About me

Maker & Shaker.

Established Since 1974.

I’m an entrepreneur and activist in the web. My roots are in the classic IT economy. My mind is in the new. And this is my mantra.

 

My main business.

• I’m a managing director at AKRA, an IT consulting and services company for large established enterprises and for well-funded start-ups in the web economy. I’m responsible for the business unit Future Technologies. My business domain covers web, mobile, communications and games, where as we deliver managed skills and co-sourcing. AKRA is focussed on custom software development and based in Hamburg, Germany.

My other businesses and activities in the web economy.

• MBC Microblogging Conferences, are a series of user generated meetings about microblogging. They are in a mashup format of conference and barcamp. MBC09 was Europe’s first microblogging conference in Hamburg in January 2009.
• Basman Consultants, you can hire me for advice, or as a senior to build up your new business or to optimize it with fresh ideas, or call me as a firefighter to save and rescue large-scale and complex IT projects which are running out of time and budget to lead them to success. Basman Consultants is about mission-critical businesses and people management.
• Brokerz, instant short messages with news, insights, thoughts and feelings directly from financial markets, right from the trading floors. Brokerz is an invitation only service dedicated only for professional brokers worldwide. It’s an experimental business in money 2.0. It is a showcase for our own commercial XMPP based microblogging platform.

Some other activities I’m involved in.

• Startup Weekend in September 2007 in Hamburg, Germany, initiator & co-organizer
• WordCamp08  in January 2008 in Hamburg, Germany, initiator & co-organizer
• Startup Weekend in May 2008 in Hamburg, Germany, initiator & co-organizer

My professional roots in the classic IT economy.

Corporate contractor for IT Services Management for large accounts. Commodity and volume contracting business in Germany and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Specialities are: To design and operate time and mission critical large, complex, area-wide IT-related services. 

I’m typically at the interface between business and technology. I work as a contractor for large enterprizes and IT service providers. Across the nation and international. My professional interest is in IT services and its management with emphasis on infrastructure services – and additionaly a „free leg“ on interactive webbased application services to a certain extend. Within IT service management I have a focus on ‘IT outsourcing’ and ‘IT service delivery’ since many years. I have founded and run several companies in the IT services industry.

Full disclosures and professional life.

I’m associated with many large projects in Germany and EMEA for service delivery organizations of HP, Siemens Business Services (SBS), T-Systems, a & o group and exempTec where I work as a contractor, business & company developer and senior project manager.

I was the founder and CEO of Basman Informatik which became later one of the two founding pillars of Lufthansa Systems Network (LSN), based in Hamburg and operating worldwide in IT infrastructure services and IT outsourcing. At LSN I was a member of the board for many years and CEO of pob Network Engineering, a subsidiary company of LSN and the engineering competence center of the LSN group. Leaving LSN I co-founded Bizzlogic in Hamburg, a software development company with expertize in Java and J2EE, but where I am not involved anymore.

In my university and early professional years I was a programmer (Assembler, Fortran, Algol, Pascal) in various host systems like IBM 360, PDP, DEC VAX and PC. Then I moved to solution architect, from technical to management, and finally to business. Always as self-employed and entrepreneur.

Non-Disclosures.

Here at this site you won’t find any information presented or discussed with my participation which is due to a non-disclosure agreement of anykind – written or as a verbal gentlemen’s agreement. That’s understood.

Entrepreneurship.

I like the idea of being a ‘creative entrepeneur’ in opposite of being an ‘arbitrageur’. I believe in an economy driven by passion where anyone can choose to afford a life of passion, experiencing new learning and personal growth by collaborating with others to create inspiring new businesses whenever they want to – doing what they love most.

I am a world citizen.

I was born in 1953 on a hot August day in Istanbul’s Nişantaşı quarter right downtown at the waterfront at the European shores of the Bosphorus strait in the American Hospital. My family roots are Turkish from my father’s side and on my mother’s side I have a Swedish heritage.

Since my childhood Hamburg, Germany, is my hometown. But I have lived, got educated and worked in several other places in Europe and the U.S., too.

I learned several languages by practice and education: Turkish, Swedish, German, English, and in the course of my career I use all of them. When I’m travelling I try always to pick up bits and phrases of new languages from taxi drivers, hotel receptionists, friends and colleagues. Once in Italy I was asked if I was from Marseille because my French had an definitive southern Italian accent. I had to disappoint them. I speak neither of these languages …

At the bottom line, I suppose, I practice some sort of an individual Pidgin best … since languages are made for contacts and conversations.

Family life.

I live in Hamburg, Germany. I’m married and father of three sons.

I’m a passionate blogger.

In the blogosphere I’m pretty much a nomad. Something inbetween a blogging bedouin and a wandering bushman. I had already consecutively four blogs since 2001 which I deleted also consecutively after I got bored of their respective concepts. The one you knew best was maybe jimmiz journal. Since April 2007 my personal blog is Sprechblase („speech bubble“ in German).

I’m arguably rather a hunter than a farmer I suppose. I don’t like to look back. I’m more interested in the „now“ and of the future. I like to experiment.

How to pronouce my name?

Listen: Cem.

Some further current details and linkology for you:

• My corporate site Basman.com
• My corporate blog about IT sourcing & shoring (which is now inactive due to some changes in my business)
• If you want to see my corporate bio, check out my Xing/openBC profile (Come, join the network!).
• Recommendations in LinkedIn
• See me from above.

Get in contact.

Here via e-mail and snail-mail.

Via Microblogging at Identi.ca or Twitter.

Or connect to my networks: