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.

Petro Salema – Designing Interfaces That Think @ beyond tellerrand Düssedorf 2015

Earlier this year at beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 2015 I had the privilege to attend a talk by Petro Salema. Petro shared his insights about today's limits in human computer interaction, attention span, mental bandwidth and how to address these issues. While the subject matter itself is interesting enough already I've never personally witnessed such rivetting storytelling before. He started his talk with a captivating story from his home country Tanzania about Bwakila, a machete-wielding madmen. This story nicely set the ground for the ... Read more

Cameron Herold: Let’s raise kids to be entrepreneurs

In this passionate TED talk Canadian entrepreneur Cameron Herold argues for raising kids to be entrepreneurs instead of lawyers or accountants if we want to solve the world's problems: Not only is he spot on but he also underpins his point with his personal experience of how he was raised to be an entrepreneur. Cameron presents a breathtaking string of entrepreneurial stories and business ventures from both his childhood and from how he's raising his own kids today. Read more

Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA

Ron Finley is a self-proclaimed guerilla gardener from Los Angeles who took the initiative and went about making his neighborhood a better, healthier place to live by converting vacant lots in the "food desert" of South Los Angeles (formerly known as South Central Los Angeles) into vegetable gardens. Ron truly is an epitome of "Be the change that you wish to see in the world." taking steps as tiny as planting a tomato plant in order to gradually and steadily ... Read more

Tiny but valuable life hack: Drastically increase the lifespan of disposable razor blades

Disposable razor blades are expensive and they usually need to be replaced after 4-5 shaves. Now, in the olden days men used special leather strips to sharpen those old-fashioned straight razors nowadays only barbers still seem to be using. These maintenance skills seem to have been lost over time leading to the current business model that's quite similar to the one for inkjet printers: The actual product is sold at a bargain price, sometimes even at a loss, while the consumables ... Read more

Supporting the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income

About a year ago Scott Santens - self-declared writer and advocate of basic income for all - wrote a highly recommendable piece on why should support the idea of an unconditional basic income. In this article he debunks common myths about less desirable repercussions a basic income might have (such as suddenly nobody wanting to do any work anymore ...). He makes a few salient points as to why a basic income is the right thing to implement both from a capitalist's ... Read more

Everything you ever want to know about enterprise sales

This title sounds a bit like dirty secrets, doesn't it? When thinking of enterprise software sales most people think about arcane, lengthy, sometimes sleazy bureaucratic processes entailing: Vendors who are very secretive about pricing: If you have to ask for a price our product isn't for you! Lots of pointless meetings Obnoxious PowerPoint presentations A plethora of stakeholders A decision maker who won't be using the software product being bought and - of course - a user who doesn't have a say but has to use this ... Read more

Money is not a scorecard

Two weeks ago I came across an interesting article on the Mr. Money Mustache blog: "What I’m Teaching my Son about Money" As is usual for Mr. Money Mustache it's a very insightful post about money, financial independence, how to achieve it and what to do with it. I love his blog because he not just tries to educate people about personal finance or money as an end to itself but about money with a purpose. The single most important lesson that can ... Read more

Freelance Developers: Get Your Act Together!

Time and time again I get emails starting like this: Good morning Harvey Nash Business Partner, I would like to make you aware of a new contract that we have open at the moment [ ... ] I didn't bother to anonymize this particular example because somebody who can't bother to look up a person's name on the Internet certainly doesn't care about some negative publicity either. So, go look up their website, I'm sure Harvey Nash are nice people after all. Anyway, I can only ... Read more

beyond tellerrand 2015

Last week I attended beyond tellerrand 2015 in Düsseldorf. This year marked the fifth iteration of the event. It was once again a fantastic two days filled to the brim with a wide range of inspiring, insightful and technical talks about design. In the next few weeks I'll be posting more about some of the talks including live recordings as those become available. Until then I'll leave you with the marvellous opening titles for this year's conference, created by the Barcelona-based audiovisual ... Read more

Antiwork – Rethinking Work Ethic Or: Hard Work is Not Working

In a highly interesting recent article Brian Dean calls for a a radical shift in how we view “jobs”. He poses a seemingly radical question: "Over a decade into the 21st century, we seem as work-obsessed as ever. Is it time for a progressive reframing of work and leisure?" Drawing upon other recent articles such as the already famous one by anthropologist David Graeber on the phenomenon of bullshit jobs Dean argues that in the 21s century our work culture and work ethic is ... Read more
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