my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.

I’m an independent IT consultant and entrepreneur in the Internet and software business. I’m interested in design, enterprise applications, web apps and SaaS products. I design and develop business solutions and applications. I help companies in terms of software quality and knowledge transfer, e.g. with Angular and Spring Boot.

Follow-up on “Accounting in 2016”

Two months ago, I wrote an article on how accounting in 2016 still is a manual and tedious process. What made me write this article in the first place was the problem that I couldn't automatically get the bank account statements for my business account into my accounting software because my bank's online banking service and my accounting software have incompatible import / export file formats and neither exposes a public API for facilitating communication between and automation of accounting software ...

TED Talk – Peter Singer: The Why And How of Effective Altruism

In 2013 philosopher Peter Singer held a TED talk on the intriguing idea of effective altruism. The simple premise of this idea is that with altruism both the heart and the head need to be involved in order to truly make a difference and make the world a better place. While empathy and compassion for other people's suffering is a prerequisite for altruism, if altruistic action isn't undertaken in a purposeful, effective manner it does little more than placate your conscience, in other ...

Sunday May 22nd, 2016 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship, Freemasonry

Accounting in 2016 – Still a manual and tedious process

The past few weeks I've been struggling with automating my accounting, invoicing and banking processes to the point I don't really have to think about it anymore. Currently, a lot of my accounting-related processes are still way too manual for my liking. Being both a virtuous, lazy programmer and an entrepreneur I'd like to automate every process that can be automated at reasonable cost, especially if that process doesn't generate any revenue. Now, as far as invoicing and small business accounting is ...

Sunday April 3rd, 2016 by Bjoern in Business, Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Software

So sollten Freelancer ihre Preise wirklich kalkulieren

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Vor kurzem machte ein Artikel auf dem Startup Blog Gründerszene die Runde, der behauptet: „So sollten Freelancer ihr Gehalt berechnen“. Darin geht es um den Preis, den Freiberufler in der IT Branche für ihre Leistungen verlangen können. Autor dieses Gastartikels ist Thomas Jajeh, Gründer und Geschäftsführer der Projekt-Vermittlungsplattform Twago. Eigentlich sollte man also meinen, dass hier ein Branchenkenner eine fundierte Analyse und sinnvolle Tipps für Freiberufler liefert. Allerdings verspricht bereits der Titel nichts Gutes. Die ...

Sunday March 27th, 2016 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship, Software

CoderDojo: Free Programming Clubs For Young People

At last year's Web Summit in Dublin I came across CoderDojo, a community that organizes free programming clubs for young people. Originally founded in Cork by entrepreneurs James Whelton and Bill Liao, CoderDojo is a volunteer-led 'grass roots'-type organization that promotes teaching programming to young people in order to support kids by giving them valuable skills that allow them to create stuff such as useful tools, products and art. At the same time efforts like this help tackle the shortage of people ...

Sunday February 28th, 2016 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship, Software, Web

Survey for IT freelancers: How do you approach marketing and sales? – The results!

Ten days ago I published a survey for IT freelancers asking various questions about how they approach marketing and sales. As promised here are the results of the survey. Thanks a lot to everybody who participated: The survey was filled out by 31 freelancers, 22 of whom came via a link both posted on several forums and emailed to personal contacts directly. 8 participants clicked on the survey on Facebook while 1 filled it out on this website. Save for the last ...

Friday January 15th, 2016 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship

Survey for IT freelancers: How do you approach marketing and sales?

As you probably know, I'm an independent IT consultant. Recently, I've been researching how to do marketing and sales in the industry in a bit more detail. I tried different approaches and made some experience with what works - and especially with what doesn't ... I'd like to share this experience with other IT consultants (e.g. through tutorials, best practices and tools for supporting sales processes). In order to get a better picture of how others in the industry approach marketing and ...

Tuesday January 5th, 2016 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship

Primate: Walking the tightrope between mediocrity and bankruptcy

In October I was at this year's Fronteers conference in Amsterdam. Fronteers is a front-end developers association that organises local events throughout the year but is most well-known for this - compared to others - small (around 500 visitors) but all the more exciting conference. The event sports a familiar atmosphere and a broad range of first-class speakers presenting about all sorts of front-end web development-related topics. The videos of this year's talks are now online. A particularly interesting talk was the ...

Sunday December 13th, 2015 by Bjoern in Design, Entrepreneurship, Front End Development, Web

Arbeitnehmerüberlassung? Nein, danke!

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Der Markt für Aufträge für IT Berater wird ganz wesentlich von so genannten Vermittlern dominiert - Unternehmen, die als Mittelsmänner zwischen Dienstleistern und Kunden fungieren. Die Gründe dafür sind vielfältig, haben unter anderem mit dem deutschen Gesetz zur "Scheinselbständigkeit", aber auch mit der unzureichenden Positionierung vieler IT Freiberufler am Markt zu tun. In letzter Zeit häufen sich kuriose Auftragsanfragen einiger dieser Vermittler: In der Projekt-Ausschreibung wird zunächst eindeutig nach Freiberuflern gesucht. Kommt es dann im ...

Sunday December 6th, 2015 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship, Software

How to succeed in business as an introvert

In this article entrepreneur Michael Shreeve provides an interesting "Introvert’s Guide To Success In Business". The cliché of a typical entrepreneur still is something like an alpha-type salesperson who's always on the phone, in sales meetings or otherwise presenting and selling his or her product. While it's absolutely true that as an entrepreneur you always have to be selling to succeed there are many different approaches of doing so. Don't do things that don't work for you just because you feel obligated by ...

Sunday November 8th, 2015 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.