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.

On Hiring Developers

Laurie Voss, CTO at npm posted an interesting article on why many companies aren't able to hire good developers in spite of elaborate hiring and interviewing processes. It's a rather lengthy post but very much worth the read. The gist is this: Don't hire someone for what they know already, hire someone for potential and eagerness to grow. Hire people capable of both solving complex problems and communicating clearly. Last not least: Don't hire assholes. The author's own TL;DR is this: Many interview ...

Leadership

Last week I was asked by a friend what I consider the most important aspects of leadership. Spontaneously, I came up with the following two: transparency dependability A good leader should always be open about her objectives and the team's goals. She's supposed to communicate timely and clearly - especially when it comes to bad news. A leader should also be dependable, i.e.: She should adhere to her decisions, admit when she's wrong and not act behind people's backs or have an agenda of ...

Sunday August 17th, 2014 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship

Bad Processes, Budgeting and Constraints

In a recent blog post Ben Horowitz talks about how one bad process can poison your company culture and break the company's back. The takeaway is this: Many startup founders - interestingly especially those with an engineering background - screw up the budgeting process by not applying any constraints to growth. According to Ben Horowitz a typical budgeting process goes like this: Set goals that will enable us to grow Break the goals down so that there is clear ownership and accountability for each goal by ...

Sunday July 27th, 2014 by Bjoern in Business, Design, Entrepreneurship, Software

Erik Spiekermann on Type as Visual Language

At this year's beyond tellerrand design conference Erik Spiekermann talked about type as visible language. Erik Spiekermann is a design and typography legend. Having started his career in the early 1970s he's been a both prolific and seminal designer. He's worked for BVG, Deutsche Bahn, Düsseldorf Airport, Audi, Volkswagen and Heidelberg Printing. So, chances are you've already come across some of his works and you've most certainly seen one of the typefaces designed by him. Besides imparting lots of knowledge on type, typefaces ...

Sunday July 20th, 2014 by Bjoern in Business, Design

Greatness, luck and storytelling

Recently, I've done some reading on computer history again. If you're interested in that sort of stuff and haven't read it yet go and have a look at Ars Technica's in-depth series on the history of the Amiga home computer. It's quite a comprehensive piece on a significant part of computer history that's largely forgotten today. This series and other documents such Dave Haynie's Deathbed Vigil remind me of how far ahead the Amiga was in many respects at that time. I'm ...

Sunday June 15th, 2014 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship

ZenQuery 1.0 is available today!

A few weeks ago I wrote about a new product I'm currently developing: ZenQuery, an Enterprise Backend as a Service. I’m pleased to announce the first public version of ZenQuery today. Since the first public announcement regarding ZenQuery roughly 30 days ago we’ve been busy working on this release. Today, you’ll be able to try out ZenQuery 1.0 yourselves on your own server and environment. I really hope you like what we’ve got for you so far. For more information please have a ...

Wednesday May 21st, 2014 by Bjoern in Design, Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Web Applications

A Comprehensive Website Checklist

Under http://www.boxuk.com/upload/2014/02/Relaunched-Ultimate-Website-Checklist-2.0.pdf Box UK provides a very useful checklist for website launches and updates. Typography, testing, SEO, security: This checklist has you covered for all those important and seemingly trivial aspects to keep in mind when launching and maintaining a website.

Sunday May 11th, 2014 by Bjoern in Business, Web Applications

Help Me Help You Dinner

Some time ago I read about an interesting concept called The Help Me Help You Dinner by Rand Fishkin. He describes this idea in a lot more detail but in a nutshell it is this: Find roughly 10 people in your geographic region who are first or second degree connections on your personal network. Choose people that you think both you can help with something and that might be able to help you in return today or in the future. Find a restaurant ...

Sunday May 4th, 2014 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship

ZenQuery: From Idea To Product In 2 Weeks

Earlier this week I've launched a new product called ZenQuery. In a nutshell, ZenQuery is an application that creates an instant REST API (with JSON, XML and CSV formats) for SQL queries. This allows you to easily access any kind of data from your database without having to deal with technical details such as database drivers, connections, ORM or caching. A typical use case is an enterprise company which for example wants to create a new mobile application. The data needed for such ...

Sunday April 27th, 2014 by Bjoern in Design, Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Web Applications

Surrounded By Idiots?

This week a video called 'The Expert' (based the short story "The Meeting" by Alexey Berezin) was spread by a CNET article aptly titled 'This is how an engineer feels when he's surrounded by idiots': I think most engineers can relate to this situation. However, the real question remains: Why do engineers time and time again find themselves in such Dilbertesque situations. Is it really because we're surrounded by idiots, nitwits and PHBs? Perhaps, but this is only a small part of the ...

Sunday April 6th, 2014 by Bjoern in Business, Enterprise Software, Software

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.