thoughts on economy of abundance/scarcity

On July 25th, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

Sometimes I catch myself thinking "oh crap - wrong time to start freelancing" when it comes to the coming recession in the world (which I believe will show up at our doorstep sooner or later). Most of the time I am thinking in a very Louise L. Hay way, that if the recession is coming then I won't be influenced by it.

If you look at what the economy of abundance has brought to society it is kind of a "have it all" feeling - everything you can possibly think of can be yours... Business models are starting to be formed around giving stuff away for free. Oh yeah sometimes I feel like a spoiled little brat...

Anyway, something tells me that economy of scarcity delivers more creativity and more eagerness than the economy of abundance, which is probably a result of the " I-could-have-it-all " kind of life. Why try harder when it is brought to us ?... why make excellent stuff when we can get by with mediocre ? I think a new economy of scarcity will make society work more creatively towards global problems than now where there is this "all is well" feeling to everything. If we need something we will just borrow the money for it in the bank - We are so wealthy it's incredible.

All is good for now - But my idea is that if the recession comes it's going to separate "crap" from "gold" and the more substantial people will make a better living than the ones that are in it for the money and the hype.

As Sanjay said in geekarmyknife # 6 " we are looking at a reversal of stereotypes" - good call, and an really genuine idea to ponder about.

[creativity, business, businessmodel, economy, geekarmyknife, scarcity, abundance, alliswell, recession] [13 comments]

my first job out of college - blaming my life on apple computers

On July 21st, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

I have talked to a lot of people in tech about this at the recent reboot 10 conference here in Copenhagen.

And I think it's one of the most inspirational things you can know about people, it makes sense to me to actually perspective it into what they are doing now.

Anyway my first job out of college was for apple computers back in 1999. I literally went from my classroom to Cork, Ireland to help build up their european support center which is still located in the same spot today.

This was before Apple Computers where cool! this was when Steve Jobs went back to working at Apple computers ( he did that while I was there)

I even promised myself after troubleshooting mac's in english, danish, swedish, norwegian, french and finnish (!) that I would never get a mac because I deeply thought that the OS sucked ( and it wasn't compatible with windows)..
I am deeply in love with my 2,5 year old macbook pro still ( and that comes from a girl who used to wear a pc laptop out in a year or so.

Both me and Apple has come a long way since then.

And I am deeply convinced that my life would have looked differently if I wouldn't have worked at apple as my first job out of college.

When I got back to Denmark I was literally sucked into a new computer startup and I haven't really worked for anything else than something evolving the internet. It's partly Apple's fault I'm sure.

so what about you - did you first job out of college shape you as much as mine did ?

[reboot, future, cork, ireland, job, college, perspective, apple, recession] [16 comments]