tag:www.menneske.org,2009://4 2009-12-06T18:39:03Z Movable Type 3.34 tag:www.menneske.org,2009://4.316 2009-11-15T10:54:58Z 2009-12-06T18:39:03Z

This past year I've been getting quite a few speaking engagements at conferences, some big and some small, and now also one abroad! I'm just returning home from overseas where I have given a talk at the Defrag social technology...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Defrag social technology conference in Denver, Colorado. The stated goal of the conference is "accelerating the “aha” moment". It aims to be doing this by gathering a wide range of thought leaders and leading innovators from the technology sector and bringing them together in a topical forum to see where we go from here. This of course means that networking at this conference is incredible with the crowd being made up of very savvy, smart and interesting people. In addition there were a few but very good open spaces, excellent keynotes, panel discussions and a series of topical explorations beginning with a set of talks and rounding off with open debates. My talk was in the topical exploration on "Leveraging the Open Web". It started out by an introduction to the industrialization of content creation Peter Sweeney, after which I covered the basics of Open Data from where I handed over to Paul Miller to talk about Linked Data, and finally the session was rounded off with a short debate facilitated by Ben Kepes. In many ways this was one of the most interesting conference experiences I've had, so I've also blogged about it in more detail here.]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2009://4.315 2009-10-24T14:08:17Z 2009-11-29T21:33:23Z

One of the things keeping me busy this fall have been the various conferences where I have gotten talks accepted. This week I attended Smidig 2009, a Norwegian conference about the use of agile methodologies in systems development. The conference...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Smidig 2009, a Norwegian conference about the use of agile methodologies in systems development. The conference is organized with a series of engaging lightening talks on various topics in the hours leading up to lunch-break, and then a wide open slate for open space discussion groups to be determined by the participants taking up the rest of the day. It is notable that many of the participants at Smidig are also speakers, ensuring a high level of professional knowledge among the participants on the open spaces which makes the networking and discussion parts of this conference very interesting for everyone. I attended as one of the speakers, and my talk was about how to get more value from your existing installation of Atlassian Confluence, an enterprise wiki-solution that is widely deployed among businesses in Norway. After getting good feedback on my talk I put up a successful open space discussion on advanced Confluence-usage afterwards, as well as yet another open space on a different topic the next day. All in all a very rewarding conference! For Norwegian-speakers my talk at Smidig can be seen on video over at TCS. ]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2009://4.314 2009-09-13T14:52:13Z 2009-11-29T21:34:11Z

Summer has passed and with the onset of fall so has the annual JavaZone conference for software developers. This year I attended as a speaker and gave an extended version of my talk on the opportunities of open data. The...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org JavaZone conference for software developers. This year I attended as a speaker and gave an extended version of my talk on the opportunities of open data. The talk was in Norwegian and can be viewed online along with the rest of this years JavaZone-talks at TCS. Standing by my topic the slides are naturally licensed as creative commons and available separately from my slideshare page. I would appreciate any feedback you'd like to give! Regarding the conference itself it was very nice with the extra track of lightening talks in addition to the many excellent regular ones, and they were still covering the usual wide range of topics from the purely technical to team management and long-term strategic shifts. It is getting very noticeable that Java is now a mature technology, so there aren't many mind blowing innovations being presented among the talks any more, but I guess that is generally a good thing. However the exhibition floor was as busy as ever with most of the Norwegian IT-industry among the 2000 participants, but there were noticeably lesser-value giveaways and less freebies than before, likely due to the financial crisis making its small impact in Norway too. All in all it was a great conference, despite my disappointment that the overflow-sessions had been moved from the conference floor to a separate area. See you there next year!]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2009://4.310 2009-06-21T15:36:25Z 2009-10-07T13:36:51Z

For me this spring has certainly been one of the busiest in recent years. Firstly there has been tons of great stuff happening in my new job with projects, proposals, conferences and just getting into the new flow here. While...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org has made an impact however are all of the social and professional networking events that have been happening lately. For my own benefit I regularly attend a variety of after-work networking and trade-events, while at the same time trying to limit myself to only those that I find the most interesting. In addition comes those meetings and gatherings directly related to my work and the offices I hold, so in total there are usually something on my schedule a few nights every week. Among the events I attend most frequently are several of the technology related trade-events around Oslo, particularly First Tuesday and the XP (Extreme Programming), Agile and UX (User Experience) meetups, along with the many one off seminars on various topics being held by Tekna, The Polytechnic Society and The Norwegian Computer Society. In between these come irregular social gatherings by the various Alumni-organizations I'm a part of, like GSA, Start Norge and Nova100, as well as gatherings with the former co-students at my bachelors and masters degree programmes. Why this spring has been particularly busy is in part due to most of the groups above being unusually active, but in addition there has been a whole range of new events starting up that I've been eager to check out; including the Last Friday innovation evenings by Ignitas, regular Oslo-gatherings with the Internations and Couchsurfing social community-websites, TweetupOslo meetups for Twitterers as well as networking gatherings with the LinkedIn and Xing professional communities in Oslo. I've naturally not been able to attend more than a fraction of the available events, but I've been very happy with both the technical and social outcomes of most of those I did go to, especially for business networking! ]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2009://4.309 2009-04-18T13:51:02Z 2009-10-06T16:50:07Z

This week two big events were held back to back in Oslo, namely the Sun CommunityOne North and GoOpen 2009 conferences, both with more than 600 participants. For the first time I was also among the speakers at the latter...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Sun CommunityOne North and GoOpen 2009 conferences, both with more than 600 participants. For the first time I was also among the speakers at the latter where I gave a talk on open data on the public sector track. I got the idea for my talk during a chat with Ron Tolido at last years GoOpen which I thought was too focused at open source software as opposed to standards and data. Then with Objectware highly encouraging its employees to give conference talks, I was inspired to request and receive a spot for a talk about open data at this years conference. Being swamped with work recently I was unfortunately not able to attend the rest of the conferences in their entirety, but I did catch some highlights including the talks by the Norwegian ministers of knowledge and reforms, Simon Phipps from Sun and Cap Gemini's Andy Mulholland, as well as a few other happenings. Despite me missing much and it being held in worse premises than last year, I feel that this second GoOpen was greatly improved and I am already looking forward to being back next year, perhaps with another talk!]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2009://4.308 2009-04-02T15:23:52Z 2009-04-23T18:19:58Z

Much time in my new job at Objectware have this far included the preparation of project proposals for competitive bidding contracts as published by various public entities in Norway. Notably my work have included developing and creating proof-of-concepts for the...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Objectware have this far included the preparation of project proposals for competitive bidding contracts as published by various public entities in Norway. Notably my work have included developing and creating proof-of-concepts for the solutions that have been requested, in addition to actually writing the proposals and presenting them at negotiations. Some of the concepts in these proposals have been based on state of the art collaborative systems such as the enterprise wiki Confluence and the Liferay portal, and based on my work with these systems we have recently secured several contracts with exiting customers such as Friprog-senteret and Oslo Kommune. While the public sector is often seen as lagging behind in adopting new technologies and methodologies, this shows that at least some of them do leave the comfort zone and join our brave new world of agile project management and open collaboration!]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2009://4.302 2009-01-08T15:24:46Z 2009-04-23T16:59:37Z

After spending the past two years as a webdeveloper on a project for the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, I was beginning to look for new challenges. The prospects at Computas did not look good, but serendiptiously I came across a...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Norwegian Food Safety Authority, I was beginning to look for new challenges. The prospects at Computas did not look good, but serendiptiously I came across a position elsewhere that appeared to suit me perfectly. I applied, was accepted, and upon the eve of this new year I began working as a Business Analyst for the consulting company Objectware. The company is part of the larger Itera Consulting Group and I'll be working with the Department for Digital Business Development. The position promises to provide me with varied work and lots of opportunities for taking personal initiative, and it has started out great. Already on the first day we were tasked with the writing of urgent project proposals for customers! ]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2008://4.286 2008-11-06T16:25:28Z 2009-04-23T16:59:37Z

To complement this compendium with a more active reference to my fields of interest and expertise, I hereby have the pleasure to announce the opening of a professional blog to go along with this site as an open forum. There...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org subscribe to my feed, and please leave a comment while you're at it! The new blog can be found at http://blog.menneske.org ]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2008://4.284 2008-10-20T16:14:28Z 2009-04-23T16:59:38Z

Last week it was time for the annual Oslo Innovation Week, a week full of events promoting innovation and entrepreneurship. For me it started out with a motivational lecture on Networking and Internationalization organized by the Norwegian Polytechnic Society and...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Oslo Innovation Week, a week full of events promoting innovation and entrepreneurship. For me it started out with a motivational lecture on Networking and Internationalization organized by the Norwegian Polytechnic Society and students at the School of Prosjektdesign, featuring the serial entrepreneur Ryan Blair. He really has an amazing story to tell! Next was a combined event of Movation Future Forum, the Venture Cup Norway Finals and First Tuesday, a rocking show in the Oslo City Hall with millions in prize money being handed out to worthy entrepreneurs. This was followed by Start Forum, the annual meeting-place and general assembly for members of the student organization Start Norway. Which after several days with activities, networking and fun was concluded last Saturday with a black-tie dinner at Drengsrud gård in Asker. Definitely one for the history-books!]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2008://4.282 2008-09-18T20:07:37Z 2009-04-23T16:59:38Z

Another year, another JavaZone, still the largest developer conference in Scandinavia with more than 2300 participants and almost a hundred sessions. This year there was a lot of focus on SOA with RESTful web-services, grid-computing and parallelization and on agile...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org JavaZone, still the largest developer conference in Scandinavia with more than 2300 participants and almost a hundred sessions. This year there was a lot of focus on SOA with RESTful web-services, grid-computing and parallelization and on agile software development with Scrum. Also there was a lot of buzz around using alternative programming languages on the Java-platform, as well as talk about going back to the roots of OO-programming. While these were novel topics, much of the content still felt like old news, especially concerning weaknesses in Java. After all, we already solved most of these problems with the advent of Smalltalk 30 years ago! Other items of note were the use of Prediction Markets, programming for social networks and database-less enterprise applications. Overall it was an interesting couple of days, but I feel like I learned less from the conference than last year. However the social buzz and community was better than ever, especially with the highly regarded ClubZone having open bars. And of course there is always the joy of meeting old friends and acquaintances again!]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2008://4.281 2008-06-10T11:52:49Z 2009-04-23T16:59:38Z

Have you ever visited a page and wanted to ask a quick question or comment, but not enough to bother with an email? I now give you web-based Instant Messaging directly to me! This will at least give the visitors...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Instant Messaging directly to me! This will at least give the visitors to this site a chance to do that quick shout about whatever, so try it out :-) In addition to this I have improved the main page and restructured the menu system somewhat to make this site easier to use. I have also rolled out several other fixes and new features, including fun facts about myself, an about-page and a suggestion mailer. ]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2008://4.280 2008-04-10T09:59:31Z 2009-04-23T16:59:38Z

This week I participated at the first annual GoOpen conference in Oslo, Norway. It is a conference about sharing, collaboration, freedom and innovation. It is focused around the free software movement and its related concepts such as open source, open...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org GoOpen conference in Oslo, Norway. It is a conference about sharing, collaboration, freedom and innovation. It is focused around the free software movement and its related concepts such as open source, open standards, public licenses and the culture of sharing. I followed several technical talks on things like the standardization process in the IETF, OpenID, Xen virtualization, and a how-to on decentralized reuse. I also caught some strategic talks about business models, experiences and strategies with using free and open software. Then to wrap up the conference there was a look to the future of open hardware(!) with a presentation of the RepRap, an open self replicating manufacturing system that may forever change our perception of how goods can be made. Always remember that the future is open!]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2007://4.278 2007-12-14T11:11:23Z 2009-04-23T16:59:38Z

After nearly 4 months of studying the intricacies of the Java programming language together with a study-group of other engineers from my company, I am now ready to take the final exam after which I can title myself a Sun...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Sun Certified Java Programmer. This certification demonstrates a high level proficiency in the fundamentals of the Java programming language, and it is also a prerequisite for all the higher levels of Sun certifications.]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2007://4.277 2007-10-17T15:47:55Z 2009-04-23T16:59:39Z

Last evening I returned from Lillehammer where I have attended the Yggdrasil conference on user interface design. Most of what I followed was focused on Web 2.0, like how to design an online shop and make good search-filters. There were...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org Yggdrasil conference on user interface design. Most of what I followed was focused on Web 2.0, like how to design an online shop and make good search-filters. There were also talks on the Second Brain and Symphonical beta-stage sites, and I followed a really good workshop on how to communicate successfully through design, held by visiting Yahoo! interface guru Luke Wroblewski. I have learned a lot and I'm absolutely going to attend next year too if I can! Also my return coincided with the second annual Oslo Innovation Week, last night represented by First Tuesday and tomorrow with 'Entrepreneurs Day' at Oslo Innovation Center. All this and JavaZone have kept me quite busy this fall, especially as I in addition to the things mentioned also have been to multiple talks with GSA, DnD and IBM, as well as networking events with Tekna, Mediabar and nettverket.org among others.]]> tag:www.menneske.org,2007://4.276 2007-09-25T08:33:09Z 2009-04-23T16:59:39Z

Ever since high school people have been talking about how networking is the key to a successful career, but rarely about how to build such a network. Making friends everywhere you go is a start, but it might not get...

Svein-Magnus Sørensen http://telcontar.menneske.org LinkedIn. Adding contacts here will allow both of you to follow each others professional life from afar. The real bonus however, is that you will both be able to leverage the other persons network as your own! Since joining in October 2004, I have added 232 friends and coworkers as first-level connections in my profile. Through these and their contacts I am as of today linked to more than one million people! This is my key to the networking advantage, and it can give me a foot in the door of virtually every industry across the world. A career awaits... !]]>