This post originally appeared at Goyelloblog. View original post.

November 29, 2006 we almost missed our plane to Gdansk. Because of the traffic jams and the very fact that Cologne/Bonn Airport appeared to be a bit further than we’ve thought, we arrived just in time to board the plane. Fortunately, my business partner Arie managed to convince the guy at the check-in desk that we had to catch that plane. On a wet and cold Wednesday morning we landed in Gdansk. Since that very moment it all went very fast. Time sort of hasn’t stand still since then. Goyello officially exists since that very moment, today it’s exactly 5 years. We are proudly reviewing the past years and we are eagerly looking forward to the unknown future.

The survival of the fittest?

Economically it has been five rather poor years. Sometimes it was even hard to survive. We had to work hard to acquire and then satisfy every new client. Fortunately, the past has shown us that this economic downturn had its good sides as well. In times of crisis, businesses became more cost focused but meanwhile they also realized they need to innovate to stay ahead of the competition. Outsourcing their software development enabled them to achieve both the savings and the innovations. Goyello turned out to be the right partner for many businesses.

Goyello steadily growing

Year by year, Goyello managed to grow significantly. In early 2007, we used to work in the living room, sitting at the dining table. We were regularly meeting with our team on the beach. These were good times when we could even sometimes relax. The first clients were choosing Goyello, we were growing faster than expected. Soon we had to rent a “real” office. Who would have thought, that by the end of this year we will exchange this office for a brand new one in the Gdansk based Olivia Business Centre.

Today Goyello employs around 60 employees and the number is continuously increasing. Several of our first clients, like Da Vinci International and Youropi.com, are still our partners today. We managed to build a PHP and Microsoft .NET team around the businesses of our first clients. Nowadays, we are developing most of our applications in Microsoft .NET and Java. Besides, we offer mobile application development (Android, iOS and Windows Phone). Not forgetting about our web designers, who make that every application is accessible and looks good.

Focusing on web-based business applications and e-commerce

Our focus has changed over the time. In the beginning we were mainly focusing on web site and portal development. Today, we are primarily focusing on business applications and e-commerce. The retail and logistical sectors are the areas where we are doing really well. For a couple of our clients we have developed point of sale solutions (POS), stock management, loyalty and reporting systems. Meanwhile, we have developed some solutions ourselves as well. We have successfully implemented our own 21crm a few times. Business Intelligence is becoming increasingly important and we deliver the solution together with our Gdynia (next to Gdansk) based partner.

We are really proud of the recent 21webmerce web shop and auction system implementations. We are looking forward to a successful future for those two of our best solutions.

From enthusiastic amateurs to skilled professionals

Sometimes, when looking back, we realize what amateurs we were back then. When you enter our office today, you will notice a well-tuned machine. Different teams are cooperating interactively with our clients in a professional manner. You could say we became very Agile over the past years.

Thanks to all who made this happen

We thank our current and former Goyello colleagues, clients, suppliers and especially our families for all the effort and support that made it happen. Without their contribution it would have been really hard, if not impossible, to achieve what we did. This also refers to all the encouragement and words of comfort coming from friends and acquaintances. That’s extremely motivating and inspiring!

Yearly Microsoft organises the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) to share the latest Microsoft news with their partner network. A network Microsoft is really depending on. More than 95% of Microsoft’s revenue comes through their partners. It seems to be an event you have to attend. Goyello is already a Microsoft Partner for several years. Unfortunately, before we weren’t able to be there, but this year we will. LA here we come!

It seems WPC has a lot to offer

WPC provides a unique, five day event for thousands of partners from more than 130 countries. According to Microsoft there are numerous reasons to attend WPC 2011, including:

• Learning how to expand your possibilities with investments in integrated cloud services, Windows® 7, and Windows Phone.
• Getting an in-depth look at innovative cloud platforms and services, such as Office 365, Windows Azure™, Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V™, and Dynamics® CRM Online.
• Gaining new insights from senior Microsoft leaders about our business vision and industry leading products. Among others executives like Steve Ballmer, Kevin Turner and the new channel chief Jon Roskill will be there.
• Taking your business to the next level and win against the competition.

Mobile and cloud attracts me the most

Personally I’m looking forward to learn about Microsoft’s mobile and cloud strategies. In my opinion these two technologies will highly influence the way we will work in the upcoming years. Microsoft’s PaaS offering with the Azure cloud platform as well as the SaaS offering with online services like Exchange, Sharepoint, InTunes, CRM Online and Office 365 are in my opinion really impressive and promising as well.

Of course I’m looking forward to learn from others as well. It’s good to see how other Microsoft Partners position themselves. For sure we can improve our own strategy based on this input.

Shaking hands with Steve Ballmer could be fun as well.

Will you join?

I’m curious who we will meet in LA. Will you be there? Since yesterday the WPC registration is open. The 5 day event will take place in Los Angeles, Calif., USA, July 10-14.

Honestly, I’m really excited about this trip. I suppose it will generate an enormous amount of inspiration…. You only have to follow my blog and Twitter stream (@PetersOpinion) to stay tuned.

Agile is hot, waterfall is over. At least, that seems to be the leading opinion in the IT world. How Agile are you? Do you still develop in the traditional way, trying to specify every detail upfront? Or do you realize it’s not possible and just too costly to specify everything upfront? Today I read an article on a Dutch blog (in Dutch) stating that an Agile way of working suits the needs of young IT people (Gen Y) best. If this is the case it would be a major reason to choose for Agile development due to the simple fact it’s rather hard to find good people. Does this mean is the whole grale for IT? And will Gen X (project) managers be able to handle?

Agile suits current organizational needs

After the recent economic downturn companies more than ever before demand flexibility and short time to market. Software solutions have to be developed quickly, proto typing is the new magic. If successful, they will continue to invest.

An Agile approach perfectly fits these needs.

The more conservative approach, called waterfall, strives to specify all the needs in a very detailed way. Based on my own experience and sufficient other examples I dare to state this is just impossible. These processes are time and money consuming and hardly ever lead to a satisfactory result.

By using an Agile approach we all together more or less know the destination of our journey at a high level. Together all the people involved define the highest priorities. Within several weeks time these highest priorities will be released as a working application enabling the people involved to provide instant feedback.

Step by step this results in an application we couldn’t define upfront but which in general really satisfies the user’s needs.

An Agile way of working suits Gen Y

According to the author of the mentioned article an Agile way of working suits the current generation of IT people, Gen Y, best. It satisfies their need for flexibility and freedom combined with self responsibility. It would result into more work pleasure, a higher productivity and more value for the business.

Personally, I believe this is true if you manage to implement Agile in a successful way. And believe me, that’s not easy. 

An Agile approach makes things more unpredictable

Implementing an Agile way of working demands a very high level of team responsibility. Things become very transparent, nobody can hide.

Not every (young) IT person will be able to handle this responsibility from day one. That takes time and needs guidance. Fear to be punished for mistakes can even damage the whole process.

But not only for the IT people it’s a big change. It might be even a more dramatic change for clients, project owners and managers. No longer will the management be able to interrupt the development process just like that. Their management style needs to change from demanding into supporting.

Managers might get the feeling they are no longer “in control”. A project seems to be less predictable. Previously, everything was at least on paper, the budget and deadline were fixed.

But please be honest. How often was the deadline met and did you manage the project within budget?

Will Gen X be able to switch?

Gen Y developers will manage to work productively in an Agile way if they are well guided. It will demand a more supportive organization culture and structure and the Agile team needs to get the full trust, otherwise it won’t work.

That might be the biggest challenge. This demands a dramatic attitude change of Gen X. Believe me, it’s not easy to convince them. They are just too much used to putting everything on paper.

But most of the paper work is really a waste of valuable time and money. Add this to an Agile project budget as risk coverage en you will be surprised by the end result.

Dare to trust Gen Y, give them the future and enjoy the fun and result! At 4Developers, 4 April 2011 in Warsaw, I will discuss this matter in more detail.

Some weeks ago I attended a meeting with Burton Lee, a Stanford University professor and Super Angel, who visited Poland. I was lucky to be present at a very intimate presentation and discussion with him in Gdynia. With the characteristic pride of an American he explained why Europe is legging behind and why this is probably not even going to change. But something will have to change if we don’t want the US, India and China to rule the world. Both entrepreneurship and research should lead to the European recovery.

US based companies change the rules of the game

You could question whether or not Europe is doing so bad. With one single example he showed what’s going on. In the past two years both Apple (iPhone) and Google (Android) gained billions of dollars of turnover, while Nokia lost. Just by thinking different they changed the established market. See my post about the changes within the mobile market for more details. Besides you only have to point to several recent success stories like Microsoft, Google and Facebook. The US based companies are setting the new trends.

Burton Lee focussed in particular on Poland, but pointed out many issues in other European countries as well.

In the US you can be proud when you are an entrepreneur

One of the big differences in between the US and Europe is how they treat entrepreneurship. If your company fails this won’t be treated as a personal failure. The basic attitude is that you should learn from this. In Europe you will be a looser and besides they might even try to take your private money to cover the losses.

Serial entrepreneurship (setting up multiple companies one after another) is the trend in the US. A failure among them is not an issue. Without taking risks it’s hard to he successful.

This entrepreneurship starts already at the university. Stanford University is 100% private money funded. As a lecturer, researcher or professor you have to commit to their high standards. Research drives them, but everyone has to acquire his own funds for a research project. In fact you have to be an entrepreneur to be successful at Stanford. That’s why many successful companies have their roots at the engineering faculties of such universities.

We should aim for a healthy innovation ecosystem

Burton showed the impact these universities and their business spin offs have on the local economical development. It’s amazing to see how many companies are more or less related to Microsoft in the Redmond area. Microsoft even supports these companies by buying their products, meanwhile monitoring the success of their product. Sooner or later they might be willing to buy it. These companies have been started by former Microsoft employees. For Microsoft this means they can rely on a certain knowledge, professional and quality level. The entrepreneur is able to run its company with this support. In Poland this wouldn’t work like that. Due to the fact it’s a low trust society a former employer wouldn’t think about a company started by a former employee. As we can learn from the US situation this is a real pity. Together we would be stronger. From idea generation and talent creation up to venture capitals it has to be one healthy innovation ecosystem.

Companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon are doing the same. They follow new startups and invest in them together with business angels. Once successful they buy them. Such an ecosystem is lacking in Europe.

So, something has to change in Europe.  As an example Burton Lee pointed out to the current situation in the UK. The government is planning to save a lot of money on education. The only good way for universities to survive will be adopting private funding like in the US.

And the same will be applicable for other universities in Europe. Before the meeting in Gdynia Burton Lee had a panel discussion at the Polish Investment Forum with representatives of Polish universities. At the end of the discussion he had to conclude they completely didn’t realize what they should focus on. The main part of the discussion was about the perfect curriculum. But as you might understand by now it should have been about how to stimulate research and entrepreneurship. Innovation is what is lacking in Europe.

Even the venture capital market clearly shows the difference

As an entrepreneur it is hard to gain funding these days. Banks will hardly support you, so super angels and venture capitals are the main sponsor of entrepreneurial ideas. The software market can still count on intensive support of Super Angels. Often these Super Angels are former employees of earlier successful startups who sold their shares. Especially mobile and social apps manage to acquire startup funding. But the story was not as positive as it sounded at first. Just about 1% of all the funding requests receive funding in the end. If you have a good idea it’s best to develop and sell it first yourself. In case successful it will be easier to acquire venture capital.

Thanks for an inspiring discussion

I really liked the discussion with Burton Lee. It was very useful to hear the opinion of an outsider. Although, during the presentation we found out he has a lot of inside knowledge from the past as well. He understands the complex European structures very well. I believe it’s good to listen to people like Burton Lee and see what we can learn from them. It won’t be easy to change, but it looks like it’s the only thing we can do. Fortunately, it looks like the European Union realizes something needs to change as well. The programming Transforming Europe into an “Innovation Union shows the ambition.

For years Nokia was the leading mobile brand without any doubt. This has changed dramatically once the Smartphones got introduced. Android and iPhone are step by step increasing their market share. The biggest looser seems Nokia. I used to be a 100% Nokia addict and didn’t want to use any other phone. But Nokia didn’t seem to realize the impact of mobile internet on time. Research in Motion (RIM, BlackBerry) is slightly loosing market share as well.

Mobile sales keep increasing

Gartner recently presented their new mobile market research results. Based on the worldwide sales amounts they compare the 3rd quarter of 2009 and 2010. It shows in a year time the Smartphone sales have almost doubled.

“Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Grew 35 Percent in Third Quarter 2010; Smartphone Sales Increased 96 Percent” (Gartner, November 2010)

Traditional phone sales is increasing as well, basically due to new markets. In these markets 3G is not available yet which explains their demand for the “traditional” cellular phone. New “white box” brands are being introduced into these markets which explains the high market share for “other” brands in these markets.

Android winning the Smartphone market

Android is doing extremely well in the Smartphone market. It’s market share increased from just 3,5% to 25,5%. Apple managed to bypass RIM (BlackBerry) thanks to its successful introduction of the iPhone 4 and the iPad. But even Apple seems not to be able to compete with Android. This is basically due to the fact that many different phone producers provide Android based Smartphones. Apple is facing severe supply limitations.

Microsoft hopes to change the current downwards trend by introducing Windows Phone 7. The future will tell weather or not they will succeed. Analysts treat the introduction of Windows Phone 7 as their last chance.

Some humor to conclude these dry figures

The mobile market is shifting quickly towards Smartphones. Android seems to take the lead in the upcoming time. Anyway, it might be hard to choose the right phone for yourself. May be the image below will help. The image has recently been posted on Daily Mobile.

During a webinar organised by Gobal Services analysts of advisory firm Tholons have just released this year’s Top 100 Outsourcing Cities ranking. Although the top 10 didn’t dramatically change the shift towards nearshoring is clearly noticeable. Tholons concludes the 1st position of India’s Bangalore is under pressure. Eastern Europe in general and Poland more specific are well ranked as emerging locations.

The group of top cities increased

This year’s list of Top Emerged Outsourcing Cities has expanded, identifying ten global delivery locations. Two new cities join the eight previously acclaimed outsourcing cities. Cebu City and Shanghai have significantly developed their respective outsourcing industries which have allowed these cities to join the Top 10 Emerged List.

While Bangalore retained first place for the fourth year running, Mumbai moved up to second place this year, with its huge labor pool consistently displaying enhanced service delivery in complex and high-value FAO services. During the webinar Tholons announced Bangalore will be facing severe competition in the upcoming time. A 1st rank in the next year is far from certain.

The traditional outsourcing countries are no longer alone

About 10-15 years ago US and UK based outsourcers only considered India and the Philippines to be their outsourcing destinations. Over time outsourcers have become more convenient in outsourcing and many more countries have joined. For different reasons today different locations are being considered.

Tholons has noticed more focus on near shore although being higher cost locations. This choice is being made for many different reasons like near time zone, language and cultural affinity. When it’s IT related intellectual property law is a very important decision factor.

Low cost is according to Tholons’ survey no longer the main driver. It’s even proven higher cost locations can be more effective. This changes the focus more towards cost effectiveness instead of just “low cost”.

Because of this change Tholons has decided to extend its list from 50 up to 100 cities.

But even those 100 cities don’t cover the full market. This is just showing some part of the outsourcing world. Depending on your needs there are far more good locations to be considered.

Top 10 emerged, top 50 emerging and 40 next wave cities

Tholons has divided the top 100 cities into three groups: emerged, emerging and next wave cities. The main difference between the 10 emerged and the 50 emerging cities is the scalability you can achieve. Besides there is a fourth group: “On Tholons radar” which are cities that could join the list in the upcoming time.

Three Polish cities rank on this year’s list. Kraków managed to climb 3 places and is leading the emerging group while Warsaw maintained its position among the emerging cities. Wrocław is with ranked for the 1st time. Already for some years it was “On the radar”.

Not on the list, but on the radar is Gdansk. Thanks to the huge effort of the local government Gdansk is for sure an emerging BPO and ITO city.

Eastern Europe is the leading continent

Based on the data provided by Tholons I prepared some graphs. Eastern Europe appears to be leading when you sum the number of cities by region, which proves the shift from the traditional outsourcing regions towards more nearshore outsourcing.

I realize this graph doesn’t tell us anything about the market size. Because Bangalore alone might have more turnover than Eastern Europe as a whole. And the picture changes when you sum the number of cities by country. India is leading this list with 14 cities.

Within Eastern Europe Russia and Poland are leading. Those are the biggest nearshore markets for Western-Europe and even for the US it’s becoming a more important outsourcing market. This is not expected to change although I expect Ukraine will become a good follower soon. It looks like Tholons just didn’t notice them yet.

You can download the full dataset here or read is as PDF here.

In the end you will have to decide yourself

If you are not just looking for a tremendous amount of resources most of the mentioned cities could be considered. Like Brian Tumpowsky, director sourcing and governance of the Publicis Groupe, mentioned during the webinar it’s most important to keep your outsourcing policy balanced.

What technology do you need? Will the location be able to provide it? What is your experience?

75% of the cities on the list is for most companies not feasible. Going to China could be the next step for some companies, but for most this will be years away. (Brian Tumpowsky during the webinar)

You might decide in favor of a certain destination because of:

• Typical factors (e.g. political climate, economic conditions, etc)
• Your customer requirements (e.g. time zones)
• Internal requirements (e.g. virtual vs. physical)
• Skill and capability needs
• Risk tolerance to explore less mature destinations
• Internal maturity and experience
• Availability of other provider options in the considered area
• Ability to leverage provider presence in area for internal business reasons.

Tholons’ list can support and inspire you when you consider outsourcing abroad. Just like other lists it’s just a ranking based on a group of relevant factors. All these factors will be relevant to you as well, but the weight per factor might be different for you. Therefore, based on this list you should prepare your own list. Is wish you good luck while doing this. In case you look for help feel free to contact me by filling in the contact form here. Or let’s discuss on Twitter, you will find me here.

According to Reuters Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer is selling some of his holdings of Microsoft stock, worth about $1.3 billion. He plans to sell up to 75 million shares by year-end. This will reduce his share in Microsoft with about 12%. Of course rumors directly came up. But be honest: wouldn’t we all like such a dream deal? Isn’t that what every entrepreneur is hoping for?Will Ballmer be leaving Microsoft? Doesn’t he believe in Windows Phone 7, which is being released right now, does he have private financial issues or is it just bad timing? I don’t know and I don’t mind. It’s great for him to cash after all the hard work.

Based on a statement on the Microsoft website you would conclude it’s purely a private matter:

“Even though this is a personal financial matter, I want to be clear about this to avoid any confusion,” Ballmer said. “I am excited about our new products and the potential for our technology to change people’s lives, and I remain fully committed to Microsoft and its success.”

But should we really believe it? We might never know.

Steve enjoy! I wouldn’t mind to face such a dream deal

Yesterday the Polish Investforum 2010 had its kick-off in Gdansk in the beautiful Baltic Philharmonic. Two days long representatives of governmental organizations and foreign investors are discussing the Polish potential. The main objective of the Investforum is to promote the image of Poland and present its attractiveness as the location for foreign investment. The question is whether or not they managed.

Too high expectations?

Weeks before the Forum I got invited to participate in the panel about the “Advantages and disadvantages of low-cost locations”. Honestly I was really looking forward to this debate and the whole Forum. The subject is appealing and it’s always great to discuss the Polish opportunities.

Unfortunately, the Forum setup disappointed me dramatically. As I mentioned in the introduction the Forum is about presenting Poland to foreign investors. Therefore, I don’t understand why the main part of the program was in Polish. By doing so you don’t open up to the foreigners, it’s not inviting to join the discussion. Honestly, it showed how closed Poland still is towards foreigners.

Besides most of the introductory presentations were far too boring and didn’t add anything new. Mostly they were about: “See how good we are”. The debate about “The perception of Poland in the world and the foreign investment inflows” didn’t include any foreigner. One of the panel members even mentioned he “didn’t have any idea what foreigners think about Poland”. I believe among the audience there were many people who could have told them, you could have asked, but there was no interaction with the audience.

Poland no longer an emerging nor a low-cost market

Dr. Nicholas Spiro showed the current economic divergence in Europe. One of the major conclusions related to Poland is that Poland didn’t feel the recent crisis too much because of its healthy financial system and decent policy making. In the past Poland never faced a real burst like many other emerging markets in Eastern Europe. Also for the near future this is not likely to happen. Predictions of the IMF prove that there will be a stable, healthy growth rate of 3.5 – 4% yearly. But the risk for “overheating” remains according to Dr. Spiro.

Based on the figures and the lack of the burst Dr. Spiro concluded we shouldn’t treat Poland as an emerging market. Poland acts more and more like other advanced economies in Western-Europe, fortunately lacking the financial history which (at least partly) caused the recent downturn.

During the panel discussion “Advantages and disadvantages of low-coast locations” we concluded Poland is no longer a low-cost destination. If cost is the most crucial factor then countries like Ukraine or Rumania have more competitive edge.

All present companies have chosen Poland because of its liaison role in between West and Eastern Europe, it’s stable economical and political system, integration into the European Union and the fact Poland is well connected to the rest of Europe. The lower cost compared to Western Europe are most welcome, but the availability of highly skilled professionals is for all of them the most important reason to stay in Poland.

Poland a great location to locate your business

Apart from the “commercial” talks also the experiences of analysts and foreign investors show Poland is becoming an important economy within Europe. It’s a great country to locate your business. The future basically looks bright. Hopefully the event organizers will manage to present this conclusion to the foreign investors.

Tholons will present its Top100 Outsourcing Cities Ranking and Report on November 11, 2010. I’m curious how they rank Polish cities. If you are curious as well better register for the webinar.

All forum pictures: Copyright PetersOpinion.com

Today my HootSuite client was offline for a while, which was a big surprise. In general Hootsuite is a very reliable service. Fortunately, I was informed this was due to a remarkable update. Some time late I noticed significant changes to the social media dashboard beginning with a completely refreshed HTML5 user interface, plus geo-located search, native Twitter ReTweets, and integrated Google Analytics.

For me Hootsuite was already the best Social Media dashboard for both personal and team based social media management. Today’s improvements prove Hootsuite continuously keeps improving its service.

HTML5 powered

With the recent announcement of Google’s HTML5 site and many other brands like Apple on-board, HootSuite has made a substantial investment in this new technology standard. HTML5 allows them to release unique features like geo-search and drag & drop. This combined with the improved performance with more responsive tabs and streams makes using Hootsuite a real pleasure.

Page redesign for better access to the streams

The most noticeable change is a fully redesigned dashboard, with more space for accounts, updates and an intuitive arrangement for HootSuite’s many features. Additionally, you can now choose a design theme which suits your tastes.

And many more

This is just a first quick impression of the new release. See the Hootsuite blog for more detailed information about Hootsuite 5.

A debate titled: The freedom perspective of digital media with William Echikson, Communications Director of Google EMEA seemed promising. It doesn’t happen everyday you can hear the future Google plans directly from one of the leaders. It turned out differently. After the debate you could leave the room rather disoriented. Is Google really just looking for more content to earn more and do we need the government to protect our copyrights?

William Echikson visited Gdansk 22 years ago as a reporter. Sending news was completely different from today. The Internet provides everybody the freedom to share their news with the world. It decreases the obstacles for free expression. On the other hand the Internet is an area where breaching copyrights happens on a regular basis.

The Google mission

Google has been started by two guys working from a garage not knowing how to make money. They basically concentrated on gaining as many visitors as possible. We can conlude this appeared to be a good concept. Today Google earns thanks to the high amount of visitors. This enables them to sell advertisements. According to William “Google is just an advertising company”.

Google aims to disclose more and more information through the Internet, they offer a platform where others can publish content. Basically this should generate even more visitors of course. The more frequent Internet users will visit Google sites the more advertisement space they can sell. William discussed two examples: Google Books and Google News.

Google Books aims to publish books you cannot buy anymore. Think about copyright free older books. They already agreed with several libraries to publish selected books. They plan to scan a tremendous amount of books from American libraries in about 8 years time. Comparable projects would take most governments at least 20 years.

There are also many books which are no longer available anymore, out of print. The publisher still owns the copyright. Google enables them to publish these books online to make them available to an increased audience. It’s up to the copyright owner to decide whether or not the reader has to pay. Of course Google will share in the future sales, but is this wrong?

Something similar is applicable to Google News. By publishing news on Google News, which is ads free, newspapers are receiving more traffic on their websites. By selling advertisement space on the news papers website both Google and the news papers earn because of all the generated traffic.

Is governmental control needed to protect our copyrights?

In the beginning of Google Books they published pieces of still copyrighted books. The intention was to show the publishers the potential of Google Books and to achieve a win-win situation. Under pressure of the EU the European copyrighted books have been removed from Google Books.

One of the main questions is whether or not the government should act like that. Do we have to be protected against Google? You could say that Google is digitizing all this information for their own gain only. Google is a normal company, that has to earn money. Enabling them to digitize everything and to store it in their databases can lead to abuse by Google. They can use all the content to improve their language algorithms. This could lead to improved search and translation services which Google could start asking money for.

The governmental control concerns Google. It blocks the openness of the Internet. Turkey in example has just announced a two year ban on YouTube. Google had a lot of freedom in China around the Olympic games. But recently it became impossible for Google to offer the openness they want.

In Europe there is a fundamental issue. Take the Google directors in Italy who have been convicted of a crime because of one indeed horrible movie which was online. According to William the movie makers have to be punished, not the providers of a content sharing platform.

More and more artists/copyright owners decide to go online. Monte Python has been fighting for years to protect their copyrights. Many people were illegaly publishing Monte Python material. Recently they decided to stop fighting and to join them. They allowed Google to publish their movies online. And they profit from this decision.

What’s wrong with content sharing?

Enabling people to publish content online is one of Google’s aims and in my opinion it’s logical they want to earn money for that. Google is investing fortunes in the development of their platform and sooner or later this has to pay off. But this doesn’t mean governmental control is not needed. We should prevent a company like Google will abuse its position. Copyrights have to be respected.

Google claims they do the best they can to prevent copyright breach. If somebody reports copyright breach Google will take appropriate measures. They also try to prevent copyright breach by scanning material which have been published online.

On the other hand more and more people decide to share their “copyright” with others through creative commons licenses. They believe the end result will improve by sharing. Platforms like Google support this in a perfect way. They increase the potential audience and make you can reach people you wouldn’t reach in the traditional way.

Poland, Gdansk, it’s time to open up!

The legal structure in Poland hardly enables a more open approach to sharing artistic rights. Gdanks is a candidate to become the European Capital of Culture in 2016 and uses the pay off: “Freedom of Culture, Culture of Freedom”. That’s why Gdansk should stimulate that artists start sharing their copyrights through more open creative commons licenses. By doing so Gdansk can stay the city of freedom, a status Gdansk gained because of the Solidarity “revolution” in the 80′s.

What’s is your opinion about the increase of online available information? Do you have experience with creative commons licenses? Do we have to watch out for these Google activities?