Yesterday, I blogged about my plans to form a group to discuss ideas and innovation in Istanbul.  The idea has received enthusiastic feedback.  I am excited to move it forward.

I want to spend a few minutes on a key aspect of this group I am trying to form: Openness around ideas. I firmly believe that ideas grow by sharing.  Every time I have shared an idea with someone who will understand, intelligently question and provide insight to it, I have left that conversation with a stronger, better thought-out version of that idea.

I do know that conventional wisdom says that you should be careful with ideas and that someone can steal your idea.  I have signed many NDAs before, and have even made people sign my NDA.  At this point, though, I think that they are overrated.  In most cases, the ideas are dime-a-dozen, and it’s execution that matters.

Fred Wilson, a few weeks ago, had a good post on what’s called "opening the kimono", which is another version of idea sharing.  I found it insightful.

I am hoping that the Istanbul Tech MeetUp New Economy Group will be about sharing ideas and opening the kimono.

I am a member of the NY Tech MeetUp.  It is a monthly gathering of technologists and those interested in technology, organized by Scott Heiferman.  The great thing about it is that it lacks any pretension.  It is fairly democratic, very informal, and organized around ideas.  It is one of the things I miss about NYC.

I had blogged earlier about how I felt the concept of entrepreneurship in Istanbul needed to be freed from the triangle of academics, bankers and bureaucrats. 

So, I have decided to organize an Istanbul Tech MeetUp.  I am shooting for January to have the first meeting.  I was going to use the MeetUp infrastructure, but I realized it is built primarily for the US, UK and Canada.  So I will probably use a combination of Evite (or Daveti.com, its Turkish copycat) and TypePad (in a similar blog to this).

I plan for the event to be open to entrepreneurs, technologists, students, academics, VCs, professions that surround new ventures, or, as Scott says, "anyone who’s interested in seeing or showing something new".  I will need RSVPs so we can keep track of who’s attending. Eventually, I think, the format will move to a series of presentations, but I think the first one will just be a cocktail (cash bar).

I’d love to hear ideas if anyone’s got any.

I am now back in Istanbul after a week in NYC.  It was a good chance to catch up with friends and see what’s new.

  I caught up with David Teten, who’s recently published "The Virtual Handshake," which he co-authored with Scott Allen.  (I was a contributor to the chapter on corporate alumni networks.)  It is a very insightful book on how online business relationships work.  I would recommend it for job seekers, business development professionals, and anyone who is interested in how social behaviors translate online.

The football (soccer) legend George Best has died after a series of problems with his health.  Although I am not old enough to have seen him play, he would have been fun to watch and, probably, more fun to hang out with.

He has a few classic quotes I found amusing,including:

"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."

"I used to go missing a lot… Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World."

Last night we were having coffee and desserts with our friend Alexis, who’s an American architect living in Istanbul for the last 5-6 years.  The topic was vision and innovation.  I was sharing with her some of my observations of the VC and entrepreneur community in Istanbul.  She brought up a very interesting insight.

She mentioned that she sometimes finds it easier to have conceptual, idea-based discussions with older Turks – those past 65 or 70.  Alexis speculates that these people, having grown up in a period in Turkey when the modern Republic was being built on the foundation of the bankrupt Ottoman Empire, almost brick by brick.

The building of a new state is as complex and ambitious a project as one can imagine.  The founder of modern Turkey, M.K. Ataturk had to establish a new vision for a country that was radical for this geography in many ways, including:

– A democracy, after centuries of monarchy
– Secularism, after centuries of theocratic principles guiding the judicial system, with the Ottoman sultan as the Caliph
–  The Latin alphabet, after centuries of using the Arabic alphabet

For the generation born in the early years of the republic, this vision was taken as the guiding principle, and in their youth, they saw this massive project take shape.  They can understand and deal with concepts.

I think Alexis has identified a very interesting point about modern Turkey.  I will be thinking more about this.

For those interested in the early years of the Turkish Republic, Andrew Mango does a good job covering the critical points in his biography of Ataturk.