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.

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

Web Summit 2015 in Dublin

A few weeks ago I've been to beautiful, vibrant Dublin for this year's Web Summit. Web Summit - self-proclaimed (and from what I've seen and experienced quite rightfully so) "world’s greatest tech fest" - is a 3-day event packed to the brim with a huge variety of talks and presentations on different tracks such as Design Summit, Enterprise Summit and Health Summit. Besides, there's a vast number of startups both pitching on a fewer smaller stages and presenting their respective products ...

Sunday November 29th, 2015 by Bjoern in Business, Software, Web

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

Cameron Herold: Let’s raise kids to be entrepreneurs

In this fast-paced TED talk entrepreneur Cameron Herold talks about why kids should be raised to be entrepreneurs instead of being lawyers or accountants. By and large, society and our educational system predominantly prepares children for corporate jobs. This is a huge missed opportunity because many children have entrepreneurial traits and skills like creativity, storytelling, tenacity, networking, problem-solving and negotiating skills. However, we don't nurture those but teach kids to get and hold down a 'proper' job. Even the seemingly innocent concept of ...

Sunday October 18th, 2015 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship

Toby Shapshak: You don’t need an app for that

In a 2013 TED talk South African writer Toby Shapshak talks about innovation out of necessity and how entrepreneurs in Africa are solving real-world problems for both their own continent and the world as a whole:

Sunday October 11th, 2015 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship, Mobile Applications, Web

Open-sourcing some of my project code: Freshcard and MemoEasy

Modern web development and software development in general for that matter wouldn't be possible without FOSS: free open source software. Whether it's web frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, frontend frameworks like AngularJS or enterprise toolkits as for instance Spring, open source software is the solid foundation most modern software is built upon. It's quite likely the technology-fuelled growth we've seen for the last decades wouldn't have been possible if it hadn't been for open source software. So, while saying that open ...

Sunday October 4th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Front End Development, Software, Web Applications

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.

Sunday August 9th, 2015 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship

Timothy Dexter – The man who carried coals to Newcastle … and turned a profit

Timothy Dexter was a colourful 18th century American businessman noted for his eccentricity and his eerily acute business sense that in most cases flouted common sense. Among others his business feats include: delivering warming pans to the West Indies, where they were sold for a profit for use as ladles in the local molasses industry shipping gloves to Polynesia, where they were bought by Portuguese merchants on their way to China, who coincidentally anchored there at the time his shipment arrived amassing early Continental Dollars ...

Sunday February 15th, 2015 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship

The How: Learn From Entrepreneurs

If you're an entrepreneur building upon the insights of others, learning from fellow entrepreneurs is essential. Learning from past experiences, mistakes and failures probably is the best way to succeed. Seeing what worked for other startups and what didn't will help you building a better, more sustainable business yourself. The How is a website by Lean Startup Productions that helps entrepreneurs by sharing useful tips and advice about running a startup.

Sunday February 1st, 2015 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship

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

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.