luca Filigheddu

This is for Barcelona? - Paul Denlinger

Yes, Barcelona. - Robert Scoble

Just look at the Container Ship Time Charter Assessment Index. It's down from 1 022 points in February to 416 points. - Marcel Janus

If I may be honest, I'm sick of reading how bad economy is. Heck, what is the economy? Isn't it but the sum of single business and their relations? If a single business is in trouble, then likely because it isn't producing something useful, isn't able to sell it or doesn't have the funding and the stamina to survive the dip. Maybe on the big scale it isn't that different. Maybe we weren't producing the things that we needed. Maybe we didn't build good, strong relationships. Maybe we, as a society, have become crybabies and simple lack the stamina to push through this. - Dushan Wegner

The guy at dinner that Robert mentions was Jordi Soler (@jordisoler). He's really remarkable. He's running a family-owned business that trucks containers around Europe, and is totally plugged into the web tech scene, reading all sorts of blogs, signed up to lots of services, etc. And a really nice guy. - Terry Jones

I'm the guy working at the docks. The Tweetup was excellent and I learned a lot about startups with you guys. As to the economic situation, yes, here in Barcelona times are pretty rough right now. I'm still holding up because I have a little family business, but right now big companies are suffering a lot and firing workers. Business is clearly slowing down and we can only hope that the situation recovers soon. - Jordi Soler

company I work for had a round of layoffs.. thankfully they can't trim the IT dept down any further since there's only 2 of us providing support for our global operations! - alphaxion

Ever ask someone you don't know really well - how's business? I stopped asking because the vast majority of the time all I've heard is "not bad" or "good". All around me I see signs that things aren't good. - Wayne Schulz

Wayne, I ask all the time, and I've been getting "not very good" or "things are slow" from cab drivers and shopkeepers, so while in general that is the response you'll get, it's not the one I'm getting lately. - Chris White

The economy will remain this way until people stop complaining about it, and start doing things to help it. - Spencer