Now, after start of daylight saving time, spring may come. All plants are on the terrace (apart from the oleander, which will be brought outside after Canada at the earliest as it is quite delicate). You might discover some blossoms already and today our new terrace table has been delivered, which I am only able to photograph next weekend unfortunately. Of course I will put up the image as soon as possible. Now it only depends upon the weather if we will be able to start BBQing officially (for one of the jour fixes on Thursday Hanna did some sausages already as far as I know). Hanna’s climate killer is ready in any case.

Cat content in the image below is just by chance, by the way. Spot the Cat!

Excitement is catching on: Next week we are going to Toronto and stay with Nata and family on the cottage over Easter. Sounds simple if you don not know anyrhing about the circumstances: according to this week’s weather forecast there was snow and the temperature is something like -10 degrees Celsius. The first person arriving will have to start the fire and as we have rented a normal car, we won’t be the first without a four-wheel-drive. One will get water only by melting snow or thawing ice, but on the other hand this is just the feeling of nativeness which is fascinating the middle-European about Canada. Monica, Axel’s boss, will come to the lake as well and I hope that her Swedish part id acustomed to such circumstances. I don’t sleep very well becaus of excitement, I think about what I will have to pack, will go to the dentist this week and so on…. well it is the usual prickle I always feel before going to Canada. In summer everything is normal and well rehearsed, but I never was ther in late winter or early spring. People living north of the polar circle celebrate farewell to the winter at the end of March, surviving the winter’s climax. However, it does not mean that spring has arrived. We will have a close feeling of what this means up Noth of Toronto.

Addition by Axel: Those wanting to know where the cottage is: at the end of the dog trail (Name by Hanna’s family) on this Google Map.

After my studies I worked with a systems house for nearly 13 years in software development. The company I would place somehow in the category “Early New Economy”, inspired by 68s ideas, this company operated with a principle that made you either a shareholder after 2 years or you had to leave (this company was founded in 1968 and was known as a the “programming commune”). I became a shareholder and stayed.

The company had good ideas and got (in the 1980s) some 5 million German Marks in Corporate Venture Capital to develop a parallel computer. Along with this investment shareholders had to declare to stay with the company at least for 5 years. Some left, but I stayed.

In additon to the venture capital developments were also financed via national and European projects. I became a member of a European project in the early phase of European funding programmes and then became responsible for those projects, probably because of my command of the English language. As these projects only got a funding of 50%, you had to write of the other 50 as own investment. In the long term this was not bound to work, especially the “alternative company” had huge difficulties with the necessary marketing. It soon became clear that it could not go on forever with this type of projects. I stayed but started to look for alternatives.

Not being bound as a shareholder any longer I found a French consulting company specialised in supporting this kind of European projects. We agreed on a coopertaion, not as an employee however, but as a freelance to start with and then founding a G,bH (Ltd) in Germany. My “old” company went into bankruptcy two years after my leaving. At least I stayed a shareholder (in my new company).

Unfortunately I only decided after 10 long years that I was not really adapted to selling my skills, especially as services in German research and development only reluctantly were being paid. And also I am not a good salesman, I am particularly good in understanding the concerns of potential buyers. My colleagues (based in Paris) got me some projects, so that I got along fairly well for 10 years. But I got tired to chase for new customers. So it came as an opportunity that a colleague of mine from my first company introduced me to a professor of the Hamburg Univerity of Technology (TUHH). After having performed well on a couple of projects he asked me to represent him with a new project.  I still was a shareholder.

During a first meeting for this project, shortly before Christmas 1999 if I recall correctly, another institute of TUHH was represented by an English woman, who is my boss in the meantime. And a company from the booming “new economy” was also represented as a potential partner in that meeting. This company even sustained an “Institute for Media Development”, which was developing new techniques with the help of European research projects. I was more or less tired with my kind of autonomy and directly apporached this company for a job. I got it and then was a not a shareholder any longer.

When I started my new job on 1 July 2000, the person employing me was no longer with the company under dubious circumstances. The company however was booming and shortly after my starting had its peak with some 1200 employees world wide. This felt like a secure job even if the company produced heavy losses, but then they were not bothering about profits but about increasing the “Shareholder Value”. I got into the job quite well, even had share options a year later. I was not a shareholder any longer but a potential holder of anonymous shares.

I took a Berlin flat in Lichtenberg, more or less within walking distance to my company. Via the Internet I got acquainted with Hanna and had a kind of wild time with her, going close and distant within short times until I decided to stay with her.  Prices of my company’s shares however started to fall, after the stock exchange’s high of an 180 DM approximately I got my options for 79 and the company distributed T-shirts imprinted with 10/10/100: 10% profit, 10% growth in turnover, 100 DM share prices (the company still is existing with price of shares of 1,36 €). The bubble was bound to burst and suddenly I was the last in my department. During the second wave of staff reductions I also got my notice. The amateurish management continued and with no representatives with deciding power I got a good compensation from the labour court. But now I was not a shareholder, I was redundant.

Then I remembered the English woman connected to another professor. She remembered me well and first gave me a freelance contract, and then an employee’s contract. This was in 2002, I have limited contracts since then, contracts which keep me from moving to Hamburg apart from Hanna of course. Well now I live in Berlin with a secondary flat in Hamburg, and I am commuting. Now I am just an employee.

Is Linus not looking as if he just walks through the air?

Just a little more than 7 years ago, around Christmas 1999, I was asked by a professor at TUHH to support him in a preparation meeting for a new European research projectin. The goal of this project was the development of an online solution for democratic decision processes based on moderated discussions. This request had far-reaching consequences for me:

• it brought me to Berlin,
• it made me experience the high time of the New Economy,
• and made me feel the downfall hardly with personal consequences,
• it led to my meeting my beloved wife,
• it had the consequence of my my meeting my current boss,
• and that I now may/can/must commute between Berlin and Hamburg.

The project application in the end was successful and of course the project now has come to an end. The project manager now is my colleague and manages a small department in our company. This department keeps a small but interesting blog about e-Participation and e-Democracy in German, the DEMOS Monitor. I think it is quite readable, so just check it out if you know German.

My personal story will be told later at a suitable moment.

To know other languages certainly is nice. I am quite glad that I know English well enough to work in this language without problems.

I also know some French, but this week I realised again that there is much room for improvement. The round table I participated in in Toulouse of course was held in French. While I was able to follow the discussion quite sufficiently, I got to the limit of talking quite soon. To introduce myself in French was not much of a problem, but when I had to hold a little talk about our project, I could not help but to excuse myself in French that I would give the talk in English.

Of course the best method to learn a language easily is to live in the country for some time, as I was lucky enough to have had the chance with English. If that is not working you have to just learn words (which would really help me with French). I just am too lazy do not have the energy to do it.

Since this week you are able to visit Berlin virtually, the first city in the world being presented in this way in Google Earth. Spiegel Online writes:

Berlin has gone virtual. As of Thursday morning, the German capital – from the gigantic Alexanderplatz TV tower right down to the potholes in the side streets — can be seen in Google Earth. The virtual visitor can even enter the new Berlin Central Station and marvel at the Reichstag. Other landmarks are likewise on offer.

To start the tour you have to open Google Earth via the link http://www.3d-stadtmodell.eu/berlin/GE/start_berlin3d.kmz öffnen. To get Google Earth you may click here.

Note: However I have difficulties to start Berlin 3D. Either I am doing something wrong or the servers operated by berlin.de are overloaded.

Note 2: Looks like loaded servers, I stuck to this user manual (in German) and the “loading symbol” does not disappear.

Note 3: It is working, but you need a lot of patience. And still, I think the quality of the 3D images are not that wonderful

Toulouse of course does not just consist of horrible 70s buildings. A very beautiful example of an old building is the Saint-Sernin Basilica from the 11th/12th century with, according to my opinion with very moorish/Spanish elements. Clicking on the picture will open a gallery with images of my Toulouse visits (captions in German).

The last time I was in Toulouse (in November) we were put up in the Hotel le Président by our hosts. Nothing special, clean, simple and affordable. But it still has something special about it.
Clearly the hotel looks like being built in the and you might say that large parts look as original as being fit to be listed. The colour design and several details look so typical as  dedicated to serving for kind of lecture material. Just take a look at the red door handle combined with the yellow door frame and the matching light switch which certainly seemed absolutely modern and futuristic at the time of construction.

A very special and typical detail of the time are the special music equipments fitted to the rooms at those times, to deliver radio programmes to the rooms with these special machines. Radio clocks were certainly quite expensive in those times. And then there was the danger that guests would just nick those items. Of course the equipment does not work any longer, it just is a decoration.

Particularly beautiful and well done is the coulour design with two different yellow shades for lamp and wall combinded with heavy curtains kept completely in orange.

Of course the hotel did not have a suitable internet connection, as there was no such thing in the 1970s. Even if the rooms were redecorated in the 1990s, the beds are definitively not from the 1970s and they fitted phones at that time which look a little bit more modern.

To dispatch something urgently, I went to an Internet café for the first time in my life. And this even had a good price/value relation. Ordering a Coke for a price of 2,50 € I could use the WLAN for an hour. You certainly cannot complain about that!

Well, then I want to show the awakening of spring from Toulouse as well. Spring is a bit farther here of course!

The only drawback is that one could have matched the colour of the house to the tree. Or the other way round.