Starting my adventure in Zurich
by Ines Silva

It’s been a week since I arrived in Zurich. This is a new adventure, a new opportunity and a new challenge for me. I usually don’t create expectations about things, mainly because I want to be surprised by life and by the choices I made. So, with an open mind, I embraced this new challenge and want to make the most of it.

For what I’ve seen so far, this is an amazing opportunity to grow, to learn about different topics and to meet outstanding people from all over the world.

In the past, I’ve been involved in several different projects. Most of them had as a goal to promote an entrepreneurship culture among college students and all these projects were an amazing opportunity to grow and to learn about interesting people.

Usually, I only have two criteria when I’m making decisions about my future. First, I ask myself “Is this a good learning opportunity?” and then I ask “Am I going to meet people that can inspire me?”. In the case of Sandbox, the two questions had the same answer, a BIG YES. It’s great to be in a startup, surrounded by amazing people that make you feel very welcomed. It’s also amazing to receive different inputs from the team as well as the opportunity to talk with different people every day, with great projects, fantastic ideas and a will to change the world.

It’s really difficult to find a place like this, but since I found it, I want to make the most of it!

Enter Sandbox
by Richard Hylerstedt

If I were into metal, I’d make up a better pun on Metallica’s Enter Sandman  to describe my feeling of stepping into the office as not only a member but as Community Manager of Sandbox. As it now happens, French house music and electro are my favorite cup of tea (speaking of tea, make it green and flowery while you’re at it, please), so no luck there. But the feeling is still there and it’s a feeling that I am now in a position where I will be able to use and develop skills that I have worked on for years. And to make things even better, I’ll be applying myself to manage and improve a fascinating community of the world’s most amazing people. I’m equally humbled and excited.

Already at the airport I was subject to a prime example of people doing really good things. As I was queuing with my 46 kilos to buy a transfer ticket to Zurich center, an actually quite pretty girl came up to me and gave me her ticket for free public transport all over Switzerland for the rest of the day. She was getting on a flight and didn’t need it anymore. This little act of kindness sent me on a fantastic escapade where I enjoyed the sunny Swiss national holiday in Luzern, Bern and Winterthur. I’d like to think that the girl was inspired to give me her ticket by hearing about a project launched by a Sandboxer. So keep doing the great stuff and do let me know how I can assist you!

We are thrilled to announce that Sandbox has accepted its 500th member! Laurie Segall is Associate Producer at CNN and joined the Sandbox family yesterday.

It is amazing for us to see how the Sandbox community has grown over the course of the last year – one new member a day. One of our biggest learnings is that the greatest assets we can provide members with is selection and trust. Trust allows people to proactively approach each other, share their visions, dreams, and fears. Selection makes sure that people can collaborate with each other and interact on a peer level.

The worst thing that could happen to Sandbox is being reduced to an anonymous social network. We live from the fact that Sandboxers can build meaningful relationships that often end in real friendships. That’s why we have stuck to our one-new-member-a-day-only-policy: to make sure that each new member has the chance to be introduced to every other.

Long live Sandbox – to the next 500 Sandboxers to come!

Noor Bin Ladin started an internship last Monday as a community manager at the Sandbox Zurich headquarters. She will stay with us for 6 months before moving to London, where she will remain involved on a reduced basis. We figured that her unconventional name might raise some questions so we decided to introduce her publicly and tell her interesting story.

Welcome to the Sandbox team, Noor! We are very glad to have you on board. What is your background? Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Thank you Antoine. I am from Switzerland, I was born and raised in Geneva. My mom is of Swiss, Iranian and Russian descent, and my father is Saudi.

After graduating high school from College du Léman and completing my Swiss Maturité Diploma, I went on to pursue my Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Geneva. Extrovert and curious by nature, I enjoy meeting new people and exchanging ideas, learning from others and their experiences.

Why do you feel you have to give this interview?

Sandbox is an organization that unites young thinkers and doers who I am sure will contribute to shaping up the world and our future. I feel privileged to be a part of this family, I admire its inspiring members and I couldn’t be happier to be working with such a brilliant team. Upon joining this tight nit community, I am aware that my name will raise questions that have to be answered and Sandboxers are entitled to know who I am and where I stand.

What is your connection to the most famous of your family members?

Actually, apart that he is one of my father’s brother that I have never even met, none whatsoever.

Have you ever been to Saudi Arabia?

No, my parents and sisters Wafah and Najia already lived in Geneva when I was born. My parents split up when I was eight months old. My Mom was afraid that if my father took us to Saudi Arabia we would not return. She knew that women there are under the control of men, restricted in their freedom of choice, and that we would be forced to accept the dominance of men. She fought hard to obtain our custody. She wanted her girls to be raised open minded, just as she had been raised: without any religious constraints, and with respect of Western modern values.

Do you have any contact with the rest of your family?

As a result we were banned from the family. We are not in contact with any family members. My sisters and I tried several times to get in touch with our father but he refuses to see us probably because we do not behave as Saudi girls do.

How did you first hear about 9/11?

That tragic day was my second day in the ninth grade. My Mom and Wafah came to pick me up at school. The second plane had just hit, and my Mom rushed us home to meet my other sister Najia. We watched CNN in horror and disbelief as the Towers collapsed, the suffering and distress of all these innocent victims was such a tragedy. I cried all night, I was in shock. Just the year before, I had bought an American flag in South Carolina and pinned it to my wall. Then, an hour before our name was linked to these barbaric acts, my Mom took us and told us: “Listen, you have to prepare yourself. Your name is going to be everywhere in the news.” As soon as the second plane had hit, she had understood our lives would never be the same.

So your Mom knew Osama Bin Laden was behind everything?

My Mom was very aware of the danger of these extremists and had the conviction that the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 wouldn’t be the last. On September 9, 2001, when Commander Massoud of Afghanistan was assassinated, she realized that something terrible was about to happen. Commander Massoud, the leader of the only resistant force against the Taliban, could be the only help to the U.S. when they would be forced to retaliate. The extremists in the country wanted him removed, they were up to something big. But she could not imagine that they would target the US on their very soil and with such magnitude.

How were the next few days after the attacks like for you?

We were outraged by these horrific acts, saddened by the tragedy, thinking about all the victims and their families. I remember going to school the next day. People came up to me to ask if I was alright. I was a renown American by heart and was often teased about it, so they knew that I was devastated. At home, we had CNN on 24/7, and as we were the only Bin Ladins with a listed number, my Mom was trying to cope with the phone ringing all the time with journalists asking questions, and with the hatred calls, insults, and even death threats we were receiving.

Since then, how have you lived with that name?

We were in a quite difficult position – with no protection from the family on one side, and with a name that associated us with the most hated man in the West, in our world. In order to cut short all the legitimate amalgamation with our name and our true feelings and values, the 4 of us had to go public and explain our situation. My sisters and I had to overcome our fear and share our sadness and express that we strongly condemn these acts. We wanted our world to know where we stand, even if by doing so it meant becoming a target to extremists seeing us as traitors. That led to the publishing of my Mom’s book, Inside the Kingdom: My life in Saudi Arabia.

What’s the book about?

She had already put down in writing for the three of us her analysis of the Saudi society, before 9/11. She wanted us to understand why she had took difficult decisions, in order for us as girls to live our life entirely as we set out to, without having to answer to anybody else because of their gender. A woman is always under tutorship of a man in Saudi Arabia, her father or brother, until she gets married. She would always need the authorization of her husband to leave the country.

My Mom started fearing for the future of my sisters (I wasn’t born yet) as she thought about which brother would be in charge of them if something happened to our father. She had heard many horrifying stories in a country where a woman is put to death by her own grandfather for falling in love and wanting to elope, a country where a forced marriage can be arranged with a extremely religious cousin. More than a story of a Mother and her convictions to her daughters, the book is a great insight to understand a society that my Mom was able to analyze due to her privileged position.

Have you been to the United States since 9/11?

Yes, over half a dozen times.

Wasn’t it complicated for you to pass through immigration?

I have never had a bad experience with the customs officers. Of course I have to go through immigration (it wouldn’t be quite right if I didn’t) and wait for Washington to clear my entry but they have always been kind and open minded about my story. Once I was entering US territory through Logan airport and had everything checked for about two hours. During that time we talked, I told them about my Mom, her battle for our freedom, and how we are “westernized”. Upon checking the content of my IPod, the officer turned to me and said “Yeah, you really are westernized!”.

In general, Americans have been really supportive. People in New York sometimes stop my Mom in the street to tell her how brave she is and how much they appreciated her book. Their understanding and kindness helped me cope with the burden of my name.

Did you ever think of changing your name?

No. My Mom, both my sisters and I have nothing to hide and we feel changing our name would be lying to people about who we are, we choose to explain.

What does carrying the name Bin Ladin mean to you?

As you can imagine, It has been quite difficult carrying a name that is associated with terror in the world I live in, with a man who took so many innocent lives and whose values are so opposed to mine, who attacked a country that I love.

I believe it’s a whole, the fact of being born in that family and cultural background and with that name has shaped me. It has made me more aware and truly appreciate my freedom of choice and not take it for granted. I feel blessed to have the freedom to decide for myself and choose my path in my life. I realize that many girls in this world are denied their fundamental right of choice and my heart goes out to them.

Antoine Verdon is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. He is continuously amazed by the drive and the positive energy of Lilly and Noor, the two Sandbox community managers, and is proud to be working with such a great team!

After an amazing year 2009, it’s time to think about our goals for 2010. You will find more information below about what happened in the last twelve months and what we have planned for next year !

What we have achieved this year

In 12 months, we have incorporated a company, established a small but global, very active and valuable network, started a business, and passed from one to four full time positions, enlarging the team to 9 people. You can find a detailed review here.

What we want to achieve in 2010

We have two main objectives for next year:

1) make Sandbox bigger, more trusted and more valuable for its members

2) make the network financially sustainable

Developing the community

The Sandbox online community is now eight months old. A lot has been done, but a lot still needs to be done until it can run it at full speed. We have several projects that will bring change over the next months:

1) Application process

We want to make the application process more efficient, more transparent, and involve our local communities more. We will exchange our ideas with the community in the next weeks and do a first test in a key hub until April.

2) More hubs, more active

With 18 hubs, we have already created a truly global network. In these 18 places, an Ambassador is in charge, the community meets on a regular basis, and visitors are introduced to local people matching their interests. In some of them, the community is still limited to a couple of members; we want to foster the growth of the existing Sandbox hubs – in quantity and in quality – and create new active hubs in several new cities allover the globe. The next ones will be Delhi and Toronto.

3) Better online community

Our current online platform was great for launching the network. With both our member base and services expanding, we now want to migrate to a customized solution as soon as possible. This will allow a better integration of all community services, as well as easier networking and better possibilities to collaborate on projects.

Earning money

source: Flickr

We realized recently that we have never communicated very clearly how Sandbox earns money. We are aware that this has brought uncertainty for some of you, which goes against Sandbox being the trusted place we aim to create.

So here’s what we did : After having tested different concepts for a while, we have now definitively formalized our business model. We had several small money-earning projects, but we mostly paid our running costs out of the investment we received back in May.

What we want to achieve with a Sandbox business

In the past months, we put a lot of thoughts into what we want to do and what our focus should be. Here is a summary of the key points:

1. Finance the community

Our primary goal is to finance the community, not to make money for ourselves; if our main goal had been money, we would have started a career in banking or consulting.

2. Professional community management

The Sandbox community is so precious that it should be managed professionally, with people paid to take care of it on a full time basis.

3. Do what we are passionate about

We believe in doing what we’re passionate about and doing it well, money will follow.

How we will do it

1. The concept

One thing we are all passionate about is problem solving. We want to enable organizations to benefit from the creative capacity of the Sandbox community. We have been proving the concept with several members on small projects ranging from a major European airport, a car manufacturer, a German city and a global Bank. We now want to take this concept to the next level!

Over the next weeks, we will contact members to participate in one or another project. We might ask them to participate in a workshop or just to brainstorm with us for an hour. For some projects, we will be able to pay members, for some other, we won’t. In any case, members are of course always free to say no: there is no obligation of any kind to participate.

source: Idiagram.com

2. And the values behind it

For every service we deliver, we want Sandboxers to benefit from one or several of the following:
a) Interaction with senior management of global companies
b) Learning about new fields, working on really cool projects
c) Personal exposure, we tell where the idea comes from and in some cases, we let members present the findings themselves
d) Knowledge database: we share the results with our members on the online community
e) Material rewards (if possible)

More than ever, we are very much looking forward to hearing your feedback! Don’t hesitate to contact Julian, Paul or myself if you want to learn more about our services or the Sandbox community.

Wishing you a happy new year and sending very best wishes from the whole team!

Antoine is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. He is in Belgium until Monday and had a wonderful New Year’s Eve at the Antwerp Opera House yesterday, where Sandboxer Victoria Pfortmüller worked as director’s assistant for a very colorful version of Candide from Leonard Bernstein.

Sandbox member Brian W. Jones is currently living in Greensboro, Alabama where he helped start PieLab, a welcoming community space focused on civic engagement, economic revitalization, and job training. He describes himself as a designer, “trying to redefine what that means and the role I play in business”.

What is your latest project?

I’m working on a few things right now, but a recent project getting a lot of notice is PieLab—an idea developed at a Project M session last spring with a group of 14 designers. I showed up as an advisor, but ended up leaving as a participant, really believing in this idea. But, to make the project really happen, someone needed to act. So in just a few weeks, three others and myself moved to Alabama and began building what would become PieLab.

PieLab is a welcoming community space focused on civic engagement, economic revitalization, and job training in one of the poorest counties in the U.S. It also operates as a design studio working on community development projects and small business incubation. The initial plan was to open a pop-up shop for the summer, but after receiving a few small grants and being well received by the community, we opened a permanent location on Maine Street earlier this month.

What are you doing and how did you get there?

I’m no longer involved in the daily routines of PieLab, but I take part in meetings, volunteer on weekends, and continue to run my own studio from the back of the shop. Project M—a program started by John Bielenberg that inspires young designers to prove their work can have a positive and significant impact on the world—has played a large role in where I am now, as well as a number of the places I’ve been in the past. John is a good friend and colleague who I continue to collaborate with on various endeavors.

Tell us about the biggest successes and failures in your life. What worked, what didn’t, and what did you learn?

The day PieLab opened may have been one of the most successful of my life. To see something so large, conceived of and brought to life in less than two months—with just $600—had a profound impact on what I view as possible. I haven’t really had a major failure, but I’m still young, give me time. One thing I continually learn from everything I do is that there will always be people doing nothing, who will criticize everything you do—ignore them and don’t give up.

What do you want to achieve in the next week, the next year, the next 10 years?

This week I’ll be in New York, so I’d like to meet a few Sandboxers in real life and continue to grow the relationships I’ve begun virtually. In the next year, I hope to start grad school at Yale or live overseas. There’s a lot to be learned from European culture and business that I think will be imperative to future success in the U.S. In the next ten, I’d like to start a profitable business that’s just as engaged in the community as a non-profit one.

What was your most inspring moment during the last two weeks?

A delicious bowl of mushroom risotto. Great food is a tangible example of creativity at its best.

]]> http://www.sandbox-network.com/meet-a-sandboxer/meet-a-sandbox-member-brian-w-jones/feed/ 0 http://www.sandbox-network.com/sandbox/new-community-services-launched-today/ http://www.sandbox-network.com/sandbox/new-community-services-launched-today/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:13:12 +0000 Sandbox http://www.sandbox-network.com/?p=272 Today at 12, we have launched several new services on the Sandbox community. Have a look below to learn more! These services are designed to help Sandboxers make the most out of the network: find places to sleep or work when traveling, exchange ideas, look for people for their projects or for new opportunities, get introduced to new people and access an extensive list of online resources.

GEOLOCATOR (new!)

The Geolocator is a great tool to meet fellow Sandboxers when on the way. It also gives some statistics about our travel habits: ever wondered how many kilometers Sandboxers travel every year?

INTRODUCTION CONCIERGE (new!)

Feeling lonely in a new city? Looking for someone with specific knowledge in the Sandbox network? Our Introduction Concierge will do everything in his power to answer your request.

COWORKING (new!)

Are you looking for a temporary office somewhere? Maybe a Sandboxer can help! Check out this map, and if you have a free space in your own office, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

RESOURCES (new!)

Access a great list of resources selected by the community and by the Sandbox team. Learn about academia, business & career, starting up, how to find employees, innovation, leadership, networking and others.

IDEAS (new!)

Access a stream of fresh ideas and discussions by fellow Sandboxers. Ask your questions, help other members, or post your craziest ideas and the most inspiring links you come across!

COUCHSURFING

Are you traveling and are looking for a place to stay? Do you have a
couch or a spare bed that could be used by fellow Sandboxers
visiting your city? Try Sandbox Couchsurfing!

AMBASSADORS

The Ambassadors are the core of our offline network. They are among the best connected people in the network, organize local events and are your main point of contact in all the cities where we are represented.

Antoine is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. He is flying to Berlin tomorrow morning where he will attend the Palomar5 final Summit, together with a dozen other Sandboxers from all around.

A month ago, we sent out a survey to the members, with the objective to learn more about what they are expecting from the Sandbox community. A key point was the access to senior leaders, and we are currently working on creating this kind of opportunity accessible to a large number of Sandboxers.

In the meanwhile, we are preparing the launch of a small pack of services, that are currently being beta tested by some members. Among them, we have a Geolocator, an Introduction Concierge and a platform for idea exchange. If you are a member and would also like to be part of this beta test, don’t hesitate to write me an email! We are always happy to get fresh feedback.

Antoine is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. He just sent a newsletter using Campaign Monitor, a newsletter management tool, and is fascinated by all the possibilities offered for creating mailings and improving them over time (and is not paid to say that!).

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Following the start of our Community Month, we had quite some thoughts in the last days about how value is created for the Sandbox community. We came to the following figure that summarizes the three key areas we identified:

1. Local value
- Meet fellow members in real life at Sandbox Dinners
- Be invited to exciting local events and conferences
- Meet high profile senior people

2. Travel value
- Meet Sanbox Ambassadors in every of our hubs, who will introduce you to the local members
- Find a couch to sleep on when on the road

3. Global value
- Meet people globally
- Get access to a range of services (jobs, speaking engagements, access to investors for your projects)
- Find partners for your projects
- Exchange ideas

What do you think of this way of presenting value-added to members? Can you imagine a better visualization? What did we forget?

In the past months, we have been working hard to create value for our members, connecting them with each other, organizing dinners all around the world, offering them unique opportunities and facilitating the creation of some really cool projects.

But at the same time, we have the feeling that we could do much more. Therefore we announce that October will be the Community Month, a month during which we will work internally and together with the community on finding new ways to generate value for our members.

We will share our ideas with you on this blog during the next 4 weeks. And on November 2, you will learn more about the services to be launched!

Antoine is the CEO and a Co-Founder of Sandbox. He is currently working late hours in London where – thanks to Christian – he has found a temporary office space in the brand new Management building of the LSE. It’s freshmen week here so there might be a good party later tonight!