I was on a quick visit to Lisbon this past weekend to coordinate things in preparation for our Global Summit. Outside of my hectic agenda, I spent some time exploring Lisbon and the city really showed itself from its best side (15 degrees centigrade one week before christmas holidays is breathtaking for a swede). The sunset above, at Praça do Comércio, was just one of the amazing experiences.

As you can see, getting from the Summit venue, the Museum of Fashion and Design, to the Praça do Comércio, is as quick as eating a piece of bacalhau. Just turn left, pass under the arch and you step right up to the majestic statue of José I.

Bairro Alto is apparently the place to go at night. Locals gather in heaps on the “Pink Street”, a tiny side road that is brightly painted and lined with bars on both sides. Among those the Sol e Pesca, Sun and Fishing, which is a sport fishing shop converted into a bar. It’s easy to get hooked!

Despite the hilly topography, trams are everywhere in Lisbon. It’s a fantastic way to get around, because you see the city at exactly the right pace. On some backstreets, you are swept away by the fresh smell of laundry hanging out to dry in the crisp evening air.

But Sandboxers are not gathering in Lisbon to do the usual tourist stuff. We are bringing members and guests together for an intense weekend of bonding and peer-to-peer acceleration. The place where this happens is our 72 hour lobby, lounge and workshop in the former bank office on the third floor of MUDE. Our design team is working on transforming this raw space into the ultimate urban playground for changemakers. Needless to say, we are extremely excited to unleash the most exceptional people we know in this space. See you in the Lisbox!

Bonus:

While in Lisbon, I ran into Sandboxer Sebastian Lindstrom of What Took You So Long who was in Portugal to check out the vibe and the surf before his winter skiing break. He brought his video camera to MUDE and put together this intense video of the event space. Embrace the chaos!

Every day, we look at everything that is going on in the Sandbox, searching for impactful projects, stories and ideas by Sandboxers. We then repost the most interesting, inspiring or brilliant stuff here on our blog.

Today Edward Harran shares with us his recent talk at TEDxBrisbane. You can read Edward’s thoughts on the talk on his blog. Edward is eager to hear your feedback and ideas on how to accelerate the knowmadic movement, so get back to him via Twitter or Facebook.

Edward speaks about his personal journey and where he sees the future of learning and self-expression. Through Sandbox and his other networks, Edward has become connected to people who, like himself, are seeing an evolution toward a rebirth of the renaissance person. But the key question is: Which are the frameworks of this evolution that will provide groundedness for the emerging tribe of knowmads?

We believe that Sandbox, as a family for young talents who think differently and therefore achieve extraordinary things, is definitely one of them. And we are inspired each day by learning about the initiatives for a new breed of learning and education that thrive among our members. One example is Kundavi, that recently hosted the Sandbox Transamerica Expedition. Take a short flight from Kundavi’s first creativity hub in Los Cabos, Mexico, and you land in at the blackbox mansion. This commune for technology entrepreneurs is contributing to the emerging science of high-tech entrepreneurship through its global network. Up in the Rockies, in Boulder, CA, resides the Unreasonable Institute, an accelerator for the most ambitious changemakers. But this is only the beginning of the Hippie 2.0 movement.

Like his fellow Sandboxers, Edward doesn’t believe in a world of information noise. Statements and visions yield the best results when they are coupled with action. Seeing what is coming is important and so is doing something with it. So if you are already on the same knowmadic path as Edward or have ideas on how he could proceed with his exploration, don’t hesitate to reach out to him.

Each day, we look at everything that is going on in the Sandbox, searching for impactful projects, stories and ideas by Sandboxers. We then repost the most interesting, inspiring or brilliant stuff here on our blog.

Today Fabian Kalker presents his newborn music project Junior. You can listen to their first single below and a few more demo tracks here. In exchange for your feedback via email, Fabian will also send you an exclusive download link.

“Meet Junior, an up and coming band at home between Berlin and New York. We started Junior out of love for both good songwriting and driving beats. We are one singer-songwriter and one electronic music producer. We love vintage instruments, old drum machines and get a kick out of the perfect line to say. Our common ground is that we spend our lives in and out of the Kreuzbergs and Bushwicks of this world, loving and hating it.

There is more than enough to share on the fine line between poetry and irony when you watch closely. And then it becomes about life, and love, since in the end, that’s all there is, innit?

Junior is literally a few weeks old but it is already showing its potential – and what a pleasure to have you, Sandboxers and friends of Sandbox, having a listen and a look as early in the process as now. Lend us your ear: give us feedback, share the video with your friends and your connections – right now we are looking for partners to develop the band. It could be a label, graphics or something we can’t think of right now – but you might!

Most importantly we hope you enjoy watching and listening. If you feel like it, get involved! Drop us a line at meetjunior@gmail.com and get an exclusive free download of the song “Die Bushwick” in return!”

Meet Dalumuzi Happy Mhlanga. At just 21, he is the founder and CEO of Lead Us Today, and a sophomore at Harvard University. He is also the third person to be featured in the video series jointly produced by the Sandbox Network and Sandboxer Sebastian Lindstrom. Sebastian was recently on a world tour through Sandbox hubs, along with the rest of the team from What Took You So Long.  At their first stop in NYC, they interviewed Sandbox co-founder Fabian Pfortmueller. Next, they made a quick trip to Brown University, where they connected with Sandboxer Jaap Ruoff. Everybody being interviewed has to answer this question: What Took You So Long? Find out Dalumuzi’s answer, and then ask yourself…What took YOU so long?

So the year 2009 is over and with it the first decade of the new millennium. A perfect moment to look back and ahead to assess what was and what will be. We already did this for Sandbox with our Year in Review and Roadmap for 2010 blog posts.

But of course, it’s not just about us. What else happened? If you have trouble remembering, this great video from Newsweek should get you started: It summarizes the last decade in 7 breathtaking minutes. To dig a bit deeper, we recommend the New York Magazine’s exhaustive “Encyclopedia of Counterintuitive Thought” for the last decade (including the realization that amateurs are better than experts and that being smart doesn’t get you ahead).

But there was also a lot going just last year. We’ll just point you to this long collection of “2009 lists” where you’ll find everything from the freakiest commercials to the best red carpet moments of 2009.

And what will 2010 bring us? We don’t know exactly, but these ten great business ideas from last year might prove disruptive in this one. We also liked some of HBR’s “breakthrough ideas” for twenty-ten, and we agree with basically all of the web trends predictions that CNN published.

Whatever 2010 wil bring – we’re excited that it’s here!

Image by Hamachii on Flickr

Nico has co-founded Sandbox and is currently working on a list of topics that WE think will be huge in 2010. We’ll publish it here in a few days.

One of the amazing things about working at Sandbox is that we interact every day with extremely inspiring young people allover the world. Their ideas, their projects and their way of creating new things take our breath away, day by day, may it be science fiction by the Sandbox twins Suresh and Jyoti Guptara, pirate politics by Philippe Nantermod, the Green Soul Shoes project by New York based Sandboxer Stephen Chen, or the idea by our members from the Palomar5 crew to create a 6 week innovation camp in Berlin.

Surrounded by that much of creative people, we can’t help but play around with ideas all the time. This of course happens constantly. But once a week we meet to brainstorm as a whole team and develop ideas on how to make this the most valuable community for young achievers. Ever. And every week we change locations.

Our last team brainstorming session at Cafi Z

Are you working on a big new idea? Are you passionate about bringing the world a bit forward, step by step? Apply to Sandbox, tell us what your next big idea is and meet a carefully selected group of like-minded people across the globe who love ideas. And even more to turn these ideas into reality.

As part of the event, I did a series of short video interviews with several of the startups as well as with Mike from TechCrunch. You can find all the videos on YouTube here. We also seized the opportunity to do an interview about Sandbox – I interviewed Antoine and Fabian about our project, which was admittedly a tad self-referential . Check out the video below.