Working for one year at the innovative software development company Liip provided me in-depth insight into bleeding edge web technologies, agile methodologies, and professional PHP programming. Now it’s time to move on and learn something new - or as some of my friends replied ‘becoming serious’ with tie and Blackberry:

As of August 2nd, 2010 I started as senior advisor in the IT Risk and Assurance team at Ernst & Young in Bern (announced also in the current Netzwoche Ticker)

The first two days at EY (yesterday introduction in Zürich, today in Bern) were challenging. Not only getting to know a completely new industry, auditing, and its complex regulations (e.g. the Sarbanes–Oxley Act), but also learning strange old software such as Windows, Word, and Lotus Notes… Nevertheless the job tasks are interesting and the people I’ve met so far are great and very helpful - and that’s what matters at the end of the day.

And since I might even use some of my know-how in social media, mobile computing, and open source software for the moment I’m also able to continue working at the board of Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open and as a secretary of the Parlamentarian Group for Digital Sustainability.

BTW my new business address is

Dr. Matthias Stürmer | Senior, Advisory Services | EMEIA Financial Services
Dr. sc. ETH Zürich, lic.rer.pol. Universität Bern
Ernst & Young
Belpstrasse 23, 3001 Bern, Switzerland
Office: +41 58 286 61 97 | Cell: +41 58 289 61 97 | matthias.stuermer@ch.ey.com
Website: www.ch.ey.com

Today I gave a talk at TransferSummit 2010 in Oxford on the Nokia Internet Tablet development (breaking news: “Nokia N-series devices to drop Symbian in favour of MeeGo”), Private-Collective Model of Innovation, benefits and cost of open source community building, the open source adoption matrix and ‘open-washing’ questions to firms.

The audience liked my speech but especially loved the Prezi-way of presenting it. That’s the backdraw with such innovative presentation technologies: The form becomes more important than the content ;)

Tonight I had a very special speech at Netzzunft guest at the Open Broadcast studios in Basel, a new user-generated radio station. Evangelism 2.0 was the topic where Sascha Corti, Technology Evangelist at Microsoft, Peter Schulz, CTO at Joiz, and I had to talk about our individual perspective of evangelism in the technology sector.

In my presentation I described the similarities and differences between open source software and Christianity. Obviously the relation between these two issues provoked an interesting discussion among the participants ;) My conclusion was that while religion is a matter of faith and trust choosing open source licensed software has nothing to do with faith but is a rational decision for beneficial license terms as described in the recent Netzwoche article “Open Source ist keine Glaubensfrage”.

Here is the animated Prezi mind map:

I’m very much looking forward to the upcoming TransferSummit in June in Oxford, UK. The organizers accomplished to setup a great speaker list with lots of interesting open source evangelists (including my humble self talking about my dissertational research). This will feel like a family gathering to meet fellows such as Danese Cooper, Stormy Peters, Bertrand Delacretaz, and Martin Michlmayr. I’ve met them at one of the many open source conferences I’ve been to in the last 7 years - and suddenly I feel old ;)

A bit more than a year ago I ran for a post in the city parliament of Bern and almost got a position there. While local politics is nice, it becomes even more interesting on a departmental level. Therefore I’m now *jevp candidate and also motivated 19 other young men and woman for representing the city of Bern in the parliament of the canton of Bern. Sorry that you have to watch me on the election posters all over the city - but it ends in two weeks ;)

Yesterday around 40 people joined a little expedition on the Faulhorn to ride the longest sledging trail of Europe - a great way of starting the age above 30! And fortunately this time it was much better weather than five years ago ;)

As Google knows everything anyway today we decided from now on we manage our family finances with Google Docs. After long negotiations we agreed on a common categorization of our spendings. My highlite of the day was that I could play around with Google Spreadsheets and program a little ‘lightweight’ budgeting table including a convenient entry form. Here is the demo - unfortunately with fictive numbers as my salary isn’t in that league yet ;)

One needs just to load the form, and fill in the values. Then the spending (or earning) data gets sent to the table, updates the current summary of the actual figures, and compares it with the planned numbers. If an error occurs the entered data may be easily corrected in the list of payments. And the best thing: The form also works on a smartphone, e.g. my new Android HTC Hero, thus I don’t need to keep all the receipts but enter the beers and cinema visits while running.

Finally the Wikipedia DE community accepted the entry for “Digitale Nachhaltigkeit”. Just hours after my initial publication of the short article a request for deletion was posted by Wikipedia watchers. This was followed by a long discussion between the editors, Thorsten Busch, and myself. In the end, one of the Wikipedia admins reasoned that our parliamentarian group, the Open Source Jahrbuch, and the ETH Zürich together are able to establish a new terminology - how powerful we are ;)

Nevertheless this incident proved for me personally that Wikipedia and open content systems are able to function on a sustainable basis - exactly the idea behind our definition of digital sustainability. The immediate reaction that the term is not yet established was justified and forced me to improve and enhance the article with other sources I found.

BTW, the two other Wikipedia articles I’ve created in the English chapter didn’t stimulate any discussion: the private-collective model of innovation and Prof. Georg von Krogh. Either they are much more established than the term “Digitale Nachhaltigkeit” (which they are of course ;) or the German Wikipedia community is really as rigorous as recently discovered.

There hasn’t been a political vote for a long time that has been so important to me: the prohibition of weapon exports. I’ve given several public statements at StopArmut events, discussion panels and party meetings on my opinion to ban Swiss military exports. Below is the ad which was published in several newspapers yesterday. And tonight I’ll be going resp. laying on the street at the biggest Swiss Flashmob ever!

Yesterday I had a talk at the 3rd E-Government Symposium in Bern about how to use the open source community principle in e-government projects. Interest in the topic was huge compared to my speech two years ago. This time the room was full of people. Many came to me after the presentation to talk about the ideas and possible future applications in federal and cantonal e-government projects. It seems open source is finally becoming a more mainstream topic - even in public administration!

Nachhaltige, innovative eGovernment-Lösungen basierend auf dem Open Source Community-Prinzip

“Einsparungen durch Mehrfachnutzung und offene Standards: Dank dem Prinzip Einmal entwickeln - mehrfach anwenden, offenen Standards und gegenseitigem Austausch werden die Investitionen optimal genutzt.” Dieser Grundsatz, zitiert aus der E-Government-Strategie Schweiz, illustriert prägnant die Vorteile von Open Source Software und Open Standards für E-Government Vorhaben.

Aber nicht nur die freie Wiederverwendung der Technologien selbst, sondern auch deren Herstellungsprozesse bieten öffentlichen Institutionen Potential für Kostenersparnisse und Innovationen um eine nachhaltige Digitalisierung sicherzustellen. Neue, kollaborative Ansätze der Software-Entwicklung in öffentlichen Verwaltungen sind erfolgreich wie das von mehreren Kantonen gemeinschaftlich entwickelte Gemeinderegistersystem GERES für die Volkszählung 2010 oder Beschaffungspraktiken des Vereins Schweizerische Städte- und Gemeinde-Informatik SSGI zeigen. Wie diese Beispiele demonstrieren, erlauben innovative Organisationsstrukturen, anlehnend an das Community-Prinzip von Open Source Projekten, die hemmenden Seiten des Föderalismus zu überwinden und gewährleisten gleichzeitig die Handlungsfreiheit und Abdeckung der individuellen Bedürfnissen der einzelnen Verwaltungsstellen.

Das Referat erläutert Grundlagen des Open Source Entwicklungsmodells, portraitiert aktuelle E-Government Projekte basierend auf Open Source Software und Open Standards und zeigt auf, wie Behörden künftig noch besser die Vorteile des Community-Prinzips nutzen können. Insbesondere werden der Begriff der “Digitalen Nachhaltigkeit” eingeführt und aktuelle Tätigkeiten aus der gleichnamigen Parlamentarischen Gruppe zusammengefasst.

Kurz-Biographie

Matthias Stürmer, Dr. sc. ETH Zürich, lic.rer.pol., hat im Sommer 2009 an der ETH Zürich seine Dissertation über den Einfluss von Firmen auf Open Source Communities abgeschlossen und arbeitet heute als Projektleiter und Berater bei der Web-Entwicklungsfirma Liip. Daneben ist er Vorstandsmitglied der Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open und Sekretär der Parlamentarischen Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit.

Portrait Parlamentarische Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit

Wissen ist für die Schweiz von grosser volkswirtschaftlicher Bedeutung: Bildung der Bevölkerung, Innovationskraft der Unternehmen, Effizienz in der öffentlichen Verwaltung, Exzellenz in der Wissenschaft – fast alle Gesellschaftsbereiche setzen die langfristige und offene Verfügbarkeit von Wissensgütern voraus. Im heutigen Informationszeitalter sind somit ein nachhaltiger Umgang mit digitalen Technologien gefragt um in der Schweiz das Potential der fortschreitende Digitalisierung auch in Zukunft nutzen zu können.

Zur Thematisierung und Förderung dieses Anliegens auf politischer Ebene ist im Mai 2009 die parlamentarische Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit gegründet worden. Präsidiert von Nationalrätin Edith Graf-Litscher (SP, Kt. Thurgau) und Nationalrat Christian Wasserfallen (FDP.Die Liberalen, Kt. Bern) und besetzt mit 23 weiteren Mitgliedern aus dem National- und Ständerat unterstützt die Gruppe den nachhaltigen und innovativen Umgang mit Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien. Die vier konkreten Handlungsgebiete umfassen die Förderung von Open Source Software, offenen Standards sowie freiem Zugriff auf Forschungsresultate (Open Access) und andere Inhalte (Open Content).