TechBerlin posted a short video about last weekend’s People in Beta Festival at betahaus.

See the video at TechBerlin.com

Listen to it on SoundCloud!.

During the event we could enjoy unusually warm October weather.
Berlin on a lovely autumn day:

Makerplatz a.k.a. Moritzplatz:

Now let’s start at the betahaus:

Beatriz of cinematografa.com filming during the event:

Awesome foundation pitch during betabreakfast:

Awesome foundation winner Willempje from Figure Running:

Ali from Protonet explaining their social network software and hardware box:

Lorenz from EyeEm explaining their photo sharing service and giving a flash course on the history of photography:

Alex Ljung from SoundCloud sharing about starting your own company:

You can hear his session recorded here – of course uploaded to SoundCloud. The recording is not ideal as I had the level on manual but had to fish out some headphones from my cramped backpack, sorry:

After the sessions and work shops some more pitches during betapitch.
Doonited social enterprise pitch:

5 minutes for pitching the idea – then 5 more for Q&A session:

Thorsten from Musicplayr explaining his business:

In the end winning the betapitch:

Betajamming after work:

Betahaus’ own Christoph joining in:

The Department of Business Administration at the University of Rostock will be hosting their 2nd Rostock Conference on Service Research.

The conference will be held in Rostock between September 23 and 24, 2010. Further information is available at the Rostock Conference on Service Research website.

We went for a walk by the media harbor:

This area has fancy buildings to marvel:

Prominent among them are the Gehry-Bauten by architect Frank Owen Gehry (wikipedia link)

All these buildings are situated around a river harbor.

Passsing the harbor downstream the Rhein river we reached downtown. Noticed the space age looking tramway.

Apparently Düsseldorf has a more refined (aka “snobby”) image compared to Cologne where they seems to claim a more latitudinarian spirit. But to be honest I like both cities and luckily don’t have to take part in the regional rivalry.

More modern architecture on the way back:

Germany is famous for their sausages and an all time favourite is the Currywurst.
Along the way I stopped by restaurant “Curry” where they specialise in said product. It is not your usual fast food shack but astonishingly refined inside. Also populated by equally refined clients. There has to be a reason for the partiality the people from Cologne display maybe.

Their sausage system is modularised where you can order your sauce/dip/salsa in normal, sweet or spicy flavour.
They also have a “sauce of the day” which they let me try by way of a free french fry:

Decided to do away with the fancy haute cuisine and stuck to the regular build:

The curry pictures were taken with an Olympus PEN E-P1 equipped with the very nice micro four thirds Panasonic Lumix G 1,7/20mm Pancake. I did have some reservations agains the new µFT cameras due to the missing optical viewfinder and the smallish sensor size but the Oly/Pana combo was very nice and lightweight to work with.

The topic will be: Success through innovation – managing corporate change.

More information can be found on the project’s website: BMInno website

As i am currently in Cologne working for a client I used the chance to visit this year’s Gamescom 2010, the german CVG (that’s “Computer and Video Games”) expo formerly known as Games Convention. The former GC was held in Leipzig but the powers to be in the CVG business decided to move to the more central location of Cologne. Pity for Leipzig but in this case lucky for me.

Staging area at the entrance. Might be confused with a LARP (Live Action Role Playing) Zergling rush.

Nowadays one can inform themselves about most things on the web. The thing you cannot learn from online media or trailers are new hardware experiences like the recent motion controls by Sony and Microsoft. They finally seem to catch up with Nintendos’ innovativeness. Sony is more the me-too product almost identically copying the Wii controller including the “Nunchuck” side-kick controller for the left hand.

Here folks are being photographed. The photographer also took some pictures of me while I played, I wonder where they will show up (if they do at all).

It seems that most of the early games they showed had either some kind of dancing or some kind of fighting topic. Here is an example of the swords play variant:

Microsofts’ Kinect motion controls work without any physical hand held controller. The players are tracked via a camera array. While at Sonys’ booth I was wondering if someone standing by will accidentally be punched Microsoft had separate booths for each demo station.
I remember reading about some people throwing their Wiiimotes into their TV sets when the Wii was new. This made Nintendo send wrist straps and soft silicone sleeves to all customers.

Microsofts’ booth was located directly next to Nintendos’.

Nintendo brought most of their trademark IP to the show. They had a new Zelda game, Metroid: Other M and a new Kirby game amongst others.

They were showing the new Zelda game. There were some cosplayers at the fair. They young lady in the picture was not on Nintendos payroll but a regular visitor. In case one wonders as who she dressed I took a convenient picture for your leisure:

For basically all of the big name titles there were lines of some length. For the Zelda game the line went around the corner twice:

Football (the one you actually play with your feet, not the other one) is huuuge over here. Konami was showing PES 2011 and had huuuge Lionel Messi posters up. The photo puts size into an interesting perspective. He seems to be looking down on us. He wouldn’t do that, would he?

At the Deep Silver booth you could play the new F1 game which is now being developed by Codemasters. They had a really nice setup for the demo.

In comparison this farming simulation is rather a niche game:

New magazine “Return” brings back some memories. I did even have the same Competition Pro joystick for the C64.

Saving the best (at least for me one of the best) for last, Portal 2. The first Portal game was pretty short but definitely an intelligently made experience. Liked both the concept and the story telling. They made a nice short story from the lab setting. Are you still there…?

But you already learned about cake, didn’t you? It’s a lie! Please await the party escort.

Early April I started freelance work as a project manager for a new client in Cologne. This means that I will be spending some time in Cologne this spring and summer.
Unfortunately I missed this this winter’s crazy Colgne carnival season but this will still be great!

As man needs a shelter I started planning my accomodation for the first few weeks: I usually do not like the usual “business” hotels too much, at least not for a prolonged time. As I will be working in the same region for a manageable amount of time I rather wanted to look for an apartment for intermediate rent.
But as I also wanted to scout the city and to learn the ins and outs of the various districts the plan was to book a hotel for the first 1-2 weeks to look for a nice place to rent.

For the hotel part I used www.hrs.com which gave me a good proce-performance ratio before already. In the past I was disappointed on some occasions by hotel reservations when the images published by the hotel showed their nicest room(s) but then the room you will actually get looks somewhat different. I.e. only a part of the rooms was modernised and is showcased while you get a lame late 80′s flavored room.

So I prefer a more recently renovated hotel even if it is rated in a lower category on the site. The user ratings also often give more accurate information than the usual star rating.
This way I ended up booking a room in the Hostel Köln

I arrived really late because my train had a technical defect (a blocked brake) which turned a 5:40 hours trip into a 11 hour one. I’ll take the plane next time around!

The hotel carries the “hostel” in the name but it actually made a very good impression. Clean place that was renovated last year only.

They have this friendly fellow in the elevator – and I’m a friednly fellow as well, taking the photo.

My room had no less than 4 beds – 2×2 so you could share the room with friends. But I had the room for myself (actually booked a single room which they do have as well but those were booked for the night). They still only charged me the single rate which at 39 € with breakfast included is a good rate.

The bathroom was nice and clean as well with a nice shower – impressive volume flow rate and well controllable temperature. Two things done right here!

The rooms also have an LCD TV and free wireless network. The TV is actually the same Samsung TV/monitor hybrid series I use at home a.t.m.

Unfortunately the hotel only had free rooms for one night so I had to change hotels. Next stop: Hotel Azimut, which is located in the Saturn tower in Cologne.

Got a good rate from booking via HRS but had to learn later that the normal rate is a lot higher when I wanted to book a room here again.

Much nicer room even than before – with a comfy lounge chair.

Another Samsung LCD TV. They seem to be popular with the business clients.

Large bathroom which is not really visible in the picture. Nice and clean and comfy.

The famous Cologne Cathedral refuses to fit into one picture of my Canon Digital IXUS 100 IS (more accurately my wife’s who let me borrow it) when I stand in front of it.

In front of the cathedral also means in front of the main station as they are located on the same square.

The cathedral is situated on a plateau above the square.

Looking from the plateau to the main station’s entrance hall.

If you continue onwards to the left of the cathedral you will reach the Museum Ludwig

As one can learn from the museum’s webpage, Peter and Irene Ludwig agreed on 5 February 1976 to endow 350 modern artworks and in return the City of Cologne committed itself to build a dedicated “Museum Ludwig” for works made after the year 1900.

From here you can see the station’s main hall and the tracks which are covered by a roof construction.

2: Personalplanung und
5: Arbeitsstrukturierung

der Veranstaltung Betriebliches Personalwesen der TAW, Studienzentrum Rostock, Frühjahr 2010.

Downloads:
Vorlesung 2: Personalplanung Folien
Vorlesung 5: Arbeitsstrukturierung Folien
Vorlesung 5: Arbeitsstrukturierung Fragen und Antworten

The annual renewal for Harvard Business Review this year offers a special collection of articles on leadership as an additional incentive.

For those who did not get the offer the good news is that the articles can be bought separately from the HBR website.

More good news for the readers of the German language issue Harvard Business Manager is that some of the articles are available in German as well.

A short list of articles available in both languages at their respective publishers’ websites:

Drucker: Managing Oneself
In German: Die Kunst, sich selbst zu managen

Montgomery: Putting Leadership Back into Strategy
In German: Die Rückkehr der strategischen Führung

Rooke / Torbert: Seven Transformations of Leadership
In German: Die sieben Managertypen – und welcher Erfolg hat

Snowden and Boone: A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making
In German: Entscheiden in Chaotischen Zeiten

The articles may also be available via your library in paper or electronic form if they licensed the content, i.e. via a DFN or GVK+ access.

If they are not then you might be interested in a themed compilation with a possibly better content-to-price ratio, i.e. through Amazon (affiliate links below):