Media Ventures invests in twidox

July 3, 2008 – 9:56 pm
The news broke on TechCrunch first, followed by a press release from Media Ventures (via their PR agency ‘Ad Public'), and a post on deutsche-startups.de and several other websites. Since then, it has been well documented in the German (online) media: Media Ventures, the highly successful and respected German venture capital company of Dirk Ströer, and twidox have decided to partner. Media Ventures is managed by Dirk Ströer, Peter Richarz and Dirk Stader, both of whom are themselves successful entrepreneurs and is one of the reasons why we decided to join them.   We meet Nico Lumma quite a few months ago, who until recently, managed Media Ventures with Peter Richarz and Dirk Stader. Actually, we were on a train from Hamburg to Berlin on our way to the Web 2.0 Expo. At that time, we were not looking for funding so we had a casual and friendly chat with Nico without any ...

twidox featured on Remedy blog

July 3, 2008 – 9:32 pm
Because of the article that appeared on TechCrunch.com about twidox, we have been featured on a number of blogs and websites, which we obviously all appreciate. One very well written and 'understood' post appeared on the Remedy blog, which described twidox as follows: "Twidox will be a repository of ‘quality documents.' Institutions and organizations will be able to publish, distribute, share, and discover these documents as they are archived and indexed for free on the site. " The security of documents was also mentioned, and it is something that we looked at very closely internally. Obviously, we cannot protect documents whilst being send over the web, no site can (as far as we know), but we can certainly try and help the user protect their own copyright. Each user uploading documents can chose, via 'Creative Commons', which rights are available to the document. Users can also turn Word documents into PDF to give ...

What is knowledge management and experiential learning?

July 3, 2008 – 10:22 am
We want to use our blog for more than just writing about what is going on and twidox and will from time to time include ‘advice' articles or articles about interesting subjects. This post is about experiential learning and knowledge management. The purpose of experimental learning is to get through experience. One of the first and most basic steps to raising the effect of experiential learning is to develop strong skills and knowledge based on practice. According to theoretical interpretation "experiential learning can be described as a process by which the experience of the learner is reflected upon, and from this emerge new insights or learning" (What is Experiential Learning? 2005). Recent years, the concept of experiential learning is widely accepted by different fields of studies including knowledge management. Knowledge management is as much if not more concerned with people and how they acquire, exchange and disseminate knowledge. "Less contrived forms of experiential ...

Introducing our advisors - Maria Sipka & Birgit Hass

June 18, 2008 – 12:06 pm
As a relatively small team, we started out knowing our strength and weaknesses- building on those strength and trying to iron out our weaknesses. But more importantly, right from the beginning, we got together a small advisory team to help us with creating and developing twidox. We are extremely proud to have these three highly respected advisors. One is a serial entrepreneur who has build up several start-ups, one being listed on the German stock exchange and the others being successfully exited. The other two advisors are Birgit Hass and Maria Sipka. Maria Sipka - Maria is a specialist in communities, groups and networks and is the former COO of XING (formerly OpenBC) and is a member of ‘Entrepreneurs Organisation'. She not only founded her first company in her teens, but she successfully sold it at the tender age of 18, thereby financing her studies. She is now co-founder and CEO of Linqia. Linqia collects and lists detailed profiles of 1.000's of online communities and groups, ...

Seedcamp Berlin…twidox is going

June 18, 2008 – 11:48 am
Well, this week is full of surprises. First we were featured on TechCrunch.com, then the press release about twidox joining Media Ventures' portfolio, then being featured on deutsche-startups.de and now the news that twidox has been selected to go to Seedcamp Berlin on 20.06.08. Seedcamp is an alliance of several entrepreneurs, investors and mentors with the aim of helping European start-ups grow their business. People involved in Seedcamp include Saul Klein from Index Ventures, internet-entrepreneur Niklas Zennström, who co-founded Skype and Joost , Paul Birch from social-network bebo , Michael Arrington from Techchrunch.com and Oliver Best from Founderslink.   We are really looking forward to meeting Reshma Sohoni, Saul Klein and the other mentors and investors as well as the other start-ups. These include, as far as we could find out: Growvotes.org Toksta (our friends from the TechCrunch event in Berlin, that twidox organised) tunesBag More information about the event can be found here: http://www.foerderland.de/419+M55912fcd862.0.html http://growvotes.org/blog/2008/06/13/growvotes-is-going-to-mini-seedcamp-berlin/ http://blog.seedcamp.com/2007/10/seedcamp-goes-to-web-20-expo-berlin.html http://blog.toksta.com/2008/06/ http://tunesbag.blogspot.com/2008/06/tunesbag-is-going-to-mini-seedcamp-in.html http://zerobudget.tunesbag.com/post/38599106/tunesbag-is-going-to-mini-seedcamp-in-berlin http://blog.seedcamp.com/2007/10/more-events-and-seedcamp-on-road.html http://www.squeaker.net/sqn/index.php?index=955&textid=1164 http://www.refinedlabs.com/blog/2008/05/30/long-time-silent-now-great-news-and-free-goodies/

Twidox on TechCrunch

June 17, 2008 – 11:27 am
Today, twidox was featured on TechCrunch.com, one of the most respected tech- and start-up blogs in the world. It is obviously great for any start-up to be featured on TechCrunch (over 3 million unique visitors a month and nearly 1 million RSS feeds), but for us it is a special moment since we are still in private beta.  We had the idea for twidox more then three years ago whilst at university and thinking that there must be a better way to share research. Since then, we have developed the idea to include all kinds of ‘quality documents', be it statistics, data, market research or academic articles, and not just from universities and academics, but also governmental and non-governmental organisations, charities and companies. Basically, we want to create a platform that allows people to easily publish documents that might help others in their work, learning, teaching or research. We know there are sites with ...

What an evening! TechCrunch/twidox German Web 2.0 Meetup in Berlin

June 14, 2008 – 11:21 am
On Wednesday, TechCrunch and twidox invited the German Web 2.0 community to Berlin in order to create a platform for exchanging ideas, discussing synergies and making new contacts. And that is exactly what just over 300 invited guests did. The evening started at 19:30 at the brilliant offices of imedo and the guests didn't waste any time to mingle with the crowd, exchanging business cards and saying hello to old and new friends. Sevenload interviewed a number of guests to discuss, in front of the camera, what they think about the concept of 'Web 2.0'. Keep checking their site for the video. It was great to see that the event was a mixture of established companies, such as MySpace, XING, Microsoft, Lycos as well as young start-ups (such as us) and business angels, venture capitalists (such as Media Ventures, Neuhaus Partners, Wellington Partners, Founders Link) all enjoying a relaxed and fun evening. Mike Butcher ...

TechCrunch / twidox German Web 2.0 meetup - Its going to be huge

June 9, 2008 – 3:20 pm
On the 5th of May, I was on the phone to John Biggs from TechCrunch’s Crunchgear and we were talking about a few things, including his trip and TechCrunch meetup in Prague. John asked me whether twidox would be interested in organising something similar in Berlin, maybe get 30-50 people together in a bar, have a few drinks and talk about the German Web 2.0 scene.   Little did I know it would turn into such a huge event! There will be roughly 250 people coming and we have well over 20 sponsors for the event. What is more amazing is that most of the sponsors said yes within 24 hours of asking them. I spoke with Stephan Uhrenbacher from Qype, Ralf Ahamer from XING and Thomas Promny from Gimahhot on the following morning, and all said straight away they would sponsor the event. Brilliant! Imedo also said on the same day ...

Study Habits For a Lifetime

June 2, 2008 – 10:33 am
Without productive study habits it is easy to spend too much time and see too little results. Here are 5 study habits that will prevent this from happening to you. Find a Quiet Place to Study It is easy to sit at the kitchen table and spread out your books, but distractions can abound in this setting which can hinder successful studying. In order to avoid this issue, and form good study habits, it is important that you find an area or room that is conductive to uninterrupted time. This is most easily achieved by sitting at a desk in a room with a door that closes and informing other members of your household of your need to not be interrupted. Organize Your Papers Organizing your papers before starting the studying process can seem like a waste of time. Why not just dive in? The answer to this is that organization beforehand can prevent ...

twidox to become a GmbH

June 2, 2008 – 10:30 am
Last week, it was decided to turn twidox into a GmbH.  Previously twidox was registered in London as a Ltd, but we have now decided to set up a GmbH with a registered office in Wiesbaden, Hessen. This means that the twidox team will move to new offices in Wiesbaden. We have already found offices and will be moving in soon.  More to follow soon.