A Fresh Start (up)

After last week-end and all this rain, I was a bit down but… it was before this week-end, and the beautiful sun all around the Valley!

It didn’t start as nicely though I remember when I was a kid, I was dreaming about the day on which I would finally buy my own furniture for my own apartment. During my student life, I bought only some basic stuff, but not “the” sofa, “the bed”… So yesterday was supposed to be a Big Day. To get this quick, it definitely wasn’t as rosy: I had the “love at first sight” for a sofa that was in fact available … in 14 weeks, so of course I started sulking and finding everything else ugly… Then we went to Ikea, which is an absolute nightmare: how comes this company is so successful??? Of course it’s cheap, but it’s a whole mess to find the stuff you want! If somebody had told me “give me 50 bucks and I will help you find all your stuff and you’ll just have to pay for it” I would have paid for it in the blink of an eye! End of the story: after two hours we managed to put everything on our cart to realize just before paying for it that Ikea can’t deliver at my place in two weeks, and that I need to come back 3 days before my desired delivery date!!! So we put everything back, I was sulking even more, becoming a real pain in the a**, when we finally found our sofa in Palo Alto (see picture)! An entire day just to buy a sofa, I know that’s a hell of a record But at least now I know where to find almost everything I need!

Fortunately, the evening was way cooler than the afternoon: we joined Seb and Anthea (that I met during my internship at eBay in France) in Palo Alto, drove to SF, had a drink with eBay France marketing team (here for a summit), then joined Nicolas and had a excellent dinner at EOS… I missed that so much: good food, great people, cool atmosphere, great city with real people…

Today, back to SF… The weather was simply awesome (despite what Nicolas’ iPhone seemed to indicate ;-)), I started to remember L.A. and the feeling of the sun caressing the skin… We went around Dolores Park, where you can find the sexiest guys on the planet, shirtless, but… obviously gay, sorry ladies, this is SF! We went from Guerrero St to Mission, and the atmosphere was very different from one street to the other: SF seems to be composed of really different neighborhoods with different atmospheres but sometimes really close to each other…. In Mission, we ate an ice cream in the middle of tattooed guys, homeless people, prostitutes, and gypsies playing guitar… Quite a surrealistic place, it was really interesting to observe people that are so different from me… That’s what I love in SF: difference is not just tolerated but encouraged, and you get to discover the most colorful things that mankind has to offer… OK, I will stop being poetic, a lot of people told me that I’m boring when I start like that

All that just to say that I’m not happy to be back to San Jose, but I’ll be way happier when I’ll have my own place with my nice sofa

Hi there! As promised, I am going to tell you more about my first steps as an expatriate… I landed yesterday in San Francisco, and, after a cab ride that cost me $100 (glups, this was a good start) I arrived in my temporary apartment found by my company in San Jose. What a good surprise when I discovered that it is an amazing place, with all the outside (spa, pool, volleyball court, barbecues…) and inside (dishwasher, washer/dryer, mixer, and even the special pizza knife!) amenities you can imagine… Besides it is well located close to a “tram” station that will drive me directly to my workplace.

The only problem: I had no idea that San Jose was such a huge city and I won’t find everything I need close to my place! In Miami and L.A., I got the chance to live in some really lively areas with plenty of stores, but now I realize that it is not possible everywhere in the US and that my residence is simply in the middle of nowhere!

So today we rented a car (but were obliged to go by train and bus to the airport to find a rental company!) to get the “survival kit”: a wifi router, a printer, and things to eat! Who said that the wifi router isn’t part of a traditional survival kit???

After buying basic things at Walmart (first time I went there, after so many case studies about Walmart when I was in HEC!!!), I decided that I missed Whole Foods way too much so we went to Palo Alto to find one… and we bought things to eat for at least a month!

And to make the most of having rented a car, we made a stop at Stanford University… and the pictures (even if I didn’t have my good camera) speak for themselves!

So here are the pictures of my residence and apartment, and of Stanford Uni!

Is there anybody here? When I take a look at my stats, I guess that there is nobody left

OK, I haven’t updated this blog for months, simply because the past 2 months were simply a transition period when I had nothing, absolutely nothing, interesting to say. I spent these 2 months with my family in the South of France, writing my thesis (almost done!) and being the more stressed girl on the planet because both my boyfriend and I got issues about our visas, and I was thinking that we were never going back to the US as we initially planned. Finally, we both received our beloved visas this week, and we are leaving on Friday

So I have decided (finally, after many hesitations!) to keep this blog as a more personal one, where I will speak about my expatriation and my experience in the US, and to keep the more professional stuff on Tech It Easy, that I haven’t updated in a while either.

So, of course, a lot more to come here about my first days in San Jose by the end of the week (if strikes in France don’t get worse and I manage to leave!)…

I feel really ashamed that I haven’t updated this blog for weeks, and I apologize sincerely to my (few) readers who doesn’t find here any updates. I have the impression that the more exciting my life is, the less lively this blog is. The thing is that I would have plenty of things to say, but I don’t find the time, or don’t try hard enough.

The courses at UCLA are very demanding but still really interesting, and I am starting to work on my final projects.  In Technology management I am analyzing the VoIP market, in Global Operations Strategy I will study the digitization of entertainment industries and in Corporate Entrepreneurship my project is to compare Google and eBay in terms of innovation strategy. So you can guess that I have a lot of material to cover, especially since I also have to make progress on my thesis about “Internet and the democratization of contemporary art”. But OK, I acknowledge that I am obviously looking for excuses, because I manage to find some time to travel (San Diego was great!) so I should find some time to blog!

I am also really busy preparing my relocation, and I still hesitate in going back to Silicon Valley for one week end to find a place to live before coming back to France for Christmas. Otherwise I would have to find a temporary housing in January, and this is a nightmare

This is it, I promise I’ll try to share the great lessons of my final projects with you soon

Update: I forgot the most important: I bought an iPod Touch! After long hesitations between the iPhone and the iPod Touch, I realized that it is before all having a cool wifi device that interested me the most, and the iPod Touch provided it without being obliged to accept the deal with AT&T and without paying $500 deposit! And of course now I can’t stop playing with it

It’s always difficult to speak about my expatriation, to communicate what surprises me, what I like and dislike about it on an ongoing basis on this blog, because it would generate really short articles about some silly things. Twitter would be the ideal way to do that but as most of my friends are not geeks, I know that I don’t reach the people I want with this medium. So I decided to make regular updates gathering all the news and practical details of my expatriation, my opinions and feelings about it. It is particularly important for me since I use expats’ blogs a lot, to discover great things to do, to understand some cultural aspects, or simply to know how to get my Internet access repaired in this country! So, in bulk:

• I love studying in the US, because I realized I really lacked some concrete experience about the fields I am studying. I get to listen to business angels, VCs, entrepreneurs, corporate entrepreneurs, innovation directors… and I simply love it, because I put a face on these functions and I mitigate my thoughts and stereotypes.
• L.A. has plenty of advantages (amazing weather, both great cultural and night life, great entertainment, lovely areas…) but a big drawback: it’s huge. As my budget didn’t allow me to rent a car for 3 months, I am obliged to plan days in advance what I want to do, because you can’t simply wake up one morning and go to downtown, because you have to remember that it is at least 1hr30min bus drive to go there. I have no impression of “knowing” L.A. as I can’t do multiple things in the same day, so I can’t manage to “connect” the different places I go to. Fortunately my neighborhood is one of the nicest (Westwood, between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills ;-))
• Today is Halloween, and it’s a big deal here, but it has been celebrated everywhere for a week now (you can see my costume of devil here)… Originally I thought that Halloween was supposed to be scary, but it is in fact the equivalent of Mardi Gras… And most women (at least in L.A.) preferred the sexy costume than the scary one!
• I kept the best part for the end: I just accepted an offer to work as a Business Analyst for the Marketplaces Strategy team of eBay in San Jose, California (headquarters), and I will start working there in January. Obviously I’m delighted, especially since I enjoyed my internship at eBay France, but also because it’s a great opportunity to discover the challenging environment of Silicon Valley, and to work with the best people of the sector, all sharing the same amazing corporate culture. I would have so many great things to say about eBay (the core values, the amazing portfolio, the great challenges to face, the vision, the campus…ok I stop now) but I have decided that it will be the only time I will speak about it. There are a lot of legal aspects involved when blogging about the company you’re working for, and the limit between what you can say or not is often really vague. I will of course share my knowledge of the Internet sector and what I will learn by interacting with bloggers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, but I won’t say a word anymore about eBay itself.
• My boyfriend also has to find some work in Silicon Valley, so if you know a company needing a top notch software engineer and having no problem in sponsoring visas, please let me know, that’d be great!
• I will move to Silicon Valley in January, and have to find a place to live: I’m hesitating between living in San Jose to be close to eBay or finding a nicer area… If you have any advice then do no not hesitate! I think I will try to rent a place for one month to give me time to find my “ideal apartment”.

That’s it, I will keep you posted about the many practical things I will have to overcome to settle down

This is kind of the paradise for a girl like me. All the logos of the big Internet companies are appearing on all sides of the road… Silicon Valley is definitely my Disneyland

By the way, being there is a great gift for my birthday (and thanks to all of my readers who wished me a happy birthday ;-))… But unfortunately you are now punished by being obliged to watch another one of my awful podcasts… This time, it’s about the HP garage in Palo Alto, the birthplace of Silicon Valley: I think that you can see on the video that I am delighted to be there, even if it’s just the entry of a garage which can’t even be visited

You really thought I wasn’t going to participate? For those who haven’t caught the vawe, Blogday is the day when bloggers can share with their readers 5 blogs they like, which helps making discover new blogs. I was also proud to be in the BlogDay selection of Tête au carré (thanks!). So here is my selection, among all my center of interests:

• eBay strategies: Ok, it’s not at all a new blog, but Scott Wingo is just amazing when it comes to analyse eBay current strategy, and as I’m still passionate about the company I interned in these past 6 months, I couldn’t miss this one.
• Inside the USA: the blog of a French expatriate who came bak from the US but who keep on commenting US news. Obviously, I couldn’t miss this one either.
• Qu’est ce que l’art aujourd’hui: again it is for French readers (really sorry for others) and it is about everything happening in contemporary art. It also proposes some great analysis about the market.
• Tourism Internet Marketing blog:  great blog about the tourism industry and its use of the Internet.
• Future of real estate marketing: a blog exploring Real Estate marketing and the impact of the Internet, Web 2.0 and blogging on the Real Estate industry.

Enjoy!

eBay has launched an advertising campaign to celebrate the fun of auctions: just as when you generate endorphins (like after a sports effort), you generate “windorphins” when you just win an eBay auction. And eBay even proposes to represent visually  your windorphin, so here is mine, create yours!

I just came back from the Skaaz party at Milk, where we were presented the latest and public version of Skaaz. Again sorry for my English readers, it is a French company but you should definitely read this if you are interested in Artificial Intelligence.

A few weeks ago in my article about Voki I said that the future of avatars was Artificial Intelligence so that they can really take your place online; no need to explain that the slogan of Skaaz is “Always ON”! It is based on the Virtuoz technology, company I have already talked about as it is the provider of the virtual agent Louise in the Customer section of eBay, which was focused on virtual agents for companies. Skaaz is their mass market product.  Your Skaaz can be embbeded in your blog or MSN, and you will have to educate him by asking lots of questions so that he will be able to answer them for you when you are offline.

From the demo I have seen, it seems that it takes a lot of time to educate your avatar, but I don’t think it will be a huge barrier for teenagers (main target) as fun will prevail. Besides, Skaazs are too cute! You can discuss with mine (sorry but she is not well educate in the right sense of the word, but I will work on it and embed her to this blog when the result will be acceptable) here.

Future evolutions will include:

- Possibility of modifying your avatar after creation (not possible now, which is definitely not convenient as I had personalized my avatar really quickly during the demo, without thinking I had to stick to it!)
- Synchronization with Twitter for your avatar to answer with the most updated answer the question “what are you doing?”
- Addition of voice to your avatar
- Launch of the same service in English (would be great!) probably at the end of the year

Just as an overview, Skaaz has required 1 year and a half of development, 4 people full time, and has launched it beta version 1 year ago. This version is considered as the v3.

This is the video (in French) I have made during the presentation by the founder Pascal Levy Garboua:

Update: Apparently the same kind of service has been launched in the US, it is called MyCyberTwin. A really good article about this service can be read here. Thanks to Michel Leblanc for the info on his blog.

I just went back from the FEVAD (French e-commerce federation) conference at Four Seasons Hotel George V (gorgeous). The 2 debates were quite interesting, and I have kept in mind a few things, sorry if they are a mess.

About the Internet in general:

- Internet brands are becoming a “patchwork”; it is stupid to try to gather a brand image in one and the same place (meaning that distribution becomes far more relevant than destination);

- The consumer in an information trader: there is no absolutely reliable information on the web (prices for example evolve all the time), so users now deal with statistical significance to get their information. 

About e-commerce:

- Multichannel is everywhere, the term “pure player” is really old fashioned (best example: Pixmania opening offline stores)

- Jean-Emile Rosenblum (Pixmania founder) said that the fast development of ecommerce in other European countries is due to the right to sell at a loss, which is not allowed in France. Of course I understand this interdiction is a pain for major players which would like to use it as an investment on prices to grasp market shares, but I think this is why the French market is so buoyant: small companies still can enter the e-commerce market without fearing that Amazon would launch a price war, as it has done in other European countries.

About advertising:

- When talking about advertising on Google, we differentiate natural search (free) from sponsored links (paid). But this differenciation is not relevant anymore because there are so many sites on the French market that this is becoming harder and harder to grasp good positions in Google natural search, which implies hiring more employees to improve the natural search of a website. So at the end, natural search is all but free for e-merchants. For example, 20% of Pixmania employees are dedicated to improve Pixmania ranking in Google main result page!

And to finish, congrats to Jacques Antoine Granjon, who won the FEVAD award, for being such a great and simple guy. He is one of the first entrepreneur to say without any complex nor arrogance: “we have all the market, we are doing fine, we have no particular threats, and we don’t need any investment” !