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.

Remote Team Collaboration: Communicate via Annotated Screenshots with Zappy for macOS

Zapier is a workflow automation software I'm using extensively and which I can highly recommend. Zapier is fully distributed remote company. In order to simplify collaborating visually while working remotely they have been using a tool called "Zappy for macOS" for some time now and they've recently released it for others to use as well. Zappy allows you to quickly capture, annotate, and share screenshots with your co-workers. In their own words, Zappy is: The fastest, all-in-one way to share screenshots, GIFs, and recordings with ...

GDPR Transparency: Web App for Managing GDPR-related Activities in Your Company

GDPR Transparency is a web app for managing the record of processing activities (see https://gdpr-info.eu/art-30-gdpr/) and technical and organisational measures (seehttps://gdpr-info.eu/art-32-gdpr/) as required by GDPR. Since I didn't feel comfortable with the common - rather makeshift - solution of managing GDPR-related processing activities (see https://gdpr-info.eu/art-30-gdpr/) in a spreadsheet table I've created this web app called GDPR Transparency that allows you to manage that kind of information for your business: https://bjoernkw.github.io/gdpr-transparency/ The source code is available here: https://github.com/BjoernKW/gdpr-transparency GDPR Transparency is a PWA based on Angular ...

Sunday April 19th, 2020 by Bjoern in Business, Front End Development, Software, Web Applications

Reprise: Petro Salema – Storyteller Extraordinaire

Almost five years ago I wrote about a talk given by Petro Salema at that year's edition of beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf: Petro Salema – Designing Interfaces That Think @ beyond tellerrand Düssedorf 2015 A common advice given regarding talks and presentations, especially ones of a more technical variety, is to not just talk about technical details but to tell a story. While this piece of advice is good and well-intentioned it's not usually exemplified or specified in any more detail. Steve Jobs is ...

Sunday April 12th, 2020 by Bjoern in Design, Entrepreneurship, Mobile Applications, Software, Web, Web Applications

Konrad Zuse: Not the most correct but the least complicated theories find practical application.

Not the most correct but the least complicated theories find practical application. - Konrad Zuse A translated quote from one of the inventors of computers and modern computer science I read last year under a bust of Zuse near Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin this statement is more relevant today than ever. In software development in particular we often attempt to design solutions that cover each and every possible use case - however unlikely or even virtually non-existent that use case might be. ...

Sunday February 2nd, 2020 by Bjoern in Business, Enterprise Software, Software

Remote Work Is Here to Stay: Best Practices and Tools

2019 seems to have been the year when remote work finally caught on. While not exactly the new default yet it's not as alien and outré anymore as it used to be just a few years ago. Today, instead of being ridiculed or looking into bewildered faces proponents of remote work are usually taken seriously. You're also far less likely to hear bromides such as "Yeah, we don't do that here because in-person communication is easier." (a claim often made but ...

Sunday January 26th, 2020 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship, Software

Boring Solutions Revisited: Choose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley

Dan McKinley's article on choosing boring solutions, although not exactly new anymore, has been a welcome reminder for me to revisit the topic of of using boring solutions and keeping things simple. Dan makes the point that "adding technology to your company comes with a cost" or as I stated in my own article on this subject: "The elephant in the room is: There’s an opportunity cost to everything." Most choices come with a trade-off. If you decide to use a technology for the ...

Sunday October 13th, 2019 by Bjoern in Business, Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Software

Stephen Fluin @ ng-conf 2018: Angular for Designers

At ng-conf 2018 Google Angular developer advocate Stephen Fluin gave this highly interesting talk on making Angular - and web development in general, for that matter - more accessible to designers: Sadly, what we often see in software development industry today is largely artificial boundaries being set up between roles that define themselves by the programming languages they use, e.g. front-end development vs back-end. In other words: Paradoxically, additional information silos are created, while software is actually meant to tear down information ...

Sunday April 21st, 2019 by Bjoern in Business, Enterprise Software, Front End Development, Software, Web Applications

Wesley Grubbs – The Importance of Failing Successfully @ beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 2018

The Importance of Failing Successfully - Wesley Grubbs - btconfDUS2018 from beyond tellerrand on Vimeo.

Sunday September 9th, 2018 by Bjoern in Business, Design, Entrepreneurship

Recommendation: The Freelancer’s Show

If, like me, you're an independent consultant or freelancer I can highly recommend the podcast The Freelancer's Show, which is about the business of consulting and freelancing in the IT / software development industry. More than 300 episodes in it covers a wide range of subjects that are vital if you want to run a successful and sustainable software consulting business. Some of the questions the show tries to answer or at least help the listeners with are: How do I position myself? How ...

Sunday August 26th, 2018 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship

Jens Oliver Meiert – The Dangers of Being a Web Developer @ beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 2018

Sunday August 5th, 2018 by Bjoern in Business, Design, Entrepreneurship, Software, Web Applications

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.