Kathmandu 1990. And can I blame the earthquake.

First time I went to Nepal was 1990. After a truly arduous journey through India, I was ready for the peace, calm and beauty everyone talked to me about in Nepal. I took the bus up to Srinagar, and then to Kathmandu. I never forget the moment I opened up my eyes in the bus after my dozing off for few hours of sleep; bus climbing the conic shaped Himalayas and hundreds shades of green shaping these enormous heights we were climbing. It felt like we were going into some land so taken away from rest of the world, so impossible to reach. When I got to Kathmandu, I felt like I found exactly what I came here for. The calm. The quiet and reserved but kind people of Nepal; beautiful small ‘village’ of Kathmandu with small streets. It was so easy to get around that I rented a bicycle and ventured out into nearby towns. Buildings were two story tall, the temples stood out. The summer of 1990 was also a very strange time, country almost quiet after the turmoil of many protests and demonstrations which turned deadly within the year but the king finally lifting the ban on political parties. At the time Kathmandu was almost the only ‘city’ in the country, rest pretty much small village like towns, and most of country largely with rural populations.

Next time I went to Nepal was 2004. I desperately needed ‘the calm’, and it was the only place I knew which would stop the train in my brain running millions of miles an hour. When I arrived to Kathmandu, the peace has left. The city became a city with multi story apartments and probably grew ten fold in size. I was sitting at the rooftop of my newly built five story hotel and could see the town stretched to the mountains; populated with slums starting at the edges.  The leftist front guerrillas and the civil war almost coming to an end and country making a decision to go back to peaceful times. I remember people with guns in their commando outfits coming down on the rural roads walking towards to Kathmandu in most unexpected places; and also trucks full of people waving Maoist flags at the outskirts of the overblown city. The long fought battle left people with so much emotion that they were demonstrating everywhere; but also the rural people tired of the fighting already left for the cities and the huge population explosion with new buildings.

As I read about the temple in Danbar square, built in sixteen hundreds, destroyed this morning; I remember all the many more peaceful cities I cherished in me, and how many of them will be no more lands of tranquillity and beauty, like what we saw in Damascus and Aleppo or Sarajevo. It is not earthquakes or the nature to blame. It is us who create oppression, poverty, forced immigrations, disruption to nature causing power struggles and wars. I am counting and list keeps growing.

Partnerships Are Key to Tapping Wearable Tech Written By Me - Business of Fashion - April 7, 2015

From 13th-century eyeglasses to modern-day yoga pants, fashion and technology have always been inextricably linked. But to tap the promise of wearable tech, we need to foster a new ecosystem of players, argues Ayse Ildeniz of Intel’s New Devices Group.

Opening Ceremony and Intel's MICA | 

SANTA CLARA, United States — Wearable technology is creating a new space for innovation and attracting the attention of a diverse and growing ecosystem of players, from Silicon Valley to Madison Avenue and fashion megabrands to small designers with big ideas who are willing to push the boundaries of what’s possible. Even casual observers can’t miss the eye-grabbing headlines about Apple’s $10,000 smartwatch or recent moves by TAG Heuer and Gucci.

With retail revenues from wearable devices projected to exceed $53 billion by 2019, according to Juniper Research, there is little reason to wonder why so many people are watching the wearables space. But if wearables are going to make the transition from high-tech novelty to everyday necessity, technology companies need to partner with leading designers and fashion brands to produce products that deliver real value without sacrificing style.

http://www.businessoffashion.com/community/voices/discussions/is-fashion-missing-the-technology-revolution#/partnerships-are-key-to-tapping-wearable-tech      

Brief history of time- Yes, everything, and time, is relative.

Now that I am stuck in an airplane w wifi for 6 hours.

-Interstellar.

Saw it in a movie theatre, dragged by my friend who suspected I dig sci-fi. A good attestment to relativity theory where three hours was far too long with too much packed of everything Hollywood suffers from. based on the theory that if you stuff it with enough science gibberish, folks will think you are smarter than them.

-uber ride with my Ugandan driver.

We agreed how expensive Nairobi and how bad Kampala traffic is; the Ethiopian politics today and that Chinese are taking Africa over. We both miss our sisters; he hasn’t seen her since 1987 when he left home as a refugee; and me only two weeks with the barbunya pilakisi she left in my refrigerator.

-I spoke at the alumni panel at the grad school I went to last weekend in SF.

Hiding in the crowd - Venice Bienalle: Architectural Spaces - www.veneziaubc.com

Unfurling by van Brandenburg at Museo Diocesano, Venice

İstanbul’dan kalanlar

SALT Beyoğlu’nda ‘Yazlık: şehirlinin kolonisi’

What will you MAKE?

Rome Maker Faire; transforming electronics—its all personal!

 I was with makers today in Rome at the opening ceremony in Rome maker Faire. It is our second year for entering into this space. And boy—what a year its been! We shipped two versions of Galileo board for Makers; we shipped Edison for promakers.

The most gratifying is to hang out with these incredibly creative techy people imagining wonderful things using technology. We demo’ed a motorcycle we prototyped with BMW which is smart, and you get all the information about the bike via a talking helmet! Our engineers did that in a matter of two weeks using an Edison chip… 7 billion people, 7 billion ideas to revolutionize how we think and how we make!!!!

I cant wait to wear that helmet on my headJ

‘By the way—I am an actor!’

The story of my week; how I managed to clear customs in Rome with Michael Madsen as his spouse and shared Gezi protest memories.

Arrived in Fumicino airport in Rome, the new terminal, majesticly large, but yet exactly three passport control officers. I am prepared for this everytime I come here, so quietly attended the very well organized que. Until when around 300 Russian speaking people swarmed around me, bypassed the entire que and lined up in a mass hysterical manner in front the by now invisible control points. I tried to hang in there for some ten minutes till I thought I was about to faint from lack of oxygen, smell of sweat and children bumping to my laptop bag. Then I decided to skip the whole thing and go back to find a chair alone and started stressing about how to make it the press meetings and rehearsal for my speech I need to deliver at the opening of Maker Faire tomorrow.

A very tall man came and sat close to me. We were the only two people who refused to stand up in the line or even take the chance, and as I was huffing and puffing and making frantic phone calls, he was doing the same. After a while we started chatting on solutions. We tried various options, appropriate and inappropriate which all proved to be not working. By this time stranger was looking all very familiar, he was wearing very peculiar snakeskin boots, many rings and certainly was fresh out of Los Angeles Melrose Avenue. I gathered he is some sort of actor that I have seen in my previous life but just could not gather who it was.

I was chatting with half of the Alitalia officers by then at the airport anyway to find a way out. We plotted on how we get assistance.. If he just could not walk… I said they wont buy it. He said ‘I am an actor’. He said just tell them you are my wife and I will say my knee popped out. I asked him his name, he said Michael Madsen. Then it all came to me… He was the man in my favourite ever movie Reservoir Dogs. He was the guy at Kill Bill. So there I went for some half hour, running around, convinced Alitalia that my husband who was coming from LA via London popped his knee out and could not walk and we needed assistance badly; and by the way he was a very famous American actor who came in for George Clooney wedding (not sure where that came from).

The New York Times / Intel and Opening Ceremony Collaborate on MICA, a Stylish Tech Bracelet

Tech, Meet Fashion

Intel and Opening Ceremony Collaborate on MICA, a Stylish Tech Bracelet

By NICK BILTONSEPT. 3, 2014

It’s time we stopped calling the current crop of gadgets “wearable tech.” Instead, I propose we start giving them a more appropriate name: “ugly tech.” Because let’s be realistic, most wearables today are really, really ugly.

Take the Pebble, a smart watch with a black-and-white screen, which first had its debut on Kickstarter in 2012. While geeks love the watch for its ability to show text messages and emails, the device itself looks like a small Kindle strapped to your wrist. Smartwatches made by LG, Samsung and Sony aren’t much better, with cheesy faux leather or rubber straps, and thick masculine watch faces that look as if they’re supposed to be paired with a pocket protector.

The Neptune Pine watch is so large, with its 2.4-inch screen, that at first glance it appears to be a joke product meant to poke fun at other gadgets. (Alas, it’s very real.)

But this genre of ugly could be on the precipice of change. On Tuesday, Apple, the venerable leader of cool, is expected to unveil a wearable iWatch that will, given the company’s track record, likely be the opposite of ugly.

The less-glamorous Pebble shows text messages and emails. CreditNatalia V. Osipova/The New York Times

While we don’t have much of an idea what the coveted iWatch will look like, I was able to glean one small detail from people at Apple who work on the company’s wearables.

I spoke at the TxT/The Details

I spoke in New York at the  Tech and Taste makers event on September 3 at New York Swiss Institute. I spoke on future of wearables and what internet of things will mean for consumers. It was organized by Details magazine, and brought a number of fashion, style, technology professionals from various industries.

I spoke at the re:MAKE

I got together with maker women in San Francisco on September 12 at Fort Mason Center. It was a very lively bunch and incredibly creative too! I spoke about the future of wearables as well as internet of things; and how these technologies will create an opportunity for individuals to be entrepreuners.

I also showed MICA! MICA is a bracelet which has is a jewellery piece with cutting-edge technology. And introduced Edison, our new platform to make all things smart!

Brit + Co is an online media and e-commerce platform that provides tools to teach, inspire, and enable creativity among women and girls. From traditional crafts to high-tech manufacturing, we connect millions of users with makers, designers, chefs, and inventors, together building a community of creativity.

You can find more on Brit here: http://www.brit.co/about/

Here is the Brit.co story on MICA from a few days ago as well: http://www.brit.co/opening-ceremony-intel-wearables/

Intel ve Opening Ceremony’den kadınlara hem şık hem akıllı bileklik: MICA

Intel ve Amerika’nın önde gelen moda evi Opening Ceremony, New York’ta gerçekleşen Fashion Week kapsamında düzenledigimiz Opening Ceremony İlkbahar/Yaz 2015 Defilesi’nde beklenen akıllı bileklik MICA’yı gün yüzüne çıkardi: “Benim Akıllı İletişim Aksesuarım”

Intel ve Opening Ceremony, New York’ta düzenlenen  Opening Ceremony İlkbahar/Yaz 2015 Defilesi’nde birlikte geliştirdigimiz akıllı bilekliği ilk kez sergiledik. Adını “My Intelligent Communication Accesory (Benim Akıllı İletişim Aksesuarım)” ifadesinin baş harflerinden alan MICA, Opening Ceremony tarafından tasarlandı ve Intel tarafından üretildi. Gelişmiş iletişim yeteneklerinin yanı sıra eşsiz tasarımıyla kadınsı bir aksesuar olan MICA, üretim sürecinin başından sonuna kadar bir moda tasarım markası ve küresel bir teknoloji şirketinin ortak çalışması sonucunda ortaya çıktı.

Nolita/soho digs, New York City.

Places to eat: The General’s Jazz room Asian food. The Mercer Hotel bistro appetizers. Phebe’s IPAs. Chobani, prince street,  breakfast a la Turk! DBGB’s (old punkrock establishment CBGB’s replaced via giant city block and a restaurant), burgers, on Bowery. New York classic pizza at Lombardi’s. Isola café/bar at the Mondrian, spritz. No time left: Cuban at Habana café, and Nolita Taco café. Places to stay: The Standard, east village, on cooper square. Coolest: Bond street. Elizabeth street park. The New Museum.

What being home means.

Take one. The wind.
Take two. Long way down dreams with the best crew.

Take three. Catching up a million years in sixty minutes.

Take four. Bumping into adventurers.

Take five. Saying goodbye over and over.

Ayse Arman Roportajim

Karşınızda Silikon Vadisi sakinlerinden Ayşegül İldeniz

Nefes kesen bir kadın. Yaptığı şeyleri sayarken takip edebilmek, hızına yetişebilmek bile zor. O hiperaktif değilse, hiç kimse değildir!

Expedition into the wilderness ---of self and others

How I dealt with ‘years of myself’ in the Gobi desert

I am just back from a week in the Mongolian steppes and Gobi desert. With 12 countrymen, twelve motorbikes, and a Kazakh woman. Being a chronic solo traveller, this expedition had presented huge risks with thirteen people whom I knew almost none, had no idea on their experience of travel or life for that matter. I been immersed into creating a completely new business past eight  months in a new continent with a new team, probably eating up every ounce of risk taking, creativity, persistence, ambition and perseverance that existed in my veins. I been flooded with an adrenaline rush since November last year, getting up to a new day every day where every second every move every player had to be contemplated and executed from scratch. So how did this physical strenuous activity in mongolia that involved people I didn’t know and extreme conditions fit to that state of mind?

My Tech Republic’s article about Wearables and fashion: Blending the two will be a key to succes

Wearable devices are still trying to gain a solid foothold with consumers. The concept is already boring some, so manufacturers are scrambling to figure out how to appeal to the masses. 

The wearable device market is evolving as tech manufacturers try to figure out what it will take to appeal to a broad audience. The connection between fashion and tech wearables is getting stronger as manufacturers recognize that people want to not only wear something that works well, but looks good, too.

Face it. Putting on a wearable makes a statement, whether it's to tell someone that you are into health and fitness, or that you're a techie and you want instant access to texts and emails.

"We're at the very beginning of wearables. People are finally waking up to the fact if you're going to be on someone's body, you have to at least be not unfashionable. With Shine, we were trying to be not unfashionable," said Sonny Vu, founder of Misfit Wearables, which developed the stylish Misfit Shine fitness tracking device.

Making wearables appealing

There is a problem with the drop off rate once someone buys a health and fitness wearable. A previous TechRepublic article focused on an Endeavour Partners survey that revealed more than half of the people who bought a health and fitness wearable had stopped wearing it, and a third of those had put it aside within the first six months of receiving it.

Dan Ledger, principal at Endeavour Partners, said that the appearance of a wearable is one of the key things that keeps someone wearing the device.

With this in mind, wearable manufacturers are looking toward the fashion industry to add style to their tech products, including Ayse Ildeniz, vice president of the new devices group and general manager of strategy and business development at Intel Corporation.

"What we have seen are the technology companies taking the lead on the wearable domain, and we believe it is time the fashion companies take the lead. They should be defining what a wearable aesthetic should look like and the kind of functions it should provide. There's a larger sensitivity in the industry toward that," Ildeniz said.

Fashion is an important consideration when designing a wearable. And yet, many of the wearables on the market have a uniform look that doesn't draw people into wearing them daily.

#WGSNHANGOUT: Fashion & Wearable Technology

I spoke at the "Challenge or Opportunity" event

United Nation’s 58th Commission on the Status of Women

I will speak at the United Natrion’s 58th Commission on the Status of Women in New York on March 12.

The Commission on the Status of Women “CSW” is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It is the principal global policy-making body dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. Every year, representatives of Member States gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and women's empowerment worldwide.This year’s theme is challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

TurkishWIN Presents: Challenge or Opportunity

I will speak at the "Challenge or Opportunity" event, here are the details;

Turkish Women  's International Network of New York Wednesday, March 12, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT) & New York, NY

Event Link:http://www.eventbrite.com/e/turkishwin-presents-challenge-or-opportunity-tickets-10563231911