thingamy

spaces, Montessori, wealth and Switzerland

Danger area: Utterly free associating forthwith, connecting dots randomly.

Zermatt has many things going for it, I love to come back and I've been doing that for about 30 years now. I feel at home.

In the car driving there on Saturday Jens Christian mentioned that his take-away from Lift, his connecting the dots, was

"Spaces. Spaces that allow certain things to happen. Spaces that foster people doing things."

When I cross the border to Switzerland, every time, it hits me that everything has it's place, the firewood stacks are perfectly aligned, the fields looks like well groomed golf courses, you know, the typical Swiss scenery. And I love it, it immediately puts me in a good "place". I feel at ease.

One evening in Zermatt we had a drink at the Vernissage, a gallery / bar / cinema created by a local chap, Heinz Julen. Then, stumbling out, we fell giggling through the next door which was his furniture shop / gallery.

 

He uses machine parts, plywood boxes and whatnot to create furniture. Like a lighted glass and steel dinner table complete with industrial hoisting mechanism to convert it into a lighting device floating under your roof. Or lower it all the way to become a lighted dance floor. Completely irrelevant. Pretty un-chalet-like.

In London or New York I would not be surprised, but in a secluded mountain village with groomed chalets, this kind of stuff? That's the best of it, the contrast, the openness to the good things, independent of being old or new. Allowing space to create, love it.

Take a look at current Swiss architecture and you know what I mean.

Another dot: Switzerland is and has been for a long time a very wealthy nation despite being landlocked and having little natural resources. Besides nice slopes and good cheese that is.

And another: Maria Montessori had as a main educational principle to "prepare the environment!", and who but a Swiss educator, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had inspired her in her early years.
Today you'll find a "Pestalozzi" street or place in any Swiss town. Go to some neighbouring countries and you'll find the parallel places and avenues named after generals. Big difference in attitude somehow.

Switzerland, the Montessori environment for grown-ups?

Could there be lines between what Jens Christian is alluding to, the importance the Swiss puts on it's environment and their wealth?

I would not dismiss the notion off hand...

travel notes

Been off for a week, Lift conference in Geneva first of all - again a very interesting two days and as always grand to meet old friends and getting some wonderful new friends!

Do love being virtual but boy do those conferences liven up ones sorry not-second-life - extremely smart and nice people, discussions, laughter, fondue, wine, double ristrettos in the morning, ahhh...

Many thanks again to Laurent, John and all the others who made it possible!

Off I went to Zurich for Monday meetings with some of my old merchant banking chums doing some interesting planning for thingamy's corporate future... more later on that ;)

The little gap between Friday and Monday I conveniently filled up with some skiing in Zermatt... here's a small amateurish phone-shaking-in-hand video snippet from that:

Best part of Sunday skiing was when I decided to veer off into the woods for a much needed "pause" thus just missing the cablecar to Blauherd which got stuck seconds after my arrival. They started evacuating by helicopter after an hour... vertigo's my middle initial and dangling under helicopters in the alps, nah...

Drove to Switzerland this time, spent 19 hours behind the wheel - post on some semantic-expanded-tagging dreamt up while speeding on Italian motorways coming soon...

random tourist notes

A bit busy these days, currently at the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco... what I'm doing there you ask?
Well, hmmm, being a bit against the concept of applications and seeing them being delivered online instead does not do it for me have to admit.

But Ismael is doing a grand job, and getting a iPod Nano with all the conference information on it instead of yet another stupid bag with papers was a superb twist!

But it is a great opportunity to see lots of new faces and meet many that I've been communicating online with for long. Nothing is like a bit of face to face with a beer in hand!

Next week will be SAP TechEd in Amsterdam - then with a couple of days digestive thinking I guess I'll be able to post something of use.

So I'll limit this to some random tourist observations while waiting for the next presentation.

I do like San Francisco a lot!

Nice airport, not much traffic there, and an actual working and comfortable public transport system to get one into town - the BART. Almost Swiss-like that part.

Until I was to buy the ticket: Being a geek-in-training I had a hard time finally admitting I needed help to buy the ticket, but I had to. Here's how that one works - handy if you're ever going here:

First find the fare from the printed sheet on the wall - in my case $ 5.15. Then you find the bill-change machine on the other wall to split your 20 dollar bill into four 5 dollar bills.

Then you feed the machine with two of those, then push the field on the screen that says "deduct a quarter", that will spit out a quarter. Repeat 19 times. The punch the field "deduct a nickel", repeat two times as it spits out two nickels. Now you're at 5.15 so you can choose "print ticket". That was easy was it not? Intuitive or what?

Random note number two: Now I know where European trams go when they die, they go to San Francisco! Really cool 50 year old trams from Milano including nothing but Italian signs - "Uscita" instead of "Exit" and all. Suspect the locals will get real multilingual after a while, nice touch!

More randomness and hopefully more interesting software observations to follow :)

travelling

Saturday 29th Thomas and a few of his SAP compatriots will be driving all the way down to Bedoin where we will meet up and go for a charity ride up Mt Ventoux.

If you have not already, flip out your credit card and make a donation to Warchild here!

October 9th - 14th will be spent in San Francisco where I will attend Office 2.0 and have a few meetings etc. But I still have some time on my hands if you're keen to meet up!

Then, week after that, it'll be SAP TechEd in Amsterdam, drop me a mail if you're there - always keen to meet up.
(Still blown away that SAP will cover my costs, thank you good folks in Walldorf, I'll study hard ;))

London

Just back from a few days in London, good fun as always - how can it not be when it starts with the London Girl Geek Dinner! (thanks Sarah and Hugh!)

Densely populated with such amazing girls as Gia, Henriette, Sarah, Cathy and many many more... and yet another inspiring call to arms by Cory Doctorow! No panels titled "Women in technology" needed at such gatherings... eh Gia?

(Eat your hearts out Dennis and Ric ;)

Met up with Cathy over lunch to show a snippet of thingamy and talk enterprise stuff. She's a wickedly smart SAP systems geek and really good company, what can I say?

Had also managed to talk James Governor into give me a snippet of time. He being a business 2.5 kind-of-a-guy he did not suggest any old Starbucks, nope, his meeting room was a wine shop with a table in the middle... that's the way to go I say :)

Think we stumbled out after four hours or something (James' brownie points at the home front being under threat), and with Hugh arriving at the scene after two hours I think we had most French wine districts covered... had a grand time!

Now I'm in serious wine bill deficit to James, and will have to arrange a 60m-of-shelf-rose-wine-tasting-sprint in my corner of the world to start paying off that debt! (Or arrange some serious eatery outing in London next time).

Wrapped up today with David and David, where the second David is a true work flow geek so what's not to like? Another inspiring meeting with yet more smart people!

To all kind souls in London, much appreciated, thanks for listening and engaging discussions, I truly had a grand (and believe it or not, productive) time!

Geneve

Just back from Geneva and Lift06.

Big thanks to Laurent and all his helping hands, great work and highly appreciated!

As always these events gathers some of the smartest people I know, and not only the smartest, they're great company to boot! Even better, I meet new people that are equally smart and funny - that alone is reason enough too go to these things!

Many great presentations of course, my own 12 minutes show-a-bit of software I will not mention, rather will forget that while I solace myself that even the best like Guy Kawasaki took many years of presentations to get good at it :)

But it did lead to some good one-on-ones afterward where I had the chance to explain more, and that it needed.

Appreciation goes to Ian, Jens Christian (who gave me hard time post presentation for not having given more of the background, duly noted Jens Christian ;), Amy, Erik, Joshua, Thibault, Daniel, Beth, Noel, Christian and many, many more for highly engaging and enjoyable discussions and conversations!

Ian even ventured to play more with the current early-version of the thingamy so I expect some frustrated inquiries of "how does this work??" from the Jura mountains soon :)

Had one of the best cheese fondues ever at Bain de Paquis on Thursday evening, enriched by great discussions with Euan, Gia, Brian and many more!

Hugh and I did not feel that was enough so we had another fondue on Friday evening just to top it off! Being in Switzerland and all...

As it was all over Hugh's old friend Hamish took Hugh and myself for lunch in the countryside and really dotted the Is with a menu of Filet de Perche! Ahh Swiss food is delightful. Then back to Hamish's place to meet Wim and The Snacks and discuss SAP and other enterprise software stuff... :)

If Hamish had been a bit older he would have been a major member of Monty Python,  I'm still hurting from laughing. Get this man his own TV show now!
Add that I now echo Hugh's "he's one of the smartest people I know" :)

Again, thank you all!

Back to the software development to-do list and some serious strategic issues - will soon be asking for suggestions in this place - why not ask the smart people (you) after all?

busy, busy, busy

Quiet here, but I'm having a great time testing, testing and testing our little system :)

Just like I always say - this is like Lego!

I build cool and complicated (business) models from generic building blocks, and I get the same the kick out of doing it.

"Being not having" to paraphrase Eric Fromm.

"Hmm, how should this process run... what is really an invoice - a real object or really something represented by another object?... Should this event happen first or later?... What follows this snippet of process? What precedes it? etc. etc."

Using atomised building blocks really makes one rethink the basics.

Hard to get a Lego model elegant in one try, ditto for a business model...

Feels like being nine years old again, on the carpet in my room, door locked, lemonade and cookies at the ready, no parents in sight and a huge box of building blocks - dreaming, scheming, building, testing, trying, ripping apart and starting over.

How time flies!

And it works, wow! Just now running my own little virtual bike factory doing all what has to be done there and showing reports and accounts and whatnot.

When bored with procuring frames and wheelsets I flip over to a virtual hospital and run that too, giving Mr. Peter Patient all kinds of ailments and treatments.

Yikes, making software is fun!

OK, OK, it does not look like much yet, more like Mr. Daimler's first four wheeler - quirky handles all over the place. But it did move and steer!

The E-class will follow, S-class a bit later :)

And next week I'll be in Geneva at Lift06 for what I am sure will be invigorating and good fun. Will bring skies for some weekend nature romping too.

And I've had the pleasure of being invited to show a bit of what we're up to - all of 15 minutes, that will be fun too, at least for me... :)