Hi,
If you’re wondering why I don’t write here any more, please have a look at my 2nd (or to be precise, my 4th or so) blog: roadtoparadise.eu.
The main reason I started that one, is that we’re moving to Australia in the (near) future and are trying to get our Visa.
I will however try to keep this blog updated a bit more than I do right now, but it’ll take some time.
In my current job as a project manager, it’s always juggling with the time the team and I have to spend. Especially in our sector (e-commerce) there’s always a new USP to develop, a new development that can be put into practice and of course, another demanding customer. The thing is, in one hand we have the nice open source e-commerce platform named Batavi we develop, for which we, of course, hope that the community will help us develop as well. On the other hand, we have the ever demanding customer that pays our rent, bills and wages.
For the community to accept our platform and for the community to start developing for/on it, we need to ‘sugar’ the community. We need to give them the needed attention, provide them with a lot of feedback and, more important, we need to set up the versioning tools in which they can commit their work. For the paying customer it’s not always important that we keep the community happy, most of the time they just want to have their bugfix/feature/new development created, preferably yesterday. And, last but not least, our co-workers need to be kept happy and be kept out of the stressful treadmill which we as project managers are in. So how are we going to juggle these two?
The key element here is time. Where do we find the time to invest in the open source community, keep our paid customer happy and pay enough attention to our co-workers?
It’s not easy and it will take a lot of effort to set up a organization which can do exactly that. And at ICEshop, we do it. Currently we’re setting up our organization this new way, and at the moment we’ve got the time keep our paid customers happy and our co-workers as well. The only thing which lacks attention is the open source community. And to be honest, I’m a bit ashamed about that. But first we need to find out the reason why the open source community isn’t getting the attention it should get.
After my first few months at our company, I realize that the main reason we can’t give enough attention to one of our main goals (the community) has everything to do with time management. At the moment we keep improving our software, customers are asking for new features as well and we are creating USP’s for almost every request we get, even if the feature can be created more easy and within less time. Of course we always create the solution for the customer first, but we keep on improving it, until we think it’s done. Instead of this, we should focus on two things:
To do this, it’s imperative that we plan our releases and that we try to combine new features into a release. Of course we can create a branch for the paid customers, even a branch for every customer (so we get 1..N branches for 1..N customers), but all features that are for more than one customer should go on the roadmap and should be released as planned.
To make sure that, next to the community, our paying customers are getting the attention they need as well, a project based way of working is very important. Happily, we are already working project based, so the only thing we need to do is incorporate the roadmap into our way of working, together with the release schedule.
In the meantime, it’s important that our customers start to understand that they don’t buy a product that’s developed by only us, but also by the community and that we want to include the community into our development schedule as well. This takes a bit of explanation to our customers, and sometimes it’s just impossible to let them understand this. This is not a big problem as the majority of our customers will understand it and we hope that they will see the benefits of it as well.
Just to come back to why I’m a bit ashamed of the lack of attention our community is getting, at the moment internally we’ve got an 1.0-alpha (1.0a) version available in our trunk and, as a good open source project should do, we are basically obliged to publish this to our site. The only reason we don’t do this is time.
Er zijn van die weken dat er van alles gebeurd in je leven en dit is zo’n week.
Om te beginnen ben ik deze week als projectmanager begonnen bij ICEshop waar ik me bezig ga houden met het e-commerce platform. Daarnaast hebben we deze week onze koopakte getekend. Als de verkopende partij zich netjes houdt aan alle eisen (zo moeten ze een bouwvergunning aanvragen voor een doorgetrokken muur, aantonen dat de steunbalk ook echt in de buur zit, etc. etc.) dan zijn we op 1 september de trotse eigenaar van een huis n Den Haag.
Last but not least, ik heb vandaag mijn AVB gehaald voor de motor, dus ik kan verder met mijn lessen voor op de weg!
Nou zijn er ook wel dingen die wat minder gaan, zoals een behoorlijke verrekking van mijn kuit waardoor ik maar met mate kan hardlopen, maar daar hebben we het maar niet over.
Als hoofdredacteur voor All About Phones krijg ik, net als de rest van de redactie, dagelijks e-mails binnen van marketing- en persbureau’s, over welk fantastisch product, samenwerkingsverband of iets anders een van de fabrikanten die bij hun onder contract staan gelanceerd heeft.
Hier is niks mis mee, het is een goede bron voor de wat minder urgente nieuwsartikelen en we doen er ons ding mee. Wat er tegenwoordig wel steeds vaker gebeurd, is dat de bureau’s in kwestie (met name de internationale) steeds vaker alleen een berichtje sturen met de strekking: “hierbij ons laatste persbericht” waar een attachment aangehecht is.
Daar is dus wel iets mis mee. Volgens mij is het de bedoeling dat zo’n mail een tricker is om te gaan lezen wat er nu voor iets moois gelanceerd is, maar dit doel wordt niet bereikt. Ik weet niet hoe het bij de rest van onze redactie zit, maar negen van de tien keer gaat zo’n bericht bij mij direct in de trash. Enige uitzonderingen zijn e-mails waarvan ik weet dat het marketingbureau ook grote fabrikanten onder zijn hoede heeft, waarbij de inhoud van het persbericht misschien tegevoegde waarde kan hebben voor onze artikelen.
That being said, zou ik willen vragen aan alle Nederlandse bureau’s om in ieder geval aan te geven waar het persbericht over gaat. Het scheelt ons tijd en de kans dat het bericht opgepakt wordt is vele malen groter.
As most other Dutch internet minded people, I am a proud owner of a Hyves-page. Nowadays I keep on getting question from my, mostly English, colleagues if I have a Facebook-page. Now I know that there are people out there that have/had them both and I really don’t fancy to maintain 3 different pages. My own blog and Hyves is more than enough. I’d like to know what the differences are between the 2 and which one I should choose. I’m sure you can convert a Hyves-page to a Facebook one and vice versa, so that doesn’t bother me.
I’m using Twitter since May 23 2007 and I was (and to be honest are) very excited about it. It’s a create way of keeping in touch with the people you know and, to be honest, it’s also a great way to get in touch with people you don’t know yet.
However Twitter (and other microblogs) are starting to get their downside. To start with, I really don’t care to know that people are brushing their teeth, what their doing to their girlfriends and so on.
What I do like about Twitter is being the first to know about what goes on at Schiphol during a crash and I definitely want to know what is going on in Iran. What’s bothering me the most about the way microblogs are developing is that they, even without making money are being used by companies to making more profit. We see it already with Dell making 3 million on Twitter and when I look at my Twitter I can see more and more accounts that are only using Twitter to promote their business.
When you ask some of them why they are doing it, they respond with “It’s publicity, so why not use it?”. That way microblogs are more and more going to be used as an commercial medium to get to new buyers, more readers of website and so on. I’m nog sure if I like that. I am, as Chief editor of the Dutch phonesite All About Phones, telling my editors not to retweet what we put in our website Twitter, but I have to admit that the owner of the website and one of my editors disagree with me.
What are your opinions about this? Do we have to see Twitter and other miniblogs as a commercial tool to get more readers? Or do we need to leave Twitter as it was supposed to be: a nice way of finding new people and keeping in touch with old ones….
Gister kreeg ik ineens het volgende mailtje in mijn mailbox:
Dear Ronald van den Blink:
Congratulations! It gives me great pleasure to be the first to address you with the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®) designation!
Based upon your examination results, a review of your application and acceptance of your endorsement, the (ISC)2 Board of Directors awarded you with the CISSP designation. By virtue of becoming certified by (ISC)2, you are a member of the (ISC)2 Electorate and have certain voting privileges that are specified in the (ISC)2 Bylaws.
M.a.w. het is nu echt officieel 
Afgelopen november (de 12e om precies te zijn) heb ik in een hokje zitten zweten om het felbegeerde CISSP-certificaat te behalen. Vandaag kreeg ik eindelijke de uitslag:
Dear Ronald van den Blink:
Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have passed the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®) examination – the first step in becoming certified as a CISSP.
Nu moet ik nog “even” een endorsement voor elkaar boxen en mijn CV opsturen ter controle en dan ben ik officieel CISSP-gecertificeerd.
Gisterochtend liep ik vol goede moed naar de auto, op naar mijn werk. Ik dacht maar eens met de auto te gaan en niet met de trein, want ik wilde eens zitten in plaats van elke dag in de trein te moeten staan.
Toen ik bij mijn auto aankwam viel het me al op dat de centrale deurvergrendeling de auto niet open wilde doen en nader onderzoek leerde dat het handschoenen-kastje open stond. Op dat moment begon ik al te vrezen, maar ik zag geen glas, geen kapotte ruitjes. Totdat ik om de auto heen liep en het driehoeksruitje links voor ingetikt zag. Nader onderzoek wees uit dat ze daarmee niet verder konden komen dan…. het centrale deurvergrendelingsknopje…. Met andere woorden, ze wisten exact hoe ze de auto open moesten maken.
De totale schade? Een nieuw ruitje en een gejatte telefoon die ik waarschijnlijk de avond ervoor uit mijn broekzak had laten vallen. En natuurlijk het kl*te gevoel dat mensen niet met hun poten van andermans spullen af kunnen blijven…..