random walk

I felt I left my blog stranded for too long. So I decided to give it a new name (henceforth canerturkmen.com), new look&feel and a new post. So happy new year to all of you, and on we go…

OK so very recently we put together a team to participate in the most prestigious pan-European case study competition, TIMES; and we topped the local qualifications at Bogazici. (My team-mates were Ömer C Küçükdere, Burak Çapar and Y. Can Akbulut, and we style ourselves Team Leverage.)

On a saturday morning we sat down in a closed session, working through a rigorous case on OC Oerlikon’s solar division. We learned some very interesting facts during the case study…

The point at which the dollar cost/watt of solar energy will drop below the watt cost of conventional energy sources will come in the next five years (this point in time being called grid parity). That is why the next five years may prove to be a bloodbath battle taking place between alternate technology providers for solar power…

In energy courses we’re taught that solar power is way too expensive, and with current efficiency; even if we covered half the roof and stuff… But that’s not the point at all, it’s more about the trend! The trend is very steep, and in perhaps less than five years, the balance will be tipped once and for all…

And much more on top of that I watched Bertrand Piccard’s tremendous speech on the dream of a solar-powered aircraft that would fly around the world with net-zero fossil-fuel consumption. Now that’s something! As of now we’ve just enough hope and imagination to haul one pilot across the ocean, but Piccard notes very accurately, that is the best we could do 50-60 years ago with fuel-powered aircraft…

It’s got me thinking, what can we do with solar power?? Ideas, anyone?

I recently finished working on a survey and elementary analysis of three developing (Poland, Turkey, and Brazil) and one developed (American) internet markets. In a nutshell, I collected the Alexa Top 100 of these countries, categorized the sites and tried to map the obvious differences in the consumer tastes onto one another. Here are some end results:

- Celebrity news are too popular in Poland.

- Political news are too popular in Turkey.

- It’s really hard to find clean data on internet access bases and penetration.

And here are the slides, enjoy…

The president of our university, dozens of potential investors and fellow students/competitors were in the historical assembly hall of Bogazici University to hear out what I had to say for five minutes, in eight slides, about my social entrepreneurship project.

Well, I took the stage and made my case for about 4 minutes; to make the winning presentation. But then there were these experiences I would like to share with all of you,

1. Even though the hall reportedly erupted with applause after my speech, I don’t remember hearing a clap…

2. What truly makes a speech in Albert Long Hall is the resonance, with the feelings of those watching you, and the spirit of the hall itself.. Having survived many presentations I can say resonance is revealed to be the single most important driver of a good presentation.

3. Even though I boast killer presentation skills, the sentimental load was too much on my shoulders to practice any control over my words or motions. In times like these, your experience in speech-making and your faith in your idea are those which make the difference.

The slides are here, if anyone’s interested.

My friend Can Akbulut “waved” me the five trends that will shape the future of non-profits; the key results of a study carried out by La Piana consulting. (By the wave, I was skeptical about Google Wave at first, but then I thought it might be worth a wave after all)

In short, here are the five trends that will shape social ventures of the future…

1. Shifting Demographics.. I didn’t really get this myself.

2. Technological Advances.. Natural selection, non-profits that adapt to latest tech will have the upper hand. Not too hard to spot.

3. New ways to collaborate.. Of course. Social media. Now the meaning has an advantage over the capital, if your cause is chivalrous enough you can rally thousands of followers overnight…

4. Greater interest in service.. The report quotes the Obama campaign with its amazing number of volunteers. This is hardly any proof that volunteerism is the topic of the day everywhere in the world…

5. Blurred lines between for-profit and non-profit. Now this is the single most beautiful finding… The non-profits of the future will be more market-adaptive, and have a greater tendency to generate competitive, aggressive results… In Turkey, one may say, the third sector will be left to entrepreneurs instead of desperate housewives.