Activities during 2009 crisis
Immigrating to the US
As Green Card Holder i.e. Lawful Permanent US Resident, I chose to immigrate to the US thru this period. I learnt a lot as a freshman about what an immigrant could feel since I was myself one of those: everything to rebuild, everything brand new, everything to learn on my own.
Where to live at arrival, how to find a dwelling, how to find a car, passing the domestic driving license, what to eat to avoid taking weight, rebuiding social and professional network, how finding a job, how staying in touch with France at low cost, dealing with both US and French administrations for taxes and immigration, dealing with banks, insurances subscription (car, house, health), ... Numerous fabulous things to discover daily.
I kept track of all these discoveries in a private web-diary. Size increazed daily, reaching about 200 letter-size full pages, and around 500 pocket-book-sized pages. To protect my privacy, data access is restricted.
| >>web-diary | >>printable PDF diary | >>printable pocket-book diary | >>US Healthcare Insurance study PDF |
Founding a Limited Liability Compagny (LLC) in California
When I arrived in the US, I decided to found a US Californian domestic LLC to have a legal framework to manage potential businesses. I might have chosen a Sole-Proprietordhip structure, but it didn't appear to be the best choice since personal belongings are not protected. A LLC is like a compagny separating business liabilities versus personal properties. The status of the LLC is Single-Member, Member-Managed: this means I'm the sole member and proprietorship. Filing out IRS tax record is simple adding a Schedule C form to the regular 1040.
Owning a LLC also gives more opportunities. Indeed, companies are reluctant to propose full time employement since they have no idea what the economy will be, and sometimes have been laying off. I consequently offer them a business opportunity thru corp-to-corp short-term contracts to move forward in their own business without the hassle of getting a full-time employee. They don't have any benefits to manage, no employee taxes to report, no lay-off plan to work on: everything is comprised in the B2B contracts.
Since it was the first time I created a LLC in the US, I had to do my homework digging in LLC features. This study is presented in following 10-page PDF document, in French, to help others to create their own LLC.
| >>web version | >>printable PDF |
Learning Web-based technologies & SalesForce
The purpose of free-time when we don't have any job is to use this time to learn new technologies in order to be knowledgeable in more fields. Indeed, when we have a full-time job, it's difficult to take time to enrich his résumé with new skills.
I immigrated to a place I was already familiar with and had the chance to be hosted in an incubator managed by my former boss from a previous company I worked with a few years prior. This strengthens the need to expand and to thoroughly work on his business network. Some interesting networking tools help like www.linkedIn.com.
A company hosted in the incubator, Real Intelligence, worked on properties management targeting Realtors. It also targets Mortgage brokers to handle Fanny Mae forms petionioners have to fill in to request a mortgage. As subsidiary activities, they own a brand KnewTV managing content of their network screens downtown. I was involved in these 3 activities providing my Software Engineering experience to assist them in the creation of new products. On a personal standpoint, I learnt web-based technologies as I wanted to do: HTML, XHTML, XML, XSLT, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, MXML to create dynamic Flash files, and SalesForce.com for underneath database management. As extensions targetted fancy add-ons for end-users, I also learnt GoogleMaps API to insert custom Google-Maps within web-pages, and Zillow API to retrieve valuable information for Realtors about properties features & price estimate.
- I created a full dynamic web-site for SILVAR (SILicon Valley Association of Realtors). This web-site was used during their weekly meetings to present new properties of the week to 100 realtors.
- I also created dynamic web-sites for Realtors displaying the properties they manage. I worked on mobile cellphones diplaying another flavor of their data fitting iPhone constraints.
- I defined and created an Advertisement portal enabling people to create an Ad on-the-fly in a secured environment to sell a car, a house or to promote their shop. They therafter pay in line thru PayPal, and then have their Ad translated into Flash SWF file (thru MXML) to be displayed in TV screens playlists, or in their own web-site at their convenience. Of course, Ad are moderated thru a comprehensive web-portal targeting administrators. This product may be accommodated to companies willing to manage the content of the data they display on their corporate TV screens, or thru the internet.
- I created a Fanny Mae web-form to be filed out by mortgage applicants, targeting mortgage brokers.
I understood that a nice look-and-feel web-form with some content management underneath may require several thousands of lines of code under the hood, involving all aforementioned web-technologies! To achieve this goal, I dramatically improved an existing API, in PHP, interfacing between HTML forms statements and SalesForce database in order to feed any kind of SalesForce objects from a web-form. The secret was to format HTML form statement's names according to a predefined syntax ala micro-language, encoding necessary information to be decripted by the generic engine feeding SalesForce database.
SILVAR weekly slideshow |
Property Ad on a TV screen in a downtown restaurant |
Tutoring at WyzAnt
In order to help juniors to seniors learning my tongue from beginner level with simple sentences to advanced level with French as a medium of communication addressing real-life topics, I enrolled at WyzAnt. WyzAnt is a company conencting tutors with some proficiency in some fields willing to get extra money teaching to students.
Since I gained some experience in web-based technologies, used in professional environment, I also found valuable to offer these services to people, thru WyzAnt, willing to have a personal web-site, teaching them from basics (HTML layout and content management) to advanced features (JavaScript, PHP, ...).
| >>my profile at WyzAnt |
Mortgage
I was involved in the activities of the Incubator's manager promoting his activities. Indeed, he mentors start-ups in which he invested money thru his own company: Silicon Valley Investment Group (SVIG). I helped him in launching his new business in Bend, Oregon, as a mortgage broker which becomes the new trend of the year following up the investments announced by President Barack Obama in this area.
This activity helps me a lot in understanding US strategies in terms of mortgage, loans, lending, and even real-estate. As a French freshman in the US, I do believe that getting the soonest as possible how US economy is working would be very valuable for myself. Indeed, at some point I will have to care about buying a real-estate property: townhouse or condominium with their specifics, getting endebted over a few decades thru a financement. Basic question: how financing my house with the right product? This activity is purposed to answer to this question.
| >>SVIG web-site | >>Bend Home Loan web-site |
m-commerce
As an evolution of the market from e-commerce, the m-commerce aims to propose shopping thru mobile phones. As was involved in MobiDough, a start-up hosted in SVIG incubator. They develop a m-portal over both GPRS and SMS technologies offering people to order goods thru their mobile phone thru in-network partners. This is also used by Indian companies to let their customers pay the bill in a convenient manner fitting Indian constraints.
Wind Turbines & Renewable Sustainable Energies
Renewable and Sustainable eco-friendly sources of energy has become a challenging topic over the decades involving now more enthousiasm from the world leaders. President Obama chose to invest in his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) billions in renewable energies to create new employements, become less dependant of oil, fight against warming effects and giving to the USA the opportunity to be in this area as well the first leader in the world.
I took the time to look at wind turbine technologies for educational self purposes.
| >>Wind Turbines Calculator | >>Wind Turbines overlooking |