Let’s be honest, I find it difficult to write a monthly review, since the month of April was quite uneventful. In a positive way. Projects flowed smoothly, I spent a lot of time reading (Thomas Friedman and Ray Kurzweil have been high up on my reading list for quite some time), I found time for family and friends, and made a couple of interesting new contacts. So everything is going fine, however, there are no big event, drastic changes, noteworthy happenings – it’s smooth sailing, but that’s quite pleasant.

In this field I am a late adopter, but it has happened: I have gotten started with my first smart home and home automation applications. We have been proud owners of an Amazon Echo for a couple of months, and I have to admit that even though I was critical in the beginning, I have gotten used to “Madame A.” and her connection to our smart switches quite quickly. We are still struggling on some commands, but she does correctly understand subtle commands, such as “how about some nice music?” or “it’s a little dark in here, isn’t it?”. Also, we have welcomed “Boris”, a robot vacuum cleaner, to our house. What should I say – convenience beats concerns in a ceratain way.

In terms of positive feedback, I felt honored that my dissertation was featured as part of the dissertation series the website of the University of St.Gallen. If you are interested in my dissertation topic and the digital maturity model, you can check out the article, it’s available in both English and German.

That’s it already for April. May will be packed with events, though. I will be travelling to Berlin for re:publica, to Bozen to give a talk on Digital Maturity at the Digital Day, to Dresden for client workshops, and finally to Slovenia and Croatia for a well-deserved vacation. Yay!

Here is some inspirational reading / watching / listening

• Since smart home is one of my key topics of this month, I can highly recommend Stacey Higginbotham’s blog and podcast on the Internet of Things. Stacey is also one of the hosts of This Week in Google.
• If Elon Musk recommends it on Twitter, it’s probably good, at least worth to take note: Do you trust this computer is a fantastic documentary on where we are going in machine learning. I can highly recommend watching it!
• I had already put this on the recommendation list, before Simone released her heartbreaking video on her having a brain tumor yesterday. Simone Giertz is the “queen of shitty robots” and her Youtube channel is entertaining and inspirational at the same time. If you are into human-robot-interaction, it’s a must-see. I keep my fingers crossed for her that she recovers quickly.