Three years ago I ran for the Bernese Parliament and was voted as “first replacement”. This fall Barbara Streit will step down a year prior to the city elections, therefore giving me the opportunity to join the Bernese Parliament for the EVP Stadt Bern. Although this will mean quite a lot of work, I’m very happy to become a parliamentarian myself for the first time.

Having worked a lot with local and national politicians in recent years I think I know what it means to do parliamentarian work. However, having now the flexibility to post policy suggestions and to do talks to the government and public administration myself increases my motivation a lot. Therefore I’m looking forward to this excieting new phase of my live.

Interview in the EVP Info Stadt Bern

Update 2011-09-23: Today’s newspaper Der Bund brought a small sidenote on the change in the Bernese parliament.

People, and even children, work without fair compensation so that we may celebrate cheap Merry Christmas (see an impressive documentary on child work in chocolate production or read this authentic report on cheap t-shirts by H&M). Therefore this year I don’t want to participate in the ‘consumania’ but be a Christmas Revolutionary! Here are several creative ways to give sense-making Christmas presents:

Giving aid
Besondere Geschenke von TearFund Schweiz
Hilfe schenken von HEKS
Kiva - Loans that change lives (remembered through Marcel Widmer)

Fairtrade presents
Geschenk-Sets von teartrade.ch
Claro Fairtrade Geschenke
Max Havelaar zertifizierte Geschenke
Geschenke auf faircustomer.ch
rrrevolve - der nachhaltige Concept Store (hint from Tania Woodhatch)

Do you know of other sense-making gift websites? Please write a comment!

Today at 8:01h we welcomed our daughter Ella Mae! Her brothers Lionel and Kai (and of course the parents) are proud to welcome a little girl (2900g, 47cm) in our family - who maybe one day may become a famous jazz singer as Ella Mae Morse was and hopefully lives a meaningful, long life as Ella Mae Johnson did ;)

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

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:

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.

This weekend Emanuel and I did our annual outdoor adventure, this time hiking in the Bernese Alps. We walked from Oeschinensee up to the Blüemlisalphütte and down the Kiental valley. Here you can see the first part of our trip on Google Maps while Mänus Android phone was recording the GPS signals (later its batteries were empty). Best viewed is this trail of course on Google Earth:

I didn’t just got to know the nice view from Blüemlisalphütte, but also got introduced to the great open source CMS Drupal ;)

Tomorrow we’ll start another short vacation. This time with the bike around Bodensee. Or to be precise: Anita takes the bike with luggage in the Bob Yak, I push the kids in the Chariot while jogging in order to prepare for the 35km-Brienzerseelauf in October, uff…

This is our planned route:

17.7.2009: Bern 11:04h -> Ludwigshafen 14:28h -> Überlingen 12km
Pension Klosterhof, Christophstrasse 17, 88662 Überlingen

18.7.2009: Überlingen -> Meersburg 16km (Peter is visiting us, yea!)
Haus Boppenmaier, Hechtweg 2, 88709 Meersburg

20.7.2009: Meersburg -> Friedrichshafen 21km
Hotel Hacienda, Am Seewald 36, 88046 Friedrichshafen

21.7.2009: Friedrichshafen -> Kressbronn 12km
Hotel Dorfkrug, Tunau 4, 88079 Kressbronn

22.7.2009: Kressbronn -> Lindau 10km
Jugendherberge Lindau, Herbergsweg 11, 88131 Lindau

24.7.2009: Lindau -> Rorschach 32km
Jugendherberge Rorschach, Churerstrasse 4, 9400 Rorschach

28.7.2009: Rorschach -> Romanshorn 15km -> Zug nach Bern

Now let’s hope weather is not like they predict to be…

Update 2009-07-28: The weather men was completely wrong, we had fantastic sunshine (most of the time)! One of the biggest highlights were Lionel’s two jumps into Bodensee from the 3m diving board!!! (frankly, I’ve never been as proud on my 3 year old son)

We don’t have an open source car but a convenient VW from my grandfather. Now let’s go to Follonica, Italy until July 4th, bye!

Update 2009-07-01: Some pictures from Golfo del Sole: