The NASF expedition with Edna Pasher. Picture by @lola_vicente

I have just spent one very rewarding week in Israel. Between the 23rd and the 30th of November I have been part of a group of 9 entrepreneurs. The trip was organized and paid by ourselves. It was not a funded or sponsored travel.

I talkedMost important thing new connections and friends

But we came here to learn from the phenomenal energy of entrepreneurship and innovation in Israel. And we learnt a couple of things and above all, were inspired by Israeli entrepreneurship spirit.

Whatever we have learnt was shared with a community of over 400 entrepreneurs that are part of the #NASF community. During our stay in Israel they followed us on social networks (Twitter #NASF and the blog http://nasf.es).  Once in Navarra we are meeting up to tell them our experience first hand.

About the #NASF community

In November 2010 a group of 15 entrepreneurs from Navarra (a small province of Northern Spain of 500.000 inhabitants) travelled to Silicon Valley. The trip was called #NASF (Navarra-San Francisco). They had met on Twitter. Behind #NASF there was not the Chamber of Commerce, not a company, organization or institution. Exclusively entrepreneurs that wanted to learn first hand what entrepreneurship meant in San Francisco. They said no to public and private subventions.

The #NASF guys were so active on social networks that over 400 entrepreneurs joined their community. #NASF (http://nasf.es) became a community of people that  promote entrepreneurship and creative attitudes that issue from civil action.

#NASF people ACT a lot and DEBATE very little. Whoever proposes any new initiative to the community, has to lead it themselves. If you are a #NASF you may not say “Why don’t we do this?”, you just say “I am doing this, will you join me?”.

They meet up quite often and carry out several activities connected with entrepreneurship in their region. But #NASF is not an association. #NASF people define their movement as an attitude, a SPIRIT (their TWITTER id is @EspirituNASF “NASF SPIRIT”. There are only a few rules  they follow:

1)    It is about creativity and entrepreneurship

2)    People act always as individuals, not as organizations. Behind #NASF there is not any company, organization or institution.

3)    Just Lead!, don’t say “shall we do?”

4)    They don’t accept any kind of public money or private donations or sponsors.

On March the 15^th and 16^th this year we had the kick-off meeting of the V-lang project.

In case you wonder how an European Project like V-lang works, here you are some information that might be useful in case you decided some time to take up such an adventure.

To begin with, unlike the other 5 partners in V-lang, at Dot we had no previous experience of European Projects.

Apparently most European Projects are made up of a larger number of partners, ours is reportedly a small group which allowed.

The whole project is divided into a number of Workpackages (hence WP).The three sessions were dedicated to explain and discuss each of the WPs.

• WP1 Project management (led by Iniciativas Innovadoras).
• WP 2 – Benchmarking & Methodology Guidelines
• WP3 Virtual Training Platform Development
• WP 4 Testing
• WP 5 – Quality Control.
• WP-6 Promotion and Dissemination (aka Communication).
• WP-7 Exploitation of Project Results (sort of Marketing plan).

We all agreed upon a number of tasks and deadlines before scheduling our next meeting for September 2010 in Patras (Greece).

On 15 and March 16, 2010 we will have the first non-virtual meeting of all the partners at the V-lang Project.

V-lang, which lasts until late 2010, will develop a virtual world designed for language learning in OpenSim and a specific methodology for language learning in virtual worlds.

The European Union, through the LifeLong Learning program has granted DOT and 5 other European partners an aid of 300,000 euros for a project whose total budget is over 400,000 euros.

It will test the application and methodology with 40 groups in 3 European countries. The testing will take place in English, Spanish and German.

This DOT led project has come forward thanks to the engagement and support of Iniciativas Innovadoras (Navarra) along with four other European partners:

• Research Academic Computer Technology Institute, Patras, Greece
• Warsaw Academy of Computer Science, Management and Administration Warsaw, Poland
• Soros International House de Vilnius. Lithuania
• DIALOGE SPRACHINSTITUT Lindau, Germany

Looking forwart to meeting you.