Last week I attended the 6th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM2008). In contrast to most other conferences I visited in the past, I didn't had a talk of my own. Instead, I reviewed a bunch of papers and acted as a session chair. The session chair was quite funny, since one of the presenters was unable to finish his speech in time. Indeed, right after he told me that he needed more time, he switched to a slide titled something like "violating time constraints".

The conference itself was very interesting and I met a bunch of old colleagues and yet another one of new contacts. What I found a bit disappointing was the very slow progress in the area of semantics. Nevertheless, other areas like mining or process analysis have moved ahead.

Another interesting news is the fact the you can by unlocked iPhones in Italy for as low as 500 Euro (8GB). This is especially interesting since I've read today that Amazon plans to sell unlocked iPhones in Germany for 750 Euro. My suggestion: Invest the 250 savings in a nice trip (incl. flight and hotel) to Milano. But be warned that a beer costs about 8 Euro in downtown!

Last but not least I'm giving you some impressions:


The Banca Popolare di Milano welcomed us right at the airport.


The building at the Politecnico di Milano where the conference took place.


The crowd of attendees during a break.


Prof. Weske from the HPI, Potsdam presented the web-based modeling tool Oryx.


Paul Harmon, Executive Editor and Founder of bptrends.com gave an interesting keynote.


Milano has a large castle in the center of the city.


A downtown view.


Torben, a colleague of mine, Jan, and myself in the underground.


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Together with my family and good friends, I spent this year's summer holidays in Sweden. Somewhere here.


Our house.


Our boat.


Our rainbow?


A lake.



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Yeah, it's summer time! While you might think this website is dead and buried, some things are going on behind the scenes...

...in the meantime, I'm going to give you a short wrap-up of the missing months.


For the first time in my life, the price of diesel went higher than benzine.

This is quite weird, since the German tax system has a much higher charge on benzine than diesel. Still, today, I would be happy if I could fill my car for the shown price.


Knut has grown up in the meantime.


The Malibu Cocktail Bar has been extended towards the beach.

(I love this place. Indeed, there's another picture taken there in this blog).


inubit moved to a new location (and my desk has been relocated, too).

Now there's also enough room for you. If you're a student and interested in BPM research topics (and their practical implementations and evaluations), don't miss this ad. If not, we have also a bunch of other interesting jobs to offer.



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Since Halloween is nearing, I have some interesting pictures of different pumpkins for you. I took them already some weeks ago at an exhibition that took place here.

First of all, there is the "Golden Delicious":



There are also ones that look like bottles:



Here are a few more:



And finally one that is called Aladin:



There was even a whole wagon covered with pumpkins:



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So, time is up. I've waited long enough for Apple's iPhone. While it seems to be a nice technical goody, the price is way to high. While the Telekom was not mentioning any details, O2, the british carrier, introduced a pricing similar to the AT&T model. Thus, the lowest rate will be about 50 euro a month. Combining 400 euro for the phone and twenty-four times 50 bucks, the iPhone will cost at least 1600 euro during the two years plan. A bit too high, if you ask me.

However, my good old SE K700i died right away some weeks ago. As a replacement, I'm happy with a SE K810i. The phone is capable of doing almost everything interesting the iPhone can do. It plays music. Okay, without Coverflow. It plays videos. Okay, at a bit lower resolution. It shows Google Maps (anyway, already my K700i did that). Well, it's not playing YouTube content. Otherwise, it has (1) extendible memory, (2) no SIM-lock, (3) Java-Application support, (4) an RDS radio, (5) a lower weight, and (6) a way better camera. That's how I came to the title:


A Christian spider in the wood.

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