The call for papers for next year’s eZ publish Conference is out.
eZ is accepting proposals on the following topics:
The submission deadline for all proposals is January 16, 2006.
eZ publish Conference 2006 will take place in Skien/Norway from June 20-23, 2006.
Of course, the eZ Enterprise Components [1] will be a hot topic there, as well as the forthcoming eZ publish 4.0.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
The way how the Linux community is organised gets growing awareness in management, not only in that of software companies. Harvard Business Review published an article entitled Collaboration Rules, were the Linux community is being compared with the organisational structure of Toyota. The article is in general worth to read. I have read the
German version which is published in the current issue of Harvard Business Manager.
The authors’ basic statement is: “Corporate leaders seeking to boost growth, learning, and innovation may find the answer in a surprising place: the Linux open-source software community.” And they continue: “Specifically, Toyota and Linux operate by rules that blend the self-organizing advantages of markets with the low transaction costs of hierarchies.”
Management will indeed be able to learn a lot from Linux or the FOSS movement in general, as it can be regarded as the prototype organisational form of knowledge work. Today, most products are knowledge-based, even if it is simply the design of your coffee cup. Thus, the culture of open sources can be applied to various companies of any kind.
The article analyzes what I’d call a company culture of open sources, where information is freely shared between various stakeholders of a production process, be it software (Linux) or industrial goods (Toyota). Such a company culture is very much one that gives community members or employees the freedom to develop their skills and personality.
Unfortunately, the article deals with the aspects of knowledge companies for individuals only marginally. It could nicely be approached from the notion of humans as open sources as elaborated in the latest book of Gunter Dueck: Topothesie (German only). Then it becomes obvious, that doing it the Linux way also means a change of management styles and human interaction at work in general.
My good friend and painter Mark has some of his fabulous art online on his homepage.
We know each other since the first semesters at university and I always liked his art. Whatever he did, he did it his way, just like Sinatra sings.
He already did some “live-painting” twice, i.e. creating a painting while a classical orchestra plays. I remember when he showed the sketches to me which helped him to prepare for one of the live-paintings, where he was supposed to visualize what the orchestra played: The Creation of Haydn. He had started with small sketches, then making bigger ones. Of course, the actual painting he created during the concert, was much bigger then any of his sketches.
I won’t write more about his works here, because talking about art is like dancing about architecture 😉
Take a look here, you don’t need to understand German, to understand the pictures: www.markkrause.de
My German slides for ContentmanagerDays 2005 are now available for download in the talks area. I explained how eZ publish is being used for Enterprise Application Integration in a common project of eZ systems and Siemens Business Services. The eZ publish implementation allows to track the usage of paletts using RFID chips. Does not sound like a CMS-thing at all when you first hear of it, but nicely demonstrates the power of eZ publish.
The company got me an IBM ThinkPad T42 about 9 months ago, which became my third arm and second brain. The notebook is very reliable, it simply works, never had any problems with it.
I actually kept Windows XP Professional on the machine, because I am not doing that much coding anymore. Until then, I had Linux on my notebooks for over 3 years. I still have it in VMWare now. It is very convenient to have the additional IBM software nicely integrate with Windows and especially the fingerprint sensor.
I have the fingerprint sensor turned on for boot authentication and it works like a charm since a software upgrade about 4 months ago. Some consider it a useless gadget – I think, it’s a nice gadget 🙂
What I appreciate most is the solid, though lightweight case.
Derick actually recommended the notebook to me – good tip, thanks dude!
Exactly one year ago, at November 16th 2004, I entered the doors of the eZ systems office in Skien/Norway and saw the shoes of my colleagues. In Norway, you always take off your shoes when entering a house and put on your slippers, so does the eZ crew in the headquarters.
Meanwhile, the shoes got removed from the entrance and are being piled somewhere else, out-of-sight for visiting customers. I am still at eZ systems and admit, that this is the coolest company I ever got to know. Just happy to work there!
Poor Zak: people he visits always try to talk him into cooking, because he is such a good cook – so did I!
He prepared “Ginger Beef”, something that has been invented by the Chinese inhabitants of Canada. It only took 2 hours (of course mainly because I was asking Zak too many questions about what and how he’s doing it).
What I learned:
The whole thing tasted so damn good, thanks Zak!
Yep, me and my wife were travelling 3 weeks in Mexico, from August 17th to September 7th.
We flew into Mexico City and stayed there for a bunch of days. This megacity is of course a must-see! What I remember most is the BasÃÂlica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, where you have the astonishing view below. Also unforgettable was a Sunday we spent with a friendly Mexican family who served us blue Tortillas (yes, there is blue corn in this world!).
Next, we travelled by bus to Guanajuato, which is a huge contrast compared to Mexico City with its tiny winding roads, many beautiful old buildings and the atmosphere of a student’s town. If you ever make it to Guanajuato, don’t miss “El Bar”, should you love to watch fabulous Salsa dance. (Of course, you are free to dance as well …)
After 3 days in Guanajuato, we headed over to Querétaro, which was again a contrast to the two other places we have seen: long and straight streets, very clean, lots of Taxis everywhere – I almost felt like in Europe 😉 What I liked most about Querétaro, was in fact the beautiful “Hotel Hidalgo” we stayed in, which had a marvelous inner court. Oh yes, and there was this wonderful sunset at the church where we simply enjoyed the relaxed Mexican after work atmoshphere:
We did not want to miss the Caribeans, so we flew from Mexico City to Cancun and travelled by bus to Playa del Carmen. There we stayed in a very nice hotel at the beach. Yeah, 10 days of laziness … not if you have a wife who wants to see the ancient pyramides in the heat of the afternoon (36C and more…). Anyway, just the right thing to relax before we went back home and back to work. Here you see three Mariachis on their way back home, at 6:30 in the morning, after a long night, right in front of our hotel:
This was the smoothest journey I every experienced. We never really had any big troubles, even busses were never late, but reliable. Also, we never met any strange people. Maybe we just behaved the right way or were simply lucky – you never know. It was in fact very nice, to speak some Spanish again, but I am sure that the locals were sometimes laughing about me in my back 😉
Mexico? I’d do it again, just great!
PS: All pictures made by my wife.
End of October/beginning of November is the best hiking season here, so we went at Oct 30th to some mountains, about 1,5h from where I live. With my dear eZ colleagues Terje and Melissa, I exchanged some mountain pictures – isn’t it nice to be in an international company?
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| Neunerköpfle (Tannheimer Tal)/Austria |
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| Melissa, in Santa Maria/Brazil |
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| Close to Skien/Norway, where the eZ office is |
Got this CD for one year now and it is still one of my favourites: Funky ABBA by Nils Landgren and the Funk Unit. This is intelligent feel good music of high quality!
Landgren and his band rearranged some of the ABBA chartbreakers in a very creative manner, thus providing unique standalone interpretations which sound fresh as fresh can be. These are the kind of song covers which I like, with the musicians putting all their heart and soul into the rearrangements and interpretation.
Some of the songs have the initial lyrics and melody almost entirely preserved, while others can almost not be recognized by the ABBA song which formed the basis for the new song version.
You can listen to some sample songs here: http://www.actmusic.com/act9430.htm
Sandro Groganz 