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First Day at Free Software World Conference

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Arrived in Badajoz yesterday for the Free Software World Conference. Right now I sit in the empty “Sala Azul” with Görkem.

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The venue looks nice, plenty of people. Unfortunately, all talks in Spanish yet, even Richard Stallman’s.

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Just met Erkan, who leads the Pardus project. That’s a Linux distribution mainly for the Turkish market and it’s financed by the Turkish government. They pay 15 full time Linux devs – seems like the largest state run Linux developers group. Will write more about that project later.

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Survey of EU Project Proves High Usability of Open Source Software

Sandro Groganz 2 Comments

In the realm of the tOSSad project, a survey on usability proved that some of the most popular Open Source software is indeed user-friendly.

The survey included the following projects and quite a large number of respondents from across Europe answered the questionnaires:

  • OpenOffice.org (196 respondents)
  • Firefox (205 respondents)
  • GNU/Linux with GNOME or KDE desktop (274 respondents)

The report’s results in short are that these projects provide:

  • user-friendly interfaces
  • a clear menu
  • a logical navigation
  • convenient combinations of hot keys
  • a sufficient set of features
  • ease of installation

Most of the participants have used the relevant software for more than 1 year, hence they seem to know why they like it.

The survey includes some interesting charts with the details. Here are some of the most interesting points:

why_did_you_switch_to_openo

76% say because it is for free, 60% because they like the idea of Free Software/Open Source. The 76% seem quite obvious to me – the world is greedy. I would not have expected the 60%, that’s a lot of ideological support!

why_have_you_switched_to_fi

75% say because of tabbed browsing. There must be a reason why IE7 got that too…

Easy to install?

(please read the survey for the various related charts)

Easy say 68% concerning OpenOffice.org, 78% Firefox. The numbers are different concerning GNU/Linux: only 16% say that it is very easy to install hardware. That shows to me that the installation routines of software which is not directly interacting with hardware are much easier to handle. It would have been interesting, if the survey also had asked whether a survey participant is happy with the Plug and Play capabilities of MS Window or thinks that GNU/Linux works better.

Disclaimer: I am a member of the tOSSad Steering Committee on behalf of eZ Systems.

Enrique Morente's "Lorca"

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

There is one flamenco CD in my collection which I like most. It’s actually modern flamenco, with various influences from other music styles (mostly Jazz), created and sung by a real grandmaster of flamenco: Enrique Morente. The CD I am talking about is Lorca, a musical version of some poems of Spains famous poet Federico García Lorca.

Each song is unique, dense, intelligent, emotional. Though I don’t understand the lyrics (my Spanish is just too poor), I can feel the poems solely through Morente’s music. I’d love to see him live one day.

Learning to Cope with the Evolution of a Weblog

Sandro Groganz 1 Comment

At February 13th, it will be 4 years that I posted my first blog entry – I am still lovin’ it! Let me tell you about some of the changes I had to deal with in those 4 years and what you can do about them.

The most important changes were:

  1. My Weblog has moved to different domains (from zzoss.com to sandrozic.de to groganz.com as of today).
  2. I changed the software several times (from b2 to a self-made eZ Publish-based blog to WordPress).
  3. There were times when I blogged actively (~5 blogs per week) and less so (1 entry per month).
  4. My focus on certain topics varied over time (e.g. from general LAMP-based Web development to ECM, from development to marketing).

Points 1. and 2. lead to the fact that I repeatedly lost some link love, especially on Google and Technorati, because Trackbacks and Pingbacks got lost. Just recently, I managed to import all posts I wrote in my first 2 years of blogging – it’s amazing to see that some of them made it back to be listed among the most visited pages in my site stats (mostly referrals from Google).

What’s most unfortunate is that I could not recover comments to old postings. Well, I could, manually, but that would mean a lot of work. Lost comments is like lost friends.

If you want to avoid the same mistakes, make sure

  • to keep your blog at the same domain at all times to keep your permalinks valid,
  • to choose a Weblog software that is well supported to avoid migration problems.

When it comes to point 3., it has a lot to do with point 4.: The level of active blogging correlated with what I did. I blogged more actively while I was self-employed, simply to raise awareness which would lead to consulting contracts. After getting employed, there were times when I was simply buried with work that did not require me to blog.

Concerning point 4., I believe that there is nothing you can do about the shifting focus of what you write about. I even think that Weblogs are there to show how individuals change over time and how their interests change.

If I narrowed down my blog to one specific topic (e.g. Open Source ECM), it would not be in sync with my personality. My general interest is in being open and combining Open Source software with the knowledge society. That’s a rather broad topic, but also a thrilling conjunction where most new things happen these days.

The only problem I see is that my tagcloud does not reflect the change of interest. Some tags (e.g. “pear”) appear much too prominent, although they are outside of my scope of interest these days. Hm, I should get a chronological slider for my tagcloud, just as they did here to display Microsoft’s evolution based on a tagcloud.

In the end, it’s all about transparency and authenticity in the blogosphere, including the ability to deal with changes. Blogging is a lot about learning to cope with evolution, reflecting upon what happened and letting others know how to avoid some of the traps. Hope that helps!

Stenshuvud National Park (Sweden)

Sandro Groganz 3 Comments

In August 2006, I spent a few days in Sweden together with my wife during vacation. The most beautiful place we found was Stenshuvud National Park with a wonderful long long long sandy beach. There were only a few tourists, lots of nature, no buildings, hundreds of ladybirds. Sounds romantic and you bet it was a great place to celebrate our first year of marriage.

We stayed at a B&B close to the park called Ekenäs Gård with nice rooms and fantastic breakfast. A really lovely place. Make sure you get the big room with the balcony should you intend to go there.

Open Source is not Altruism

Sandro Groganz 3 Comments

David A. Wheeler made clear that Open Source is indeed commercial. Let’s iron out another misunderstanding: Open Source is not altruism!

The confusion – that Open Source is based on altruism – is a dreadful mistake. Speakers who argue that it happens due to the unselfish concern of developers for others, are simply unable to understand what is happening.

Those who say Open Source is altruism think of knowledge as a scarce resource, that only altruistic persons would share. The opposite is true: knowledge is an abundant good. For “trading” it, you get attention, trust, authority, etc. – all the things that help you to further develop your expertise and be successful.

As long as you don’t understand that point, you won’t understand the knowledge economy of Open Source. To extend Wheeler’s statement: Open Source is commercial when it comes to making money as well as “buying” knowledge with knowledge. This has nothing to do with altruism.

Pinpoint Your Marketing Message

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

This is about a simple truth, often heard, often neglected.

Especially start-ups talk too much. Look at the first page of a young company’s site and you’ll get plenty of information, but the visitor will end up asking herself: how can I actually benefit from what they offer? Unexperienced entrepreneurs often fail at boiling down their marketing message to 3 or 4 sentences. They live in imaginary skyscrapers touching the moon where the elevator ride takes days.

Writing a song

Good marketing has a lot in common with popular music:

“One of the most brilliant points of humanity is when you take a complex situation, and describe it in a sense that’s simplistic enough for people to grasp it very easily. That’s amazing, really, and that’s what I try to do with songwriting – I try to take a big subject and condense it down into something very simple, maybe just a phrase, or a line, or a couple of lines that says everything. That’s a tough challenge, and that’s what keeps bringing me back to writing music. It’s never easy, which means there’s always a challenge to come up with something new and different.” (Geoff Tate)

Less is more

Just try it: explain your product in 30 seconds to strangers and make them understand. Less is more. It’s damn hard, but it’s worth it. That exercise will help you to take an outsider’s view of your product, to better reflect upon what you are offering. It’s much too common that start-ups feel overwhelmed by their own product and don’t realize that it’s not about technology, but the benefits it offers to potential buyers. Looking at your product from the outside makes you better understand your potential customers. It will make the difference and provide a basis for others to choose or reject your products.

All is less

Of course, there’s always the challenge that you need to adapt your core marketing message over time, as the market and your product changes. You’ll see that changing an existing clear marketing message is possible, while changing a flabby we-can-do-it-all statement is impossible because you can only restate your omni potential hopes or downsize your message. All is less. Indifference makes you inflexible for change.