Obsession Attempt: Dexplora

Started a new company - let's see how it evolves - Dexplora (www.dexplora.com).

Period: 2012-08 to TBD

Obsession #6: Inspiring the innovators of tomorrow

I happened to end up at a meeting with the swedish minster of IT in March and when asked I spoke my mind - all children ought to learn programming - just like any other second language or creative subject taught in school. Programming is a way of thinking. Programming is a way to learn how others understand things (computers are the dumbest pupils). Programming is a way to create things. The response I got was meek. So I felt that I had to try for myself. So - I gathered a bunch of entrepreneurs in Malmö and we created Mixtra (Facebook, "internal" Tumblr, Youtube) and went to six schools and talked about programming and entrepreneurship and let kids aged 4 to 15 try programming. We got wonderful responses and had a great time.

For a kindergarten class of four year olds - no programming but tinkering (more info on clay here):

For 100+ seven and eight graders (14 and 15 years old):

Most pupils said they liked it (no input from last school of 110 students or kindergarten class of 10 children):

Period: 2012-04 to 2012-08

Twins = sleep craving

We got twins October 2011 so the main obsession was to get sleep... :)

Period: October 2011 - March 2012 (when things got a bit better)

Obsession #5: Donations by speaking

I did a lot of speaking at conferences and started to get a lot of interest to come and talk at companies and events. I felt I needed some kind of "threshold" to make sure they really were serious, but I didn't feel that I wanted money. So - I realized that I could require of them to donate money for a good cause instead. It wasn't all smiles as it was not trivial for them to set-up (and all asked me to invoice and that I could donate), but eventually all accepted it. So far I have done 15 speeches, averaging close to 11000 SEK (+ four columns at about 1000 a piece).

Period: 2010-06 to 2012-05 (not saying it is over, but it felt like the "obsession" is)