Flying in my gondola

Interview with BOOM co-founder Jacopo Benedetti 23 November 2018 Gordana Davila Launched in early 2018, Milano-based  BOOM  Image Studio is a Prop Tech marketplace connecting professional photographers with businesses worldwide. We caught up with its co-founder Jacopo Benedetti at the recent Property Portal Watch Conference in Madrid 2018. When asked what prompted the conception of BOOM Image Studio, Benedetti commented: “When we buy a meal or a house we are first attracted buy by their image representation – usually a photograph. So having a quality image is critical and crucial for a lot of all companies which who want to boost their online sales." Although Benedetti’s background as a biomedical engineer has little to do with photography, he has always been fascinated by the eyes and the science of the human brain, which come together in Artificial Intelligence and the development of BOOM Image Studio sof...

Erik Backer, Co-Founder, and CEO of Portal.chat 26 November 2018 Gordana Davila Recently we caught up with Erik Backer, Co-Founder, and CEO of  Portal.chat  at the 24th Property Portal Watch Conference in Madrid. The decade-old Netherlands-based Portal.chat offers online real estate sites an instant messaging app that also supports live video and audio chat.  “We have a plug and play solution that allows real estate classified sites and marketplaces, anywhere in the world, to offer a live chat solution between consumers and the listings owners or between the advertisers (the agents) and the real estate site. “In the past 18 months, we have noticed that there has been a significant increase in the use of chat and it can no longer be ignored as a communication channel,” stated Backer. He also added that the use of chat is generational with the younger generations using chat as their prime method of communication with so...

21 November 2018 Gordana Davila Madrid was the city of choice for the 24th Property Portal Watch conference where a record 400 attendees from 48 countries met to discuss the key issues facing their businesses. Over the three days, some of the biggest names in online real estate classifieds and marketplaces listened to 42 speakers from 17 countries present on this year's theme of "From Classifieds to MARKETPLACES." Ideas were exchanged, technologies shared, networking was conducted, and startups pitched their business plans to the panel of experts. There were many wonderful presentations, but here are some of the highlights. Mayank Yadav, Product Manager,  Facebook Marketplaces  was interviewed by conference founder and leading industry expert, Simon Baker, about Facebook’s rollout of its Marketplaces product, the success they are having and the next steps.  The interview directly addressed the key issues of co-opetition and whether Facebook would t...

27 September 2018 Gordana Davila Property Portal Watch had the pleasure of interviewing  Anthemos Georgiades , CEO and co-founder of  Zumper . Launched in 2012 and based out of San Francisco, California, property portal Zumper was conceived due to the frustration experienced by Georgiades and other Zumper team members during the process of searching for, applying and signing the contract of rental properties, in the UK, as well as in the U.S. Whilst attending business school in the U.S., Georgiades noticed that the process of searching for and renting an apartment was quite antiquated and cumbersome, so he decided to plant roots in the Silicon Valley, and he co-founded Zumper. Having already raised a whopping US$90 million in funding, we asked Georgiades about Zumper’s steps in raising funding, and what advice he could give other companies who are in the same situation. Georgiades stated that the company’s approach was to have a narrow scope of what they we...

09 August 2018 Gordana Davila Founded in 2012, based in Redwood City, California,  Kahuna  is powered by big data and machine learning and is trusted by companies like Yelp, Yahoo!, GoPro, Dollar Shave Club, among many more companies, to provide a new level of authentic engagement between brands and their customers via web, email, mobile and social media channels. Claiming over 144 million engaged users and over 4 billion messages sent, Kahuna has quickly taken the lead in becoming the platform of choice for meeting the needs of marketplaces, using state of the art machine-learning technology to drive extreme personalization, product and pricing optimization, trust, and engagement. Sameer Patel joined Kahuna as CEO and board member in 2016. Before Kahuna, Patel served as General Manager at SAP / SuccessFactors overseeing the Collaboration and Hybris Commerce Community Software business. Prior to SAP, Patel had 15 years of leading enterprise tec...

  Left – Lana Jones. Photo – Lynette Wills. Cover – Eloise Fryer and Ben Davis. Photo – Jeff Busby Australian Ballet’s  Cinderella  has been beautifully revamped by choreographer  Alexei Ratmansky . Formerly artistic director of the renown Bolshoi Ballet, and currently the artist-in-residence with the American Ballet Theatre in New York,  Ratmansky  is white hot in the ballet world and very much in demand, because of his skill in merging classical technique with a contemporary sensibility. The beloved fairytale is moulded into a different type of happily-ever-after, which although does feature a fairy godmother ( Lynette Wills ) – albeit slightly resembling Mary Poppins with an elongated nose – it does not incorporate a carriage which is fashioned from a pumpkin, nor do any mice show off their sartorial talents, or morph into hoses. What  Ratmansky’s  Cinderella  does have, are two silly step sisters and a ruthless but equally comical step ...

Left – Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Emma Matthews. Cover – Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Taryn Fiebig, Richard Anderson & Shane Lowrencev. Photos – Jeff Busby. Mozart’s  infamous  Don Giovanni  and considered by many to be the greatest opera ever written, is based on the legendary fictional lover  Don Juan , not easily resisted by any woman, no matter her social status or nationality, and whom they loved and despised in the same breath. Opera Australia’s  highly anticipated  Don Giovanni , directed by  David McVicar , focuses on the dark side of the sex addicted nobleman, who cannot control his appetite for conquering every and any woman who crosses his path, regardless of her age or shape. Much like some present day players,  Don Giovanni , keeps a tally of his trophies, with numbers in the thousands, from all over Europe and Asia Minor, and with numbers so impressive, he could easily be dubbed the Wilt Chamberlain of the 18th century. Teddy Tahu Rhodes ...

Renown South African singer  Belinda Davids , opened her Australian tribute tour,  The Greatest Love of All – The Whitney Houston Show , at the Athenaeum Theatre this weekend with a passion and talent which channeled the late great Whitney Houston so well that, if you were to close your eyes, you’d swear that the diva herself was belting out her award winning songs for her Melbourne fans in attendance. At the beginning of the concert, as the lights dimmed and images of Houston flashed onto a screen, the energy in the theatre was simply electric. The audience was extremely pumped and enthusiastic… maybe, too much even. I overheard someone say: “They do realise that the  real  Whitney Houston is not going to come out on stage, don’t they?” But, within minutes of the concert, the same person was as enchanted by  Davids ’ performance as the rest of us, and by the end she had moved many to tears.  Self-taught and blessed with a four octave vocal range,  Dav...

Opera Australia  has opened its Melbourne season with one of the company’s best-loved productions,  Giacomo Puccini’s  Madama Butterfly –  in this case the revival of Moffatt Oxenbould’s 1997 production of the famed tragic story of  Cio-Cio-San  (cio translates to butterfly) and her American husband. Soprano  Hiromi Omura  dominated the night, and was superb in her role of  Butterfly . Besides possessing a beautiful and silken voice,  Omura  also successfully projects a naiveté and demureness of a young girl in love, as well as that of a woman consumed by total despair at the understanding that her husband intends not to return to her. Tenor  James Egglestone  portrays her husband,  Pinkerton , as lustful, selfish and even arrogant, but he also conveys a somewhat regretful concern for  Butterfly  as well. Just when you thought you could hate him, you almost feel sorry for him. Mezzo-soprano,  Sian...

Grammy-nominated  Meghan Trainor  is performing her first big tour, trotting around the globe, with Melbourne being one of her stops in Australia. Even if you don’t recognize  Meghan  by name, unless you’ve been stranded on a deserted island during the last eight months, it is impossible to say the same of her pop phenomenon,  All About That Bass , which ruled the airwaves for so long that, even her own mother expressed disbelief over the song’s mass appeal. It’s not surprising that  Bass  was, and still is, on everyone’s lips and minds; with positive self-love lyrics, catchy 1950s doo-wop inspired music, one can’t help but tap to it and nod in approval, if you’re a parent, and even if you’re not. At the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy,  Meghan ’s music successfully appeals to the young and the old, without the all too familiar in-your-face raunchiness present in both lyrics as well as in fashion choices displayed by some other pop stars (he...

Who is  Khaled Khalafalla , and why is he happy exactly? Born in Saudi Arabia to Egyptian parents, Khaled  may discuss identity exploration, and his own fitting-in challenges in everyday Australian culture, but he possesses that special something which Aussies are renown around the globe for, the ability to take a jab at oneself, and everyone else around them. Khaled  successfully pokes fun at his culture, and everyone else’s, carefully walking that dreaded ‘gone too far’ line, and never crossing it. But one thing is for sure, no one is spared in the process. Front row or back row audience members; if  Khaled  makes eye contact with you, you’re becoming part of the show. Fear not though, Khaled  is charismatic and funny, not irritating and offensive. On the night I attended, the award-winning  Khaled , actually started out a little lukewarm, and laughed a bit too hard at his own jokes, and just when it seemed as though perhaps we were going...

Gitanos music ambassadors to the world,  The Gipsy Kings , kicked off their 2015 world tour in Australia, with a stop at The Palais Theatre in St. Kilda, which is where I, along with the most culturally diverse audience ever, got to enjoy their amazing music (to the left of me, Chileans, in front, French, to the right, Greek, in the back, Japanese). The Gipsy Kings , composed of two families, the Reyes from Arles and the Baliardos from Montpellier, France, have been performing since the 1960s, in theatres such as Carnegie Hall in New York, and for the likes of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Brigitte Bardot, among others. Their first album,  Gipsy Kings , was released more than twenty years later in 1987, featuring familiar flamenco-like music and vocals with a twist, with which they literally took the world by storm. The Gipsy Kings ’ roots are from Catalonia, Spain, so it’s no surprise that their music should have the same source of inspiration, but it’s been reinvented a...

Watching a stand-up comedian perform, always makes me envious of his/her talent to get people laughing, but when a comedian is successfully delivering his material to an audience in a foreign language, and is still able to generate laughs, that’s pretty damn incredible. Such is the case with Venezuelan-born  Ivan   Aristeguieta . Aristeguieta , a successful Brew Master (this explains his passion for beer) turned full-time comedian, migrated to Adelaide three years ago, and became an Australian Permanent Resident this past September. Since arriving down under,  Aristeguieta  has taken on the challenge of becoming part of the comedy tapestry of Australia, performing solely in English. Anyone else would be discouraged to do so, but  Aristeguieta  has risen to the challenge. Comparing any foreign country to Australia can be fun, but seeing that Venezuela is such a polar opposite of Aristeguieta ’s new home, it makes for some hilarious story telling, and a new ...

Written by  Gordana Andjelic-Davila      Friday, 27 March 2015 16:22 Laughter, it's said, is the best medicine. Research has concluded that laughter reduces pain, brings down blood sugar levels and relieves stress. If this is true, then last night’s performances by comedian Russell Peters  and opening act  Gregg Rogell , cured all sorts of ailments, with the exception being sore cheeks. Canadian-Indian comedian  Russell Peters  was born and raised in Toronto, and, according to his recanting, he was clueless as to what career path he should pursue, until one day, he was thinking out loud to a friend, saying that he needed a job which would allow him to sleep all day, and work only a couple of hours in the evening. His friend suggested he become a comedian, so he went for it. Fast forward 26 years,  Peters  has been entertaining packed houses internationally longer than, some of his audience members have been walking the Earth, as he...

The Brunswick Music Festival , nearly three decades old and still one of Australia's most diverse and colourful festivals, has come to town, with many free and ticketed concerts and events, which are sure to impress even the most seasoned festival goer. I was fortunate to experience three (actually four, including Radical Son ) very different shows, which form part of the rich tapestry of the Brunswick Music Festival . Margaret Leng Tan Margaret Leng Tan caught my attention, because of the most unusual musical instrument(s) which she features in her repertoire.  Classically trained, Tan is revered as one of the most formidable pianists in modern music. In 1971 Tan became the first woman to earn a Doctorate in Musical Arts from New York’s Juilliard School. In 1981 Tan met John Cage, an American composer and pioneer of non-standard use of musical instruments, who influenced Tan ’s musical style, and can be credited for her consequent exploration and eventual p...