Ok, I think it's time to say something good about Bond University.

For me it was the perfect place to teach information technologies. So when and how to organize the information in your organization into relational-, XML-, object-, ontological-, or text databases and when and how to introduce information services at all.

Why? Because Bond did everything wrong what you could do possibly wrong.

They are everywhere. Whatever you buy nowadays which needs electrical power, it has a power adapter. And that comes from China. Fullstop.

And to allow simpler outsourcing and packaging the majority of devices come with an external adapter. And some of these are bigger and heavier than the device itself.

Which means for you that you loose real-estate on or under your desk:

Should your career come to a grinding halt and you find yourself on a university committee, let alone one discussing departmental hardware requests, then there is only one escape hatch: Poetry.

Yes, poetry. Such as the following (almost Haiku)

Being on a committee, tough decisions you will see.
Churning cash on M$-Fee, why not dream with USB?

I have the competent looks and it begins to annoy me.

Let me explain. When I do shopping with my wife and I am standing parked uselessly in some corner of the shop, people - usually women - approach me. No, not what you might now fantasize (I'll wait until you're finished .... ok? ok). They usually ask me where the bathroom is. Or when I rush to some meeting, a tourist will ask me for directions.

But this is only one part of the story. What annoys me is that whatever I tell people, they do the exact opposite.

Ron Davison was a thinking Dean at Bond University. He just liked to think. And to strategize. And to innovatively develop strategizing policies. And to excellently think innovation.

So at one point he felt that the Faculty needed a new direction in research (I never realized we had an old one). And he decided to do something about it.

So he was thinking and consulting and thinking. For almost two months. Of course he consulted our key staff members (I assume this is an 'age' thing to become key staff?). And then did more thinking. I mean we were almost

"Look Robert," Ron had started his sentence. I instantly knew something bad will follow. Australians always start sentences with "Look," if they try to say something which may conflict with your expectations.

It was my third year at Bond University and I had negotiated with the technical staff of Golden Orb (a smaller web application shop at the Varsity 'technology park') a number of projects we might do together. We had a good understanding of each other, and the Golden Orb people seemed to be competent and keen.

Also, weil wir gerade so gemuetlich beisammensitzen ... what about yet another tiny story about Bond University? I'm sure the Vice Chancellor - who might be hawkishly monitoring the site - would appreciate that one.

So, this is about a completely hypothetical dean, let's call him HypoDean and his HypoSon who is studying Computer Science on the same HypoUni. The HypoSon (this sounds all very japanese, not?) has a

Because of work I had only 1.5 days time to consume YAPC::Europe, so this entry cannot be representative of the event. But you would not have expected a neutral report from me anyway.

I was suprised about the size of the conference. The plenum almost filled the AudiMax of the WU Wien (University of Economics). Organisation was smooth, maybe I was missing a bit more "session management", so that the speakers were introduced a bit at the start and the question time is moderated.

"They are fuckingly stupid."

These were the famous last words I heard from a colleague of mine before he left Bond University. Not that I had reason to doubt his assessment for a second, he had to deal a lot with other middle management and also the upper management echelon (Australians just love this expression).

But for an Australian to say such a thing in a corporstralian environment was remarkable in itself.

Like any other superhero, I like to fight the evil in this world. At least on Sundays.