Vienna

Kamil | 11 September, 2009 | 0 comments

After a year of blogging it is time for me to say goodbye and focus on the current challenges in Vienna, where I will for the upcoming six months work with Product Management of our casino – a very interesting product that I want to learn more about. The focus right now is on analytical work for a major strategic project that we will launch within the next couple of weeks.

Last Friday I was on the so-called Action Day, a day where all bwin employees in Vienna meet off site to do something fun (the Viennese version of our Power House sessions in Stockholm). This year, we were divided into teams and given instructions to build soap boxes, which we then raced with down a quite steep slope. Speeds of up to 50 km / h were achieved and the race track was challenging - the entertainment value was high when the soap boxes ended up in the bushes. Fortunately no permanent damage occurred, at least not to the contestants, some of the soap boxes will however never race again. In the evening we had a really good dinner and after that, there was a party. As usual the poker tables were prepared and I can say that the competition in Vienna is much more lucrative to play than in Stockholm.

I’m looking forward a bit extra to my next Stockholm trip since we now have increased the trainee crowd, a fun activity is high on the agenda!

Tschüss!

New client and new trainee

Kamil | 12 June, 2009 | 0 comments

Our new client is now available! It is without a doubt the most user-friendly, most stylish, and fastest of all clients on the market. You can read more about it here.

This week, Fredrik and I have looked at the applications submitted to the advertised Management Trainee position, and it looks really good, we have already identified a bunch of interesting candidates, even though the deadline for the applications is June 14. So it is not too late to apply, and if you have a strong interest in poker, are passionate about business and technology, have a solid academic background and are ready to run at full speed for the next 18 months, then you might be the person we are looking for. More information about the position is available here. If there is something you would like to know you are welcome with your questions to me or Fredrik at firstname.lastname at bwin dot org or 08-562 470 00.

Until next week,

Kamil

Vienna & training

Kamil | 5 June, 2009 | 0 comments

This fall, I will be placed at our headquarters in Vienna, which I have been looking forward to  for a long time. In Vienna, we have ownership of our other products; sports betting, casino and skill games, and it is also where we have our marketing department. The casino business is what I find particularly interesting; it is a dynamic product that is facing interesting changes within the next months, so it would be fun to work with our casino offer. Another department that is interesting is the Customer Management function in our company, which is responsible for maximizing customer value by, for example, matching campaigns and promotions to our customers.

This Wednesday our managers and Fredrik and I, had the second part of our Dale Carnegie course. The theme of this day was Be - Do - Get. Among the topics we discussed was how to set clear objectives and coaching. Interesting stuff! What I like about Dale Carnegie is that we learn tools and methods that easily can be applied on job – the transition from knowledge to action is really easy.

Until next week,

Kamil

Beer & pea soup

Kamil | 29 May, 2009 | 0 comments

It has been a fun and eventful week, focus has been on some of the previously initiated tasks, but some new tasks have popped up as always. On Tuesday, we had a full day workshop with Product Management. In the evening we went out for dinner and beer tasting at Monks Café on Wallingatan. The beer tasting was led by an extremely knowledgeable man who in an interesting and informative way told us about the different types of beer we had. After the tasting, I came to the conclusion that Pilsner is the type of beer that I like the most. However, when I eat fish or seafood I will go for weissbeer.

On Thursday we had our monthly meeting with our C-level executives from Vienna. As these meetings are of the longer type, we usually order in lunch to the meeting room. In order to build bridges between our cultures, the lunches are always “husmanskost”. We have already had pannbiff (Swedish beef), meatballs, and salmon, and since the meeting was on a Thursday, the natural choice of menu was pea soup and pancakes. The pea soup was met by a rather skeptical reaction from our Austrian colleagues, but it did not take long before they realized its greatness. The actual meeting was as always good and it's fun to look up from the daily operational issues and address things of more long-term nature. My trainee colleague Fredrik held one of the presentations, and the outcome is that our COO will drive the topic further. Good job!

Until next week,

Kamil

Processes & Step Competition

Kamil | 15 May, 2009 | 0 comments

This week focus has been in the area of processes, more specific documentation of these. In order to integrate new partners into our network a lot of work is required in order to deliver a great end user experience - everything must be synced before the partner can go live, processes must be identified and adapted. The essential preliminary work is mostly related to the exchange of information, often at different levels of companies and with different level of abstraction. For this to be as smooth as possible, a unified picture of the respective organizations should be communicated, and this is achieved in the most efficient way by high quality documentation.

There are now only two weeks left of bwin Games step contest and it's with great pleasure that I after two and half months into the contest see my team being number one. Our team has an average of more than 18k steps per day, which is almost twice the recommended ambition level of the race, so now all we have to do is keep the momentum up for the remaining time!

Take good care of your body - it's you who live in it.
Kamil

Poker Tournament & Off Site Workshop

Kamil | 30 April, 2009 | 0 comments

Recently our Chief Officers from bwin Group were on a visit here in Stockholm, and a poker tournament was arranged in the evening after all meetings in order to under informal circumstances, get to know each other better and have fun together. We were about thirty people in total, from various parts of the company that participated in the tournament. The competition was fierce, as you know we have a number of really good poker players in the house. I was therefore very happy with reaching the final table, and eventually a third place.

We have also started work on our innovation project that we are doing within the framework of the Dale Carnegie leadership course. We have had a couple of short meetings, and both the opportunity statement and deliverables are defined, so it is time for execution. It is a strategic project that is of high importance, however not time critical, so it has not been prioritized before, but now we are up and running, and that feels good.

The week's major event was the off-site work shop, which I had been assigned to arrange. During this occasion, we used the help of an external consultant to make a deep dive in our group dynamics - it was a rewarding experience for my part since it gave me better self-understanding, but more important, a greater understanding of how people in a group interact and how they can use each other's differences in order to make better decisions. As usual, the meals were delicious, so given my cooking skills and the time I spend cooking, there will be a sad shift back to home made food. On the positive side, I will still manage to keep my Beach'09 plans.

Nobody can have missed it is Valborg this week, and it is of course celebrated best in Uppsala. As usual I will start with a champagne breakfast, after that a "champagne gallop" and then we will have a barbeque and party in the evening. Needless to say, it will be awesome.

Until next week
Kamil

Activity planning & leadship program

Kamil | 17 April, 2009 | 0 comments

Focus this week has been on the activity planning of the Ongame Network management team. We had a good workshop where we discussed the strategic orientation of our organization based on the targeted customer segments, competition and product offering. It is always nice to have the kind of forums where one can take some time to think about how the daily operational activities are strategically aligned and how they bring us closer to our goals. Afterwards we went out for dinner at Rolfs kök, which is a really good restaurant with great food and a nice atmosphere. All in all it was a really good day.

On Wednesday I had the first out of four days of the Leadership Program that is spread out on the whole year. All managers attend the program, and so does my trainee colleague Fredrik. We did one especially fun exercise where we by following a creative process elaborated on a new type of product based on a normal umbrella. The concept my group came up with was an umbrella designed especially for the urban lifestyle, meaning it was packed with features such as integrated weather forecasts, taxi call function and dating services. It would be a great product.

Until next week,

Kamil

Workshop on Workshops & Step Contest

Kamil | 9 April, 2009 | 0 comments

This week I have been at an in-house training on how to hold workshops, we went through the necessary preparations, how to set objectives and how to communicate them, and other methodology that helps in holding effective workshops. We discussed our own experiences on how to work with different visualization techniques and for what occasions they are good, and how to post and process the information that is the outcome from the workshop. Also how to turn it into decisions or actions. We also carried out a really fun exercise where we had to act in a simulated workshop wearing different "hats". Each hat was characterized by that the person wearing it must show a certain behavior. For example, the bearer of the yellow hat turns into a positively thinking person, but the same person carrying a black hat turns into a risk analyst who sees flaws in everything. It was a fun exercise and we had many good laughs. In my general opinion, the whole workshop was a good learning experience.

Four weeks into the bwin Games step contest, I note that my team is still in the lead, albeit a small one. We work with individual targets, monitoring and performance simulation. This we believe gives us an advantage over our competitors. Unfortunately, I had not been able to prioritize the competition to the extent I had hoped. The result is that I had to organize the “fika” (pastries for the coffee break) for the other members of my team on our sync meeting. My goal for the next sprint is set high, I want to increase my average number of steps from over 17k to 20k per day, which should save me from  being the person who has get pasties for the next sync meeting.

Until next week,

Kamil

New tasks and spring

Kamil | 3 April, 2009 | 0 comments

This week I participated in a longer workshop where the focus was on what actions we should take in order to meet the challenges we face. Things are going well for us and lots of unforeseen opportunities arise, opportunities that require resources to evaluate and exploit. These resources are according to previously established planning and budget already allocated to other activities.

I'm in a period right now where I get sign offs on the things I have been working on this year, while I am also taking on some new tasks. Yesterday I had a meeting with Martin, my boss, where we talked about one of my new tasks. It will provide good business value, be lots of fun to work with and I will learn a lot about our business and organization. 

On another note, I have a new personal best high score at our pinball game (I just have to improve it by a factor of 10 to have the overall bwin high score). Another observation is that it is spring in Stockholm. During the weekend it's going to be sunny and almost 15°C, perfect conditions for shopping.

Until next week,

Kamil

Courses & trainings

Kamil | 2 April, 2009 | 0 comments

When I studied labor law in school, I did not think it was that fun. When I think about it, it was really boring; the Medbestämmandelagen (law 1976:580) was especially dull. This week there has been a course in labor law for all managers, and as a trainee I have the privilege to participate. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when it turned out that we had a really good and entertaining lecturer, who in a fun way gave us a crash course on how the labor laws apply "in reality". A number of amusing anecdotes and case studies where told - it is obvious that law and justice are two entirely different things.

During the coming year I will attend a course in leadership, the course is distributed on four occasions, evenly spread over the year. The focus of the course will be to learn and develop the managerial tools that are used on a daily basis, and the idea is that we should have enough time between occasions to apply our newly acquired knowledge, and then meet to discuss our observations. On Wednesday, we had a first information meeting about the leadership training and my impression is very positive.

One of the projects I am involved in got a positive decision at the end of the week. It is just as fun each time to be around on such occasions, when after much hard work and preparations, the team spirit is high and everyone is happy and enthusiastic.

Until next week
Kamil

Lead & Win Follow Up & PM Kick Off

Kamil | 24 March, 2009 | 0 comments

The week started off with a follow up on the Lead & Win management training, the leadership course that every bwin manager has to complete. Among other topics, we had discussions about what actions we have taken as an outcome of the first part of the course. One of the things I have been working on in order to improve are my time management skills and prioritization skills, two skills that at first do not seem that complicated, but there is however room for improvement. Time is a scarce resource and should be used effectively and efficiently.

Product Management has expanded with new team members during the week and in conjunction with this reinforcement a work shop was held. The discussions were about vision, strategy, processes and organizational interfaces. The new Product Management team will have a clearer focus and be more transparent to the rest of the organization. The changes are in the right direction and will yield a stronger collaboration with the development teams, which is a clear benefit. After the work shop we played bowling and ate stakes at a restaurant in Gamla Stan. Out of the three series I played, my top score was 134, this due to finishing with three strikes in a row. Unfortunately this was due to luck rather than improvements in my technique, but it was a fun game.

Until next week,
Kamil

A fast week

Kamil | 13 March, 2009 | 0 comments

Sometimes the weeks go by fast. Very fast. Every now and then I open my Outlook to set up a meeting and then I see that the orange marker that highlights the current day is as far to the right of the screen as it can get. That means it’s Saturday tomorrow. There’s of course nothing wrong with that, but 24 hours a day and seven days a week sometimes feels like way too little time to do everything I want to do.

This week our step counting contest started. The goal is to walk a distance corresponding to that between Malmö and Prague in 88 days. That is a total of 605 km, or roughly 10 000 steps each day. The competition is about being the best of all the teams that are participating from bwin Games, in terms of highest average number of steps per day per person. After two days, my team is ranked as number one among the eleven teams. This is of course neither a coincidence nor a surprise since we decided beforehand on the goal with our participation and how we can reach it. We will for sure be the fastest team to Prague.

A new information booklet about bwin Games is being created and I recently got the news that I will be contributing to the content. In a few hours I will be photographed and later on I will answer some questions about my background, trainee position and views on where the industry is going. When I look at the booklet we have now, even though it is not especially old, there has been quite some changes, both to our organization and the entire industry. The e-gaming business is a fast paced field.

Until next week,

Kamil

The rake

Kamil | 27 February, 2009 | 0 comments

An important part of a poker offering is the rake – the amount of money the house charges from every hand for providing the service. Looking at the industry as a whole, one can see that the rake is pretty much standardized. Depending on the stakes, the rake is between 2,5 % and 5 %, with a cap of at most $5. These differences, which from a casual player’s perspective are rather small, have of course huge impacts on the revenues of a poker site. How the rake is set on different level, and on different table sizes, has also impact on how the money flows between the levels, and how many times the money is played before withdrawal, which provides us with another aspects to take into consideration when analyzing the pricing – a very interesting task in which I have been involved in this week.

The spring is coming – it is brighter in the mornings and the sun can be seen on almost regular basis. Even though I can see from my window that it is snowing, the thought of Valborg being only two months away makes it all good!

Until next week,

Kamil

System thoughts

Kamil | 23 February, 2009 | 0 comments

I just came out from a meeting with a colleague from Ongame Network and one of our systems architects. The topic we discussed was different scenarios of implementing new functionality which led to quite deep and heavy discussions, which was no surprise, since we have to take into account factors such as the scope and requirements of the change, dependencies to other projects, resource allocation and planning, and time to market. Our systems are more complex than I ever imagined, and as a former engineering student, it feels really cool to be working on improvements and changes of such an advanced system.

Until next week,

Kamil

Figures and Poker Face

Kamil | 13 February, 2009 | 0 comments

Last Friday the preliminary figures for 2008 where released, some of the highlights are:

• Full year gross gaming revenues of EUR 420.9 million (up 19.0 % from 2007)
• Full year poker revenue of EUR 94.2 million
• Poker revenues up 27.1 % (Q4 2008 compared to Q4 2007)
• Record sports betting revenue of EUR 235.4 million

Looks really, really good!

As most of you know, the bwin brand appears in Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" video. The song has made it to the top in Australia, Canada, Sweden and Norway and has been viewed over 12 million times on Youtube. In case you have not seen it yet, click here.

Until next week,
Kamil

Conference at Smådalarö

Kamil | 6 February, 2009 | 2 comments

On Smådalarö there is a really nice manor from the first part of the 19th century, and I had the privilege to spend the first days of this week there, in the company of our management team. As expected, it turned out to be a very productive conference and rewarding experience, where there was enough time for deep dives into issues that because of various reasons are not suitable for the normal meeting forums. We also played quite a lot of poker!

The work with my project is coming along well. I recently had a sync meeting with my boss, Martin, and everything is going in the right direction, according to the initial plans. One of the projects requires meeting with people Gibraltar, where bwin has an office. It will be great to get to know that part of our organization better!

Until next week,
Kamil

Lead & Win

Kamil | 30 January, 2009 | 0 comments

Wednesday through Friday have been spent in our internal management training program, Lead & Win, which all managers (and trainees) at bwin have to complete. It has been three rather intensive days full of theory on strategic management, organizational management, and people management. The really nice thing about the training is the close connection between theory, and our everyday operations. Even though the theories resemble of those I have been taught in school, my understanding of them, and their implication on daily business activities have become far deeper then back when I was attending university (which by the way feels like years ago). We are 12 people taking the training this time, from different parts of bwin Games, and it is fun to get better acquainted with colleagues that I yet haven't had the opportunity to work with. The discussions about our company are also interesting, and even though we stand before similar challenges, we all have different roles and see things from different perspectives and contexts. On the negative side, we have had lunches and dinners consisting of three courses for the last couple of days. I am now used to three course meals twice a day, and I will be somewhat of a disappointment to go back to "bricklunch" and "matlådor".

Until next week,
Kamil

Product Forum

Kamil | 23 January, 2009 | 0 comments

My second week at Ongame Network is coming to an end. I like Ongame Network. Even though we are part of a large multinational corporation we have managed to keep the feeling of a small company. It is fun to be able to have an overview and understanding of our whole value chain.

Yesterday I participated in one of our Product Forums, a day dedicated to discussions with our partners about the expectations on our product offering. The focus was on P5, the poker engine, i.e. the core of our poker system. There were a lot of good discussions and it was interesting to hear about what our partners expect from our products and us as a company.

Until next week,
Kamil

Ongame Network

Kamil | 16 January, 2009 | 0 comments

My first week of my second trainee block, which I spend at Ongame Network, is coming to an end. Ongame Network is a subsidiary of bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, and the B2B side our poker business. We supply our inhouse developed poker product to over 25 of the online gaming sector's strongest brands, such as Betsson, Bet24, and PAF.

I have already been assigned three projects, each one concerning a different area of the B2B business. I have got the feeling that it will be a fun and challenging spring!

Until next week,
Kamil

Retrospect

Kamil | 19 December, 2008 | 0 comments

It is my last week at the Project Management Office. I have been with bwin Games for half a year, even though it feels like it was just a couple of weeks ago that I for the first time walked into our office. It has been an amazing ride so far. During this time I have worked with a wide area of tasks and got to know many extremely competent and fun people. I have learnt how our company operates, how the big decisions are made, how they are communicated, and executed. The next six months I will spend at Ongame Network, our B2B business, which I'm looking forward to. But before I start there, I will have a couple of days off! I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Kamil

Project Management Training Part 2 & Manager Forum

Kamil | 5 December, 2008 | 0 comments

I have now completed the project management training and I am now certified to handle projects within the bwin group! The second part of the training, which I had this week, focused more on the soft skills and group dynamics than the first one, an area which I am very interested in. Among many things, we did a really good role play exercise in which we were to act either pro, or con a project. We followed up the exercise with a discussion on how our roles acted and it's fascinating how different people perceive the same situations in different ways! Great learning experience!

This week we also had the Manager Forum, a meeting where all bwin Games people managers gather to listen to presentations and discuss management. HR gave an excellent presentation on performance management and leadership competencies.

Last but not least, the eCOGRA audit is completed, and everything went according to plans!

Until next week,
Kamil

Audit

Kamil | 28 November, 2008 | 0 comments

This week's focus has been on the preparations of the yearly EGBA/eCOGRA audit. The European Gaming & Betting Association (EGBA) is a non profit organization set up by the leading online gaming operators that sets technical standards for offering online gaming and betting activities in a secure, safe and reliable environment. The technical standards are founded upon the following principles:

• Promote responsible gaming and betting
• Know-your-customer and prevent underage gaming and betting
• Zero tolerance of fraudulent and criminal behavior
• Protect customer privacy and safeguard information
• Prompt and accurate customer payments
• Rigorous independent assessment of product fairness and randomness
• Ethical and responsible marketing
• Commitment to customer satisfaction and support
• Responsible practices underpinned by a secure, safe and reliable environment

The eCOGRA (e-Commerce Online Gambling Regulation and Assurance) is the organization that ensures that the principles are followed by auditing the processes, the IT infrastructure, and the software. The audit is scheduled for next week and I am coordinating some of the preparatory activities. I have learnt a lot about the way we do business in the process! So how do you know if a site is following the standards? Look for the EGBA banner on the webpage! Here is a good example.

Until next week,
Kamil

Finalization of Roadmap 2009

Kamil | 21 November, 2008 | 0 comments

This week's focus has been on the final phase of the work with the Roadmap 2009. The efforts for the different ideas we want to realize in the coming year have been estimated during the last couple of weeks, the task that remained was to map the ventures against time. With the input from the resource owners and representatives from our various departments the task was finalized through a series of workshops which I coordinated. Today the Roadmap will be evaluated by our management group so it will be interesting to see the outcome of this meeting!

Until next week,
Kamil

Trainee Recruitment

Kamil | 14 November, 2008 | 0 comments

A new trainee is about to be recruited! The deadline for the application is only a day away and after that, Pernilla from HR, my trainee colleague Fredrik, and I, will start to go through the applications. For those of you that still haven't applied, now is the time polish up your CV and pen a perfect cover letter! The application can be done here. It will be fun and of course a good learning experience to be involved in the recruitment process from the hiring side. I have already looked at some of the applicants, and I must say it looks good! The interest for the position has been huge, and a lot of the applicants have remarkable CVs, I am looking forward to meeting the selected few that make the first cut in person during the interview rounds!

Until next week,
Kamil

Road Map 2009

Kamil | 7 November, 2008 | 0 comments

This week has mostly evolved about the work with the Road Map 2009 for our products. As a trainee at bwin Games you get a first row seat on all the pivotal meetings, the ones involving the strategy and Road Map being no exception. My contribution was to organize and lead a meeting in the beginning of the week where our product managers could with the help of system architects and people from operations design estimate their new ideas for 2009 in terms of effort from a technical point of view. All in all, during this four hour meeting, involvement from approximately 20 persons was needed, and the coordination and facilitation of the meeting was quite a challenge. It was of course very interesting to hear the visions for our products and the ideas presented will get us even further ahead of our competition. 2009 will be a good year!

Until next week,
Kamil

Project Management Training

Kamil | 31 October, 2008 | 0 comments

Today I had the first out of four days in Project Management training. Project Management can be seen as the process of how to reach a predefined goal, given constraints in time and resources. To reach the goal a set of interrelated activities, often dynamically influenced by internal and external factors have to be carried out. Building a house is the classical example of what is a project, but IT development is also often handled as a project. There are of course huge differences in what project management tools should be applied to these two projects, but there are also many similarities in the project management tools we learn, such as how to define the project objectives and non-objectives, breaking down the project into manageable pieces, risk management, to mention a few. The conclusion is that knowledge in project management can be very useful and I am looking forward to day no 2 in my training.

Until next week,
Kamil

PMO Milestone

Kamil | 24 October, 2008 | 0 comments

This week we reached a milestone in the work of Project Management Office; the roadmap for the next quarters is completed! We have spent a lot of hours in meetings in order to finalize it, so it is a great feeling to know that we now have a list of actions prioritized according to dimensions such as importance, effort, and feasibility. The whole process of turning lots of unstructured ideas, visions and constraints into tangible actions was a great learning experience!

Until next week,
Kamil

My day in Vienna

Kamil | 17 October, 2008 | 0 comments

05:50 Today is my first business trip to Vienna and I am really excited about visiting one of bwin's two Vienna offices. On the agenda for today there is a demonstration of a project portfolio management tool, followed by a workshop to see how it could fit our organizational needs. Right now I am in the cab on my way to Arlanda. The flight leaves at 07:10 and ETA in Vienna is 09:40.

08:40 The flight was 20 minutes delayed, hopefully we will still make it to the meeting on time. For preparation I am reviewing material from a previous meeting on the topic.

10:05 Due to the late arrival, Angelica and I are currently on the train from the airport to the bwin office. Thomas, our boss, had meetings in Vienna yesterday so he is already on site. It takes about 15 minutes to get from the airport to our final destination. The train goes directly to the Wien Mitte Station, which is about 50 meters from our office, which is very convenient (especially since it is raining). The meeting which we are supposed to attend has already started so we are a bit late.

12:15 The demonstration of the project portfolio management tool consisted of a presentation of a case on how a company had implemented the tool and how it supported the organization in project prioritization, capacity planning and general workflow in the processes related to project management. Now it is time for lunch where we will discuss with some of our internal stakeholders how we could benefit from a similar solution.

15:55 The lunch discussion gave a lot of new input and new perspective on how we could work. Angelica and I spent the afternoon getting acquainted with the tool, which means navigating the GUI, testing the process of registering a project, creating components to a dashboard to get an overview of the portfolio, and so on. In about 5 minutes we at the Stockholm Project Management Office will have a meeting with Peter, the leader of the Project Management Office in Vienna to discuss his impressions of this morning's demonstration and to discuss if we should proceed further down the road with the tool.

21:30 We are on the aircraft heading back to Sweden, approximately 420 km away from Stockholm. It was nice to meet Peter in person, so far we have only talked on the phone and emailed. During the meeting we gained a mutual understanding for the two PMOs challenges and the impact of implementing a project portfolio management tool. To sum it up, today has given us a lot of input on how we could develop the work with our project portfolio so it will be interesting work to evaluate the alternatives and decide in which direction we should proceed.

Until next week,
Kamil

Off Site Management Meeting

Kamil | 3 October, 2008 | 0 comments

This week's main event was a two day off site management meeting. The location was Häringe Slott, a 17th century castle located approximately 30 minutes from our office/central Stockholm. The meeting was about strategic HR, an area that I find very interesting and have taken a couple of courses in when I was in collage. The topics included, among others, managerial and organizational audit, how to keep key competencies, and succession planning. We also did a workshop on talent management where we defined what personality traits a bwin manager should possess. The outcome of these two days was a lot of good decision and actions on how we will work with the development of our employees, on all levels of the company, both managers and specialist. As a recent graduate it is always fun to see how the things you study at university turn into action in "real life"!

Apart from business we also had time for some leisure; horseback riding, and of course, poker!

Kamil

Scrum

Kamil | 26 September, 2008 | 0 comments

Last Friday's Power House Session turned out to be a success! All presentations were delivered with a high quality, the team building activities (improvisational theater!) were a lot of fun, and the food was great! The high light of the evening was when our own bwin Games band, bquiet, entered the stage! All in all, everything went according to plans and I am looking forward to the next Power House Session!

Today I attended a very interesting seminar on the Scrum software development process and the organizational benefits of using it. The Scrum process can be seen as an implementation of the Lean production philosophy in IT development. The key words in Scrum are iterations and team work. Traditionally, software development has been as a series of sequential steps; requirement definition, design, implementation, verification, and maintenance. The problem with this model is that it is very hard to get everything right in a stage before moving on to the next, which can result in time consuming roll backs in the process. In the Scrum methodology the above mentioned phases of software development are integrated and carried out iteratively in time periods of 2-3 weeks (called sprints), where after each sprint a functional product is delivered. This eliminates the risk of unpleasant surprises that become visible no earlier than in the final stages of the traditional process. The iterative approach also makes to software development more agile and it is easier to adapt to changes in requirements. The Scrum methodology has some other interesting aspects, such as the absence of the traditional project management role, but instead there are several other roles/entities defined in Scrum. The most important are the product owner, the team and the Scrum Master. The product owner represents the voice of the customer and ensures that the Scrum team works in the right direction from a business perspective. The teams are not larger then 14 people because everyone in the team should know what other team members are doing. The team consists often of members from different departments and with various skills in order to bring competence needed for carrying out the whole traditional software development process, but on a smaller scale. Another key concept in Scrum is transparency in planning and module development. All over our office there are post it notes on walls illustrating the status of the sprints. Here is how it looks:

Until next week,
Kamil

Power House Session, Poker School & Prize Money

Kamil | 19 September, 2008 | 0 comments

This week has been busy with the planning of the upcoming Power House Session, which is the name for the half day (and night) where all of us at bwin Games gather and do fun activities, and listen to presentations of our recent accomplishments, visions, and goals for the upcoming quarters. The precise agenda for the Power House Session is by tradition a secret until the actual event for all of those not involved in the organizing, so I can't write much more on this topic. The Power House Sessions are legendary, there are tons of stories circulating around the office from previous Power House Sessions. My expectations for my first Power House Session are set high!

On Wednesday, Fredrik and I held a poker school for our newest employees. The school consisted of a theoretical/information part and a tournament. We held a presentation where Fredrik explained the rules and strategies of the game, and I talked about some of the most well known tournaments. The poker school turned out to be a huge success, some of the participants enjoyed the game to the extent that they wanted to stay after the scheduled time and continue playing! While researching for my part of the presentation I came across some interesting facts:

• Total Prize Pool for WSOP 2008: $180,666,773
• $10,000 World Championship No-Limit Hold 'Em Prize Pool 2008: $64,333,600
• 148 people participated in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. in the last WSOP
• WSOP Europe £10,000 No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em 2007 champion is an 18-year-old girl. Because of her age, she is not allowed to participate in tournaments in the U.S. Good for her that she could win the £1,000,000 in London!

The graph below illustrates the WSOP Main Event first prize over time:

As you can see, there is a huge increase in prize money during the first years of this millennium. There are two main reasons for this; the evolvement of poker into a spectator sport suitable for television thanks to technical innovations (such as the ability to see all players' hole cards through a small camera in front of them on the table), and the fact that anyone can become a poker millionaire by spending a couple of dollars on an online satellite and qualifying to the WSOP Main Event, and winning. This is exactly what happened in the 2003 WSOP when Chris Moneymaker, an accountant with no previous live tournament experience became the champion. The substantial drop between the years 2006 and 2007 can be accredited the introduction of the SAFE Port Act, which made the US online poker market inaccessible for law-abiding companies. The rationale for the prize drop is that many online poker operators buy seats in the event and let their customers play for them. When the U.S. market closed down, less people could play, thus the operators cut down on the amount of seats they bought, which meant less money for the organizer, and the prize pool. As you can see in the graph, the trend now is that the amount of prize money is growing. It will be interesting to see what the prize money will be in 5, 10 or 15 years from now. Any guesses?

Until next time,
Kamil

The past week

Kamil | 12 September, 2008 | 0 comments

This week I have been mainly working on two things, the venture process and a business intelligence project. The venture process describes how ventures and projects should pass a set of stages and gates. The process is a guideline for how an idea should grow from being a blurry vision, to being a well defined set of deliverables with a planned timeline and clear resource requirements, to production. The process ends with a review of the whole venture. The venture process includes several gates at which decisions must be made in order for the venture to continue to the next stage of the process. As you can imagine, defining the check points and deliverables in terms of documentation within each stage, without turning our organization into a rigid bureaucracy is challenging. And fun!

The business intelligence project I am involved in is also a lot of fun, especially for me, since it is somewhat related to the topic of my masters thesis; how predictive analytics can be applied to customer churn. The project involves people from across the whole organization with different backgrounds and skills. Since the competencies in the group are so heterogeneous, I study closely how our project leader Angelica coordinates the work and manages the meetings. I learn a lot from watching her steering the discussions in the right direction and collecting input from the participants.

During lunch time, me and Angelica went to the health club and attended an hour long class, originating from New Zeeland, called BodyPump. This training form includes the use of a step platform, a bar and a set of weights and is supposed to be the fastest way to shape up and lose body fat. I preferred working out in my own pace and I was not really into group-fitness programs, so I was a bit skeptic about the whole concept, but now I'm sold!

Until next time,
Kamil

Mentoring and the Monopoly

Kamil | 5 September, 2008 | 0 comments

As quite new to the professional life, there are a lot of questions in my head. These can concern everything from where I want to be in 20 years to how I should tackle my next task. My mentor's name is Henrik and he has extensive experience in leadership and management from a couple of Swedish blue chip companies (among others a global telecom company with headquarter in Kista...). Henrik and I meet approximately once a week for a longer session where we discuss a certain topic. He is also there for me when I need instant advice on how to proceed with a specific task or how to handle a difficult situation. Henrik has the ability to break down the most complex issues into little pieces that are much easier to deal with. So far Henrik has been very helpful and I value his input highly. Simply put, he knows his stuff, and shares his knowledge with me. It's great to have that kind of support in your professional life! Last week he invited me to attend a meeting with his network of executives, where management topics were discussed in an informal atmosphere. Really interesting!

The head of Spelutredningen (the Swedish inquiry commission on gambling) has confirmed that a licensing system for foreign sports betting operators will be proposed when the commission reports its findings to the Swedish government in December. Even though online poker is not included in this proposition, it will be interesting to see if this is just another move from Sweden to avoid further actions from the European Court of Justice, or if there actually will be changes within a near future.

There is a new blog here on bwin Games, written by developer Johan Nilsson. The blog will focus on his daily work, and the technologies he uses. It will be interesting to follow!

We currently have 23 job openings here at bwin Games. Now we also have a huge banner on our building stating that we are looking for new coworkers. I knew last week that there will be a banner on our building, but the size of it was a surprise! See for yourselves.

Until next time,
Kamil

Management Meetings and Poker Faces

Kamil | 29 August, 2008 | 1 comments

 It's Friday morning and I am looking through my Outlook to get an overview of the last couple of days. I can see that I spent quite a lot of time at management meetings. Attending management meetings is one of my favorite tasks. There are two main reasons for this; I learn a lot during these meetings, and it is fascinating to be there and follow how decisions are made at management level. My role at these meetings is usually to take minutes and distribute them afterwards to the stakeholders. At the meetings organized by the PMO (Project Management Office, my department) I am also responsible for setting the agenda based on the status and the current phase of our ventures and projects. The last two times I have also led the meetings, which was awesome! Anyway, being at management meetings gives me insights into our business and operations that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else and I am very happy to have this opportunity.

This week I have also been in contact with my colleagues at the Project Management Office in Vienna to discuss how to share information across our departments. We have basically the same goals, but our processes differ due to historical reasons and our departments have now started working on how to create value from the synergies we would get from aligning our processes. This is related to another task I am working on at the moment, which is how to increase the transparency of the resource allocation for ongoing ventures and projects. It is important for all stakeholders to know where the resources are allocated in order to facilitate prioritization of the ongoing ventures and projects and it will be fun to work on improving this.

Experts in the field of personology (the study of facial features to predict character traits and behavior) have constructed a mock-up poker face based on the facial features of successful poker players. The analyzed faces belong to ten past successful WSOP Main Event competitors. The ultimate poker face is the combination of the following characteristics:

1. Roman nose of Chris Moneymaker - won $2,500,000 in 2003 WSOP
2. Wide-set eyes of Jerry Yang - won $8,250,000 in 2007 WSOP
3. Head width of Greg Raymer - won $5,000,000 in 2004 WSOP & J.J ‘Noel' Furlong - won $1,000,000 in 1999 WSOP
4. Sloped-back forehead of Robert Varkonyi - $2,000,000 in 2002 WSOP
5. High forehead of Carlos Montensen - $1,500,000 in 2001 WSOP
6. Jutting chin of Scotty Nguyen - won $1,000,000 in 1998 WSOP
7. Outer corner of the eye of Joseph Hachem - won $7,500,000 in 2005 WSOP
8. Cupped out ears of Chris Ferguson - won $1,500,000 in 2000 WSOP
9. Flared outer edge of the eyebrow of Jamie Gold - won $12,000,000 in 2006 WSOP

So be on your guard the next time you play against a person with a Roman nose, jutting chin, cupped-out ears and wide-set eyes. Remember that you can eliminate the unfair advantage that people gifted with the above characteristics have in the game of poker by playing online.

Until next time,
Kamil

Playing Around at Work

Kamil | 22 August, 2008 | 0 comments

At the beginning of this week I had a meeting with our Managing Director and an external consultant that has been involved in one of the projects we are currently working on. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how to take the project to the next stage. Both our MD and the consultant have astonishingly impressive entrepreneurial backgrounds and it's truly inspiring to work with people capable of such accomplishments. Sitting in a conference room and discussing ideas how to take the project to the next stage with people that have started several successful businesses from scratch is quite a remarkable experience (it's worth mentioning that this type of entrepreneurial background is not unusual here at bwin Games). I think I learned a lot about how to pitch visions and ideas during that meeting, and even more afterwards when I had the time to process my notes. The project is by the way something extraordinary, and I would very much like to write a couple of lines about it, but for obvious reasons I can't. But you might see the results of it in the future!

A couple of days ago, I had a meeting with my mentor. We played Guitar Hero. At work. During office hours. Well, the fact is that here at bwin Games we have a so called Gaming Room. It's a place where people go to take a break from whatever they were doing. It's a good spot to meet new coworkers in a relaxed setting. Even if I in total have been in the Gaming Room less times then by the coffee machine before lunch on a normal day, I still like to have the possibility to go there when I feel like it. We also have pinball machines, a table tennis table, and as you probably would expect, a really nice room dedicated to the game of poker.

How do we get any work done here with all those fun and potentially distracting things around us, you might think? I believe that having the possibility to play Guitar Hero (or any other game, we have pretty much all of them) implies that bwin Games is an employer that knows that we are motivated and enjoy our work, so that's what drives us, and therefore, things get done. It's really simple.

I am sure all of you readers already know that our parent company (or "Konzernmutter" as they say in our HQ in Vienna) bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, has published the results for the second quarter. You can see the presentation here. If you prefer to read the report, you can download it here. Enjoy!

Until next time,
Kamil

Welcome To My Blog!

Kamil | 15 August, 2008 | 0 comments

First of all, my name is Kamil Gajewski and I'd like to introduce myself as the new trainee here at bwin Games in Stockholm, the leading company in developing digital entertainment globally in the online poker- and casino games segment. My educational background is in Engineering Physics and Business Administration, which I studied mostly at Uppsala University. I have also spent a few semesters abroad, more precisely in Maastricht and Berlin. Before joining bwin Games I was most recently working on my master's thesis for another poker company in the area of customer churn prediction. After reading the rest of this post you will know two things; what you can expect from my blog and the role of my department.

The purpose of my blog is to give you readers insight in what it's like to work as a trainee at bwin Games. My ambition is to write about both my daily tasks and activities, and share with you the more general observations I make. I think everyone with an interest in our company, online poker, e-business, the trainee life, or general thoughts of a young professional will find something worth reading. I will try to write about things I would find worth reading when I was about to graduate. So this is the initial scope of my blog, and it can of course change over time (as all other things in our industry do!).

It might be good for you to know that my trainee program consist of three blocks, each being six months. The first one is at the Project Management Office (PMO), which roughly speaking is the part of our organization that is managing the management of projects. A lot of what we do is connected to the monitoring and development of the processes around project management within our organization. I think it's a great place to start a trainee program because it gives an understanding of how business is carried out in a large corporation in terms of implementation of the strategic plans, resource allocation and rationales behind changes in the daily operations.

Finally, this is a topic I will write more about in an upcoming post, but I can't finish this one without even mentioning that our office is ridiculously nice, and has some unique aspects. More on that next time. If you want to see the view from my window, you can follow this link and you will be redirected to the blog of my fellow trainee, Fredrik. Check it out!

Next time I will be writing about what I experienced during my first two weeks here at bwin Games. I can already now tell you that it was a lot!

Until then,
Kamil