http://www.stuermer.ch/blog Thoughts of Matthias Stürmer Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:25:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today I read a (German) t3n.de article on mega trends 2012. While I agree with most of the expert's hype assumptions I missed a statement about the recent developments in the area of open source as well as digital sustainability in general. (At least Ulrike Langer briefly points out the ... http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/digitalsustainability.html At first sight Small and Medium Companies (SMEs) may not seem very attracted to open source software (OSS). They have little to save in IT costs if they use e.g. desktop Linux but lots of work to integrate and learn how to use OSS. However, the big potential for SMEs ... http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/oss-for-smes.html Today I had my first day in the city council of Bern. It was a great experience, especially, because I already spoke in the plenum regarding a planned Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. By mobilizing other parties of the parliament we finally won the votation! It's now already in the online news ... http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/first-city-council.html I did a presentation at the LibreOffice conference in Paris about our workshop on improving OOXML support within LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org: User initiative for improving OOXML integration in LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org View more presentations from Matthias Stürmer http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/ooxml-workshop.html 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 ... http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/becoming-a-parliamentarian-myself.html The work of more than half a year is finally seeing daylight: Our new Ernst & Young brochure Open source software in business-critical environments is online as free PDF in German as well as in English. The broad feedback, especially from the usually highly critical German blog community, is very positive. ... http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/business-critical-oss.html Promising times for open source: During the last two weeks I had two opportunities to talk about open source in two different European capital cities. First I spoke in Vienna at the OSS BIG (Open Source Software Business Information Group) Conference about Ernst & Young's new open source brochure "Open Source ... http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/open-source-for-business-and-communities.html Today I had the opportunity to present an introduction, some case studies and the Swiss activities related to Open Government Data at the eGov Lunch of the Berne University of Applied Sciences. I presented the following examples of Open Government Data initiatives and applications: http://www.data.gov http://data.gov.uk http://www.opencongress.org http://www.openspending.org http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org http://www.fixmystreet.com http://energy.publicdata.eu http://www.police.uk http://www.opendata-showroom.org Here are the slides of the presentation: ... http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/ogd-egov-lunch.html Mid April André Golliez and I were invited to teach a guest lecture at Lucerne University of Applied Scienes on Digitale Dustainability and Open Government Data: Digitale Nachhaltigkeit und Open Government Data http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/digital-sustainability.html Here are the slides of my presentation at the Info Society Days 2011 on LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org: (download as PDF) Weniger ist mehr - LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org als kostengünstige und effiziente Office-Suite View more presentations from Matthias Stürmer Viele Benutzer von Office-Software verwenden im Alltag bloss rund ... http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/less-is-more-presentation-on-libreofficeopenofficeorg.html