Geekness - closer to the world » Event

70.3Ironman Switzerland 2010 in Rapperswil-Jona

CoCaman — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:45:11 +0000

Top Five Men

Michael Raelert (GER) 3:47.47,2

Ronnie Schildknecht (SUI) 3:54.29,2

Olivier Marceau (SUI) 3:55.16,6

Romain Guillaume (FRA) 3:59.06,2

Masimo Cigana (ITA) 4:01.52,8

Top Five Women

Caroline Steffen (SUI) 4:19.29,5

Nicole Hofer (SUI) 4:25.25,4

Karin Thürig (SUI) 4:29.09,1

Simone Benz (SUI) 4:34.12,6

Eva Janssen (NED) 4:41.55,7

Lost Series Finale (spoilerfree!)

CoCaman — Mon, 24 May 2010 07:35:56 +0000

Letdown
Or
Surprise
Today?

Tell me know in the comments. I am still uncertain what to think…

Fussball WM 2010 in Südafrika – Das Tippspiel

CoCaman — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:10:10 +0000

Die ganze Welt schaut Fussball. Aber es gibt noch etwas besseres als Fussball spielen. Darauf tippen. Und dank dem WM Tippspiel von fussballmag.ch kann jetzt jeder einfach seine Tipps für jedes Vorrundenspiel abgeben. Und dabei noch tolle Preise gewinnen!

Also nichts wie anmelden und Preise absahnen!

Lust auf Ferien? Mach auch mit beim grossen WM-Tippspiel und gewinne eine Reise nach Malta! > http://www.fussballmag.ch/i/AGZhpaObqaIlAmD/

Register for StartupCamp 2010 Switzerland in Basel!

CoCaman — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:07:49 +0000

The first StartupCamp in Switzerland took place in January 2009 and brought together young and future entrepreneurs in Switzerland in the process of building or planning a business in the high-tech, Web or life-science industry. The StartupCamp 2009 was such a success that the organization team clearly decided to organize another camp in 2010!

The StartupCamp aims to transfer knowledge and know how in the relaxed atmosphere of a Barcamp and to demonstrate the various possibilities to get help on your way to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Tracks can include writing a business plan, fundraising, building the right team, startup support agencies in Switzerland, web technologies, marketing & PR and much more. The attendees learn from each other and expand their network with new interesting contacts. Thanks to all sponsors this event is free for all attendees.
The sponsors are Acceleris, FHNW Basel, i-net BASEL, CTI Invest, Oracle, SUN Microsystems, DeVigier Stiftung, Amiando and Amazee.

Date & venue

The StartupCamp Switzerland 2010 will take place in Basel on Saturday, 13 February 2010 from 10am to 5pm at the same place as last year: University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz FHNW), right at the main train station, Peter-Merian-Strasse 86, 4002 Basel. The registration opens at 9am and an after-party is planned for the evening, so reserve the whole day and evening!

Registration is now open

Registration for the StartupCamp Switzerland 2010 is now open at http://www.amazee.com/startupcamp-switzerland-0
For registering you just need to click „I’m attending“ on the front page of the project magazine.
If you RSVP “I’m attending” and later decide that you will not attend the StartupCamp, please remove your name from the list as soon as possible as space is limited.

Spread the word!

Please give others the chance to find out about this event by talking and writing about it. Help us spread the word and make the StartupCamp 2010 a great event!

The StartupCamp Switzerland Team
Ansgar Wollnik, Dania Gerhardt, Patrick Liechti, Matthias Sala, Carola Ettenreich, Daniel Ebneter

MyEasyPhotoGallery – Simple PHP Photo Gallery

CoCaman — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:57:18 +0000

I needed a quick and dirty PHP photo gallery. So what did I do? I hacked one together very quickly. That was in 2007. Today I have published that little piece of software to GitHub. You can download (ZIP or TAR) MyEasyPhotoGallery from GitHub and use it create a photo gallery in less than 3 minutes.
All you need to do is upload the script, upload your photos and click a link. The script then creates the thumbnails and you can share the link with everyone. There is no need for a database, user management or anything.

The design is very basic. So this really is just a simple plain “show” interface. You could use to quickly create a display for some logos your a creating or for your mother’s photos to France.

And there are some bugs. For example, on my server GD creates very dark thumbnails. Maybe ImageMagick could help. And there are sometimes some error messages I have not yet removed or fixed.

Preview MyEasyPhotoGallery: http://projects.cocaman.net/easygallery/index.php?view=refl
Download: http://github.com/cocaman/easygallery/archives/master
GitHub Repository: http://github.com/cocaman/easygallery/

Be A Secret Twitter Santa This Christmas

CoCaman — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:15:04 +0000

This must be a first. Swiss web-agencies Liip and frühjahr have created a secret santa “game” for Twitter. Yes, this Christmas you can do a secret santa on Twitter. And it is pretty simple. You just register with your Twitter account and the OAuth protocol and from December 1st until Christmas Eve you can give gifts to other twitterers. But instead of books, chocolate or handwritten poems you can give links, photos or other web-ish online stuff.
The German version of the game can be found on twichteln.ch. “Wichteln” is the German word for “secret santa” and English speaking people can participate on tweecretsanta.co.uk.

So go ahead and register. And have fun receiving your virtual gifts this Christmas season.
You can also download the press release with more details.

The official hashtags are #twichteln for the German members and #tweecret for English people.

Challenge Projekt Zwischenpräsentation

CoCaman — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:57:55 +0000

Seit dem Start des Challenge Projekts an der Hochschule für Technik in Rapperswil sind rund 7 Wochen vergangen. Zeit also, einen kurzen Rückblick zu halten und sich vertieft mit den “Gegner” auseinanderzusetzen.
Aus diesem Grund fand am 30. Oktober eine Vertiefungsveranstaltung statt. Unsere Präsentation findet sich weiter unter oder auf SlideShare.net.

Dabei tratt auch Andreas Töscher, einer der Mitglieder des Siegerteams des Netflix Prizes auf. Er erzählte über seine Erfahrungen, das Dataset und einige Tipps und Tricks zu ihrem Algorithmus und ihrem automatischen Parameter Tuner. Äusserst interessant und spannend. Es zeigt auch, wieviel Zeit nötig wären, um einigermassen erfolgreich zu sein. Die meisten Teams im Challenge-Projekt konnten bisher nur die bereits vorhandenen Algorithmen testen und auf das riesige Datenset anwenden. Viele Ideen wurden Andreas Töscher vorgestellt, welche von ihm jedoch als unnützlich oder zu zeit- und ressourceintensiv angesehen wurden.

Zum Schluss wurde noch der “HSR Netflix Progress Prize” vergeben.

Gratulation an Team 6 mit ihrem virtualisierten Linux System

ChallP Zwischenpräsentation Gruppe 5

View more presentations from Corsin Camichel.

Ich werde die restlichen Präsentation sammeln und wenn erlaubt, ebenfalls online zu verlinken.

BarCampRapperswil Recap

CoCaman — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:14:56 +0000

Last Saturday marked the day for the first BarCamp at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil. In a few words, the BarCamp was much smaller than camps are usually but the quality of presentations and the participants was very high.

And the feedback I got so far is very positive. People already are asking about the next one and a date. If anybody is willing to organize another BarCamp, please feel free to do so.

All in all I am happy how the event turned out. At the same time I have to say I am disappointed by the lack of HSR-students not attending such an event. It would have been a great change to enhance their presentation skills or to connect with some tech-companies or startups in Switzerland.

You can find pictures from the event on Flickr and the slides are on the BarCampSwitzerland Wiki.

Thanks to all the participants. Was a great Saturday! Also a big thank you to all the BarCampRapperswil sponsors

BarCampRapperswil: October 24th 2009

CoCaman — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:39:22 +0000

I am very happy to announce that the registration for the next BarCamp in the Zurich area will be on October 24th at the university of applied sciences in Rapperswil (HSR).
And starting now you can add your name to the participants list on the BarCamp wiki.
Also you like to present something (like a new Javascript library, a nice hack for WPF or just talk about Open Source projects) add your name and the presentation title to the wiki as well.

BarCamp Rapperswil auf einer größeren Karte anzeigen

All the details can be found on the BarCampRapperswil wiki or by contacting me.

I hope to see and meet you there!

Toni Schneider: CEO Role Model

CoCaman — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:44:27 +0000

On August 27th 2009, Toni Schneider the CEO of Automattic (makers of WordPress.com) gave a very interesting and entertaining talk about his life as CEO, his past in the States and about the super-exciting life as a part-time venture capitalist with True Ventures.

First he talked about his past in California. Growing up in Switzerland and being very interested in technology and computers, he did not have much of a choice for studying computer science. But as he phrased it, he luckily met an American one day who told him about this great college in Santa Barbara. And that is where Toni went. He studied in Santa Barbara and Stanford computer sciences. At Stanford he joined a startup that created three dimensional sound. They later sold it. After a few other startups and acquisitions he became part of Yahoo. At Yahoo he was vice president of the Yahoo Developer Network (YDN). I did not know that and I was very surprised to see a Swiss guy having the lead at the YDN.

After the time at Yahoo, a friend of Toni created a Venture Fund and wanted him as a partner. At the same time, Toni proposed to Matt Mullenweg to set up a company for wordpress.com. It is important to note, that Automattic is not the company behind the software. They see themselves primarily as a service provider (wordpress.com, Askimet, PollDaddy) with an infrastructure of 1200 server you can use to host your sever. The business model is upgrades for your blog, Google AdSense (but only for Internet Explorer users, not a joke!) or Askimet licensing.
One of their clients, CNN, hosts around 50 blogs with several million unique viewers a day. They pay USD 30’000 a month for using the Automattic infrastructure.
Toni also talked about Automattic as a “virtual company”. They did not have any office until a little while back. Of the 55 employees only half are located in the US and have a working contract with Automattic. The others are consultants, that are payed on an hourly-based consultant contract. They never have any meetings (= saving lots and lots of time). The only time they meet each other eye-by-eye is at their 6-monthly event somewhere on the planet. The other time they collaborate over IRC or the P2 theme for WordPress. They never use e-mail, because it is not very easily searchable, most e-mails remain unread or get lost and so on.

One important lesson he gave the audience was the frequency of decision making. If you have to make a decision, see how fast it can be undone. Let’s say you release a new feature. If nobody likes it, you can easily remove it again. But if you take VC money, you are stuck with the investors for a couple of years.
Making decisions that can be reverted is important. As well as “release early and release often“.

Also something very interesting is the fact, that each employee has full access to all live systems and source code repositories. If there is something you do not like, you can easily change it. And it takes 30 seconds to change all 1200 servers. After that, you have another 30 seconds to remove or fix the thing you just broke . How many people do you need to administrate 1200 servers? One hell of a good system engineer. Yes, only one guy is in charge of 1200 servers. And those servers are regular, USD 100/month root boxes. They only have to run Apache, MySQL, Linux and are all set up the same. I am really eager to hear more about the technology behind WordPress.com. Anybody wants to organize the first Swiss WordCamp?
Wordpress.com/Automattic is profitable. They have an income of 1 million a month and expenses of USD 800’000. The reason why they took the first million in funding was to have at least something in the bank, as a reserve. Then they “had to take” 30 million because the investors really, really wanted to invest. Something you don’t see or hear very often. And this is of course very good for the company. Now they can dictate the rules of the investment. The idea behind taking the money was to give it to the employees, changing stock for money. At first the team was very happy with that. But in the end, almost no stocks returned. Seems the employees believe in Automattic and have higher goals .

Last Toni talked about his great life as a venture capitalist. Everybody wishes to be a VC. It is a easy job, no work stress, you met many new and bright people. And he confirmed all of it. He works 20% as a partner at True Ventures. A relatively new fund that seeds in early stages small sums between 0.5-2 million dollars. For that, they take 23-24% of the shares. Compare to other and bigger VC firms that invest 5-50 million and take 30-40%. The first batch was around 150 million big. Of that money 40 millions are invested in around 40-50 startups. The rest is banked for later investments or bigger rounds.
In a second batch True Ventures has now 198 million dollars to invest. Not bad if you know that other funds are dying or not investing. But True Ventures was investing all the time, even in this bad time. The investments Toni did are more personal, for people he personally know from Stanford or somehow through his day job at Automattic.

The evening finished with an apero at the Technopark foyer where many people had the chance to exchange a few words with the CEO of the Year 2007 and talking about ideas for the WordPress Dashboard or asking about sweet life in California.

Here are now some photos of the event. The last photo shows some Swiss WordPress bloggers (including myself). Enjoy.

A big thank you to Toni Schneider, Myke Naef of Doodle, the /ch/open team and the Technopark for this great evening and the insights Toni gave.

Other posts
Lucas of Amazee has a recap of the first part.
Dania of Amazee has the second part.
Doodle Blog has a small text

Fairness in Tech

CoCaman — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:15:08 +0000

What are you doing on October 22nd 2009? Why not camp out in front of an Interdiscount, Media Markt or any other tech store. Why? Well, because a new revolution will be released on that day. Yes! Microsoft’s newest operating System, Windows 7, will be released.

What? You think camping in front of a store for a new product is stupid? So, why did you do it for the iPhone?

Do you think it is fair that for product that only 0.01% of the worlds population is using people should camp out in front of stores? And for a product that is widely used for productivity and not for touching, flipping and screaming about is fair?

Dynamo Rapperswil – Go 4 Gold!

CoCaman — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:08:54 +0000

Just a friendly reminder to all students in Rapperswil and Switzerland. This year’s Eurobot is happening right now in La Ferté Bertrand, France and our home team, Dynamo Rapperswil is there to win. Below is a video of the Swiss final from May 9th in Yverdon-le-Bains:

GOOO DYNAMO! The team currently ranks as third.

Live streaming will also be available on the final day.

Swiss Cyber Storm II – First Successful Day is Over

CoCaman — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:50:49 +0000

I was 8th a few minutes before I made the screenshot

Gamlor is also here having a lot of phuns Cross Site Scripting his way up the ladder . Gugelhopf also has some fun I guess . She’s my favorite hacking girl this weekend!

If you have time you definitely should drop by tomorrow and have some fun with cool hackers.

Doodle now has over three million users worldwide

CoCaman — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:36:01 +0000

I’ve just received the following good news by Doodle.

Doodle.com proves appetite for online scheduling tools with
10 per cent monthly growth

In Switzerland, more than one out of ten of the entire population uses the service at least
once a month. In Germany, the US and the UK, Doodle‘s user base more than quadrupled over the last
twelve months.

“Getting people to agree to a time for a business meeting, conference call or social event, even by email,
can be a nightmare – that’s why we founded this company,” Doodle’s founder and CEO Michael Näf said.
More on the Doodle Blog

Michael is currently traveling around in San Francisco and presenting Doodle over there. It does not look like the growth will be flattening out any time soon. I can also tell this be all the Doodle schedules and invitations I personally get. Parties, play dates and dinners are organized with Doodle.

Do you know a funny story about a Doodle you created or your participated? Please let me know in the comments.

BlogCamp Switzerland 4 – Photos

CoCaman — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:33:37 +0000

Geekness - closer to the world » Event

70.3Ironman Switzerland 2010 in Rapperswil-Jona

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