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I'm sharing my experience with the programming, the entrepreneurship, personal growing and society awareness trough the Kaba Gaida (Bulgarian Bagpipe) perspective.
I cannot imagine a presentation about bagpipes without playing it so I’ll play a bit
What could be the common between software development and bagpipes? Well … That’s me on a first glance. I’m a Full(No) Stack Developer and Manager with more than 12 years of professional experience with Java @Dreamix_Ltd. The last story I remember the gaida helped me while programming is from a project for a SF based startup (Twibble.io) using Spring Boot, Elasticsearch, Angular.JS. It was then 3-4k active users web site and had some huge problems regarding availability of the service. I was working overnight and very stressed. One of the founders was getting married at this time so he invited me on his wedding in Annecy, France. For a present I put my traditional clothes and performed in front of the audience, which was from all around the world. All the guys were fascinated and after the performance the guy said that no matter what happens with the project we’ll be friends for a life. We fixed the issues anyway but it was a huge relief hearing that.
One very important aspect of playing the gaida is that it can give you Mindfulness. If you go to San Francisco you’ll hear a lot about Mindfulness related to Entrepreneurship and Software Development. It is critical to exercise your body when you are sitting on a desk all the day. It is critical to keep you mind clear when you are a software developer, specially if you work for startups, to avoid burn out.
Look at the face of Kostadin… He definitely looks mindfull :) When you play music, often you concentrate, fall into a special state very close to meditation. The Kaba Gaida has very deep sound, very ancient, simple and pure melodies (pentatonic - 5 tones). The materials are all natural and they make the voice of the gaida close to the nature/mountain - imitating birds, springs, etc. The Kaba Gaida plays in E and F, most of the meditation cups are the same sound. Kaynak, means ‘source’ and is used for a kaba gaida player when he enters a special state while playing.
I’ve been involved in tech startup since 2003 and all I do is somehow related to startups. And I was able to apply this knowledge in my project KabaGaida.Com
The big goal of KabaGaida.Com is to build and maintain a sustainable community:
make possible for people to make a living by playing and making the gaida;
travel abroad
build a training platform
gather and digitize kaba gaida traditions
In order to make it sustainable we need to get money - KabaGaida.Com oficially started 3 years ago as an online store for kaba gaida. I did quite a few canvases and it helped me a lot. For example I realised that if I contact music stores to resell my gaidas I’ll be more successful than putting effort into social noise (marketing).
We started lean - with no budget, just trying what works and what we get money from - weddings, (online) trainings and selling bagpipes. With no prior investnemt.
And we are building and maintaining a community that is self sustainable. As a programmer I was able to integrated great tools for user engagement and tracking their behaviour:
Optimizely
Uservoice
Twitter
Mixpanel
Mandrill
http://www.inspectlet.com/hello
https://www.kissmetrics.com
We make money and we give back to society
Concerts
Keeping the traditions
Innovations
Teach
Weddings
workshops with kids
Every Monday 19:30 under Billa next to Pliska hotel, Sofia, Bulgaria we give lessons, and we have a group practice which is open to the public. Just bring your good mood and maybe beer/wine. If you want to play your are more than welcome. If you want to join the KabaGaida.Com team here is what we need:
Online store manager - Someone who manage the stores, promotions, contact resellers and make up a strategy.
Newsletter and social marketing guru - somebody to make people interested in the gaida by serving them good content.
PR of the band - somebody who can arrange concerts. performances, tours around the world and make good presentations of the band
designer - somebody who can make web sites and design visual materials
somebody who can make good photos, videos
Translator
Somebody who wants to travel around Rhodope mountain and gather and digitize kaba gaida traditions.