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Oliver Thylmann's Thoughts

Barcamp Cologne looking for Sponsors

Barcamp Cologne is still looking for some sponsors. The current list includes the following:

• QSC AG, Köln (Veranstaltungsort, Internet Access, finanzielle Unterstützung)
• DocCheck AG, Köln (finanzielle Unterstützung)
• team|networks, Köln (finanzielle Unterstützung)
• newthinking communications, Berlin (Party)
• Ormigo und sevenload, Köln (Bier für Samstagabend “after work”)

If you want to take part you can of course just give some money, which will allow the great team that is working on making the event great for everyone, to keep everything there free.

Google for your Domain Please

Ok, now I am starting to have enough. Google is now posting on their blog about among others Google Apps for your Domain. And you know what, I have been asking for it for some time and actually registered several times but I have the slight feeling that having been denied in the early beta period means that I don’t get through now. I would really like to have an account please. Just search for Oliver Thylmann in your database, there should be several. Or otherwise, please stop posting about it.

Otherwise I’d like to hear anyones suggestions for a hosted corporate email system. Fusemail currently has SMTP Problems again for many hours and while they are otherwise good, I am not so thrilled that I wouldn’t move.

Update: Not even 24 hours later, the problem is solved! Thank you Google Team

Ormigo Online

I wanted to wait for a quiet period for writing a bit about our launch, but as this is very likely not to happen, I am just writing a few notes now. As said, Ormigo launched last week and things are going very well indeed. What we are doing, in very short, is allowing local merchants to have access to new customers that inform themselves about products they sell online. The entire system is focussed on products or services that are not sold via an impulse buy, but where you have to or want to talk to a real person before making a decision.

As it is currently still focussed on creating demand from local merchants for different products (financial products in germany first), there is not a lot for the general internet user to do. This being more of a B2B service this is even likely not to change too much in the near future.

Thanks to the great team have have assembled, launching went smoothly and we are already well into the next sprint for another part of the system which will focus more on the user side of things. But with this, I’ll finish and go back to work for another period of light blogging.

Nine things developers want more than money

Very good post over at Software by Rob. It’s about the important things that developers need to work happily at your company.

He places everything in two parts. Hygiene and Motivation. This is actually very similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs something that is always again turning out to be true. Maslow put motivation into a hierarchy.

* Physical Needs: working conditions, wage, housing, catering,…
* Safety: health insurance, pension provision, safety, security in job
* Social: sports, clubs, parties, outings, open communications, …
* Esteem: Regular positive feedback, prestigious job titles, promotions
* Self-actualisation: challenging, encouraging, can structure own work

The idea is that you need the first parts like with a pyramid. If the base is not there, it is futile to add the others. In bad working conditions, no amount of challenge will lead to motivation.
The same thing is true for hygiene. You need it to start with. Or at least a good amount of it. Maslow is actually a bit clearer that you need the base as a must have.
So let’s put this more into perspective for developers.

1. Being Set Up to Succeed
The idea is that you really want to build something, something that doesn’t put unnecessary road blocks in your way, that is maintainable. It needs to be a quality product. It’s craftsmanship. You don’t tell a craftsman to build a crappy table. I am happy to be able to put a check here.

2. Having Excellent Management
You need to take bullets for your team, no micro-managing, give them free the freedom to think themselves. This is really too early to tell. This really takes time to build up. The verdict is still out.
3. Learning New Things
It seems that if your job gets more variety, and you get to acquire new skills, you will forgo a 20% raise. A really good developer needs to learn. Of course they have to want to, which is kind of a circle. Good developers do. This is a kind of test. I am making damn sure they have the option.

4. Exercising Creativity and Solving the Right Kind of Problems
I think I have to try one suggestion he has: drop a Sudoku in the middle of the developers to see them attack it. Might be a good trick when hiring somebody new. I agree that developers love challenge in general, so a big job is to make sure that the problem at hand is a difficult one. And remember, easy problems can be difficult if put in the right light and made into a challenge.

5. Having a Voice
When a developer speaks, somebody has to listen. Simple. That’s actually true for all people I’d say.

6. Being Recognized for Hard Work
Peer pressure. Something Google uses as a management style. Hard to make right and not backfire.

7. Building Something that Matters
Building something that somehow has more reason than making money. I think we score big there at Ormigo, because we give local merchants an option to compete in the global advertising market.

8. Building Software without an Act of Congress
Let them build it. Don’t talk about building it, but build it.

9. Having Few Legacy Constraints
This is really a cry for refactoring and putting that into your development model, making time for it. The thing is that you don’t want anything in your app to hold you back. But as you are learning along the way, the stuff holding you back will appear again and again.

I actually have to say that we are doing pretty well at Ormigo. A lot of this can be read out of simple management practices from an MBA if you look at it from the right angle.

StudiVZ even more Facebook

Error messages on StudiVZ.de, originally uploaded by Bumi.

Bumi posted the following picture of an error message on StudiVZ. We all knew it was a copy of facebook, and it is already clear that it has copied the Stylesheets.

This is getting even better now in that they weren’t even imaginative enough to make their own folder names. This is what brought StudiVZ then Online Star.

Come on germany, we can be more innovative than that! This can’t be it. Sure, they got a lot of money in their VC round, but it makes me sad that the biggest things out there are copies. OpenBC is special, Sevenload might be a copy but it’s technology is top notch, and there are other german start-ups that are innovative.

I would really like to see more of that happen because I think we have it in us in Germany. We have it in us in Europe. I might add a bit more on what I think we need to make that happen later.

Google Acquires JotSpot

Now that is good news. JotSpot has been acquired by Google. We are using JotSpot as our corporate wiki and are pretty happy with it as it is, but things will now likely improve.

Jot is currently sending around this email, which explains a bit about the acquisition.

JotSpot is now part of Google

We’re writing to let you know that Google has acquired JotSpot. We believe this is great news for our users. More importantly, we want to reassure you that you’ll continue to have uninterrupted access to your account. Both Google and JotSpot are committed to supporting our customers, and we understand that users have invested a lot in our products. In the near-term, we’re focused on migrating JotSpot to Google’s systems and datacenters. We’ll work hard to make that move as seamless as possible so that customers won’t be inconvenienced.

Why is Google acquiring JotSpot?

Google shares JotSpot’s vision for helping people collaborate, share and work together online. JotSpot’s team and technology are a strong fit with existing Google products like Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Groups.

What does this mean for JotSpot customers?

We believe that joining Google will accelerate our team’s vision of offering users the best collaboration platform on the web. Google shares that vision and presents us with the world’s best environment for delivering on it. We’ll be taking advantage of Google’s world-class systems infrastructure and operations expertise to ensure that access to your JotSpot is fast and reliable. We can’t share any of our plans publicly just yet, but we can tell you that we’re incredibly excited about the possibilities. We can’t think of a better company to have been acquired by.

Will paying customers still be charged?

We will no longer be billing customers for the use of the service. Although you will still have use of the product at your current pricing plan, we won’t charge you anymore when your current billing cycle expires.

What about security and privacy?

Your data is yours — that doesn’t change at Google. We will continue to work to ensure the privacy and security of your data. Furthermore, Google is as committed to privacy and security as we are. Since the user information you provided to JotSpot will soon be transferred to Google as part of their acquisition of JotSpot, we want to provide you with the opportunity to retrieve your user information and cease usage of the JotSpot service before the transition. If you do not wish to continue using JotSpot, send an email to privacy@jot.com in the next sixty days and we will reply with instructions for retrieving your user information.

Answers to more frequently asked questions are available at www.jot.com/. If you have any other questions, please email support@jot.com.

In closing, we wanted to offer our sincere gratitude to you — our customers — for believing in us and helping us achieve success. We look forward to continuing that relationship at Google.

Best wishes,
The JotSpot Team

Congratulations to the team! I got my first into to JotSpot by Joe Krauss in 2004, which I first hinted at and then could post about.

Get your Fonera NOW

I wanted to post about this yesterday but it fell through the cracks, now Martin confirms it. End of next week the Fonera will cost 29 EURs. So if you want to get your fonera for free, I suggest you go at it now. You have a few days left until you will not get it for free anymore.

There will soon be thousands of Foneras in Germany, and hundreds of thousands all over the world. It makes absolute sense to share your nocat. I am sharing it at two places already and if I knew somebody at the airport I would give them 10 and make them a Bill. Sadly I don’t. If you do, go out and get some.

You might just want to have a chat with Fon directly if you believe you can set up a few restaurants in the city center. Check out the “SuperBill Aktion” in Germany.

Everyone is a Vampire

Or no one actually. In an article on Spiegel, they give out the solution from Costas Efthimious, physics professor from the University of Central Florida. It’s actually pretty simple. Presuming the first vampire appeared 1st of January 1600 and we have a world population of 536.870.911 people (it was roughly 500 million back then), we would all be vampires now.

Why that? We already know that vampires need to bite people to get their blood and those people become vampires themselves. Easy enough. So let’s further presume that a vampire needs to bite one person per month. The first one then had a friend on 1st of February 1600. On the first of March 1600 there were already 4 vampires in the world. 29 months later (2^29) there would be no normal human beings left.

There you have it. You can sleep well. There are no vampires or they have a very low need for blood. Of course if we think that they only bite one person per 10 years, we might still have a few humans left, because due to maths, this really scales best at the end. Think what you will.

Cyberport 24 aka Woot! Germany launches

Cyberport just announced on their blog that they have launched Cyberport.24. They got the idea from Woot! and the adapted idea is simple.

They will each week place 2 different products online for 2 days with a good reduction. Now they have a bluetooth stick for 10 EURs online and 36 pieces are left at the time of this writing. First come first served, like at Woot!. I suggest you subscribe to the rss feed of Cyberport.24, as some interesting things might come along.

I would have expected them to launch with something a little bit more exciting than a bluetooth stick though.