As many public administrations we are publicly funded and collect few donations to be used to increase the salary of our team (a coordinator and two animators). We try to keep them motivated, as my HR manager told me more that 5 years ago, but it doesn’t work.

My definition of the motivation is:

1. Inform honestly on the difficulty of the job (but psychologists say: if you don’t experience it you can’t truly evaluate its difficulty or simplicity – think when you had your first child)
2. Focus on the dreams of the employees but use their past knowledge and interest (e.g. we had a professor or theatre courses who never gave any classes to our children)
3. Answer honestly to the questions of the employees
4. Involve the employees during each discussions when strategic decisions are made
5. Give a full autonomy to the employees to organise activities with our children

But apparently it is still not sufficient, the work looks too hard:

• Maintaining a barge of 38×6 square meters
• Educating children though the work, the sport and the culture
• Motivating children

On top of that, we had difficulties to recruit new members of our Management Board as people are too busy to dedicate time for a mid-long term; On the contrary, we find easily volunteers for short-term (read semester) participation to achieve the goal of the organisation with the children.

Definitively, the motivation is not the only reason why we will keep our children, employees and members of the Board in our organisation.

Recently I found a definition of the motivation which made by Daniel H. Pink. He is an American writer, author of many books focusing on the world of work.

Below is a talk presenting the gap between what science knows about motivation and what companies apply. Apparently, we don’t need sweeter carrots and sharper sticks, we need a whole new approach, an approach that puts more stock in intrinsic motivation.

Dan identifies three elements that comprise a new way of thinking about motivation [1]:

• Autonomy: The urge to direct our own lives.
• Mastery: The desire to get better at something that matters.
• Purpose: The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

Based on that assumption I’ll be able to evaluate our definition of the motivation to keep our employees proud of them and willing to help children who need guidance during this ‘crisis” era where the bonus of the individuals have generated one of the biggest economical decline!

let’s watch this 5 stars talk:

[1] End of December, Dan will release a new book: “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”

[2] Semaphore nonprofit organisation: http://asblsemaphore.skyrock.com/

Bookmark to:

When you look for a name for your company or your service, use this strategy:

Use a name that represents to your clients:

1. What you do
2. How you do it
3. and What you deliver

For example: Technology, Consulting and Integration Solutions

Bookmark to:

Here are my first shots using my Canon EOS 450D and making them available through http:///www.photosynth.net from Microsoft Research team. “In simple terms, Photosynth allows you to take a bunch of photos of the same scene or object and automatically stitch them all together into one big interactive 3D viewing experience that you can share with anyone on the web.”

Photosynth – Adam in movement

Bookmark to:

Why are they buying the company?

Is it because SUN is cheap?

Is it  because IBM wants to improve OpenOffice and make it a better competitor of Microsoft Office?

Is it because IBM want to stop to fund Eclipse and use NetBeans instead (or to kill the competition)?

Is it because IBM wants to buy their customers?

One important aspect is the following: if IBM really buys SUN Microsystems we can easily foresee the end of the competition in the open source world for at least those tools:

• NetBeans vs. Eclipse
• GlassFish vs. WebSphere
• MySQL vs. DB2
• Solaris vs. AIX
• etc.

It is clear that this buy happen

1. IBM will drastically increase the monopolistic position in many IT areas
2. The customers of SUN Microsystems will have to migrate to the IBM tools within the next 5 years
3. The open source world will loose its competitiveness against closed source applications

I just hope that the European Commission and Mrs Neelie Kroes will avoid such buy for the sake of the competition!

Bookmark to:

A few months ago, Microsoft released the Microsoft Web Application Installer[0] that allowed limited amount of Windows users[1] to easily install widely used Open Source software. But strangely, the Readme file [2] contradicts the list[1] supported Operating Systems by saying: “…Windows Vista RTM is not supported due to the lack of FastCGI support for the version of IIS that ships with it…”.

I haven’t found a given explanation justifying the first selection: DotNetNuke, Drupal, Gallery, Graffiti CMS, osCommerce, phpBB, WordPress.

It seems that the first Microsoft choice doesn’t focus on developers but on users of open source software: The tools proposed are not exclusively manageable by high skilled administrators like OBM,

What are the reasons why Microsoft releases such installer? I found several good reasons:

1. To increase the amount of PHP developers on Windows OS
2. To increase the amount of ASP.NET developers by Open Source developers
3. To increase the usage of Internet Information Services (IIS) by Open Source developers

But today, I used the same link to see what happened to this initiative and I can only say that it has been abandoned!

Microsoft is now providing a kind of LAMP stack of Microsoft Free solutions: .NET Framework, IIS and Extensions, SQL Server and Visual Web Developer.

That is a great idea for the Microsoft .NET developers but will once again prove that Microsoft has difficulties to find a breach into the open source community cohesion against them.

[0] http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebApplicationInstaller.aspx

[1] Supported Operating Systems are: Windows Vista RTM, Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008

[2] http://forums.iis.net/t/1152406.aspx

[4] http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/

Bookmark to:

Vous apprendrez aussi le prix à payer par votre employeur pour vous payer €25.000 net de manière annuelle, ou combien il en coûte à votre employeur pour vous augmenter de €1.000 par mois!

Cette présentation date de 2004 mais force est de constaté que peu d’information a changé depuis.

Les charges concernant le véhicule de fonction ont augmenté et doivent être mises à jour mais le reste des montants doit être (peut-être) augmenté de l’indexation annuelle.

Voici le mind map en image (jpeg):

Voici une version en PDF: Fiscalité-Salaires et avantages en Belgique

Bookmark to:

I document, based on this article “EU: Green MEP: ‘EU procurement rules possibly exclude Microsoft’” [2], the rules that each EU Member State as well as the European Commission and the European Agencies must follow while procuring.

I end my post with open questions to those public actors as the execution of such constraints could change drastically our daily life.

Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1605/2002 of 25 June 2002 on the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European Communities[1] says this:

“Article 93

1. Candidates or tenderers shall be excluded from participation in a procurement procedure if:…
(b) they have been convicted of an offence concerning their professional conduct by a judgement which has the force of res judicata;
(c) they have been guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means which the contracting authority can justify;….”

But, if we continue the reading of the regulation we see that the article 95 says “Each institution shall establish a central database containing details of candidates and tenderers who are in one of the situations described in Articles 93 and 94 [3]. The sole purpose of the database shall be to ensure, in compliance with Community rules on the processing of personal data, the correct application of Articles 93 and 94. Each institution shall have access to the databases of the other institutions.”

I have some open questions:

1. What is the content of the central databases containing details about companies? Where is it stored? Is it public or not?
2. Are we sure that the lawyers review correctly the procurement rules before contracting?
3. Are the European Commission, the EU governments and EU agencies negligent, careless or lax?
4. Should we exclude the convinced companies from any procurement? If yes, for how much time?

Here is a non exhaustive list of companies having infringed the rules:

Telefónica charged record fine for price rigging (4 July 2007): http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/telefonica-charged-record-fine-price-rigging/article-165243

Visa to appeal Commission’s €10m anti-trust fine (3 Oct. 2007): http://www.euractiv.com/en/financial-services/visa-appeal-commission-10m-anti-trust-fine/article-167353

Court confirms abatement of Belgian beer cartel [Danone and Interbrew] (8 Feb. 2007) : http://www.euractiv.com/en/competition/big-fines-vitamins-cartel/article-115485

Heavy fines for German bank [5] cartel: http://www.euractiv.com/en/competition/heavy-fines-german-bank-cartel/article-113823

EU cracks down on electricity-gear [6] cartel : http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/eu-cracks-electricity-gear-cartel/article-161169

Cartes Bancaires flagged for anticompetitive behaviour: http://www.euractiv.com/en/financial-services/cartes-bancaires-flagged-anticompetitive-behaviour/article-167716

Maximum fines requested in Erika [Total] oil-slick trial: http://www.euractiv.com/en/transport/maximum-fines-requested-erika-oil-slick-trial/article-164264

New EU fine brings Microsoft bill to 1.7 billion: http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/new-eu-fine-brings-microsoft-bill-17/article-170596

[1] Regulation of the Financial rules : http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002Q1605:EN:HTML

[2] “EU: Green Member of Parliament says ‘EU procurement rules possibly exclude Microsoft’ : http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7567

[3] Article 94 of the Regulation on Financial rules

Contracts may not be awarded to candidates or tenderers who, during the procurement procedure:
(a) are subject to a conflict of interest;
(b) are guilty of misrepresentation in supplying the information required by the contracting authority as a condition of participation in the contract procedure or fail to supply this information.

[4] Fines were imposed on the following eight vitamins companies as follows:

• F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG (Switzerland): € 462 million
• BASF AG (Germany): € 296.16 million
• Aventis SA (France): € 5.04 million
• Solvay Pharmaceuticals BV (Netherlands): € 9.10 million
• Merck KgaA (Germany):€ 9.24 million
• Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co Ltd (Japan): € 23.4 million
• Eisai Co Ltd (Japan): € 13.23 million
• Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd (Japan): € 37.05 million

[5] Following are the banks found guilty of infringing article 81 of the EC Treaty and the respective fines :

• Commerzbank AG : 28,0 million EUR
• Dresdner Bank AG : 28,0 million EUR
• Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank AG : 28,0 million EUR
• Deutsche Verkehrsbank AG: 14,0 million EUR
• Vereins- und Westbank AG: 2,8 million EUR

[6] Fines imposed to electricity-gear cartel:

• ABB, Switzerland 215.156.250 EUR
• Alstom, France 65.025.000 EUR
• Areva, France 53.550.000 EUR
• Fuji Electric, Japan 3.750.000 EUR
• Hitachi, Japan 51.750.000 EUR
• Japan AE Power Systems, Japan 1.350 000 EUR
• Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan 118.575.000 EUR
• Schneider, France 8.100.000 EUR
• Siemens, Germany 396 562.500 EUR
• Siemens, Austria 22.050.000 EUR
• Toshiba, Japan 90.900.000 EUR

Bookmark to:

After watching/reading the news regarding their latest quarter I wanted to know the “estimated” real value of the stocks. I used my Internet banking to do so.

I learned an amazing thing: the market evaluates the actual price of the Unisys stocks at 3.42 USD! Today the stocks costs 4.44USD

The report (based on criteria like solvability, increase of revenues…) says that the current price of the stock is overestimated!

Based on the current price of the stocks (4.44USD), the company could be bought for about 1.57B (market capitalisation). They are about 30500 fellow employees which mean that any buyer will pay each Unisys’ employee about $51.500.

When you know that Oracle paid 6.7B for BEA systems who employees only 4,275 persons (Oracle paid each BEA’ employee about $1.5M) you understand how cheap Unisys is.

In the meantime, Unisys earns a lot of framework projects; they want to reduce their costs by creating UTS (Unisys Technical Systems) and outsourcing 40% of their projects. But it is still not sufficient or not fast enough for the market.

The questions are:

• How Unisys could gain some visibility which should increase the interest of investors / speculators?
• Is Unisys interested to gain more visibility?
• How many times have you read visions of their managers or IT Architects?
• How many times have you seen an advertising of Unisys? and how many times have you seen Tiger Woods in the newspapers?

I wonder how Unisys will be able to be more visible. Its Management Board doesn’t seem to have found the magical potion see this blog on the Yahoo! Message board

I have one advice: Buy the stocks as the price is terribly low because the chance Unisys will be bought or cut into small business units this year is very high! this will increase drastically the price of the stocks.

Bookmark to:

The goal of this workshop is to create "specifications that facilitate cataloguing and retrieving eGovernment resources in pan-European federated resource registries".
Those eGovernment resources "can be eGovernment services, standards and specifications, laws, terminological resources, description of selected cultural elements."

In short, they want to create an UDDI capable of registering any kind of resources allowing eGovernment services to facilitate their interoperability. I looks like an "impossible mission" when you know that the multilingualism is already a big constraint in the real word. Creation of taxonomies, ontologies of contexts are very often difficult to work with.

How many eGovernment projects use RDF to define their business and organise their data?

How many developers know the difference between taxonomy and ontology?

How do you update efficiently an ontology and study the impact of this change into your application? I know no application capable of addressing that requirement

What is the power of the Ministries of Justice in the EU? How can you define it and compare it to each other Ministry? This is why I believe that the following task "Mechanism for using terminological resources for the unambiguous description of eGovernment resources" seems to be in the critical path of the workshop.

I believe that the workshop will provide the template that each Member States should use to define its resources but is it sufficient? The biggest task is to put the providers of identical eServices around the table and try to understand how to uniquely define the services they propose. Hopefully this task will still provide a lot of bread for the consultancy companies.

Not that I’m pessimist but registries are filled by humans with their understanding of a context. The context (like the laws) changes constantly. The content of such registry is the Holy Grail for people using cross border/organisation web services.

The Workshop innovates with the type of resources they want to share; from standards and specifications to laws. Mixing such context is a brilliant idea if they are able to link them together, having a kind of traceable tool.

I will definitely follow their work and try to propose some content coming from a project I’m working for: R4eGov (Research for eGovernment). The Chancellery of Austria is proposing an innovative way to define business rules that will be the content of a future post.

Link to the R4egov project: http://www.r4egov.eu 

Here is the short presentation of the future CEN/ISSS workshop:

"The [CEN/ISSS Workshop on Sharing eGovernment Resources] will publish consensus specifications that facilitate cataloguing and retrieving eGovernment resources in pan-European federated resource registries.

It will thereby ease the access to and hence (re-)use of eGovernment resources through standardized and localized metadata schemata and common exchange protocols. eGovernment resources are all types of resources published on the Web under the responsibility of public authorities.

eGovernment resources can be eGovernment services, standards and specifications, laws, terminological resources, description of selected cultural elements.

Metadata schemata and information models will evolve out of the prototypical eGov ontology.

This workshop will create specifications, including:

• standardized minimum description of eGovernment resources (leveraging existing federated terminological assets)
• mechanism(s) for the notification of new/updated information about eGovernment resources
• common agreed approach(es) to facilitate the discovery of, query of, access to, and federation of (information about) eGovernment resources

The main deliverable will be a three-part CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA):

• CWA X-1: Description of eGovernment Resources:
  • Standardized minimum description of eGovernment resources
  • Notification mechanism
  • Methods and/or protocol(s) to query (information about)
  • eGovernment resources
• CWA X-2: Federated Terminological Resources:
  • Mechanism for using terminological resources for the
    • unambiguous description of eGovernment resources
    • Integration points for ADNOM [European Network for Administrative Nomenclature: The aim of the Workshop ADNOM is to establish and maintain a network between European government translation units, terminology organizations, etc. with the purpose of developing and disseminating European Administrative Nomenclature]
• CWA X-3: Description of Cultural Elements
  • Structure for the formalized description of cultural elements
  • Integration with eGov ontology
  • Initial taxonomy of soft cultural elements (ten elements)"

Source: CEN European Committee for Standardization, CEN/ISSS eGovernment Focus Group,  "Minutes of the open meeting of the CEN/ISSS eGovernment focus Group on 19 February 2008", 26 February 2008

Link: egov034_Minutes of the open meeting of the CENISSS eGovernment focus Group (2008-02-19).doc

Bookmark to:

R4egov: The technical components

The architecture of the system is based on Open Source or Microsoft solutions. We selected the two competing architectures to address the needs of the partners and to ensure an interoperability of the most used multi-tier architectures on the market.

Open Source Stack:

• Intalio|BPMS
• Apache foundation components
• WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus
• Web Services Specifications

Microsoft Stack:

• Microsoft BizTalk 2006 R2
• Microsoft SharePoint 2007
• Microsoft .NET 2.0
• Microsoft .NET 3.0
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Windows Workflow Foundation

Further information about the project available on http://www.r4egov.eu

Bookmark to: