Eerlijkgezegd, ik was niet van plan te gaan.  Na een poosje de belangrijkste conferenties in mijn métier te hebben afgelopen (FOWA, SXSW, FOWD, ATMEDIA, FOSDEM, DCONSTRUCT) heb je ‘t wel gezien.  Uiteraard kom je overal dezelfde mensen en dezelfde sprekers tegen, maar na een poos is het nieuwe eraf.

En dan is SXSW toch weer nét iets anders.  Ms Jen omschreef het begin vorige week opnieuw als “spring break for geeks”.  Op TechCrunch las ik dat het een braspartij was van 10 dagen waar af en toe een technologie-sessie aan gekoppeld werd.  Beiden zijn waar.

Maar waarom ik net 3000 euro heb betaald om dit opnieuw te kunnen meemaken?  Simpel.  De tagline van SXSW.  ”Tomorrow happens here“.  3 jaar geleden is twitter daar gelanceerd.  2 jaar geleden is het er groot geworden.  Vorig jaar is Gowalla er gelanceerd (de mensen achter Gowalla zijn trouwens Austinians).  Mis je deze conferentie, dan sta je stil, of heb je tenminste de eerste kans gemist.  Elk jaar opnieuw.

2 jaar geleden heb ik een koffie zitten drinken met de breinen achter Flickr.  Een uur en 3 Starbucks later was is zòveel wijzer geworden dat de trip zichzelf al had terugbetaald.  De mensen achter Yahoo’s Upcoming hebben me jaren geleden het nut van een interne API via dewelke je alle communicatie met je frontend doet bewezen.  Sindsdien bouw ik op geen andere manier een app.  Het laat je toe te groeien, en in een groter team te werken zonder conflicten of beperkingen.

Dit jaar kijk ik uit naar de sessie van Mark Zuckerberg, Pete Ashmore, Gary Vaynerchuck, de CEO van Twitter, en zoveel meer.

Het sociale aspect is daarbij niet alleen meegenomen, het is een conditio sine qua non om te gaan.  Je praat er urenlang met de bedenkers van CSS, de goden van Domscripting of het brein achter Ruby on Rails.  Het is overigens de enige plek ter wereld waar een foto van mij met een pint in m’n hand kan genomen worden.  Overal behalve in Texas ben ik immers geheelonthouder.  But what happens in Austin, stays in Austin!

En voor wie doen we het?  Voor de klanten uiteraard.  Het feit dat ik die inzichten kan krijgen en met zo’n ruimte groep getalenteerde mensen bevriend kan zijn bezorgt ook hen voorsprong op de concurrentie.

Genomineerde voor roommate van het jaar wordt ditmaal Hans Verschooten. Hij was bereid me in extremis een slaapplaats aan te bieden in de Hilton, vlakbij het congrescentrum.  De in-house Starbucks en het ontbijtbuffet zullen het geweten hebben.  En ook dat is maar een kilometertje of wat verwijderd van de running track rond de rivier.

Vorig jaar was ik te gast door ons Euro-Amerikaans project The Grid, voor zowel interactive als film.  Dit jaar wordt het interactive only.

Dit is ook dé kans om nog eens een paar boeken uitgelezen te krijgen; zowel audiobooks als échte boeken.  Zoals gewoonlijk ga ik gepakt met een paar thrillers en wat non-fiction.  Het worden de biografie van Steve Jobs, The Inmates are running the Asylum en wellicht een spannend 24-verhaal.  De soundtrack wordt non-fiction vrees ik: Napolion Hill.  Tenslotte zal ik meer dan 24u in de lucht hangen, dus tijd zat!

Dus wordt maart een “korte maand”.  Van 11 tot 17 maart zal ik daar zitten.  De 17e ’s morgens land ik op Zaventem en ’s avonds neem ik daar terug het vliegtuig om naar Monaco te gaan voor de halve marathon van Monte-Carlo (intussen ook een traditie).  De “training”, nee zo mag je het niet noemen; de “emotionele voorbereiding” doe ik dan langs de Colorado in Texas, ’s morgens vroeg (= het enige voordeel van een jetlag).  Pas dinsdag 23 maart zal ik terug in Brussel zijn.  Da’s al bij al 13 dagen weg, wat niet kort is voor een eenmansbedrijf.  Maar de manier waarop ik me georganiseerd heb, met m’n Asterisk en Regus-abonnement en de fantastische mensen die me helpen, laten dat absoluut toe.

I was so proud a couple years ago when I heard our government dared take the step towards open source software. The city of München had done so before, and even in Belgium there were a couple important steps made, amongst others by the city administration of Schoten.
Not only did they choose OpenOffice (as did the justice dep.), but also Asterisk for all telephony. And the results were satisfying.

Regional judges’ offices all over Belgium (in cases of domestic violence or small disputes) we already running Suse Linux, OpenOffice and the likes and an internal report said that project was running smoothly and the users in the field were happy with the solution.

As always, going for an open source solution means you need the necessary know-how within the IT department (or through consultancy, of course) and apparently, that’s where it went wrong at the justice department: they are now moving entirely towards Microsoft’s solutions again: Microsoft Exchange for mail, Windows 7 for the desktop and MS Office as content editor.

Did these people forget the track record of Microsoft in the past? The EU has repeatedly confirmed unlawful commercial practices and fined Microsoft hundreds of millions. Yet our government chose this manufacturer to do business with.
The fact that Microsoft Consultancy Services (not real MS people, but guns-for-hire!!!) are taking care of the entire move back FOR FREE should ring a bell, though. And how about the rest of us, who are selling their services (non-free)?

Open source software, given away for free has the advantage that the customer is not limited to one supplier to provide him with support. The decisions made when developing the software are also not driven by economics but by what the community decides should be created. A very important difference!

Disappointed and ashamed I am in this matter. And eager to see the outcome in the long run.

I hope it doesn’t mean that getting satisfaction professionally implies I’m crap at golf forever. The two should go hand in hand.

On a personal note, SHE is coming home again around midnight today after a two week holiday. I’m planning to get some rest and head for the south of France for a week in an couple of days. That means I’m cleaning the house, washing the car, doing laundry, painting, buying flowers and plants, … all to make her happy .
If only. If only she would pick up golf as well. That would be a big gamechanger!
If only…

Check this out! Do make sure to watch it in HD.

I’m talking about my run in Monte Carlo.  I only started training a month ago and ran a couple of times alongside the Colorado in Texas last week, but I wasn’t really ready for this.  Our last test run yesterday afternoon didn’t promise much good, as I had to rest just at around 5 km.

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday and I had flown her, my dad and my girlfriend in on friday, just after I had landed in Nice (coming from Austin through Dallas and London).  Needless to say I was exhausted beyond belief but the willpower was there to do this anyway.

This morning I got up after a nice celebration for mom yesterday.  We had driven to Ventimiglia in Italy and I had a guitarist sing and play “maaaaamaaaa” at lunch.  She had teared up instantly.  But I was saying I got up this morning after that celebration and yesterday already I had felt quite feverish.  Just before going to bed, I had taken a Dafalgan Codeine (prescription) to lower the incredible fever.  Lorenzo’s (Italian here in Monaco) was very hot inside and that hadn’t helped.

Besides the fever this morning, the plumbing had stopped working.  And I don’t mean in the kitchen.  Actually, it hadn’t stopped, it worked too fast!  4 immodiums later, I had a virtual cork stuffed up there and 2 perdolans later, the headache had gone as well (I’ve been taking perdolan for days now, to counter the migraine after flying back from Austin).  Drugged beyond reason and jetlagged bigtime, I was ready for the run in Monte Carlo at 9:45 am. I felt like crap (what a choice of words in this case, too!)

My parents and our lovely hosts Anny and John were sure I wouldn’t make it to the finish, given my condition.  John had placed a bet I would have a stroke when I put my shoes on.  But I told them the word “quit” wasn’t in my vocabulary.  All the hope was put into Griet (girlfriend) who was completely up to the challenge and fit as ever, to save the face of the nation.  I let her start a couple hundred contestants before me so she could run at her pace and figured that 6 miles an hour would be fast enough this morning.

I found out the hard way that “Monte” in Monte Carlo means “mountain”: the parcours goes up and down ALL the time.  But nevertheless, I made it to the finish in Stade Louis II.  The Prince (Albert) was there to support us and we got a medal for the effort we had all done.  Mind you, if anyone would have known about my condition, they would have given me the gold medal.  Don’t know what rank I got at the finish yet, I’ll have to check the website.  Griet had arrived about 10 minutes earlier and was there waiting for me at the finish.

Thank you all those who have called me during the run or had texted me before.  I was running with “Caz – welcome to your weekend“, a podcast from the Netherlands in my ears, on my iPhone so friends and family could call me during the run.  It was effortless to pick up and usher a few words . Average heartbeat was 178 (yaay) with peaks (for over 10 minutes) of 189 (that’s 98% of my capacity). That’s what we’re made for, anyway. Long story short: I’ve done a huge effort here.

We’ve all decided that this was a great thrill and that we’ll be back next year. WE DID IT!

See the trailer on youtube.

It’s a well-kept secret that I always build the automation to generate the election graphs at our local TV station.  They’ll have to convince me to do it again this year, cause it’s a hell of a job in impossible circumstances, but I’ve started R&D already, nevertheless.

Instead of generating the graphs with ImageMagick, driven by a PHP-based web portal (where the live show’s continuity system is also maintained), as I do every year, I’m considering generating Keynote APXL directly and creating graphs as shown below. I’ve got plenty of time to master APXL, as the elections are on June 7.
They’ve finally gone widescreen across the programming, so my graphs will have to be 16:9 too. I’m looking into a replacement for the traditional scan convertor too, in the form of a proper SDI graphics card. Tips are welcome!

Utah-based KBYU TV station attempted this before.
This is what I have so far (generated! not manually edited)

My attic sports a whole selection of boxes with random cables, adapters and gadgets. A targus serial-to-usb convertor was in one of them.
I connected both on my macbook pro and sure enough, the printer was immediately recognised and some legacy Epson 9-pin printer drivers (roughly) do the job. This wasn’t good enough though. Since working at XS4ALL in the mid-90s, I learned to ban any printer directly connected to a computer. 5 minutes later, I couldn’t help but smiling when the second test print rolled out the Epson, which was now connected to my Airport Extreme / Time Capsule base station (still through the serial-to-usb convertor, which was now connected to a – i again refer to my attic – usb hub, to still allow an extra external harddrive to be connected).
Some 20 minutes later, I had a rough “good morning” generator, including the weather (through the weather.com API) and the latest tweets (through the twitter API).

The code is quick and dirty, I’ll have to clean it up one day (the same day I’ll clear out the attic), but it works:
function get_forecasts($location) {
$url = "http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/".$location."?cc=*&dayf=5&link=xoap&prod=xoap&par=1100278982&key=[mykey]";
$xml = simplexml_load_file($url);
$forecasts = $xml->dayf[0];
$firstday = $forecasts->day[0];
echo $firstday->attributes()->t;;
echo $firstday->part[0]->t[0];
echo round(f2c($firstday->hi[0]));
echo round(f2c($firstday->low[0]));
echo "  sun: ".$firstday->sunr[0];
echo $firstday->suns[0];
}
get_forecasts("BEXX0008");//ghent, Belgium

All that’s left for me to do is to set up the new fileserver (I’ve been preparing one for the last month or so, to replace the 4-year old “riogrande” server, also in the attic) to print this “good morning” greeting every day at – say – 7am. I’d like to combine it with my daily schedule (iCal) and todo list (through TaskPaper, easily done).
Thanks for the tip, Jeremy!  I haven’t spent a dime and I’m one great gadget richer!

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last 8 months, you must have heard of this crisis that’s been going around.  Now, I haven’t felt a decrease in projects yet, but I’ve noticed some changes here and there.

Some projects aren’t being decided upon as fast as before, others (mainly backend stuff, financial applications) are getting priority.  These are moving faster than ever before! There’s real business to be done and a real opportunity here! I’ve never been so busy as these last weeks.  

Belgium being Belgium and our weather being what it is, I was looking forward to a weekend enjoying the great outdoors (read: the golf course), but work comes in the way.  Now, I don’t mind hard work, but from what I’ve seen around me, many people are really suffering from increased stress levels, doing longer hours, a slower cashflow and mainly, a burden on the mind.

Let’s all remember that we’re here to enjoy the time we have and to help one another.  Griet and I both enjoy our jobs and we love working hard every day.  We hope that our plans come true and that we’ll be allowed to retire in 17 years (when we’re 50 and have saved enough to relocate to the south of France and open a bed-and-breakfast) but we ain’t going to try and enjoy our lives now any less. Have a superb weekend!

When the going gets tough, the tough get going!

Though SXSW08 was as packed and geeky as ever, me spending 3 days in bed with the famous South-by-Souhtwest-flu didn’t make it that good an experience.  And eventhough I love Derek and all his geekyness, the added Lightdsaber sounds (he was extracting bits from the original dvd’s for his session) during the little moments I was awake were not the ones I wanted to hear.

Thus, I would skip 2009.  Along came Producer’s Utopia.  The project actually started at SXSW08 when I met our US partner.  We launched the first beta of our main app during AFM in Santa Monica in November 08 and we’re working hard to improve and expand our universe towards a new release at Cannes 09.

The great team at Producer’s Utopia decided we couldn’t let Southby escape.  Not having booked a hotel or any flights became a nice added puzzle, but we figured it all out and indeed: on March 12th, Christopher Buckeridge and myself will be travelling back to Bush Country, or, Obamaland as it is now called (nbe: We were all together in LA on election day!).

On the way home (the 19th for me, the 21th for him), I won’t actually be flying back to Brussels.  Instead, I’ve taken this insane bet with our CFO that I would participate in the Monaco Marathon on March 24th.  I will only be starting in the 10km race, but still.  Not an easy task for a geek with my physique.

So, there it is.  Big plans for another big trip to the big land.  Excited as always and eager to learn what insane stuff the community has come up with this year.  I shall be sporting a Gold Badge, as I will be combining the Film and the Interactive festival.