By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) In the mid-1990s, just days after stepping off the plane for my first job in the U.S., I had the pleasure of meeting Guy Kawasaki. I was there to organize the Mac Summit Conference, and it turned out that he was the event’s keynote speaker. If you look up the word “entrepreneur” in the dictionary, it’ll probably have a picture of Guy Kawasaki. He was one of Apple’s chief evangelists in the mid-1980s, spreading the word about the Macintosh computer. He later left Apple to start his own database company, ACIUS, and then […]
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) Friends often ask me, “How do you find things to write about? Where do you get your ideas?” My answer is simple: I am a curious person, curious about pretty much everything, and when a topic catches my eye, I dig deeper into it. I don’t have a favorite physical location or a “thinking space” where I go for ideas. I don’t have any particular music that I listen to, nor a painting that I like to gaze at. I draw inspiration from the world around me. When someone asked me this question […]
The Web Is Transforming Learning
By Fatmanur Erdogan, for the Hurriyet Daily News Every year, about 1.5 million Turkish students take the university entrance exam. Those who score at the top get to enroll at the best universities in the country. The ones who don’t score as well don’t go to the top schools, and many of them won’t go to university at all. The competition is incredibly intense, not because the top schools offer a uniquely superior educational experience, but because they offer a brand name the students can carry with them for years to come. In the past, that brand name was practically […]
Start Up Lessons From Backpacking
By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) Next time you’re planning a trip to a faraway city, and you’re feeling lost just searching for the right hotel, think of this: You could sleep on someone’s couch instead. It’s called “couchsurfing”, and there’s even a website for it, www.couchsurfing.org. CouchSurfing is a free service, and it has grown quickly into the world’s largest hospitality exchange network. Its members offer their couches or spare beds to travelers from around the globe. Here’s the story of how CouchSurfing got started: The founder, Casey Fenton, got the idea after finding a cheap flight from […]