EVE Fanfest 2012 - EVE Forever trailer

[Original post written @http://startupiceland.wordpress.com]

This was EPIC to say the least. It was my first EVE Fanfest, thank you Hilmar for inviting me. I got to see the true awesomeness that has been created by the CCP team. Congratulations! I was mesmerized, and it took me back a long time when I was fascinated by video games and how I spent endless hours playing games although I did not have access to the latest or the greatest, I got hooked. I have been resisting the temptation of getting back to playing games. I have to say EVE Online and Dust 514 look incredibly attractive. First of all, there were a couple of announcements that I think was incredible,

1. DUST 514 will be the first AAA game to be totally free on Sony PS3 platform
2. DUST 514 and EVE online are linked, what does this mean? this means CCP has really broken ground in integrating a first person shoot out game with a massively multi player strategy and battleship game. It has never been done before! In addition to that the level of details that has gone into developing the avatars, the space ships, the engine, the missile launch systems is just simply mind blowing. CCP has truly shown leadership and broken new ground in gaming.
3. What was fascinating to me was how involved the gamers were in the entire show. CCP has shown incredible strength and maturity in allowing the players in the game dictate how the game should be run. To seal that strategy they have formed what is called as the Council of Stellar Management, which is a democratic way in which the players in the game get elected to represent all players. The CSM meets with the CCP leadership and the Game development teams to provide feedback and raise issues. This is truly innovative and I would like to say a small company called Clara which has been working with CCP for more than 18 months is helping CCP. Full disclosure, I am one of the investors in Clara, made me really proud looking at Jon Lander, the Product owner of EVE online show the word cloud generated from CLARA to describe how CCP takes Community interface seriously and how they engage with their players. It basically validated our business hypothesis that gamers and players of the game really are the true heroes in this new world. The gamers define the agenda and develop the eco-system.

Related articles

• EVE Fanfest to livestream keynotes from tonight (vg247.com)
• CCP shifts gears from DUST to EVE at Fanfest 2012 (massively.joystiq.com)
• EVE Fanfest talks Inferno, World of Darkness panel later today (massively.joystiq.com)
• Eve Online Fanfest 2012: Watch It Here! (rockpapershotgun.com)
• CCP premieres new Dust 514 gameplay at EVE Fanfest keynote (vg247.com)

Starting Up Iceland

[Original Post written @http://startupiceland.wordpress.com]
I have been frantically meeting and organizing the Startup Iceland Conference, here is the Facebook Event Page. While we are organizing this, the constant question that I get is will we be able to fund this conference can we raise the money needed to hold the conference. I am totally transparent about how I am trying to organize this. The cost of putting up this conference is quite a bit but many of the sponsors have stepped up, namely Arion Bank, Icelandair, Kosmos and Kaos, Reykjavik University and the US Embassy in Iceland. If we can pull this off it is going to be the start of something awesome, but as I promised before if we crash and burn it is going to be totally out in the open for everyone to see :) The website design has come out really nice, I am hoping that we can finish all the fine touches and launch it in the next couple of days. I have a talented team who are a startup in their own right, who have stepped up to sponsor the website... how cool is that? A Startup Sponsoring the Starting up of Iceland. I digress, but we have our major sponsor also committed to sponsoring Eric Ries to participate in the conference. I have sent the agreement to Eric's Agent lets keep our fingers crossed and hope he agrees to come. I already have an awesome speaker list lined up:
His Excellency Olafur Ragnar Grimsson - The President of Iceland
Brad Feld - Partner Foundry Group
Brad Burnham - Partner Union Square Ventures
Rebeca Hwang - CEO youNoodle.com
Hilmar Veigar Petursson - CEO CCP Games
Hilmar B. Janusson - EVP of R&D Ossur
The Computer Science Department in Reykjavik University has agreed to host the Hackathon, the Recktor of Reykjavik University has been awesome and totally wants to support the effort. So far, I have been very excited about the developments and I think we are well on the way... but we need more people to participate to make this an awesome event so please share the links to signup with your network and Lets Do This! My vision is to make Startup Iceland like Iceland Airwaves, in the first quarter of the year. A yearly event that is focused on Startups, Entrepreneurship and Starting New... hey! it is Spring after all! although it does not seem like it when I look out of the window.

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• Starting Up Iceland (startupiceland.wordpress.com)