Last night was the March meeting of Istanbul NEG. The presentations were insightful and informative.  Gungor Koprulu presented the impressive accomplishments at Tekfen Sigorta, and their partnership with Arabam.com.  Erdem Sahin presented a very forward-thinking model for lead generation and management, with the Fisboo application of Kahins.com.

We’re scheduled for Wednesday for the Istanbul NEG March Meeting.  There will be two companies presenting:

Tekfen Sigorta – showcasing their  B2C and B2E initiatives

Kahins.com – discussing their projects, including Fisboo

Please let me know if you can think of potential presenters for April.

Marc posted about this new year’s card from Sam Zell.  So well done…

The March meeting of the Istanbul NEG is moved to Wednesday, March 29th.

My friend Craig Thompson told me about a project that he’s
now involved in: The Homeless World
Cup. It sounds like an excellent way to
leverage the power of soccer, the social draw of which I find consistently
under-utilized, to help alleviate the problems and pains associated with
homelessness.

Here are some stats from the 2004 World Cup:

• Today 78 of the 204 World Cup players work in regular jobs
• 16 signed with football clubs or work as coaches
• 95 improved their housing situation

I think it’s additionally brilliant because soccer is
inherently a street game. The common
story these days is the soccer star rising from the streets (usually poor, if
not literally homeless) very quickly (most exceptionally talented players are
discovered and make it through the very efficient filters of the game by their
late teens), but, in the process, losing ties to their community. True, they remain role-models to the kids on
the street, but the interaction is little.

The Homeless World Cup is an opportunity for the global
soccer industry to pay its debt to the cradle of the game – the streets.

It’s time for the March meeting.  It’s scheduled for March 22nd March 29th at Bizim Tepe.  I apologize for not having devised a more convenient announcement/RSVP setup than the current triumvirate of:

1. this blog
2. evite
3. Ist NEG Yahoo Group

That’s going to change soon, I promise.

In the meanwhile, please go and RSVP to the March meeting, thorough the evite you’ve received.  If you have not received one, let me know.  If you’d like to invite others, please feel free.

And, very importantly, please let me know if you’d like to (or know others who would like to) present.

See you on the 22nd.

I have recently discovered the Visual Complexity website.  Generally, art that excites me the most is driven by complexity and attempts to represent and communicate it. At the 9th Istanbul Biennial last year, the most impressive work for me was in this area, by Axel John Wieder and Jesko Fezer.

Exploring the site is a lot of fun.

Via CoolHunting.

I am not a finance expert.  My venture capital activities are really the first time I am operating in the financial field.  However, a good deal of my friends have gone into finance (mostly investment banking) after school, and a good percentage of those are now on the less traditional side of finance now; namely, at hedge funds.

As a result, I hear quite a bit about hedge fund performance claims.  Among friends, there has been long standing discussion about how if each of these claims are true and accurate, then either these guys are smarter and richer than anyone else we know, or some of these number are inflated.

Well, just came across this article discussing how the latter explanation may just be the reason.

This statement may be a little indulgent but my favorite Turkish artist is one of my best friends, Ali Kazma.  Yesterday, I attended a screening of his latest project titled "Obstructions to the Second Law" at Dulcinea, in Istanbul (unfortunately a Flash site – click "sergi"; in Turkish).  If you’re in Istanbul, I recommend seeing it.  There are continuous screenings between 3 and 8pm, every day except Mondays, through March 24th.

At SelectMinds, we spent a lot of time thinking about stakeholder relationship management.  Our specific challenge was getting companies to look at their alumni (former employees) as sources of diverse value, e.g. re-recruitment candidates, potential clients, etc.  We knew that the concept could be applied to various stakeholder groups, and were frustrated at how closed-minded most companies were about looking at these stakeholders outside of their explicit context.

Today, reading the paper, I came across an article (in Turkish) that demonstrated one of the most brilliant examples of effective stakeholder relationship management.  Escort Computer, a leading Turkish PC maker, is offering a 15% discount on all laptops desktop computers, to its shareholders.  While I am sure there are details, such as how many shares one has to hold and how long, this hints at Escort’s perspective  on its shareholders.  Very impressive, especially in a market where investor relations is still a crude notion.