Now that I migrated to WordPress for blogging, the permalinks of my previous blog entries have changed.

For example:

/article_php_5_enterprise_edition_available_online

changed to:

/2006/11/26/article-php-5-enterprise-edition-available-online/

My initial idea was to use mod_rewrite by adding a RewriteRule for each old link redirecting to the new location, but that looked like a lot of copy&paste to me and would not teach me anything new.

Instead, I chose to redirect requests for old links to the WordPress search page. Try it out yourself: Click on this old permalink /article_php_5_enterprise_edition_available_online and you will be redirected to the search page, which displays the blog entry to you as a search result. This looks like a more flexible solution to me, just in case that my permalinks might change again one day.

The implementation was simple. I added a few lines of PHP code to the 404.php page of my WordPress theme as described in the support topic 404 Search Function for WordPress. I also added a header redirect directive.

This is the full code:

Notice that for security reasons, I use urlencode() for the search page URL to avoid HTTP Response Splitting.

These are the WordPress and MediaWiki extension I use on my site:

WordPress Plugins

• Ultimate Tag Warrior: Very nice and powerful plugin which lets me add tags to my blog entries and display the tag cloud in the sidebar. It also allows me to retrieve tag suggestions from Yahoo! for a post - easy to install and configure and very helpful!
• WP-Leftycats: A mini patch which makes the feed icons display to the left side of a category name. I was just too lazy to hack it myself

MediaWiki Extensions

• GoogleMaps: This extension allows me to show where I am located on the page with my contact details.
• XFeed: Aggregates RSS feeds and displays them from within MediaWiki. Look at the startpage of my site to see it in action. There I show the 5 latest blog entries. I had to tweak the code a bit though, from $feedItems = array(); to $feed->items = array();. The author had it the right way initially, don't know why he changed it.

I have made myself a little christmas present and redesigned my homepage on sandro.groganz.com. Furthermore, I have changed the software to Wordpress and MediaWiki. Some long evenings and short nights have come to an end.

I am particularly happy about using MediaWiki now. Hey, weeee, I use the same software as Wikipedia does :). While transfering the contents from the old homepage to my new one into MediaWiki, I was quite suprised how well the default CSS formatting works and how we all got used to it by using Wikipedia. Hence, I did not change the formatting of contents. Actually, the same is true about the default CSS of Wordpress, which is also widely used on the Web.

Big thanks go to Gassi of Netzwirt, who helped me very quickly by moving my domain to a PHP 5-enabled server. I am very happy with his hosting service for my site - no problems since 2,5 years.

Merry christmas to all of you!

... and thanks so much!

I have had a great time at eZ systems, both from a professional and a personal perspective: Having started as a System Developer in Nov 2004, I learned more about the technical details of eZ publish. My following roles included consulting, training, conference and customer presentations, pre-sales, etc. After 1 year at eZ and having gained a good overview of most business areas, I became part of headquarters management and ended up being the VP Communication, doing strategic governance of all global marketing and knowledge management at eZ systems.

Now it is time for me to start something new, with a different focus, where I can apply and further extend the broad skill set I was able to develop at eZ.

I have been appointed Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) at eZ systems. Some of you might go "Uh, CwtfO???", so here is what Wikipedia has to say about the CKO role:

A Chief Knowledge Officer is an organizational leader, responsible for ensuring that the organization maximizes the value it achieves through "knowledge". [...] CKO responsibilities include such things as (1) developing an overall framework that guides knowledge management, (2) actively promoting the knowledge agenda within and beyond the company, (3) overseeing the development of the knowledge infrastructure, and (4) facilitating connections, coordination and communications.

That's quite a nice description. One special thing about eZ systems is, that it is an Open Source company, thus the borders between internal and external communication often do not exist. In fact, an Open Source company is just as much about an open communication as it is about open software.

This is actually the part I am most excited about: to explore the potentials of open knowledge management, which includes the eZ systems team just as much as the developers community, the partners, etc. In an Open Source ecosystem, knowledge management is very much a joint effort of all actors involved and can only follow a bottom-up approach.

With the CKO role, eZ systems is the only Open Source company I know of with a dedicated role for managing its knowledge and that of the whole ecosystem. It shows that eZ systems is serious about its slogan "Share your Information".

If this all sounds too abstract to you, stay tuned, as I plan to write about concrete KM projects and their results in my Weblog.

I have seen and heard several Pop concerts where the CD sounds so much better than the live performance. Quite the opposite with James Blunt live: The concert was even better than his fabulous CD, his voice is simply great - on CD and live. Although he only played roughly 1h+, he deeply impressed the audience in Böblingen/Germany at January 21st 2005.

I am really happy that Pop can still be more than Britney Spears!

If there's a James Blunt concert close to you, go and hear him!

My friend Nir Yariv started blogging. I've enjoyed good times with him while travelling Germany and Austria together during the Enterprise Open Source roadshow, and also during a great evening in Munich's pub Alter Ofen.

Check out Nir's Blog, because the dude's got something to say

I live in a tiny little village called "Bergerhausen", which is part of Biberach. We had quite some snow lately and here are some freezy cold pictures.

Shadow on the snow: my wife and me.

View from my home office onto almost all of Bergerhausen.

That's the house we live in, right where the windows in the roof are.

South-eastern view from my home office at the winter morning sun.

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

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!