The Queen came to our UK office today and I had a prime position where I could watch her stroll by. I took some photos with my phone, but somehow they're broken. Well, maybe the next time ;-)

packed in madrid two weeks ago, went to new york and worked lots and met more interesting people than in two decades together. moved to london on sunday, working ever since and will be until friday. it's like on a rollercoaster, but it's good. girlfriend is far too far away, but not for long anymore. the future looks good, touch wood.

While I am already blogging (GDD inspires me), I might as well write a short post about what's happening in my life.

There are obvious signs that the summer is nearing it's end, even in Madrid. However, it was not so much the weather that made this fact clear to me, but the departure of the girl, that does not admit to know anything (although I would argue against it). I have spent a fabulous summer with her, my family and lots of friends and the photos in picasaweb (for links see blog post from earlier this month) are the best proof for it.

So while autumn is knocking at the door, I am starting a new chapter of my life and I am curious and happy about it. Next week I will be moving to London to take on a new job at in the EMEA Marketing team, leading marketing of Consumer Apps (think Gmail, Picasa, Blogger, Google Sites, etc.) and branding initiatives. Currently, I am already involved in a project which is extremely exciting and I am dying to talk about it (not yet though). Also, the girl that does not admit to know anything will move there too in the beginning of 2009 and I don't have to explain to anyone who knows us that this is a step that we both long have been waiting for.

See you in London!

"You can't beat free" is a well known slogan, but does it apply for everything? This is a question that Ihave to ask myself learning about the new resolution about the abolishment of tuition fees at Austrian universities. Before telling you why I am against it, I want to make two things clear:

1) I have paid tuition fees myself and while I had the luck that my family paid most of my education during university, it still hurt to pay them because my parents did not pay me more just because university suddenly cost something (when I started in 1999 there were none).

2) I don't agree with tuition fees, but that does not mean that I agree with the political parties that are against it as well (I am actually shocked about the quality of the political landscape at home).

So why is it that I think it was a poor choice to make studying available to everyone? Because I think it is an idealistic and most of all, a populistic move before the elections. There is no black and white, it's more complicated.

While it surely hurts the students to pay tuition fees in the moment they're paying it, they'd benefit a lot more from higher quality of education in the long term. As for the argument of accessibility: Yes, there have to be loans and scholarships. I doubt that a lot of people were not able to study because of the 380 something Euros they had to pay. For the not so well-off, there were scholarships available and no, I don't know if there were people that fell through the system (poor, but not eligible for scholarship in other words), I am all for improving and changing the system, but not just making a valuable good entirely free without any entry barriers. It takes away funds from the universities and decreases the overall quality of students and the student experience.

I think everyone agrees that Austria is far from having the best overall university system in the world. It's not all bad, but what does this step do to improve our status quo? Nothing.

Finally, I just want to point out that studying is a lot more expensive in other countries. In my point of view, I don't think of education as a free service, but one that should be supported by the state and made available by lots and lots of scholarships for students that come from lower incomes. This is the equivalent to a progressive tax model and thus a pretty socialistic idea, so why the hell is the Socialist Party not for it?

Just as a last comment I would like to state, in accordance to my black and white comment from before, that my thoughts about this topic refer to Austria, not to other countries. There is not one model that fits all. You see, it's complicated ;-)

Hi,

live blogging from the Google Dev Day in Madrid. Just heard the Keynote Speech from ChrisdiBona (slashdot.org) about OpenSource strategy at Google and now listening to Kasper Lund, "the father" of V8, the JavaScript machine that runs on Google Chrome. Exciting!

Check out the page for all the GDDs here: http://code.google.com/events/developerday/2008/

PS: Can't hyperlink words in the blog post, because the better editor does not work in Chrome. Booh!

Summer is practically over and I am planning to revive my weblog again. For those who don't know yet, I have accepted a new job in the European Marketing team in London and will move there in October. There, I'll be in charge for Consumer Apps and "Special Initiatives". I was already assigned to the first one and it's very exciting. Unfortunately, you will have to wait until the 1st of December until it's live.

I'll hopefully post something soon again, for now some slideshows of pictures from this summer:

I know such thoughts have no place in the business world (or only rarely), but I wish that media executives kept in mind the power of YouTube's enabling technology before they go on and say that it's a site full of "pirates and thiefs". For my part, I keep believing that sharing content, UGC or professional, is the future and that there is a fitting business model out there for it.

To underline this statement, watch Matt Harding's latest video. I signed up on his website but somehow I seem to have missed him when he was in Madrid - bugger ;-)



P.S: Doesn't help my travel bug at all...

Recently I am very busy plastering the internet with multimedia content:

Another weekend in Madrid, 26-04-08

Heyo everyone,

I got the feeling it's time to post something again, although there is no particular reason for it. Right now I am working, but NOT in the office but IN FRONT of it. God bless 3G! While there is no real Silicon Valley feel in Madrid, that's as close as it gets!

Actually, there is a pretty interesting study in one of the recent Economist about how mobile devices and technologies will change the way we work. Right now, it's probably not a reality for most of the people or ever won't make sense for a major part of the workforce, but I definitely can imagine that the share of working outside the office will increase steadily in the future. In the end, it's probably just a question of finding the right balance.

Talking about balance, I should probably start working again ;-)

P.S: I took a lot of pics recently:

Granada, April08

Sölden, Meltdown08