called Natural User Interface. A NUI refers to an interface that is invisible to its users and naturally integrated to the users’ environment. It’s as if you had a computer integrated in your table, your wall, your mirror, etc. The first example of NUI developed by Microsoft is Microsoft Surface, a computer integrated in a table. In 2010, Microsoft enhanced the technology with Project Natal (code name soon replaced by Kinect) and the development of Motion Detection. Kinect recognizes users’ movement and translate them into commands on the software. It also includes Voice Recognition, meaning that the software is capable of interpreting a vocal command.

    But the best example of voice recognition is the development of Siri, a Voice Detector available on the new iPhone 4S so accurate that it can be interpreted as a demonstration of Artificial Intelligence – it’s obviously not as all the answers given by Siri are actually recorded and programmed.

    Now imagine if you had Siri, Kinect and Surface all together: computers would be integrated in your environment, and all you would need would be your voice and your body to create commands that the software can understand. Why would you need your computer anymore? Well, you could still keep it as an antique in your garage: I’m sure it will worth a lot of money as a collector in a couple of decades.

    Yes, computers will soon disappear as a separate entity to naturally integrate in our environment. We still need a few more years to increase software capabilities and make it so small that it’s invisible, but it’s coming. Soon, you will go to the restaurant, and instead of reading a printed menu and using your phone to check-in, you will activate a software integrated in your table that will not only display the menu, but will also tell you if some of your Facebook friends already came here, what they liked and what they didn’t, what people are saying about the place on Yelp, or who’s the mayor on Foursquare.

    Yet, the concept of a separate device will remain: we will still need a device for the software to “recognize” us – how can it tell you what your Facebook friends ordered in the restaurant if it doesn’t know who you are? – but it will only be an authentication device, probably smaller than a chip, that you will carry in your clothes, as a jewel, or maybe under your own skin. Scary right? Well remember that few years ago, we thought that revealing our marital status to our coworkers was an attempt to privacy, and today we let them see our private pictures on Facebook. It’s all about adaptation. We are not ready for it, but when it comes, we will be.

    Here is a short video of NUI currently developed by Microsoft and that will be available to the general public in 2019, which means in 7 years. Get ready!

    I hope this first “Technology” article did make you think “out of the box” and predict the future. If not, it’s probably because your reflection is going further than mine, and I would love to hear it in the comments! Also, as a former Microsoftee, I have a lot of resources regarding Microsoft, but if you have any information about Apple, Google, Facebook or any promising start-up working on a revolutionary NUI, I would love to hear it too. Thanks for reading!

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  • Social Media Strategy: Expose, Influence, Engage

    on Oct 26
    in All, Marketing
    by Doriane Mouret
    with 3 Comments

    As I already said, being a Good Community manager means being able to develop a community of Briends by creating relevant content to be shared and discussed on Social Media Channels. However, you need to select carefully how and on which social media channels you will publish your content and let your Briends discuss about it.

    When used for personal purposes, Social Media seem to be easy: anybody can create a Twitter Account, a Facebook Page, a LinkedIn Profile, and start sharing. Well, having that kind of strategy for business purposes will basically…. Not create any added value. Thus, the first thing you need to do is to build a strategy. So first, take a piece of paper and start writing your Social Media Roadmap: What? Where? When? How? Who? I’ll explain how to draw the perfect Social Media Roadmap in my next post.

    It all starts with a Blog

    The first Social Media Tool you should create is a Blog. A Corporate Blog is the best way to display content that is relevant to your audience. It gives you an entire control on what you publish, and when you publish it. Plus, it’s a great way to improve your SEO, as you can share links to your main website in all your articles. You can afterwards create accounts for your company on different social media websites: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. Then, every time you will publish some new content on your blog, you will be able to instantaneously share it on all those channels, and therefore increase chances for it to be viewed and shared again.

    Now let’s say you have your blog and your social media accounts ready, and you start implementing your social media strategy. You will now have to measure its efficiency and start analyzing what works and what needs to be improved. Here are the 3 levels to evaluate the proficiency of your Social Media tactic.

    Expose, Influence, Engage

    The Level of Exposure

    The first level is the Level of Exposure. It measures how many people have already heard about your brand through a social media channel. We can also call it the Online Brand Awareness. The Level of Exposure is determined by 3 different factors:

    • The number of visits on your blog, which can be measured with Google Analytics
    • The number of followers and fans you have on your social media accounts
    • The number of views on any website where your brand is mentioned

    For this last factor, I suggest to use uberVU. uberVU has developed a very powerful solution that will analyze every online item where a specific keyword or group of keywords is mentioned, from press articles, to blogs, through tweets, links publicly shared on Facebook, StumblUpon, Digg, Reddit, checks-in on FourSquare, etc. For instance, let’s say you set up a search for “Starbucks Coffee”, UberVU will tell you how many times “Startbucks Coffee” has been mentioned on the web, and how many people saw the mentions.

    The Level of Influence: the Klout Score

    Exposure is good, but it’s better if it has an impact on consumers’ minds. It’s useless to tell a story if nobody listens to it. This is what we call the Level of Influence. For this second level of measurement, you will need to combine UberVU with another compelling tool: the Klout Score.

    Klout – which is also one of my favorite startups – has developed a complex algorithm that measures the influence of your Social Media Accounts. Originally based on Twitter only, the Klout score can now measure your influence on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare and will soon include YouTube.

    Two of the the 4 factors measured by Klout should be used in this second part of the analysis:

    • The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. It tells you how likely people who see content about your brand are to read and listen to it.
    • The Network Influence measures the influence you have on influencers, i.e. people who have their own sphere of influence, and could potentially amplify your own influence.

    Klout will also analyze your content and specify on which topics you are the most influential about. For example, according to Klout, Starbucks Coffee is influential about coffee, food, and 8 other topics.

    UberVU has also a role to play in the measurement of your influence. It will give you the overall Sentiment Internet users have about your brand. It analyzes content to see if people talk positively, negatively, or neutrally about your brand. Combined with the Klout Analysis, this will provide you with a very interesting evaluation of your influence. You will know if people listen to you, on which topics, and if they react positively or negatively.

    Finally, the Bounce Rate will tells you if Internet users who found you through Google did actually stay on your page and read your content or just “bounced” and left to another page. You will find the bounce rate in your Google Analytics.

    The Level of Engagement

    The Level of Engagement is the most difficult level to reach, but also the most difficult to measure. You will need to use different tools, including your brain and your analysis skills. The Level of Engagement determines the propensity of your audience to not only listen to what you say, but also do what you encourage them to do. In other words, an engaged customer is more likely to buy your products and recommend them to their own groups of influence. Recommendations are the most efficient marketing tool you can ever have. It costs you almost nothing – the customer does the work for you – and it has the highest level of conversion – you will always trust a friend that tells you to buy a specific product/service more than an ad. Here are some examples of tools that will help you figure out how efficient your social media strategy is to engage your audience:

    • Clicks are a the first criteria to measure the level of engagement, as it implies an action from the user. If visitors click on a link you suggested them to click on, it means that they don’t just listen to you, but also trust you and change their behavior according to you. You have to take into account the clicks on yout blog of course, but also on the links you share on your different social media accounts.
    • To measure your level of engagement on Facebook specifically, you will need to count your comments, likes and shares. The new Facebook Insights tool lets you know that plus many other details about your fans’ engagement. The “People Talking About” metric is for instance a new feature that I appreciate particularly.
    • Another tool that I use on a day to day basis is TwitterCounter. This web-app lets you measure and analyze ReTweets and Mentions on Twitter. The paid version lets you get the entire history of your account. Here is an example of the mentions the AppDirect Twitter account got until its creation. I started working there in January 2011. This is exactly when the mentions started (what a coincidence!). The pick in May is related to an article we had in TechCrunch:

    • The Amplification Profitability in the third item measured by Klout. It gives you “the likelihood that your content will be acted upon” on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn: Likes, Comments, Retweets, @replies.

    And that’s it! Now that you have all those figures in front of you, it’s time for you to analyze them! And no, I can’t help you with this, as it would take me an entire book to describe the different scenarios possible! But don’t be afraid: it’s all about common sense.

    A Pound of Brain, A Ton of Heart

    Exposure, Influence, and Engagement are the 3 steps you need to follow in order to improve your Customer Conversion and Retention, hence your revenues. However, Social Media Marketing will not be sufficient to increase your Reach, and will have to be coupled with traditional marketing solutions: Advertising, Viral Marketing, and Press Releases, mainly.

    Now you know almost all my secrets to determine and measure your social media strategy. Even if this list of tools is far from being exhaustive, it will give you an idea of the performance of your strategy, and how you can improve it. A piece of cake? Well, you can be the best strategist and analyst in the world, you will still need to bring this little piece of magic that will make your strategy actually work: passion and heart. Be passionate, love what you write and share, and your audience will pay attention, listen, and follow you wherever you go.

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  • Great Minds Don’t Think Alike

    on Oct 26
    in All, Inspiration
    by Doriane Mouret
    with No Comments

    “Man is a Social Animal” said Plato. Human-beings can’t live alone, they need interaction to survive. What they become is influenced by their social environment and all the interactions they have with other men and women. I am probably one of the best examples of this statement as I can’t remain without the presence of another human-being more than 12 hours in a row. I guess I’m not alone.

    “Great minds” will be a place for me to talk about all the people who had an impact, small or big, in my life. Once every month, maybe more often if I find the time, I will publish an article highlighting one of those incredible individuals who took part in building the person I am today. They taught me how to be better, they pushed me, they challenged me, they made me stronger, angry, happy or sad. They could be my closest friends, or maybe I never met them. But above all, they helped me think out of the box, accept that my truth was not universal. And this is the reason why this website is born: from a strong desire to always get out of my box, my comfort, improve myself, and help others get better and get out of their boxes too.

    Because it’s the exciting part of life! Discovering what hasn’t been discovered yet, getting to know the unknown, experiencing the inexperienced, and hearing opinions that are miles away from our individual values and beliefs. Great minds don’t always think alike, and therein lies beauty.

    I would like to start this blog series by thanking Josh Villbrandt who bought my domain two years ago and has been patiently waiting for me to start building the site since then. He is also the one who hosts it. I will dedicate an entire article giving more details about him later, but I had to at least say thank you in my first article. This wouldn’t have been possible without you, Josh! Thanks!

    So stay tuned! Perhaps the next article will be about you!

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