SaaS Entrepreneur. CEO/Founder SambaStream, acquired by Alfresco where I became Director of Cloud Services launching their Enterprise Cloud Business. Now CEO/Founder of Dataloop.IO, a monitoring tool for DevOpshttps://davidgildeh.com/https://davidgildeh.com/2021/03/08/running-python-opentelemetry-with-google-cloud-run/https://davidgildeh.com/2021/03/08/running-python-opentelemetry-with-google-cloud-run/I’ve been playing with OpenTelemetry in my spare time because of a general interest for my current role heading up Telemetry at Netflix as it appears to be gaining traction in the industry as a standardized way of collecting traces, metrics and logs for Observability. While experimenting I also came across Google Cloud Run, which…Mon, 08 Mar 2021 03:02:27 GMThttps://davidgildeh.com/2020/10/01/building-an-abundant-future-through-deflation/https://davidgildeh.com/2020/10/01/building-an-abundant-future-through-deflation/My first personal blog in years. I actually looked back through all my posts and find it interesting how so many of my opinions have changed in the last few years doing my 2nd startup, moving to America, becoming a father. I don’t think I would write a blog praising Marget Thatcher as much today…Thu, 01 Oct 2020 07:38:37 GMTaideflationeconomicstechnologyhttps://davidgildeh.com/2018/11/06/why-not-to-build-a-time-series-database/https://davidgildeh.com/2018/11/06/why-not-to-build-a-time-series-database/At Outlyer, as a monitoring company, we rely on time-series databases (TSDBs) as a foundation for building a scalable and reliable monitoring solution. Over the past few years, we’ve gone through 3 iterations of our architecture as we scaled up with more metrics and more customers, and we haven’t always gotten it right. We’ve tested…Tue, 06 Nov 2018 09:27:37 GMTmonitoringtechnicaltime-series-dbhttps://davidgildeh.com/2018/10/17/building-a-raspberry-pi-weather-station/https://davidgildeh.com/2018/10/17/building-a-raspberry-pi-weather-station/Having moved to the US two years ago, my son Tagir now has to do annual science fair projects at school, which are a great opportunity for him to learn about the scientific method and how to run experiments and analyse data. For his 7th grade project this year, as he’s super interested in electronics…Wed, 17 Oct 2018 16:00:24 GMThttps://davidgildeh.com/2018/03/14/introducing-jmxquery-to-monitor-java-via-python/https://davidgildeh.com/2018/03/14/introducing-jmxquery-to-monitor-java-via-python/Back in December 2014, we had a team Christmas hackathon and I decided I wanted to make Java Monitoring really simple via our agent and integration plugins. At that time we were recommending new users monitor Java services using solutions like Jolokia, listed in this blog we wrote back then. It was frustrating that our…Wed, 14 Mar 2018 21:06:09 GMThttps://davidgildeh.com/2014/11/02/using-customer-development-to-get-traction-in-a-crowded-space/https://davidgildeh.com/2014/11/02/using-customer-development-to-get-traction-in-a-crowded-space/A couple of weeks ago I did a talk at Hacker News London on the Story of Dataloop.IO and how we got our initial customers and traction using Customer Development. David Gideh – Using Customer Development to get Traction in a Crowded Space from HN London on Vimeo. In this talk I share: What we…Sat, 01 Nov 2014 23:27:22 GMTadvicepresentationstart-upvideohttps://davidgildeh.com/2014/10/04/making-everything-a-pipeline-in-your-start-up/https://davidgildeh.com/2014/10/04/making-everything-a-pipeline-in-your-start-up/In the past few weeks, we closed our seed funding round at Dataloop.IO, moved to new offices, hired 2 more people and did some PR to announce our funding round. In parallel our meetup group, DevOps Exchange, has now grown to become the worlds 2nd largest DevOps meetup group and we hosted our largest event…Sat, 04 Oct 2014 14:45:33 GMTadvicestart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/09/23/the-future-of-enterprise-artificial-intelligence/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/09/23/the-future-of-enterprise-artificial-intelligence/Artificial Intelligence (AI) is like Fusion, its always 30 years away. The dream of building computers that are as intelligent (if not more) than we are is still a long way off, but there have been some recent changes that make several experts in the field more bullish that maybe this time, it really is…Mon, 23 Sep 2013 09:00:47 GMTartificial intelligencebusinesscloudenterpriseFuture of Enterprisemachine learningopinionhttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/09/16/the-future-of-enterprise-machine-learning/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/09/16/the-future-of-enterprise-machine-learning/My last blog talked about the effect of Big Data on the future of Enterprise. When it comes to generating insights and correlations on data, a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), is a key tool in the Data Scientist’s arsenal. Machine Learning is a set of algorithms that can apply statistics on…Mon, 16 Sep 2013 09:00:12 GMTbusinessenterpriseFuture of Enterprisemachine learningopinionstart-uptechhttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/09/09/the-future-of-enterprise-big-data/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/09/09/the-future-of-enterprise-big-data/This blog is a follow up to my previous blog on The New Instability and the Future of Enterprise, and was inspired by Daniel Hulme’s General Assembly class on Big Data to Big Wisdom. There’s a lot of hype at the moment about Big Data, and how it will revolutionize the Enterprise. As a result…Mon, 09 Sep 2013 09:00:33 GMTbig databusinessButcloudenterpriseFuture of Enterpriseopinionstart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/08/30/a-few-words-on-syria/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/08/30/a-few-words-on-syria/As some people know, I’m half Syrian, and my grandma, Uncle, Aunts, and a few of my cousins all live in Damascus. My family are Christian too. I was in Damascus only 3 weeks before everything kicked off in 2011, and I was really surprised when I heard about it – on my last visit,…Fri, 30 Aug 2013 20:40:59 GMTopinionpoliticsrantsyriavideohttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/05/27/how-to-install-octave-on-mountain-lion-10-8-x/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/05/27/how-to-install-octave-on-mountain-lion-10-8-x/The past few weeks I’ve been learning about learning about Machine Learning from Stanford Professor Andrew Ng on Coursera. I love how anyone can learn advanced subjects online from the worlds top professors in their field for free, but this post isn’t about the course, its a quick solution for those of you, who like…Mon, 27 May 2013 17:54:16 GMTmacostechnicalhttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/05/13/the-new-instability-the-future-of-enterprise/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/05/13/the-new-instability-the-future-of-enterprise/Over Christmas, I discovered a great book recommended on Amazon by Peter Evans-Greenwood, The New Instability. The book coherently brings together a lot of areas I’m interested in, primarily how globalization and new technology are forcing Enterprises to change the way they are organized and function, into a vision of how Enterprises of the future…Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:19 GMTalfrescobusinesscloudenterpriseFuture of Enterprisepresentationstart-uptechvideohttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/04/09/why-the-world-needs-more-margaret-thatchers/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/04/09/why-the-world-needs-more-margaret-thatchers/Although I lived through the Thatcher years, I didn’t ‘live’ through the Thatcher years, I was too young to understand or remember all the things she did while in power. So my respect for her is based on what I learned about her from books, magazines and documentaries I saw when I was older. I’ll…Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:23:55 GMTeventsopinionpoliticsUKhttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/04/04/living-in-the-cloud/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/04/04/living-in-the-cloud/Now that I’ve moved my blog to WordPress.com I’ve pretty much moved all my digital life to Software as a Service (SaaS) services. I’m living up to my title of Director of Cloud Services at Alfresco by living what I preach. It took a while to get there as some of the services are still…Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:00:15 GMTcloudhttps://davidgildeh.com/2013/04/01/moving-blog-to-wordpress-com/https://davidgildeh.com/2013/04/01/moving-blog-to-wordpress-com/After almost a year, I came back to add a new post on some talks I’ve been doing recently (will post next!) only to find my Drupal website, hosted at Dreamhost had been hacked for the 2nd time, and my blog was just showing a blank white page. The reason it keeps getting hacked is…Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:06:19 GMTdrupalwebwordpresshttps://davidgildeh.com/2012/05/08/mining-sky-big-deal/https://davidgildeh.com/2012/05/08/mining-sky-big-deal/When I was a teenager I remember lying in my grandma’s back garden in Damascus reading “Mining the Sky” by John S. Lewi for several days and since then I’ve been hooked on starting my own company to mine asteroids and the moon after making my millions in IT like Elon Musk (who’s pretty much…Tue, 08 May 2012 15:54:05 GMTspace industrystart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2012/04/20/are-we-entering-another-bubble/https://davidgildeh.com/2012/04/20/are-we-entering-another-bubble/With the recent acquisition of Instagram for a ridiculous $1bil. (and potentially worth up to $3bil. if FaceBook IPOs at $100bil. later this year for the share exchange they took) you can’t help wondering if this is the trigger before the boom, the same way Netscape was the trigger for the dot.com boom in the…Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:27:39 GMTinvestingstart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2012/02/26/choosing-digital-magazine-subscription/https://davidgildeh.com/2012/02/26/choosing-digital-magazine-subscription/I have a goal to replace all my books and magazines with digital copies as soon as they become available. I already have most of my paper books listed on Amazon Marketplace (you can check out my sellers profile here if you want to buy any of them, as you’ll see I have a myoptic…Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:21:37 GMTamazonappleemagazineskindleopinionziniohttps://davidgildeh.com/2012/01/29/re-death-business-founders/https://davidgildeh.com/2012/01/29/re-death-business-founders/Today I rediscovered an old blog on The Death of the Business Founder by Ben Yoskovitz and as it tied in with some discussions I was having earlier this week with other start-up founders in London, I thought I’d add a few thoughts on this. I am a Technical Founder. I started programing on a…Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:00:51 GMTfoundersopinionstart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/11/22/why-politicians-shouldnt-run-our-economy/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/11/22/why-politicians-shouldnt-run-our-economy/Yesterday I read (BBC News Article) that the UK Government is announcing a ‘great’ new program to get everyone back on the housing ladder again. This includes: Mortgages of up to 95% of the value of new homes to be offered with government underwriting part of the risk £400m public fund to help developers “unblock”…Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:25:14 GMTdavid cameronopinionpoliticshttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/10/22/future-great-cloud-companies-engineers/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/10/22/future-great-cloud-companies-engineers/I’m currently in San Fransisco stopping for a few days to meet with a bunch of companies ahead of my talk next week at Alfresco DevCon in San Diego. It’s great to be back and I’ve been meeting with loads of smart start-ups, entrepreneurs and companies that we may use or partner with for our…Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:10:57 GMTbusinessopinionsilicon valleystart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/10/08/steve-jobs-legacy-be-true-yourself/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/10/08/steve-jobs-legacy-be-true-yourself/I’ve spent the last couple of days reading a lot about Steve Jobs since he passed away. For someone I’ve never met I do feel sad about losing him, I wish I’d ‘made it sooner so I could rub shoulders with him in the same circles and got to know him personally to see what…Sat, 08 Oct 2011 02:15:22 GMTapplenewsstart-upsteve jobshttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/09/23/replicating-silicon-valley-effect-outside-valley/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/09/23/replicating-silicon-valley-effect-outside-valley/Last night I was talking with my business partner from SambaStream, Ale, about start-up communities. He went to a big start-up event in Rio (Brazil) for his new start-up Kioos and was complaining about all the ‘chaff’ there with a lot of wannabe entrepreneurs who really had little value to add to the community in…Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:56:16 GMTbrazillondonopinionriosilicon valleystart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/09/11/real-tragedy-911/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/09/11/real-tragedy-911/I still remember where I was 10 years ago today. I was working as an intern at Tandberg TV for one year, and as usual just browsing the internet bored (I was never born to be a test engineer!) when I noticed the desks around me had emptied and the office was all quiet. I…Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:41:01 GMTmiddle eastpoliticsUShttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/09/08/closing-down-sambajam/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/09/08/closing-down-sambajam/I finally got around to sending out the final email to all our users announcing we will be closing down SambaJAM on October 8th. It doesn’t feel as sad today, the saddest day was when our last paying customer did their final migration off SambaJAM to a new system a few days ago, which is…Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:20:55 GMTalfrescocareercloudcustomer developmentECMsaassambajamsambastreamhttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/09/05/revamping-my-site-on-drupal-7/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/09/05/revamping-my-site-on-drupal-7/I finally sat down this weekend to do a full revamp of my website in preparation for some serious blogging! It only took a couple of days and it was my first chance to really get to know Drupal 7. The issue with Drupal is that is that it is quite technical, and out of…Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:49:47 GMTblogsdesigndrupalwebhttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/08/22/circus-world-media/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/08/22/circus-world-media/I never appreciated how much the media exaggerates things until the past few months. First it was the protests in Syria, immediately from the get go it was displayed as though a civil war was going on, with mass killings, and world leaders were condemning Assad for human rights violations. So I was immediately concerned…Mon, 22 Aug 2011 20:41:03 GMTlondon riotsmediamiddle eastnewspoliticssyriahttps://davidgildeh.com/2011/08/18/sambastream-acquired-new-role-alfresco/https://davidgildeh.com/2011/08/18/sambastream-acquired-new-role-alfresco/It’s been a very long time since I last wrote a blog, and I’ve got loads of thoughts and advice on start-ups to share after 3 years of SambaStream. A few of my start-up friends are encouraging me to share them, however I couldn’t possibly start blogging again without posting a short update on where…Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:21:43 GMTalfrescocareersambastreamhttps://davidgildeh.com/2010/11/10/iphone-4-deals-suckers-me/https://davidgildeh.com/2010/11/10/iphone-4-deals-suckers-me/After procrastinating on a phone upgrade for the past few months, I finally took the time to put together a list of all the “deals” out there for the new iPhone 4 and decide if it was worth staying with O2. Part of the reason it took so long was because I was seriously considering…Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:09:18 GMTapplegadgetsiphonehttps://davidgildeh.com/2010/04/17/wheres-our-barack-obama/https://davidgildeh.com/2010/04/17/wheres-our-barack-obama/After glazing through last nights debate and starting to get slightly political recently, I have to say I’m really disappointed with our politics in the UK. We have two main parties who constantly engage in a slagging match and the ones that annoy me the most with their petty slander are the Conservatives. Recently the…Sat, 17 Apr 2010 02:02:43 GMTdavid cameronobamapoliticshttps://davidgildeh.com/2010/03/12/implementing-revolving-backups-aws-ec2/https://davidgildeh.com/2010/03/12/implementing-revolving-backups-aws-ec2/A few weeks ago we decided to switch on hourly backups on SambaJAM and I went in search of some good automation scripts to do this…I was very disappointed. Like a lot of new start-ups, we’ve been taking advantage of Amazon Web Services to host our servers and data, and if you’re building stuff in…Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:27:30 GMTawsec2technicalhttps://davidgildeh.com/2010/02/21/configuring-tomcat-shared-directory-work-properly/https://davidgildeh.com/2010/02/21/configuring-tomcat-shared-directory-work-properly/I don’t usually write quick technical posts on my website, but this issue is so undocumented on the web that I wasted two days Googling only to find the issue comparing all the files on my old server to my new one. Basically, in Tomcat 6, if you want to put classes that are shared…Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:26:22 GMTtechnicaltomcathttps://davidgildeh.com/2010/02/08/tvcatchup-how-not-run-feedback-forum/https://davidgildeh.com/2010/02/08/tvcatchup-how-not-run-feedback-forum/A few months ago, after using what I think is a wicked service, TVCatchup.com, for 6 months, I decided to venture into their community forums and post some ideas/feedback I’d had nagging at me since using the service. It wasn’t meant to be a criticism of their service, just some innocent feedback on my thoughts…Mon, 08 Feb 2010 02:16:32 GMTcustomer supporttvcatchuphttps://davidgildeh.com/2010/01/29/underwhelmed-ipad/https://davidgildeh.com/2010/01/29/underwhelmed-ipad/I’m currently watching Steve Job’s latest keynote speech where he’s showcasing the iPad, and I’m very underwhelmed after all the hype. It’s essentially an oversized iPhone, and while I love the iPhone, there are a few things that I don’t think will translate to a larger device like the iPad. My main concern is Apple’s…Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:24:30 GMTapplegadgetsipadhttps://davidgildeh.com/2010/01/07/very-original-idea-address-climate-change/https://davidgildeh.com/2010/01/07/very-original-idea-address-climate-change/I’m a big fan of TED because of the wealth or thought-provoking ideas the speakers bring to the stage. While browsing through some of their videos I found this one by David Keith: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_keith_s_surprising_ideas_on_climate_change.html In all the talk about climate change, this is one of the most original ideas I’ve heard. By using particals in…Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:28:47 GMTglobal warmingtedhttps://davidgildeh.com/2010/01/06/loving-windows-7/https://davidgildeh.com/2010/01/06/loving-windows-7/Let’s face it, Windows Vista was a major disappointment and one I’ve been stuck with for a year and a half since it came with my Dell Laptop. Slow performance, crap security restrictions, I couldn’t wait to get rid of it and upgrade to 64-bit Windows Vista when it came out! I’m elated, but that…Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:30:43 GMTgadgetsMicrosoftOSwindowshttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/07/21/goodby-vmware-hello-virtual-box/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/07/21/goodby-vmware-hello-virtual-box/Ever since I first learnt about virtualisation and started using it on my laptop for playing around with new operating systems and development, I’ve been using VMWare. I first used the Workstation edition, but when Vista came out, it didn’t support it without buying a new copy, so I moved to the free VMWare server.…Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:25:22 GMTtechnicalvirtualboxvirtualisationvmwarehttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/07/08/ryanair-worlds-stingiest-airline/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/07/08/ryanair-worlds-stingiest-airline/Tomorrow I’m going to Spain for a long weekend for my friends wedding in Santiago. Unfortunately, I had no choice except to fly the worlds stingiest airline, Ryanair. It seems to me that they’ve gone a step beyond what any of the other airlines are doing to save costs and make more money, by literally…Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:08:27 GMTrantryanairhttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/07/07/advertising-kills-start-ups/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/07/07/advertising-kills-start-ups/I spent some time with some new business entrepreneurs this morning at a seminar on Raising Revenues by Prevista. I went there in the hope of learning some new ideas for my own start-up, but found out that I was several chapters ahead of the group and left early (it was really setup for beginners).…Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:26:51 GMTadvertisingadvicestart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/06/26/king-pop-dead/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/06/26/king-pop-dead/Sad news today, as the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, died today from a cardiac arrest. To say MJ had an impact on my life is an understatement. When I was a kid, my next door neighbour, Ann, introduced us to Michael Jackson after we saw Moonwalker in the cinema and were amazed! (In fact…Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:45:49 GMTeventsmichael jacksonhttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/06/15/book-opened-my-eyes-four-steps-epiphany-steve-gary-blank/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/06/15/book-opened-my-eyes-four-steps-epiphany-steve-gary-blank/Every now and again, a book comes along and you think “WOW! I wish I’d read this before!”. This is one of those books. “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” by Steve Gary Blank. While I’ve read a lot of books about start-ups and entrepreneurship, all of them tell you pretty much the same thing,…Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:54:00 GMTadvicecustomer developmentstart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/05/30/trip-seattle-and-silicon-valley/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/05/30/trip-seattle-and-silicon-valley/I’ve been away for the past 2 weeks to the states, and I’ve been away from this blog since January, too busy with my start-up SambaStream to concentrate on it properly! In case you were wondering you can read some blogs I’ve been doing for SambaStream here: http://www.sambastream.com/blog. The trip to the states was excellent!…Sat, 30 May 2009 13:49:00 GMTsambastreamsilicon valleystart-uptripshttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/05/11/drupal-marketing-google-analytics/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/05/11/drupal-marketing-google-analytics/Last week I did a presentation on how to use Google Analytics to improve your website’s effectiveness in marketing your product at the Drupal for Marketing conference. I used our own website, SambaStream.com as an example of how we’ve used Analytics to monitor the traffic on our site and improve our content for our SambaJAM…Mon, 11 May 2009 14:09:18 GMTdrupalgoogle analyticspresentationhttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/01/20/final-words-bushi-hope/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/01/20/final-words-bushi-hope/Finally! The end of a bad chapter, and the beginning of a new Obama era! Today Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States of America, and literally millions (maybe Billions), including myself, watched it on TV around the world. Obama seems to not only be hope for the people of…Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:41:05 GMTbushobamapoliticsUShttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/01/19/sock-awe-good-cause/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/01/19/sock-awe-good-cause/I just noticed some new pictures on FaceBook with my good friends in Amman, Jordan. They were involved in an Aid Gaza Souq (Market) and some friends took some photos. I hope they raised a lot of money for Gaza after the tragic events bought to them the past 3 weeks. What I did like…Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:41:06 GMTbushmiddle easthttps://davidgildeh.com/2009/01/02/why-i-think-2009-going-be-good-year/https://davidgildeh.com/2009/01/02/why-i-think-2009-going-be-good-year/Happy New Year! Welcome to 2009, the year the media would have you believe is going to be miserable for everyone. As for me, I feel extremely positive for the next year. I began it at Big Ben with my Uncle and Cousin on Westminster Bridge. Unfortunately because my cousin Tanya was sick, they came…Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:41:10 GMTopinionpersonalhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/12/15/youtube-symphony-competition/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/12/15/youtube-symphony-competition/Today I found out about a very interesting competition on YouTube, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Tan Dun, the Chinese composer who wrote the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, has composed a piece which you can download as PDF sheet music for each instrument and then follow him online while he conducts you in a…Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:29:40 GMTeventsmusicyoutubehttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/12/15/world-starts-falling-apart-and-bush-didnt-even-get-hit-head-shoe-his-part/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/12/15/world-starts-falling-apart-and-bush-didnt-even-get-hit-head-shoe-his-part/So much has happened in the world recently, and unfortunately the best part when George Bush got shoes thrown at him today in Iraq (see the YouTube video below) didn’t work out so well and missed his head. Bush was his usual smug self pleased to have dodged the shoes and make a joke of…Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:38:39 GMTbushmiddle eastobamaopinionpoliticsUShttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/12/05/im-finally-chartered-engineer/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/12/05/im-finally-chartered-engineer/As a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology I applied this year to become a Chartered Engineer (which allows me to put CEng at the end of my name). To pass I had to do a huge application form, followed by an interview, in which we spent considerable time discussing my new start-up…Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:17:42 GMTcareerIETsambastreamhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/12/02/ale-clarence-leave-accenture/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/12/02/ale-clarence-leave-accenture/It’s been a long time coming, but finally my two business partners, Ale and Clarence, have taken the big leap to join SambaStream full time, leaving their full time jobs in Accenture. To celebrate, we took this photo in front of an Accenture Tiger Woods poster in St. Pancras. No longer will we all be…Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:10:12 GMTAccenturesambastreamhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/11/29/business-start-event-london-2008/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/11/29/business-start-event-london-2008/The last couple of days I’ve been at Olympia in London for the Business Start-up event 2008. Every year thousands of people interested in or presently running a business descend on the event to see 100’s of exhibitors offering services and seminars with some well known UK entrepreneurs. I managed to pop in to see…Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:40:19 GMTeventssambastreamstart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/11/10/sambastreamcom-finally-online/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/11/10/sambastreamcom-finally-online/It is with great pleasure today we finally got our site, http://www.sambastream.com up online! Small steps towards something much bigger! For those of you that don’t know, I left my job with Accenture in July to found a start-up with 2 workmates, let me take some time to introduce you to our team and what…Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:04:36 GMTsambastreamhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/11/05/obama-wins-i-can-finally-forgive-my-american-friends/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/11/05/obama-wins-i-can-finally-forgive-my-american-friends/After months of waiting and speculation, my favourite to win the US elections, Barack Obama, HAS WON!! I’ve been following him closely since I was working in the US (Baltimore, MD) earlier this year and my co-worker Sri, who was one of his biggest supporters in Seattle, kept going on about him and how great…Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:38:37 GMTobamapoliticsUShttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/10/23/drupal-ngos-presentation-ashoka-connect-website/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/10/23/drupal-ngos-presentation-ashoka-connect-website/Tonight I presented at the Drupal for NGO’s event in London that I go to sometimes. Its basically an event to connect Drupal developers to NGOs so us developers can help NGO’s build sites and online applications (using Drupal of course). Obviously with my Accenture Development Partnerships background, this is of great interest to me,…Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:17:11 GMTAshokadrupalNGOspresentationhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/10/16/selling-software-enterprises/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/10/16/selling-software-enterprises/Finally I’ve managed to find the time to put up my presentation from Barcamp London last month in the EBay offices in Richmond. It was a fantastic day, and I’m fortunate that my good friend Josh Lui from Minutebox was there to let me know it was happening last minute and get me on the…Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:33:37 GMTbarcampcustomerdevelopmententerprisepresentationsaleshttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/10/13/consulting-lessons-learned/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/10/13/consulting-lessons-learned/Finally I’ve managed to find the time to complete my consulting website to support my freelancing business, and put it under the subdomain consulting.davidgildeh.com (you can also click ‘Consulting’ above to get to it.) No longer am I a freelance web developer without a website! Since I decided to rent out my brain, I’ve managed…Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:23:18 GMTadvicebusinessconsultingstart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/09/30/why-do-start-ups-keep-re-inventing-wheel/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/09/30/why-do-start-ups-keep-re-inventing-wheel/Recently I’ve met a number of start-ups who’ve spent lots of time and money building a custom solution for their new website or web application! Not everyone knows about web technology the way a Geek like me does, so hopefully I’ll catch you in time before you go to another developer offering you a custom…Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:40:07 GMTadvicestart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/09/24/offshoring-best-practices/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/09/24/offshoring-best-practices/Recently I’ve met a lot of start-ups asking me about offshoring because of my freelancing model. For those of you who aren’t aware of what I do, part time I freelance for start-ups and other companies developing Drupal sites (because Drupal is amazing and can do everything!) Because I wanted to keep it part time…Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:08:19 GMTadviceoffshoringhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/21/first-24hrs-iphone/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/21/first-24hrs-iphone/Yesterday, I walked past an O2 store that had iPhone 3Gs in stock (a rare event these days!), so on impulse, because I’d already been drawn in by their sexiness and my friends who had one couldn’t stop going on about them, I decided it was finally time to buy one. My disappointment started as…Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:57:10 GMTapplegadgetsiphonehttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/09/beijing-olympics-opens-spectacularly/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/09/beijing-olympics-opens-spectacularly/When I was a kid, I remember watching the Olympics on TV and thinking it was pretty boring. Then in 2004, I went to the Athens Olympics to visit all my friends. I think that’s when I finally got what the Olympics was all about! It was amazing! The atmosphere, the parties, produced by all…Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:58:50 GMTbeijingchinaeventsolympicshttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/07/ultimate-online-porn-application/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/07/ultimate-online-porn-application/This morning I went again to OpenCoffee to meet some fellow entrepreneurs, and met Tim from Scene Stealer, who told me about their new online clothes shop where people can pick their size and see a model of the same size wearing the clothes before they purchase. Sounded a lot like the infamous Boo.com that…Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:53:36 GMTideaporntechhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/05/my-new-business-cards/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/05/my-new-business-cards/Today I just received my order of new business cards from VistaPrint. Now they weren’t as cheap as the ones they advertise on their site, because I added my own custom logo (my Southpark avatar that I use on this site) and you have to pay almost £6 just for the standard postage! So all…Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:20:49 GMTcareerhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/01/37signals-inspiration/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/08/01/37signals-inspiration/Yesterday I stumbled across “Getting Real”, a book from 37Signals, the creators of Basecamp and other small business software. You can read it online here. Its a great book, very simple and to the point and goes along very well with the presentation I put on my blog on Start-ups that rely on advertising models…Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:14:26 GMT37signalsstart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/31/british-library-good-reason-pay-taxes/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/31/british-library-good-reason-pay-taxes/Today I paid my second ever visit to the British Library in St. Pancras, but today I actually signed up! All you need is a picture ID (like drivers license) and a utility bill with your home address (like a phone bill). It takes 15 minutes to register as a reader, you get a card,…Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:34:59 GMTbritish librarystart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/24/ive-decided-rent-out-my-brain/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/24/ive-decided-rent-out-my-brain/Yesterday I went to a free training workshop on “Market Research & Marketing”by KIS Training. I have to say it was excellent, lasted the whole day, which is amazing considering it was completely free! They hold the workshop once a month, along with two other free sessions on writing a business plan and how to…Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:57:52 GMTcareerconsultinghttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/22/windows-vista-sucks-bit-doesnt-it/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/22/windows-vista-sucks-bit-doesnt-it/I just got my new laptop, a Dell XPS M1530! About time as I was being totally unproductive using a very old slow desktop that I couldn’t use away from home…anyway the laptop itself is pretty good, bigger than what I originally wanted, but livable. However, I now find myself using Windows Vista properly for…Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:54:03 GMTgadgetsMicrosoftranttechwindowshttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/08/are-all-good-ideas-already-thought/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/08/are-all-good-ideas-already-thought/Its a fact – there are more start-ups, more investors and more entrepreneurs out there. Cheap technology, easy access to funding and a general change in our generation’s attitude to going it alone means there’s never been so much innovation happening in any point of history! I think the cheap technology has had the biggest…Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:23:59 GMTbooksstart-uphttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/03/startup-business-models-rely-advertising-will-die/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/03/startup-business-models-rely-advertising-will-die/First of all I want to share this excellent book I picked up a few months ago in the airport on my way to India, “Smart Start-ups” by David Silver of the Angel capital firm Santa Fe Group. While the book is really about how the online communities we’ve seen such as MySpace and Facebook…Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:49:05 GMTadvicebooksstart-upvideohttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/02/intelligent-spamming/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/07/02/intelligent-spamming/If you’ve ever left a comment on my site, you may notice that it doesn’t appear right away. I like to approve them before they get put up for everyone to see and the main reason for that is not for flaming (I think any good blogger should be able to accept some critisim and…Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:53:34 GMTrantwebhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/06/27/new-chapter-my-life/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/06/27/new-chapter-my-life/When I found this cartoon many years ago while bored in St. Charles training (at http://www.bigtimeconsulting.com) I kept it on my desktop for the day I would quit Accenture. Now after 3.5 years, today is my last day in Accenture, and to be honest I put the cartoon up not because I feel this was…Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:22:21 GMTAccenturecareersambastreamhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/04/15/how-make-friends-new-place-when-youre-lonely-business-traveller/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/04/15/how-make-friends-new-place-when-youre-lonely-business-traveller/After over one year travelling for my work (S. Korea, US, Thailand, Dubai, Hong Kong, US again and now India!!!) by myself I’ve got used to going to a new place with no friends or contacts and having to go out and make friends or face sitting around by myself every-night in my apartment/hotel and…Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:51:45 GMTadvicetravellinghttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/19/arthur-c-clarke-sadly-passes-away/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/19/arthur-c-clarke-sadly-passes-away/Today, one of my favorite authors, Arthur C. Clarke, passed away. The guy was a creative genius and inspired me to take an interest in space technology and the space industry. Famed for his book (later turned into a film) 2001, he wrote numerous books which I still keep on my bookshelf today. May he…Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:54:08 GMTarthur c clarkeeventshttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/18/back-us-and-political-drama/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/18/back-us-and-political-drama/You know you’re back in the US when people don’t understand you saying “tomato” anymore… I got back yesterday to Baltimore after my week home in the UK and will be here for another 3 weeks. However I have noticed some disturbing developments in the US Democratic Primaries since I’ve been away. Its getting nasty!…Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:42:12 GMTobamapoliticsUShttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/16/creating_world_without_poverty/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/16/creating_world_without_poverty/A couple of months ago I picked up “Creating a World Without Poverty” by Muhammad Yunus. I knew who Muhammad Yunus was, but I’d never read a book by him. However it was the title that grabbed my attention and the overview talking about his idea for Social Businesses. And yes – it took me…Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:35:22 GMTbooksNGOssocial enterprisehttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/13/future-space-tourism/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/13/future-space-tourism/This evening I went to the IET‘s main headquarters in London, Savoy Place, to listen to a presentation by Robert Lainé, Chieft Technical Officer for EADS Space (part of Astrium), as part of the IET’s Kevlin lecture series. The presentation was on EADS Space’s new launch vehicle designed for sub-orbital flights to 100km, designed specifically…Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:18:03 GMTIETspace industrytechhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/10/global-warming-really-issue-us/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/10/global-warming-really-issue-us/I’m finally back in London after 2 months away in the US, albeit briefly as apparently I will need to return to Baltimore next week again…Wink So I just went downstairs in our London office for lunch in the canteen, and picked up The Guardian, not my favorite newspaper but the only one available, and…Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:16:00 GMTglobal warmingUShttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/07/finally-new-clear-strategy/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/07/finally-new-clear-strategy/This week the British government announced they were full steam ahead for building more nuclear power plants to meet the UK’s growing energy needs and reduce our CO2 impact in the world. This is after a decade of indecision! While I understand the risks inherent with nuclear reactors and nuclear waste disposal, this is long…Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:30:25 GMTglobal warmingpoliticsUKhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/05/google-sites-not-sharepoint/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/03/05/google-sites-not-sharepoint/When I visited Google.org 2 weeks ago in DC (blog here) I managed to get a sneak preview of their new offering, Google Sites, but was unable to blog about it as I’d signed a NDA when I went into the building. Now its been officially launched I am free to share my opinion on…Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:21:08 GMTECMgooglegoogle sitesSharePointhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/27/i-am-entj/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/27/i-am-entj/My friend from work just sent me another one of those personality tests people love to do. You can take the test at Humanmetrics.com here. It was probably one of the more “scientific” tests I’ve taken, so I liked it, and I especially liked the result: ENTJ Extroverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging A full description of…Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:53:34 GMTpersonalityhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/21/googleorg-presents-dc/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/21/googleorg-presents-dc/Today I came to DC on an invite from Google.org to attend a conference they were organising for NGO’s in the area. It was a great day, if anything just to see all the people I’ve been working with in the sector since I started ADP almost a year ago – NetHope, Ashoka, Red Cross.…Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:14:11 GMTgoogleNGOssocial enterprisehttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/12/seeing-barack-obama-live-baltimore/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/12/seeing-barack-obama-live-baltimore/As I mentioned in a previous blog, I’ve been getting caught up in US politics the last couple of months as the primaries go on around me. Yesterday I actually had a chance to see Obama speak live in front of 17,000 people at the Baltimore Arena, 2 blocks away from where I work. The…Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:01:38 GMTeventsobamapoliticsUShttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/05/firefox-becoming-more-unstable/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/05/firefox-becoming-more-unstable/Now I know I’m not the first person to complain about this, I just did a quick Google search and it appears this problem is common. I have noticed that my very good and stable browser Firefox, running on Windows XP, has become less stable as new releases come out. What surprises me is that…Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:40:48 GMTbrowsersfirefoxtechwebhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/05/online-desktops-enterprises/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/02/05/online-desktops-enterprises/When I was working out in Hong Kong last October, I noticed the developer was using a desktop through his browser. I thought it was a remote desktop to his PC back at home, but it turned out that it was an online virtual desktop from Startforce.com. I signed up, and I’ve got to say…Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:16:12 GMTenterpriseonline desktopsstartforcetechwebhttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/01/30/captain-abu-raed-wins-audience-award-sundance/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/01/30/captain-abu-raed-wins-audience-award-sundance/One of my closest friends Phaedra, from Jordan, works as a freelance for the film industry in Jordan and has been involved in many movies that have been shot there, both Hollywood (who film most of the middle east war films there) and local. She just let me know about this really interesting film that…Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:13:38 GMTfilmsmiddle easthttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/01/28/idea-obama/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/01/28/idea-obama/Even though I am a UK citizen (or as I prefer to call myself a citizen of the world!), I, like millions of other people around the world, take an interest in US politics. The reason is pretty obvious, as Bush has shown with his devastating foreign policies, America is the only country in the…Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:37:44 GMTglobal warmingobamapoliticsUShttps://davidgildeh.com/2008/01/17/workplace-revolution-corporate-responsibility/https://davidgildeh.com/2008/01/17/workplace-revolution-corporate-responsibility/CNN did an interesting piece this morning on how new graduates are actively looking to join companies that are green and socially responsible. This is great news, as I myself have been a volunteer on Accenture’s Accenture Development Partnerships for the past 10 months, and even better because CNN spent most of the piece talking…Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:17:06 GMTAccentureADPcareerNGOsvideohttps://davidgildeh.com/2007/10/03/bangkok-life/https://davidgildeh.com/2007/10/03/bangkok-life/For my work with Accenture Development Partnerships, I did a presentation to my group in the UK to show them life out in Bangkok, where I’ve been working for the past 7 months. The presentation went great, but unfortunately they ran out of time to show the video, so I’ve posted it up on YouTube…Wed, 03 Oct 2007 01:08:44 GMTAccentureBangkokcareerThailandtravellingvideohttps://davidgildeh.com/2007/07/01/smoking-ban-comes-force-today-and-includes-shisha/https://davidgildeh.com/2007/07/01/smoking-ban-comes-force-today-and-includes-shisha/Following on from my previous blog on this issue, today the smoking ban came into force across the UK, and although this is a great thing, unfortunately Shisha was included in the ban as the petition didn’t get anywhere close the number of signatures it needed to get this issue raised (the final count is…Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:52:42 GMTopinionshishashisha banUKhttps://davidgildeh.com/2007/06/03/building-wealth/https://davidgildeh.com/2007/06/03/building-wealth/When I was returning from the NetHope summit in Seattle, I had to stopover in Seoul airport for a few hours. After being watching all the Korean couples wearing matching track suits (so 80’s!) and remembering my fantastic experience working there 5 months earlier, I went to have a look in the terminal bookshop and…Sun, 03 Jun 2007 11:37:36 GMTbookseconomicsMBAMIT Sloanhttps://davidgildeh.com/2007/05/27/how-open-source-start-ups-can-benefit-ngos/https://davidgildeh.com/2007/05/27/how-open-source-start-ups-can-benefit-ngos/As mentioned in my last blog, I’ve been working in the NGO sector the past few months and also following Alfresco, the first open source Enterprise Content Management system. Through my contacts in Alfresco I’ve been talking about potential partnerships between Alfresco and the NGO sector. First of all, I have to dispel a myth,…Sun, 27 May 2007 05:40:48 GMTalfrescoECMNGOsopen sourcehttps://davidgildeh.com/2007/05/09/presenting-nethope-microsoft/https://davidgildeh.com/2007/05/09/presenting-nethope-microsoft/I’m here on my third day in Seattle, in the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. This place is fantastic, and yesterday I swear I saw Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) walking down the corridor! We also did a tour of Microsoft’s vision for how we will work in the next 3-7 years, round table video…Wed, 09 May 2007 21:07:54 GMTcareereventsMicrosoftNetHopeNGOsSharePointhttps://davidgildeh.com/2007/05/01/alfresco-first-open-source-enterprise-content-management-system/https://davidgildeh.com/2007/05/01/alfresco-first-open-source-enterprise-content-management-system/I’ve recently been running a vendor assessment for an NGO (Non Government Organisation, Charity) called NetHope. They are looking to build a collaboration Intranet for all their member NGO’s (there’s currently 18 of them!) to share information and documents. Obviously, I included Alfresco in the vendor assessment, and also Plone, which is heavily supported by…Tue, 01 May 2007 19:44:03 GMTalfrescoECMNGOsopen sourcehttps://davidgildeh.com/2007/04/11/smoking-ban-includes-shisha/https://davidgildeh.com/2007/04/11/smoking-ban-includes-shisha/Finally, I have a reason to use this blog (as opposed to my personal one for friends only) for something useful, although I will be adding more geek-blogs on open source shortly, as I have been following that with great interest (especially Alfresco). Following up on my blog a few months ago (I’ve pasted it…Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:33:04 GMTpoliticsrantshishashisha banUKhttps://davidgildeh.com/2006/10/20/hello-world/https://davidgildeh.com/2006/10/20/hello-world/I’ve installed Drupal, updated some configurations and updated some content. Bascially, I’ve got a website up and running finally! With Drupal its very easy to setup a site like this (it only took me half and hour of tinkering), the time from now on will be spent adding content and actually making this into a…Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:06:04 GMTdrupal