Sclipo hosts Facebook Developer Garage in Barcelona on May 30th

Posted on May 9, 2008

We are happy to announce that Sclipo will host Barcelona’s 1st Facebook Developer Garage on May 30, 2008.

“… Attending a Facebook Developer Garage is an opportunity for a deep dive into Facebook Platform: it is a forum to share ideas with local developers, look for partners on your latest project, see and participate in Facebook App demonstrations, seek technical support, or just network and socialize with other developers interested in the Facebook Platform … ” (See Facebook Wiki for more info.)

Besides developers and companies sharing their experiences about Facebook apps, Javier Olivan Director of International Marketing at Facebook will also join. After the event, we will go for tapas.

If you know of developers or companies who could be interested in attending and/or presenting, please invite them. To attend, you must sign up to the event on Facebook (see link below).

If you want to present, please send me a message through Facebook.

When: Friday 30.5.2008 - from 4 pm to 8 pm
Where: Sclipo Office, Barcelona
Sign up for the event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=18993571292

Sclipo hosts the EU Start-Up 2.0 Competition Video Challenge

Posted on April 22, 2008

The 2008 Start-Up 2.0 Competition is about finding Europe’s best web 2.0 start-up. We at Sclipo, having participated and won last year’s contest, believe every EU web 2.0 Start-Up should participate, because:

1. You will get noticed by the right people. You are all looking for financing and references. By participating, your company will be re-viewed by a first class jury including Martín Varsavsky, Loic Le Meur, Daniel Waterhouse, Tom Raftery, Ouriel Ohayon, Nicole Simon, Bernardo Hernández, Luca Conti and Yaron Orenstein.

2. It is free PR: The competition will drive attention, traffic and new members to your site.

3. It is a motivation booster: Motivation is your most valuable resource (more than cash!). This competition will put you and your team on fire. You will be applauded, voted and celebrated. All doubts will go away! This adrenaline is essential to help you overcome the challenges you are facing.

What’s new this year is that start-ups can submit videos showcasing their product. We are excited that Sclipo was selected to host these videos. It is not mandatory, though we dearly recommend submitting a video. Imaging being a judge who has to struggle her way through thousands of lines of text describing hundreds of start-ups … a video makes it so much easier to understand and value your product. So, take the time and create a video! It’s worth it!

Thanks to the organizers for making the event happen: Alianzo and La Caixa Emprendedor XXI. Partners of this year’s event are Microsoft, Sun and Techcrunch.

Register here for the 2008 Start-Up 2.0 Competition. Registrations will be admitted till May 10, 2008.

To submit a video at Sclipo, go to the Start-Up 2.0 Challenge at Sclipo and follow the instructions.

Good luck!!

Red Herring selects Sclipo as finalist for the Red Herring 100 Europe 2008

Posted on March 25, 2008

We are very proud to announce that the Red Herring selected Sclipo as a finalist of Red Herring 100 Europe, an award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region each year. We are thrilled that a jury as knowledgeable and savvy as the Red Herring validates our value proposition.

Quoted from Red Herrings Press release:

“This year’s impressive list of submissions from companies demonstrates Europe’s growing role as a major center of innovation in the global technology sector,” said Red Herring Editor-in-Chief Joel Dreyfuss. “The exceptional accomplishments of European technology startups and entrepreneurs are a testament to the rapid advancements being made in building the European innovation ecosystem.”

Red Herring’s lists of top private companies are an important part of the publication’s tradition of identifying new and innovative technology companies and entrepreneurs. Companies like Google, eBay, and Skype were spotted in their early days by Red Herring editors, and touted as leaders that would change the way we live and work.

Red Herring’s editorial staff rigorously evaluated several hundred private companies through a careful analysis of financial data and subjective criteria, including quality of management, execution of strategy, and dedication to research and development.

Red Herring will honor the Red Herring 100 Europe Finalist companies at its Red Herring Europe 2008 event. Scheduled for April 14-16, at the Westin Dragonara Resort, this intimate, three-day event is themed “The Pursuit of Disruption” and will explore how European firms are leading the charge in many technology sectors, gaining the competitive advantage, and driving entrepreneurial success in ways that create business opportunities for challengers and incumbents alike.

About Red Herring
Red Herring is a global media company which unites the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available on the Internet at www.redherring.com.

TubeMogul partners with Sclipo

Posted on February 28, 2008

We are very excited to announce our partnership with TubeMogul, the premier distribution and analytics service for online video.

With this partnership, posting educational videos – how-to, tutorials or lectures - to Sclipo will be as easy as checking a box for the almost 16,000 content creators that currently use TubeMogul to distribute and track their video-tutorials online. TubeMogul’s analytics package tracking video viewership will also be integrated. Sclipo is the only site dedicated to educational videos on TubeMogul.

“We love Sclipo’s quality content and their global focus,” reports Brett Wilson, TubeMogul co-founder and CEO. “Our syndication and analytics tools will propel them forward and further cement us as the ultimate service for content creators.”

Check out TubeMogul … a very cool and needed service. Enjoy!

Here is the official Press Release.

And our Wacom Challenge winner is… MartinNH!

Posted on September 28, 2007

Well it is time to announce the winner of the Wacom Challenge, which is … MartinNH! for his video Painting Jack Sparrow using a Wacom tablet. Congratulations Martin!

Martin will take home our Grand Prize, a fantastic Cintiq 21UX, which we are sure will help Martin do even better Illustrations and videos. You can enjoy more of Martin’s work in his Sclipo Academy and his blog Martinity.com.

Also congratulations to the other 6 runners-up winners, who won one of Wacom’s newest products, a wonderful Bamboo Pen Tablet!
Comic strip
Quick Z3 Doodle
How to create Fonts
Intuos configuration
Animation
Digital painting tutorial

We are delighted about the active and enthusiastic participation: 42 participants, 82 videos and hundreds of thousands of visitors! Also, the response and feedback from our viewers have exceeded our expectations. Thanks a lot to all who participated!

Finally, thanks to Wacom, the Sponsor of this Challenge. It was great to work with the Wacom team. Thanks for trusting Sclipo with running this challenge (we know there are quite a few video communities out there …)!

Sclipo - jetzt auch auf Deutsch!

Posted on July 1, 2007

Sclipo - ein soziales Netzwerk in dem Wissen, Anleitungen, Tipps, etc. (Skills) in Form von Videos ausgetauscht werden können - gibt es jetzt auch auf Deutsch! Damit ist Sclipo die erste Video-Community dieser Art auf Deutsch. (Es wurde ja auch Zeit, dass man in der deutschen Video-Szene was anderes als nur “lustige” Videos austauschen kann.)

Die Sprache der Sclipo Benutzeroberfläche passt sich automatisch an die Browsersprache an. Benutzer können die Sprache auch im Dashboard unter “Mein Profil” einstellen.

Wir freuen uns schon sehr auf die interessanten Skills-Videos unserer neuen deutschen Mitglieder.

Sclipo kicks-off Wacom Challenge

Posted on June 25, 2007

Today, Sclipo proudly kicks-off its first officially sponsored challenge - the Wacom Challenge - sponsored by Wacom, the global leader in digital pen tablets. This challenge is about creating and sharing a skills-based video that demonstrates the ability to achieve impressive results with a Wacom tablet.

To participate, just create and upload a video tutorial that teaches how to use a Wacom tablet for any number of things, like digital photo editing, digital arts, manga, office work or gaming. The top award is a fantastic Wacom Cintiq21 Interactive Pen Display!

With this challenge, Sclipo takes another step towards building a community where sharing of skills is the reason to be. Quite importantly, Sclipo now allows companies to participate in the community in a win-win kind of way … sponsor a product-award that is relevant to people (as it helps them to improve on and perform the skills they care about) and in turn, get some solid viral marketing and evangelism (as only talented people who submit good videos with high levels of popularity and viewership will be able to win).

Wacom Challenge info, terms and FAQ.

The Sclipo difference

Posted on June 4, 2007

At the European Start-Up 2.0 competition a judge asked me: how is Sclipo better than a how-to video site? I answered — Sclipo is different! not better and not comparable! Here is how and why.

Sclipo is a social network focused on skills where video is the main medium for skills-transfer. How-to sites are generally repositories of videos. Sclipo’s goal is to facilitate the transfer of skills among its members, not to create a video-encyclopedia.

Confused? Here an analogy: in a school, Sclipo would be the campus and a how-to site would be the library. Sclipo members are masters, and each has a profile page from where they share knowledge and connect with their students. To find good knowledge and masters fast, Sclipo offers search, browse and rating features. But — you may ask — doesn’t a how-to site not also offer personal profile pages to members who upload their videos? Yes, many do. And that’s where the confusion comes about. So, what are the differences between our social-network and a repository? I see two key ones:

1) We focus on features to enable economies of skills, or, stuff that makes sharing knowledge easier, cheaper and possible where it has been impossible before. For instance, we built SclipoLive to enable instant & efficient sharing of personalized knowledge through a web-cam system that is not possible in the analog world. For example, SclipoLive enables John from New York to take a flamenco guitar lesson from Pepe in Sevilla. No travel costs! Without SclipoLive, Pepe would not have been able to sell his class to a guy in New York. How-to video repositories, in contrast, focus on features that facilitate video storage, search and viewing. These are important for Sclipo too. But they are a condition rather than a goal for us.

2) Sclipo is all about user-generated skills. We do not edit or interfere at all with the user’s content, as long as it complies with our terms of use. For instance, videos can have any duration and we do not review or approve content. We only “police” videos to enforce our terms of use. In addition, we do not approach companies — as some how-to sites do — offering to produce videos of i.e. their knowledge bases or product manuals. At Sclipo, anybody can upload their videos, private persons and companies. Both are treated equally.

These differences have a strong impact on how we run and measure our business. A repository looks towards accumulating as many videos as possible. Sclipo’s measure of success is the number of skills-related interactions among users: the more interaction, the more knowledge creation and transfer.

Conclusion: The web & video opens a large array of new possibilities to share knowledge. We chose the path of a social - network, others that of a repository. Sclipo is a campus (with a library) and how-to sites are a library (some with a cafeteria). It is not about judging which approach is better. Both are inherently different. Both are needed, and will make a difference to the way people learn.

Sclipo wins European StartUp 2.0 award

Posted on May 28, 2007

It is a great feeling, I must say. We started something out of the blue, just believing that a social skills-network makes sense. Now, by winning the first place prize of the European StartUp 2.0 award, we are quite a step closer to knowing that a our social skills-network makes a lot of sense.

Thanks, above all, to our users. Without them, there would be no award.

Thanks to our team - Edwin, Dani, Luis, Otto, Rafi, Sebas, Sergi, Xevi and myself (Gregor) - without them, there would be no Sclipo.

Thanks to the organizers - Alianzo, Spri, La Caixa, First Tuesday, MADRI+D - without them, there would have been no competition and no extra boost of energy and buzz, which a start-up needs like oxygen.

Thanks to all participants - without them, winning would have been … hmm … boring. (Can’t list them here, there were close to 300 hundred).

A special thanks goes to Carlos from nvivo.es - also a finalist in the StartUp 2.0 competition and a wonderful site to find the best concerts in Spain - without his help, connecting with the Basque audience in such an incredible venue like the Bilbao Guggenheim would have been much harder: Eskerrik asko Carlos.

Sclipo selected a top 5 EU web 2.0 startup

Posted on May 19, 2007

StartUp2.0 - a memorable happening! A great event to meet interesting companies and people, including ourselves (we took the opportunity and made the competition our first off-site).

We are very happy that we have been selected for the final to be held on May 24 at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, where we — together with the other 4 finalists — will have another opportunity to present Sclipo. You can register here for the event, which will be part of Blogak 2.0.

Thanks to the organizers of StartUp 2.0, its jury and all the people who are helping to make such events happen. These are important for start-ups like us. They create energy and enthusiasm among the team, they foster culture, they create a buzz, the reinforce your vision and motivate you that we are doing the right thing.

The Sclipo Team

Sclipo - a top 15 web 2.0 start-up

Posted on May 8, 2007

We are very excited that we were selected a top 15 EU web 2.0 company in the StartUp 2.0 contest. StartUp 2.0 is a competition of European web 2.0 sites. The selection was made based upon votes from Internet Users and a jury of prominent web experts, including Martín Varsavsky and Loic Le Meur.

Congratulations to all other selected web 2.0 firms. We are looking very much forward to meeting you in Madrid. We are excited about the exchange of ideas, in special about highly innovative smart flash players and other breath-taking technologies to delight the social network community.

We would like to thank the organizers Spri, Alianzo and La Caixa. We very much welcome your initiative!

A very special “thank you” to our Masters and users!

Your Sclipo Team

Welcome Sclipo, farewell Visuarios … a little history of our young firm

Posted on April 16, 2007

We love the name Visuarios. Visuarios stands for visual user in Spanish (usuarios visuales). Since our launch, Visuarios has become the world’s leading community for user-generated skills-videos. Millions have visited and used our site, and we received lots of great feedback. One was that the name Visuarios was hard to pronounce and remember internationally. So we decided to find a better one. We decided for SCLIPO: Skills + CLIP + a Spanish touch with the “O“. We hope you like our new name.

Well, and a change of name kind of demands a little about the history and vision of our young company:

Visuarios was the name selected for a project back in June 2006, not a public web. The project was to explore how visual or video web applications would change and benefit the life of Internet users. At that point, video-web was all about entertainment, yet we thought it had a much larger potential.

A finding of said project was that our life is - in many ways - all about skills: we all depend on the skills we can acquire and promote. Everybody has an inherent need to learn skills and to show the world that we are damn good at these to achieve recognition, respect, a job and - if our skills are really outstanding - fame. Kids dream of joining a celebrated soccer team, teenagers of becoming a rock star and college students of winning the Nobel Prize (well, some of them).

Ok, but how does Internet video change the way we handle our skills? Well, it makes learning, sharing and promoting skills much easier, faster and cheaper than before. Before, anybody could video-tape skills, but sharing them with an audience larger than the one that fits a living- or class-room was practically impossible. To share your skills with a wide audience - for teaching or promotion - you had to convince experts of some kind to invest a lot of money into the production, distribution and promotion of your skills-video. Now, you can upload any skills-video and promote it yourself at no cost … for example by posting it to your blog and social-bookmarking sites, or just emailing its URL. Now you can also build a network related to your skills beyond the boundaries of your local friends, family, club or school: you can create a community with people from anywhere on the globe with whom you share those skills that define - in one way or another - your life.

So we decided to build and launch Visuarios, as of now Sclipo, a social web utility that helps you share, improve and promote your skills through video.

Your Sclipo Team!

new Visuarios

Posted on April 5, 2007

We are happy to present our new home … and ourselves. We boosted our homepage - from just showing 5 videos to present a large selection of interesting skills-videos. Members will also be able to see their skills-status right on the home page. We also updated the profile page.

We — Otto, Gregor, Pawel, Dani, Sergi & Xevi — hope you like the improvements. More are on the way …

Imagine …

Posted on February 8, 2007

… if only a fraction of the value created by millions of user-generated videos and views could be channeled towards social issues, such as world hunger, a lot of money could be raised! So, we decided to challenge the Internet community to create content that can serve as a trigger, platform, channel … for donations.

Visuarios’ first challenge - Cook for the World - is about helping solve world hunger. Users upload a cooking video, then they promote it to friends and ask them to make a donation. The more videos, the more donations, the more help for needed children: we will give all donations generated by all videos to the charity Save the Children.

Here one of the first challenge videos. We encourage … hmm … we challenge everybody to participate. Start to Cook for the world!

¡Visuarios en castellano!

Posted on January 24, 2007

¡Ya está la versión Visuarios en castellano! Y pronto saldremos en más idiomas. Actualmente Visuarios se adapta de forma automática al lenguaje de vuestro navegador y podéis cambiar de idioma en cada página. Pronto lanzaremos un panel de preferencias para seleccionar idiomas y otras opciones.

Visuarios just launched in Spanish! And, we will soon have more languages available for you. Currently, your browser settings define the language, which you can override by clicking on the language of your choice on the top of each page. Soon we will launch a preference panel to select languages and other options.

visuarios + mailxmail cooperation

Posted on November 28, 2006

Estamos muy complacidos en anunciar un acuerdo con Mailxmail.com, un líder de open e-Learning que ofrece formación gratuita por Internet. Se trata de integrar videotutoriales selectos de Visuarios.com, con cursos online que ofrece Mailxmail.com. Con este acuerdo avanzamos en uno de nuestros principales objetivos: ayudar a nuestros miembros a compartir y promocionar sus conocimientos. A partir de ahora, los videotutoriales seleccionados tendrán una audiencia adicional de los más de 3 millones de miembros de Mailxmail.com.

El primer videotutorial seleccionado es de Tai Chi: enseña los 24 pasos básicos del estilo Yang. El vídeo es de Weihong, una profesora china de Tai Chi, residente en Barcelona.

We are happy to annouce that we agreed with Mailxmail.com — a leading open e-Learning company — to integrate selected videotutorials into their offering of online courses. With this agreement, we are taking an important step towards a principal goal of ours: to help Visuarios members promote and share their skills. Now, in addition to visitors from visuarios.com, the selected videotutorial will have an additional audience of over 3 million Mailxmail.com members.

The first videotutorial is about Tai Chi: it shows the 24 basic steps, Yang Style. The video is from Weihong, a Chinese Tai Chi trainer living in Barcelona.

Visuarios is Alexaholic

Posted on November 16, 2006

We are very excited that - as of November 14, 2006 - Visuarios is the world’s number 1 video sharing site for user-generated skills videos, as per Alexa and measured by average daily rank and reach. We passed videojug.com and expotv.com, and we are reaching eHow.com (which is text-based).

Important: We are aware that a one day rank is just that … a one day rank! We are just exhilarated and wanted to share this tiny yet huge story with you. Also, we may have missed other skills-video sites against which to benchmark. In addition, generic video-sites like YouTube attract significantly more traffic.

Visuarios’ rapid rise in traffic since our launch barely 4 weeks ago (Oct 20) is a proof of the power of user-generated knowledge sharing through video (and that our designers and developers are doing a nice job).

Thanks to all Visuarios users, and to all who reviewed and wrote about us!

Visuarios’ first review

Posted on October 28, 2006

We got our first review! … by The Internet Video Magazine, which listed Visuarios as a Best Video Site: “This is very interesting. If you have a skill and want to make some money at it online you ought to check out the new Visuarios web site. …” (read full story here)

Bugs … thanks to all for testing and providing candid feedback! Please continue to emailing feedback our way.

Enhancements and new features … yes, our to-do list is as long as Barcelona’s beach (about 5 miles). So, bear with us and don’t hesitate to make yourself heard, and send us your enhancement wish list.

Finally … remember that Visuarios is all about user-generated and user-evaluated skill-videos. Visuarios does not assess you … our aim is to help you share and promote your talents all around the world. To post your videos, just sign-up for a free account.

Visuarios launch

Posted on October 21, 2006

Visuarios was born at 19:27 on October 2006 in beautiful Barcelona! (Our keyboards are still all smoking!!). Guess that makes Visuarios a Libra …

Now, even though we are extremely happy that Visuarios is out and working pretty good, please be aware that this is an early beta version - hence, not all will function perfectly. Thanks for your understanding and patience! If you notice a bug, don’t hesitate to email us.

Also, we are working on more features. So, if you don’t find the feature you want, please email us. This will help us prioritize. Thanks!

One day to go …

Posted on October 19, 2006

One day till we go live… Our keyboards are all smoking!! …

We are extremely happy that so many people from all around the globe submitted really interesting and entertaining skill-videos. We have over 300 now. Hey, that’s a growth-rate better than YouTube’s …

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