Flying in my gondola

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...