AGILEMinds

Captain's Log | Tuesday, April 20, 2010

2010-04-21T09:06:00.000+02:00

Agile Stories Series

Took up my complete day, I have been reading and brainstorming about possible ways of telling these stories. What does the community want to know about companies? Actually is a very difficult question to answer. I have some ideas which I'll share by the end of the week.

Over and out

Agile Coaching | A little bit of war

2010-04-20T13:28:00.002+02:00

I wanted to share these lyrics by a Belgian band called Noordkaap with you.
They reminded me at those projects were playing nice wasn't always the only way to go...

Although I do know the rule states that as an Agile coach you can never get mad, you can't blame, you always talkkk attt tthheee saammeee ppittchhh (this one actually scares me about people). But I'm a human being filled with emotion and passion, and I do wonder, do those people never have a fight with their wife or husband at home. Come on people we do all know that the best conversations happen during a fight, you feel SO relieved afterwards... (and let's not even mention the make up ... afterwards) Is playing nice ALWAYS the best solution? Perhaps it is perhaps it isn't... that Noorkaap was a great band is without doubt. Enjoy!

Would a little war may not have been better
Loudly than spoken words and nights of pain
Would a little war may not have been better
Then unexecuted murders and smiles of venom
Would not
would not
After all this grief goes much too deep
A short fight it really does not take long
A short burst and then continue
A short fight it really does not take long
A short burst and then continue
Would not
would not
After all this grief goes much too deep
Would not
would not
After all this grief goes much too deep
Would a little war not have been better

Lean Thinking - 5 Steps

2010-04-20T12:52:00.001+02:00

Just a recap on the 5 steps that make up for Lean Thinking before we continue or posts on Lean software development:

Correctly specify value for the customer
Identify the value stream and remove waste
Make the product flow
So the customer can pull
By managing towards perfection

These principles come from a book called Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones from the early 1998 and are since then the guiding principles behind lean in manufacturing, logistics, heath care... and now also software development.

The ugly truth about predictability

2010-04-20T12:32:00.001+02:00

As software systems grow more complex , more people become involved therefore managing software development becomes increasingly difficult. To keep up with this increased complexity the industry experts have been telling companies for year to add more metrics, more control, more rigor. Surely, if we could control everything up to a single keystroke we should be able to predict the future, right? To ensure such prediction people needed to be told what to do exactly, when and how otherwise chaos would be lurking around the corner waiting to jump out and take over. Therefore companies added more layers of control and even more resource were wasted on making sure process compliance was met.

So what did we learn, complexity leads to uncertainty. Uncertainty is evil so we added all these mechanism to be able to forecast and predict the future. The main problem with organizational cultures that focus on forecasting is that they significantly decrease any flexibility needed to deal with changing markets. On top of that we can see a significant decrease on innovation and learning.

As flexibility decreases, market responsiveness also significantly decreases. The system that has been put in place to eliminate chaos, to give us control over our projects, has now turned its back against and it causing companies not to be able to deal with market changes due the many layers of the chain of command and the lack of a culture of learning and innovation. Even worse, due to an increasing focus on predictability and control this has let to a major decrease in seeing and hearing what the customer really wanted. Companies aren't just being incapable to deal with market changes they stopped seeing them!

Last, let's see what's the impact of a culture of predictability is on people? Too be able to plan so much in advance managers need to treat people as resource with a certain performance rate. That way when deviating from a project plan you can calculate exactly which resource with which performance rate you need to be able to get back on track, much like machinery parts.

Unfortunately software development is anything like mass manufacturing. It's a creative role one for which creativity and problem solving skills are key. The tools we use are never the same, the software we built always differs from that what we made before, technology and market change on a daily basis, learning truly is king. What we need is way of thinking that stimulates organizational learning while focusing on delivering customer value first.

Lean Thinking beyond world class manufacturing...

Survival

2010-04-20T10:59:00.000+02:00

This quote becomes more true by the day:

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.

It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning a lion wakes up.

It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.

When the sun comes up, you better start running."

Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat 2005 p. 114

Captain's Log | Monday, April 19, 2010

2010-04-20T10:11:00.002+02:00

Agile Stories Series

When I started out with AGILEMinds, the whole idea behind it was that it should be something for and by the community. For the community is the 'easy' part. I started out with focusing on events and trainings right from the industry experts offering the agile enthusiasts a better platform to hear and learn about agile. A way better alternative than all those big consultancy companies offering less than basic training from consultants who hardly read 4 blog posts about the topic... I had to start somewhere :-)

What's up next?

Since mankind stories have played an important role in knowledge sharing. Stories endure, connect but most importantly stories get passed along from person to person from generation to generation. One thing I notice while organizing these events is that it is VERY hard to get companies - not consultancy companies but end clients - to share their stories. So starting from know I'm going to pro-actively go out there and search for companies that are willing to share their Agile roadmap up until this point, their pain, their joys, what's up ahead....

Stories are important because it gives people and companies the feeling that they are not alone out there...

These stories will be part of the AGILEMinds community site which I hope to launch asap :-)

Interested in sharing?
Let's get in touch!

Also, should you have a good name for this series let me know!

Training | Business Model Innovation

Our Business Model Innovation workshop with Alexander Osterwalder just got more excited. I got in touch with Karen Boers from IBBT which is a government supported research center and they seem to be doing research on ways to rapidly generate business models through a multi-touch collaborative device called SIMBU. As usual these multi-touch things get me all excited so I'm happy to tell you that professor Pieter Ballon from IBBT / iLab-o will be demonstrating this device during the 2-day workshop. Great!

I'm probably going to meet him in person this or next week after which I can tell you more on the device and its possibilities.

Some boring facts

- my office chair broke down so I went out to buy a new one... 6 week waiting period, arghhhh.
- as usually I ran out of printer ink on the worst possible moment, although it the warning sign has been blinking fore weeks I just ignored it. Off course the store was out of ink, again 2 days of waiting.
- bought myself a digital voice recorder to be used for interviewing companies for the Agile Stories Series

Training | Cold Calls

Alright, first of all I'm 1000% AGAINST making cold calls. But I have been trying to find ways to get people to notice our trainings and events. One of the things you notice is that we are not in London or the US. It is actually very hard to convince people over here to get them all excited about new ideas. Most of the people just don't want to hear about innovation I guess. Or their budgets are still frozen due to the financial crisis.... yeah right. Anyway, I never thought it would be easy but I also never thought it would be this hard... we'll get there some way some how.

So I tried out cold calling on two companies being KBC and BNP Paribas Fortis. I thought why not give those old giants a call at least they sent out their employees on trainings more often than most companies. What happened was exactly what I imaged what would happen when placing a cold call... worst case experience with mankind and banks you can even imagine. I'll try to write a separate blog post about it somewhere during the day. It's a laugh...

Lean & Kanban 2010 | Venue booked

2010-04-16T17:08:00.000+02:00

Mission accomplished!

The bar is about 48m2... that's big!

A deadline was set for finding and booking a venue. That deadline was today, close call! Let's move that post-it to the right...

Visited about 10 venues, one worse than the other until I visited Stuurboord in Antwerp. As I already mentioned in one of my previous posts Stuurboord is an old hangar which has been renovated to a not so traditional venue to say the least. It's one gigantic open space, I think it can fit about 2000 people standing-up in total. The venue is divided in 5 units, one of them is the bar, another one will be taken - in combination with the bar - for reception / lunch / networking area. So that leaves 3 units (there are some smaller meetings rooms we can use if we want), unit capacity is +/- 250 people. Oh yes, before I forget, there are mobile walls between the unit so no, you cannot listen to two talks at the same time ;-) Two units will be used for hosting the normal sessions. The last unit will be used either for workshops, or can even be divided more for more Open Space rooms, depending on the program.

Some more picture I found on the web...

Naked venue

Customizable to make it more Lounge (Sponsors???)

View over the Schelde (river)

Stuurboord by night

Looks great doesn't it?
Now I just got to find a dozen sponsors to cover costs :-D

Captain's Log | Friday, April 16, 2010

2010-04-16T16:30:00.001+02:00

Sorry boys and girls I had a day off - family time - so nothing to tell today.

Google Analytics | UP 3.690,91%

2010-04-15T23:08:00.000+02:00

Mommy I'm scared...

What just happened here? I opened my Google Analytics page to see if my single fan was still following me on a daily basis, and that's when I saw it, the big green arrow was pointing high in the sky... it stated: an increase in visitors by 3.690,91%. That's insane, how come?

Ahhh, it were not the numbers for www.agileminds.be but for the Agile Tester Days website, a 2 day workshop with Janet Gregory I did last year in September... So after some further investigation I noticed the traffic was directed to this website mainly through the keywords agile testing days in Berlin in October. Anyway, I actually forgot all about this website until this strange trend occurred.

First, I did not gave it a lot of thought but than it hit me. I'm a startup, what I need is exposure, free exposure. What if would just redirect all the traffic from the Agile Tester Days website to the AGILEMinds website, free advertisement!!! So I quickly added one line of html meta data code and that allowed be to get around 70 additional hits a day worldwide. I know these numbers are really low but every hit counts when you're starting up.

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=http://www.agileminds.be">

Below a quick screenshot of the increase in hits.

Captain's Log | Thursday, April 15, 2010

2010-04-15T21:09:00.000+02:00

In plain English

Since my oldest son could speak we're having these funny conversations. I truly enjoy explaining him stuff but what is so remarkable and I catch myself doing it all the time is I explain things in a very different manner than I would explain something to my wife or friends. How's that you ask?

First, people tend to get nervous when explaining something, mostly due to our educational system that has learned us that failing is not an option, you fail, you get punished with bad grades and than you probably get punished by your parents... it's a nightmare!

Than because failure is not an option we tend to bluff that way we hope they other one thinks you are that much smarter than you are and they what you are saying must be write, remember those professor who only used words you had to lookup in a dictionary?

So what happens when we talk to our kids? None of the above rules count!
The moment we talk to our kids our primal instinct takes over, we protect them, we guide them, we'll do anything what is needed to help them 'survive'.

So how do you teach him how an apple looks like? Right, you just show him a real or a picture of an apple! That did not feel strange did it? But what happens when your boss asks you for a status report? You go crazy, probably open up powerpoint start making pointless slides, you joggle a bit with the numbers because it's your neck that...

Also check out this blog post I made comparing explaining some aspects of Scrum versus teaching a kid what an apple is. Something I quickly drew up today... just for fun. Let me know if you like it.

Live Streaming

Francesco Masia - who was also one of the speakers at AATD - informed about UStream.tv as an out-of-the-box solution for live streaming events, definitely going to have a look at it.

Lean & Kanban 2010 | Speakers

Still no luck on getting mister Goldratt himself. Should anyone knows him personally, let me know otherwise this will be a dead end road.

It will be hard to get Jeff Patton in, he was very enthusiastic about our Lean & Kanban 2010 event but it is the same date as his daughter her birthday. First things first, we understand.

I also tried to get in touch with the one and only James Womack. Yeah right, no way this guy will show up in a local event as ours. I received an email back from his secretary or so informing me that he 'only does very big events with impact' :-)

Final, I'm trying to get in touch with people from the university of Brussels and Leuven to see if they are running studies around Lean & Kanban. I'll keep you posted on that one... will take some time. I'm hoping I can find some students who are willing to do a 15 min pitch talk!

Lean & Kanban | Mystery Tickets

For the true fans, those who are mean clean lean machines, who will attend this Lean & Kanban event no matter what's on the program I introduced the Mystery Ticket. This tickets gives you to opportunity to buy a ticket at 50% discount without knowing who is on the program or how it will look. This ticket comes at 325 Eur and sales end the day the call for paper ends, so end of April 2010. Curious to see who the die hard fans are... if we have any in Belgium?

Training | Business Model Innovation

Today I got in touch with the people from IBBT and UNIZO to see if we can work together on promoting the Business Model Innovation workshop with Alex Osterwalder to startups and other companies. Again, conversations will take some time...

Over and out

Scrum like explaining an apple to a child

2010-04-15T11:59:00.001+02:00

Just something I pulled together in 75 seconds...
I notice since I have two small kids (oldest is 3 years old) I tend to explain things differently to people using simple words, simple visual concepts, reminded me of doing Scrum :-)

Captain's Log | Wednesday, April 14, 2010

2010-04-15T10:48:00.000+02:00

Live Streaming

I had a meeting with Combell because I'm interested in this whole Live Streaming of conferences. The whole idea of sustainable and affordable conferences and trainings or just call it knowledge is something I deeply car about... so expect some cool initiative in the future. The question remains whether or not I'm already going to Live Stream the Lean & Kanban 2010 event... Let's start with putting up an amazing conference agenda.

Anyway, I was a bit disappointed in the conversation I had with Combell because they could only help me or tell me about the part of the Live Streaming story from the moment the live data entered their network. I did learn how easy this Live Streaming concept works when you just put it on a cloud. But they charged way too much for it. So back home I started Googling for Live Streaming and Amazon CloudFront services and although they already support streaming they do not yet - but planned for 2010 - support Live Streaming... that would be an option.

Second, now I still need to get in touch with folks who have experience with filming events and proving the data directly in live stream format...

If anyone has experience with this or any good ideas, let me know!

Training | Agile Acceptance Testing

Gojko Adzic, author of "Bridging the communication gap" is doing a two Agile Acceptance Testing workshop at AGILEMinds. Gojko also spoke at our Agile Acceptance Testing Days event and he truly breathes agile testing! I have very high expectations of his workshop and I hope you'll enjoy in to. The workshop will be on May 20 + 21 in Mechelen. You can find more information in our website. We also got a very good deal going on for those who attended the Agile Acceptance Testing Days, a 20% discount, that's not bad!

Register here

So yesterday I put up the EventBrite registration page and started contacting folks to attend our workshop. It's limited to 20 seats, so you better hurry!

Training | Partners

Now that the Lean & Kanban 2010 conference T-6 preparation is almost done I can get back to focus on doing my sales pitch for the upcoming trainings. Next to doing my own sales I'm thinking of collaborating with a couple of exciting consultancy / training companies, just to get the name AGILEMinds out there... before it dies on me :(

Agile .Net Conference

Just check out my previous post on how I got to think about doing a .Net conference here in Belgium and read about my first experience with Microsoft.

Over and out

Great news! Microsoft is about to buy AGILEMinds!

2010-04-15T09:50:00.000+02:00

I'm so excited!

I just hit jackpot!
I never thought it would be so simple but it has happened...

Let's start at the beginning.

We have organized several events now and one question or remark that kept popping up from the attendees was that there was a lack of .Net awareness. They are totally right, up until this point we haven't seen anything that even mentioned the name .Net. And that's strange because I see the attendees ask for these topics but when receiving the session proposals, in all this time I have never seen anything pass by that would discuss .Net, so it is not like I'm deliberately NOT putting any .Net stuff on the conference agenda. I do have a background in Java / Ruby so perhaps you could 'sabotage' ;-)

As a company with an open mind, open for all cultures, I do embrace these .Net questions I received. I think about two weeks ago I took a first initiative, I needed to find an easier way to get feedback or ideas from the attendees or people who were interested in joining. You could set up a forum, but then I would end up reading posts all day long, manually keeping track of what people were suggesting or what I thought they were suggesting... nightmare!

A while ago I read about the 90-9-1 rule which talks about participation inequality. I'll come back to this 90-9-1 rule in another post but the main idea behind is that 90% of the people are lurkers / voyeurs and no would not commit to doing anything, 9% would from time to time give it some thought and commit a little bit but for them it is really low priority, than there is the 1%, those are the folks you need to kick start a community, to drive the community. So what I needed was a tool that supported this culture of 90-9-1, meet agileminds.ideascale.com/. This web 2.0 community portal will allow creators to add ideas quickly and give the lurkers an easy overview of what is happening within the community and lower the participation barrier by giving them the ability to vote for an idea by a single click. There are lots of studies on this behavior, it is truly applicable to anything in the world they say, it just gets very visible when dealing with tangible content on the internet. But more on that in later post!

So I asked the attendees from our last event - Agile Acceptance Testing Days - to give the community portal a try. Immediately you could see the 90-9-1 rule in action :-) Anyway, I did help destiny a bit by already suggesting a topic called 'More .Net awareness', it got about 9 votes out of the 85 people who joined us at the Agile Acceptance Testing Days. So that's actually not a bad sign because looking at the profiles of the attendees there were not that many people with a .Net background.

Alright, that gave me an initial idea, now let's do something with that. Yesterday I gave Microsoft Belgium a call because I want to sit down with them and discuss the idea of an Agile .Net Conference. As everyone, contacting Microsoft Belgium for the first time it got confronted with several phone menus after which I ended up with those phone operators who can only redirect you... or that I thought. Instead of getting me in touch with someone from marketing or business development they asked me for all my contact details.Next they would sent me an email, that email would contain a link to a form, I needed to fill in that form, someone from Microsoft would read it and decide who was the right person to get back to me. So I did, I gave all my details, waited 15 minutes before the email came in, opened the web form which and started to fill it in.

Where is the 'I just want to have a talk to see if we can do a cool conference' button? You could ask many cool things at Microsoft but NOT what I wanted. so ok, I gave it a spin and took the one that seemed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of what I wanted. Had to go true a couple of boring disclaimers and so on...

Then it happened!

I knew Microsoft had a lot of money but that it would be so easy for me to let Microsoft buy AGILEMinds, I had no idea!
There it is, the select option that would change my life

It was tempting but no thanks :-)

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on the Agile .Net story and I do hope to hear from Microsoft soon.

In God AGILEMinds we trust? | Series

2010-04-13T23:43:00.000+02:00

You probably have seen this Dilbert like a 100 times, but it stays funny.

Couple of days ago I met an old friend from school. He works in one of those - bang my head against the wall old school - companies that just entered the 21th century / digital era. He told me that typical story; his company that was massively pushing their employees to generate content for their corporate blog. Because... you know, because they needed a blog :-)

You can already guess what happened, they were blogging, blogging if their life depended on it - because that's how workers of an industrial age are trained to do. This resulted in content that was for 99% aggregated or just a copy cat of existing information on the internet.

I'll try not to do that...

Reason behind the Captain's Log for example is a way for me to show the human side behind the company name. To share with you common problems like wasted days on an over-flooded email inbox. But also the fun side of entrepreneurship like enjoying a good boor during working hours while discussing random startup thoughts...

Openness matters...

It's real, it genuine, and I hope it is what your looking for in a company.

Captain's Log | Tuesday, April 13, 2010

2010-04-13T17:00:00.000+02:00

Lean & Kanban 2010 | Venue

After having visited almost 10 venues the search has come to an end. A decision needs to be made by the end of the week.

Today I visited 'Stuurboord' (english: starboard) in Antwerp. Three reason for expanding my search beyond Brussels. The first one is that there seems to be some kind of European political top meeting end of September and almost every meeting or conference room has been booked, typical! Second, I really did NOT like the venue I visited, they were old, corporate feeling, they were not what AGILEMinds is all about. Third, it's way closer to my own door :-)

Stuurboord seemed to have something special when I visited their website. Pictures were not too clear but I did know the area quiet well and I knew the view over the harbor/river would be amazing. Stuurboord is built in a renovated old ship hangar. It's actually one big volume which can be modulated very easily, just what we need for our event because of all the workshops and open spaces. Not unimportant their bar is like 48m2, that's BIG! So you will not have to stand in line getting one of our famous Belgian beers ;-)

It's always hard to describe the feeling you get when spotting a venue, especially because it's such a personal feeling. But man, that's one great venue, it what AGILEMinds is all about, openness, rough, pure, uncut, authentic, restful... I'm currently waiting for their offer, it's not cheap, but non of these things are when you aim for +150 people.

Hopefully the deal is done by the end of the week. Finding a venue was way too stressful this time.
But it's part of the job, and I love it! :-)

Lean & Kanban 2010 | Email Mania

Mails, mails and more mails. Big part of organizing these things is the never ending back and forward mailing between speakers and organizers :-)

All work and no play makes...

After having visited Stuurboord venue I went to lunch with Mathias Bogaert, old friend and fellow entrepreneur. We have the same background in IT, the same age, same mindset, so really fun to talk about startup stuff, sharing pain and glory is important. Knowing you're not alone in the world... so we went out for dinner and stayed for a couple of hours. The weather was just right to enjoy a couple of beers on the terrace while discussing next steps...

And before I knew it it was time to get the little one from day care and so another day passes...

Over and out

BetaGroup here we come

2010-04-13T16:24:00.000+02:00

Just registered for my very first BetaGroup conference in Brussels. The BetaGroup is a group of 2.100 Web Entrepreneurs in Belgium passionate about Internet, Software, Mobile Technologies and Online Media. They aim to connect Entrepreneurs, Creative Thinkers, Software Developers, Digital Marketers, Web Designers, Web Agencies, Advertisers, Publishers, VC’s and Business Angels to innovate together.

A couple of weeks ago I attended my first Android conference here in Belgium. One of the goal I have set for myself since I started AGILEMinds is to go out there and meet people, learn about new and exciting worlds. I have been in consultancy since 8 or 9 years now and what I tend to notice since I'm a 'free man' is that doing something for that long has shortsighted me.

Like most people who start a new business they go out on Google and query for 'startups' or something else, just to see what's out there. I queried for 'lean startups'. You know like mean clean killing machine startups that take over the market by surprise :-) But many of the starters (US located) all talked about the same thing... go out there and start talking to people, no matter what the conference is about go out and see the world as it is not as you remember it!

After a couple of weeks, meeting all these new folks who are so passionate about what they do I can not agree more. Just going out there and talk is one of the most powerful startup tips I can image.

Alright, I wandered a bit of the trial... so I was talking about the day I went to the Android conference. There was this guy Jean Dérely who I started talking with during lunch and he got me all excited about BetaGroup.

I'm very curious, not sure what to expect but I'm definitely going to stay in touch with him. The upcoming business model innovation workshop with Alex Osterwalder is something I would like to share with the startups. Alex is such a creative thinker and let's you visualize and rejuvenate business models like you never thought possible. Definitely something of great value to other startups, I'll do my pitch, hope I can get them excited to join the workshop and as a bonus, because there can never be enough support for startups I pick two startups who registered and they can join for FREE!

Captain's Log | Monday, April 12, 2010

2010-04-12T23:11:00.000+02:00

Captain's wa?
That's right folks a daily log to share with you what keeps me busy at AGILEMinds.

In Star Trek the Captain's log, a form of ship's log, is used to fill in the audience as to the events in progress.

Lean & Kanban 2010 | Venue

This week I'm visiting 3 possible venues. I tell you later about two I went see last week. Today I went to see the Lamot venue in the center of Mechelen. I have to admit I did not have very high expectations. Because I live nearby Mechelen I'm used seeing the venue, and from the outside I was not that impressed. But anyway, I thought I would give it a try. You gotta try out new things...

I took me by surprise but just seeing the enormous entrance hall, the rough concrete walls and sealing was actually very cool. Lamot was in a far distance a very famous brewery, they renovated it and kept the authentic elements in place, very nice!

I think they have about 7 rooms, we do all fit in there right?
Not a big fan of auditoriums again I was very surprised being in this one, very nicely renovated. They also took out one of the side walls and replaced it with a glass wand so you get a awesome view over the city of Mechelen. On this picture you can see part of the glass but not the city, so it will not give you the same feeling as I had. Many many rooms later I was actually very convinced about doing the Lean and Kanban conference in Mechelen. But wait until tomorrow, one more place to visit in Antwerp that looked very cool on their website... With all the documentation packed I headed back home... smiling.

Some more pictures
- catering room
- Cool room but bad picture
- This small one actually had a very big terrace looking over the city, NICE! Open Space room anyone?

Lean & Kanban 2010 | Program

So the good news with the venue was that there was a lot of space... now I just needed to find a way to make it fit the program.
Damn, we're still in the "call for paper" phase until the end of the Month so I will need to make a bunch of assumption, the venue needs to be booked THIS week, period! Too make a long story of complaining against my planning board short, this is what I came up with:

Day 1:
Keynote
2 Tracks
Every track has 5 60 minute sessions

Day 2:
Keynote
4 Tracks
1 track with 60 minute slots another will be a combination of 60 minute and 15 minute lightening talks
1 Open Space track but with multiple rooms
1 Workshop Track (max 2 or 3 workshops)

Let's review this tomorrow, it sounded good today, perhaps a new day will bring new insights...

Lean & Kanban 2010 | Speakers

Mary and Tom Poppendieck confirmed

Lean & Kanban 2010 | Stuff

Was really surprised today when I opened my email inbox while getting back from visiting the Lamot venue.
Pascal Van Cauwenberghe, the driving force behind XPDays asked me, or rather sent me an open invitation to join each other efforts so we can better serve the community. I think this is really great news. AGILEMinds and XPDays both serve the community in a different way, but when working together we can probably serve them even better. So the upcoming weeks we'll be sharing email list, talk about cross-advertising and so on...

Random Stuff

- Did a quick Google search on upcoming events, time to network!
- Fooling around with name cards... I tend to loose myself in playing with all these different kinds of ideas :-)
- Added Google Analytics to the AGILEMinds website
- Registered for an upcoming event at BetaGroup
- Finally got the Alex Osterwalder 2 day workshop ticketing up in Eventbrite - Don't forget to REGISTER!!!
- Requested to give a 'Where's Agile heading and what I'm up to' presentation at a team building event of software company owned by a friend of mine

Over and out

In God AGILEMinds we trust? | Series

2010-04-11T15:39:00.000+02:00

Alright, let's get started with the first of many posts on 'TRUST'.

Why should you trust AGILEMinds?
Why should you trust any company?
Why should you trust me?
Why should you trust any person?
Why should you trust that mouse next to your keyboard (alright, that one went too far)

Those are actually very hard questions. I have no idea, why do we trust someone or something?

In this series of "In ~~God~~ AGILEMinds we trust" posts I'll try to discover with some help of you readers why you should do so. How can all these millions of ideas inside my head, these hopes and dreams become something tangible, something that grows on you after a while, something that without doubt is something you trust...

I did a quick Google search on 'define: trust' and here are some of the results that talk about this kind of trust:

- reliance: certainty based on past experience
- believe: be confident about something
- faith: complete confidence in a person or plan etc
- confidence: a trustful relationship

Nothing that really pops out on first sight, but let's take these items as a starting basis for further discussion on next posts.
I'll cover confidence / relationship in my next post.

Thanks!

Website update | AGILEMinds.be

2010-04-11T15:14:00.000+02:00

Following changes have been made to http://www.agileminds.be:
- Added Blog Badge
- Added Ideas Badge
- Added Footer Section (What we do, Community, Company)
- Fixed Twitter Badge not working in Chrome

The journey of a thousand miles...

2010-04-11T11:17:00.000+02:00

Lao Tzu a philosopher of ancient China, a Taoist and "One of the Three Pure Ones" once said:

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Hi, my name is Maarten Volders - Founder of AGILEMinds - and throughout these blog posts I'll take you through every step on my journey towards building an innovative software company that offers knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, a company that will build a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. We believe passionately in the power of ideas that change attitudes, lives and ultimately the world, one person at a time.

I did some research on the above quote and it seems a more correct translation of the original Chinese would be "The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet." Rather than emphasizing the first step, Lao Tzu regarded action as something that arises naturally from stillness. Another potential phrasing would be "Even the longest journey must begin where you stand."

My journey started long ago, with ideas, crazy thoughts, hopes and dreams... today I invite you to be part of them. Help me overcome obstacles, see what I don't see, remind me of that what I have forgotten, guide me along the way for if you lead me I cannot stray.

I have introduced myself, next time I hope you will introduce yourself and make this a good conversation...