If you’ve seen me recently, you might have noticed a new gadget dangling from by belt: a GPS receiver, which can be used to locate your position on earth. You might be tempted to ask: what the heck? (which would actually be a sensible question). The simple answer would be: “I am mapping the world.”

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a cool project that works collectively towards that goal. People collect GPS tracks by walking/cycling/driving around, use an editor to enter that information and voila, maps are returned. (The UK, especially the London area, is pretty well covered if you want to browse around)

Why is that necessary, would be the next (sensible) question. There are Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Maquest, Mapblaster, the Ordnance Survey and hundreds of other sources which you can use for free. One answer would be: Those sources are not really free. It is illegal to copy their maps on your cool shiny Nokia N800 and use it as a portable navigation device. It is not possible to create your own routing software with that data. And you can’t change the layout or design of the maps or tinker in hundred other ways with the data. All this is possible with the OSM data which is available under a Creative Commons License.
The second answer is: because it is fun. It is interesting to explore areas you’ve never been before although they are close to where you live. You discover interesting streets/buildings/shops. You get to find shortcuts for routes that you have been using for months. You get an excuse to walk and bike a lot more than you previously did, which also feels good. And you get that warm fuzzy feeling when you see the map and say: see, I mapped a part where only white area had been. It makes you feel like Columbus and Capitan Kirk at the same time.

ZDnet has a nice introductionary article on the project, which you might be interested in.

This is how my town Dübendorf currently looks like.

Well not really. But in London we went to see “Wicked” the Musical. Besides a local performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar” in St.Gallen, this was the first time I have seen a modern mainstream musical, and I have to say “WOW”.

The story was a twist on the “Wizard of OS” story, basically giving a view behind the scenes of the original story. Protagonists were the good witch, in reality a blonde and rther ego-centric person, and the evil witch, who is a greenish but nice girl. Easy to follow but still kind of clever. I liked that.

However, what made the thing spectacular was the stage design and the effects used. Very cool and so impressive that it made you feel like it was a movie rather than a theatre (I don’t know if this is a good thing in general though).

newspaper tidbit, to be used as lecture example?
Consultant turnover in Switzerland in 2006 was 1.2bn CHF (9% increase from 2005). Increasingly BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) consultants are being hired. (source: industry assoc. ASCO)

Biggest Bank Mergers/Aquisitions (May 2007, Thompson Financial)

(Aus den 20Minuten vom 30.5.07) Wegen 2km/h zu viel geblitzt. Weigerte sich die Strafe zu zahlen. In der Gerichtsverhandlung “extrem querulantisches Verhalten”. Busse mittlerweile bei 975 Franken inklusive Gebühren.

Der Mann hat sich wohl extrem kindisch und unmöglich verhalten. Aber dass man es in Zürich wegen 2km/h zu einer Gerichtsverhandlung kommen lässt, spricht ebenso Bände.

No, it’s not for girls!

Do you think that big global food giants are boring?
Think again: Yorkie, produced by Nestlé is not for girls!

One happy Master

We came back from England only yesterday, but on Wednesday Almut had the presentation and oral defense of her Master Thesis.Following the Swedish System, this is a public event, with an officially appointed opponent, an examinator, and the audience being free to ask questions.
It went over well, and now Almut is officially a Master of Science now… Well, she were if one of the examiners hadn’t accidently signed the certificate where Almut’s name is supposed to be filled in. Now effectively, the examiner had granted herself a new Master. Almut will receive a proper certificate by mail soon (hopefully). Then, we headed over to London and spent 2 days there before going back to Switzerland.

Yesterday was an excellent EURAM today, the Open Innovation track I participate in, is really interesting. Most of the presentations are very good, with some exceptions (it’s generally a bad sign when you have to resort to call every statement on your foils as provocative, when they are doubted).

Like Stefan, I was intrigued by the article from Francesco Rullani, although I got a little agitated when I had to review it previously, and sent him 2 pages of harsh feedback. I am happy to see that he has changed many of my issues since then already. He uses Dosi’s (1982) metapher of Technology Trajectories in order to explain Exploitation vs Exploration of those trajectories, Exploration being measured by the number of new project foundings at SourceForge. The discussion lateron focused a little on whether founding a project for a fork would be legitimate or needed to be filtered out. The consensus seemed to be that the need to be filtered out. I disagree here, forking a project is in my view a perfect example of exploration of new directions when people feel uncomfortable in the old Technology Paradigm, but whatever…

It’s a pity that I missed out Joel West‘s second presentation, which I was looking forward too. We had missed the first bus and the next bus left only 2 hours later, taking 70 Minutes to go to the conference location at HEC. It’s a pity that it is so far away.

Another highlight was Jean-Michel Dalle‘s presentation on simple.wikipedia.org, which they analyzed. It looks into who contributes and who applies the tag “unsimple” to (which) pages. Very cool analysis and I hope the Wikimania conference will be happy. This is one of the Economics who do credible work which does not oversimply too much (as can happen so easily in Economics).

It was also cool to get to know Linus Dahlander who is a nice guy doing excellent research, although he is way younger that I would have imagined. Finally, I got to know new people, such as Lars Bo Jeppesen and Lars Frederiksen and “old” ones like Karim Lakhani.

In the evening, we went to a nice little restaurant, called “Le vin sobre” which had been recommended by a Parisien participant. Although the final bill was impressive too, we enjoyed the nice atmosphere and the excellent food. A good tip indeed!

I am sorry, that I won’t be able to listen to Linus’ presentation and to Karim’s Keynote. I guess we have to invite both to ETH to give a talk there at some time…

All in all, was this year’s EURAM a big success for me. P.S. Please cut the plenary sessions a little next year or at least make them a little bit more interesting.

We arrived in Paris yesterday evening for the EURAM conference. Using my cool GPS gadgets I could see that we were going rather slowly (120kmh) most of the time. Not until 2 hours before Paris did we go at a max of 270kmh. Cool.

Now the first session with joel West is about to start and I better listen…