Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

The use of the Web 2.0 opens new doors as it gives us the chance to meet a lot of unknown people. For a phobic like me, this is enough to crisp my hair.

Getting acquainted with strangers is not an easy task for me. For instance, I would never chat with someone I don’t know. But, you know what? In my 2.0 life I was twice surprised by this subject.

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Recently, I gave two conferences at Wordcamp and Buenos Aires 2.0 offering some of my ideas concerning social networks and the Web 2.0. In this post and in a few more to come I will try to share with you the main points I made there. First, a question: Is the use of social networks dangerous?

We frequently hear from those who are reluctant to the use of web 2.0 tools that they do not do so because they find them dangerous. Don’t upload your pictures to Flickr!, they say. Don’t publicize your activities on Facebook, Twitter or Friendfeed! -they add- as someone might use that information to harm you or even kidnap you!

In my opinion, this argument is senseless. At least in Argentina, where the probability of dying in a car crash is MUCH HIGHER than the chance to be kidnapped, let alone die as a result of a kidnapping. We all know that, yet nobody gives up using cars.

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The sensation of flying, even at low altitude, is like anything else. But the true challenge (and pleasure) is to be able to fly high.

The next morning after my first take-off, we went to a much higher mountain. It was no longer time for preparation or test take-offs: the time had come to really fly.

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Along the lines of comparing the learnings from paragliding with becoming an Entrepreneur, the first post covered the stage of preparation. Now is the time to focus on the start-up phase. And as Wes Harman, the author of this photo, graciously reminds us, no start-up is ever the first or last to die!

So back to Tucuman and my paragliding course. After two hours of suffering and being blown by the wind on the flat, the instructor said it was time to move on to the next stage: the first take off. We moved to a different location, where we could walk up a hill about 100 feet high. Naive, I asked: “We are going to fly in tandem, right?”. The professor laughed. With only two hours of practice, it was time for my first flight alone.

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Very few things in my life took me out of my comfort zone so much as when a few years back I traveled with a group of friends to learn to fly a paraglider. Trips with my friends are chosen by voting, and, needless to say, that year I lost.

So I travelled to Tafí del Valle in Tucuman, Argentina, pretty scared, but determined to start the course, which I knew started on a totally flat place.  I thought the next step was to fly in tandem with a professor and that I was willing to try. Then when the time came to fly on my own, I would see what I did.

The experience was very interesting and what I will do now is write a series of four posts connecting what I lived while learning to fly with the stages of founding and starting up a company.

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