Shameless Self-Promotion

It is always a difficult exercise to get interviewed for a job. It becomes even more difficult if it concerns an internal interview aiming to promote your company. Anyway, who I am and what I do is now available on YouTube: My work at Aliaxis

Evolution of the Social Networking Map

In February 2008, in my What is Web 2.0 blog post I showed the following map about Social Networks, which came from xkcd.

Today, I saw on Le Journal du Geek the 2010 version and it speaks by itself. Notice the rise of FaceBook, YouTube, and Google for example but also the decline of MySpace and some others.


Only two years and an half between the two pictures. Changes are fast on the internet.

Google is the Heir of Sun Tzu

A few days ago I posted a pretty long article about my experience with setting up a SharePoint intranet. Less than twenty-four hours later, I received a LinkedIn invitation from someone working for the same company as I do but located at the other side of the world. That person kindly introduced himself to me, wrote a couple of nice words about my SharePoint article, and asked to be connected to each other. My first reflex was to immediately accept his network invitation - after all we are colleagues - and to thank him for his kind word.

I then started wondering how he had found my SharePoint blog article. My article was not the first one to be written about SharePoint. It is surely not the most detailed or the most complete article about that topic. Additionally my blog is not (yet ?) one of the most read and famous blogs of the world wide web. So how could he find me through that article so quickly ? Not even a day had passed since I had posted it on BlogSpot.

I then remembered that a few hours before getting the LinkedIn invitation, I had received my usual Google Alert digest. For those ignorant of Google Alerts mechanism, Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. In other words, you enter a keyword or two and Google will bring you the search results right into your mail and when something new it added on the Internet concerning that keyword then a it will appear in your next Google Alert. And on that day, my Google Alert digest tuned for my company name contained my SharePoint article. Needless to say that from there it became as clear as 1 + 1 = 2. All people using Google Alerts with the same keyword had received the link to my blog. This was the right explanation. It could not be otherwise and a few hours later I even received the written confirmation. It was a good guess.

So what is the true meaning of this story ?
Google knows it all. It knows everything available online about you, about your company, about your competitors. It knows what has changed or what is new, and it knows it before you do. As such, Google sets itself in straight line with Sun Tzu so famous principle:

Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

Ten years of Online Gaming Presence

Historically, it was on the 3rd of December 1998 that Frederic "Fizzban" Waymann, Mario "PtJedi" Dominguez and myself (known online as Veynom) decided to start an online game on the ashes of a defunct one called Star Wars Simulation. Unlike any game editor, while we had a few hundreds players around us eager to play, we had absolutely no game to offer. We could only propose hope, dreams, and a perpetual answer that would quickly became famous: Soon™. Yet, on that day, we founded the Star Wars Combine.

Ten years after, hundreds of people have contributed to the growing success of the Star Wars Combine. Our membership has always grown (even if sometimes slowly) despite ups and downs in the game development. showing that one of our biggest successes is doubtlessly the community.

Now, like once every ten years, I will rather tell a small story instead of boring the world to death with a “we’re the best” type of speech. So here comes one of my Uncle Vey ’ stories which I will name "The Lost Days".

A long time ago in a not so far far away galaxy …
errr no. Wrong story.

Today is the 3rd of December. Today is the official tenth anniversary of the Star Wars Combine. Yet today is Year 10 Day 3 by standard Combine Galactic Time (CGT) - an in-game time reference. Where does the difference come from ?

Is the memory of that old Sim Master acting crazy and forcing him to believe the Combine was started on December 3 while it was in fact on December the first ?
Did some well-known thief manage to steal two days from the Combine ?
Did an Imperial historian make a mistake while re-copying the official Combine chronicles ?
Is this … a feature ?

Absolutely not. This is no feature, this is a bug !
This is simply a bug due to how CGT code converting calendar dates to our own system which does not stake leap years into account. As consequences, we lose a day every four years and one of those years we will need to fix these days. Enjoy,

Stress at Work

First day at Work

You listen to Stevie Wonder. It is your first day, the sky is blue, girls are nice, and everything goes well.

After three months

You listen to HOUSE music because you are already overloaded.

After six months

You listen to Heavy Metal and start seeing everything double because you work from 8.00am till well over midnight.

After nine months

You listen to Hip Hop. You became fat because of stress and suffer from constipation !

After one year

You listen to Gansta Rap. You blink, all the time and for no reason. You are deeply addicted to caffeine.

After two years

You listen to Techno and your life is a perpetual rave party. Beat after beat you become crazy.

And ultimately...


In a pure and sincere desire to reduce mailbox sizes and help poor IT administrators, I decided to put online this joke instead of forwarding the mail. Credits go to its respective authors.

Something has changed ...

Eight years ago, in a not so far away country ...



Today, something has changed.



Reality strikes back.
Wazaaa !!!

A Small Bag for a Man

With my new job, I’m much more on the road, spending a day here, a couple of days there or even a full week at yet another place. This is quite a welcome change from my previous comfortable position of ICT Director where travelling was rather the exception than the norm. During the last weeks, I have been quickly accustomed to trains, hotels, having lunch in a city and dinner in another.

Now, every married man would tell me that sooner or later I will have to be careful. Being away from home too often can potentially lead to disastrous family situations. Starting with an unhappy wife, it can quickly lead to hell.

However note that miracle do happen sometimes. Last weekend was father’s day here in Belgium and I got a nice surprise. My wife offered me one of these nice Samsonite boarding bags. The kind equipped with wheels, able to carry your laptop case, and authorized with you inside the plane without having to registering it. Needless to say that I was extremely and positively surprised while reinsured about my future business trips. I guess from now I can comfortably travel without worrying too much.

Isn’t life wonderful ?
At least mine is. :-)

Attack of the Mouses

A new job is always full of little surprises and when you work in an IT environment, you also receive a lot of shiny toys. There is of course the laptop (an IBM/Lenovo T61 with Win XP and 2GB RAM) considered as the must-have work tool. At the same time, I also received a Blackberry so that I could be harassed by emails 24 hours a day. Then of course, I got the full environment necessary around these two devices: a docking station with an extra screen, an external keyboard from the latest generation, and a wireless rechargeable optic mouse. Wow, a wireless mouse, the typical gadget you don't find in offices because they are expensive and don't last as long as wired mouses.

So far nothing unusual except that until today, I was used to deliver similar environments to users but this time, I was on the other side of the line. Everything was installed by a charming assistant who went as far as unpacking, placing, and plugging in the keyboard herself before cleaning the office from all extra plastics and garbage - and still smiling all the time. Definitively something has changed in my life. But don't think I was granted any extra treatment here; my colleague got the same only a few days beforehand. it is only the norm where I work now.

However after having contemplated all these toys, work had to start. After minutes I started complaining about the mouse. Movements were not so accurate and the left click-button did not always respond timely. I was about to curse and migrate back to a reliable wired old-fashion mouse when I noticed that my colleague next to me also had problems with his mouse. Being IT professionals (at least this is the official reason why we got hired), it only took us minutes before discovering that the mouses were in fact interfering with each other. Worse, some quick small shaking movements with once mouse could completely jam the other one. After checking the manufacturer's website, we found out that the mouse bases should be distant from at least 3 meters. Of course we tried by 3.20 meters and changing the bases' orientations but without any success. There was a permanent invisible war between our two mouses just in our office. And then we knew that our office was planned to hold five IT people with five cordless mouses ...

My colleague was faster to react by plugging in his wired mouse to fix this little annoyance. As such he eliminated himself from the list of wireless users. There are situations where being the fastest is not always recommended.

Until next time...

Turn Off the Lights when Leaving

Last Friday was my last day at work. I spend over 5 years at Cherokee Europe with over two of them as ICT Director. I enjoyed that period very much as it has been a wonderful experience.

Now, leaving a job should not really be worth a post on a blog as it has become common these days. But as responsible of all informatics and communication services for the plant, my last action has been quite uncommon for a day of work and is maybe worth mentioning. I spent my last hour at Cherokee to shut down all servers and systems because of a planned maintenance operation. While proceeding, one of my colleagues told around something like:

He is really a nice guy; he even turns off the lights behind him when leaving.

I thought it was indeed funny.

Bye Bye Cherokee !

It is now official. I resigned from my extremely comfortable job of ICT Director at Cherokee Europe, the European business unit of Cherokee International. For over two years, I have been in charge of all information and communication matters for our entire European activities and it has been great. On top of that, I was also a member of the Management Team and as such could access to a lot of information and participate to strategic decisions. Within this position, I learned a lot and had the opportunity to work on several interesting projects ranging from Sarbanes-Oxley audit compliancy to IT security, ERP customizations, or even Business Intelligence.

During a little over two years, I could work at various company levels from the company strategy to day-to-day operational issues. I had the opportunity to both maintain existing systems and implement new ones, while working with a great team. But everything has an end and May 16, 2008 will be my last working day at Cherokee Europe.

So why did I decide to leave then ?
Well, I found something that looks even better. Or to be completely honest, they found me. The new company looks better (and everyone around me confirms that), the job description and responsibilities are awesome, I will have the occasion to travel a bit more, and the package is even more attractive.

The name of the new company and my new role ? Well, you will have to wait for one of my next posts. I will then tell you everything. Just let me make the switch. ;)

To be continued...

It's Good to be Praised

Last week, I have been traveling to Paris to attend the QAD Users Conference. QAD is our ERP supplier here at Cherokee Europe and we use their product - MFG/Pro 8.6E - since ten years already.

Unlike similar events, this time I was not only there to passively attend some seminars and workshops but I was also there to present a 30-minute seminar about a Business Intelligence project I started implemented last year for my company. Two hours before it all started, I got the surprise to see Cherokee Europe awarded the QAD 2008 Performance Improvement Trophy. It happened during lunchtime and when you think "lunch" in France, you can be sure you will not be disappointed.

Soon after lunch and the trophy ceremony, I presented my seminar and was pleasantly surprised to have to talk in front of a crowded room - which is way better than an empty room. If I judge by the many compliments and nice words I got afterwards, I dare to say I did well.

But aside of my personal little success, I must see this day was really entertaining and pleasant to me. First, when you go to France, you can always rely on the legendary French hospitality: nice people, good food, and good wine. Then in this case there was the QAD team: Delphine, Louise, Dan Marie, David, Jean-Philippe, Gilles, Jean-Claude, Hans.... I would really like to thank them all for this great day. It was extremely interesting (QAD Finance 2008 is what I dream to have installed here), very well organized (Kudos to Delphine), and we all felt fantastically welcomed. My recyclable electrons will not forget this anytime soon.

Book Review: Wikinomics

I just finished reading the book Wikinomics from Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams and wanted to share my feelings about it.

Wikinomics describes various examples of how mass collaboration already started changing the world-wide economy, in many sectors and levels. It is a book that clearly depicts Web 2.0 technologies and some of their impacts on how to conduct business. As such, you will find information about FaceBook business models, about Ideagoras, about the mashups culture and trends, about Wiki and peer-production. For all these parts, Wikinomics is a great book and probably a must-read for any CxO or manager. It opens your mind and update you on a few recent Web 2.0 concepts.

I would add however that some of the concepts or theories pushed by this book are to be taken with a grain of salt. It was obviously written by Evangelists of the concept and as such, they sometimes tend to create theories from examples instead of illustrating demonstrated theories with these examples. Similarly, it sometimes goes "too far" in some directions but maybe it does so hoping that half of the message will pass through.

In short, Wikinomics is a great book for managers interested in some consequences of Web 2.0 but as every new theory, it has to be pondered.

To blog or not to blog

Like thousands of people, I wondered if I should start my own blog or not. Finally, I decided I should at least try.

So here it is where is starts. I will blog about various ICT experiences, movies I watched, books I read, websites I visited, some Belgian politics possibly as well. This blog will evolve in small steps, at least as long the experience is worthy.

Here we go...