Tag Archive for: Athens

Starting-up your business in Greece, could a coworking space benefit you?

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Lucy is a US citizen who decided to move away and live in Greece. She is a marketer and start-up advisor, and she recently launched the website for her new company The Port. For the last couple of months she has been working from Stone Soup, so we thought to ask her about her experience and how is life for her in Greece.

In the summer of 2016, Lucy traveled to Greece on holiday and fell in love with the country. By the end of the year, she had become educated on the local tech community in Athens, and made the move to bring her skills to a new market. Since arriving in Greece over a year and a half ago, Lucy has been getting to know the local tech scene and culture, working with startups and small businesses both in Greece and the States. She is using her experience to better understand the needs of startups here, and identify the best practices from Silicon Alley (New York City) that could be adapted to help Greek startups grow.

This year, Lucy officially launched The Port, a startup resources hub and consultancy that is “helping startups navigate unchartered waters.” Specifically, in the Greek Market, The Port is helping local startups adapt and leverage the strategies that have helped the rapid growth of American tech companies.

Lucy joined Stone Soup in search of a shared space to surround herself with creative energy and inspiring hustle, and for all the other coworking space benefits that come with it. The welcoming community and open space office layout provides her with a “tight-knit community” enabling her to interact and collaborate with “creative and bright minds.”  The location was also a big plus and attracted Lucy to the space. Working in the heart of Athens, she is in walking distance from all other central neighborhoods—like Greek food hub, Syntagma Square and the famous Monastiraki Square and Flea Market.

To answer our initial question, Lucy felt that setting up shop in a local coworking space has greatly helped in both her transition into the Greek lifestyle and the successful launch of her business.

We would like to thank Lucy for her kind words, and to wish her lots of success!

More about Lucy:

Lucy grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan and spent her university years in Philadelphia where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in business from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating, she went on to join IBM Global Business Services in New York City. After spending some time in corporate America, Lucy decided to make the shift to working with technology startups: early-stage e-commerce game Drop’ Til You Shop  and visual commerce platform Curalate. To learn more about The Port and the services it offers for Greek startups, go to the official website www.totheport.com

React JS Academy by CollegeLink

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CollegeLink and Golden Gate Pro organize a 3week hands-on seminar on React JS, for the first time in Athens. The seminar is ideal for web developers with a professional experience up to 18 months, knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and who are looking for their next workplace.

The seminar will take place on Saturday 13th until Saturday 27th at ACEin and will be led by the senior Web Developer Miltos Stamos. During the seminar, the trainees will also have the opportunity to work on a real project in React Js.

Thanks to Workable, Webjar & Stone Soup the cost for each participant is 90 euro while the price for students or unemployed is 60 euro. Stone Soup along with the other companies has some job openings and will attend the event to meet with some of the attendees.

For more info on the participation criteria and the schedule of the seminar you can visit the website.

Stone Soup has one ticket to give away for free, so get in touch with us if you are interested.

The biggest festival about making is here!

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The second edition of the Athens Mini Maker Faire  takes place on May 5th and 6th at the Peristeri Exhibition hall and you can book your ticket through Viva.gr

In this festival visitors of all ages have the opportunity to participate in workshops and learn how to make stuff themselves. They can also watch new projects and attend lectures from technological achievements and innovations. Visitors can find constructions such as Do-It-Yourself, handmade robots, 3d printing, DIY Drones, Arduino, handmade bicycles, electric cars, e-growing plants, recyclable constructions and many other categories of new achievements.

                 

Want to learn how to build a robot? Program an Arduino? Turn wood to make a bowl? Weld? Blacksmith? Build underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROV)? Automate your garage door? Spin yarn from wool and knit? Recycle glass into beautiful tables and glass pieces? Or maybe just take-a-part something and learn how it works? Learn to solder? Fly a drone? Make a drone?

The list is endless at the Athens Mini Maker Faire!

Project Update: Camerize’s whereabouts

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Martinus Meiborg is an freelance director from Amsterdam and an associate of Stone Soup.

He is the founder and CTO at Camerize and co-founder at Appsterdam. During his visit to Athens we had a quick sit down with him to check on updates and his encounters here in Greece.

Q: So Martinus what is your backround?

M. When I turned 18 I wanted to go to the Dutch Filmschool, but people in the profession told me to learn a craft, as I would learn filming while doing it. So I studied digital electronics and programming at a technical school. I have worked as a cameraman, editor and director. In 1990 I started a computer based editing company and a two years later I started a software company called Broadware aside, specialized in all sorts of tools for the video postproduction. Around 6 years later I quit the editing company to work in Broadware full time. In 2001 I moved to France and took Broadware with me. In 2005 the Broadware dissolved and after 2 years I started working for a company that produced playout automation and media mangement for TV stations all around Europe, North Africa and Asia. In 2010 we started Camerize, which proved to be a little bit early for the technology so we started again in March 2014. We decided to take out Camerize for testing in January 2015 to cover the Greek National Elections and then again in September 2015. After that came a 24h endurance test in order to cover the Star Wars Premiere.

Q: Does the app work only on iOS? Do I need to have an iphone?

M. You need an iphone for the camera app but Camerize is a live production service in the cloud and we use mobile phones as cameras. You can stream with any device, but then communications and possibilities might be limited. Right now the app is running only on iOS software but we’re planning to release it on Android in time. The difficulty is that Android is running in different versions on many different brands and devices, which is tedious for a hardware related app as ours. We’ll do that once we are fully up and running on iOS.

Q: What about any future milestones?

M. Oh, that’s a big secret but we’re planning on letting you know as soon as we have some news.

Q: So, what about your experiences here in Greece? What’s the thing that excited you the most?

M. A souvlaki per day keeps the doctor away! I really loved the greek souvlaki and the mediterranean food in general. The truth is that there is a misconception about the greeks and there are many stereotypes that are not true. Here in Athens we do start late but also end late compared with Amsterdam, but I must admit that it fits me better since I am not a morning person anyway.

Q: And what about your project with Stavros Messinis? Could you tell me a little more about that?

M. In October the first Mini Maker Faire was held in Athens and I went there to visit the Stone Soup booth. I really liked the concept of the exhibition and there were many great things going on so I decided make a small video. Stavros was a co-organiser of the Maker Faire and he is really making an effort to put Greece on the map so I wanted to help this effort.

Stay tuned for more!