Sunday, January 1, 2012

Happy new year 2012




May this new year, bring many sharing ideas and peaceful times. I wish you a awesome new year.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

xALEc first session

xALEc is an ALE online open space using Google Hangouts every Monday 9:30 pm CET.

Adrian, (@adibolb), Jaumes (@JaumeJornet ) and I had the first xALEc session on December 12th, 2011.
The session was like a physical open space session: a great conversation, not focusing precisely on the proposed subject. We collected a few tips and answers to questions we hadn’t asked ourselves before the beginning of the session.

So it works, and please find below some remarks and a few improvements to consider for the next ones.

  • Twitter is the best place for sharing links before the sessions using the #xALEc tag.
  • Sessions can be proposed anytime during the day.
  • The session starts at 9:30 pm.
  • Leaders may prefer to open the Google Hangout with extras, 5 minutes before the session,
  • The language barrier will broken after 5 minutes of conversation (enjoy each accent). We are not there to speak English but to improve our Agile/Lean knowledge.
  • Yes, talking directly online to someone, you have never met is not always easy. But, don’t be shy, we are all beginners at this.
  • It is better to share something visual like a drawing.
  • Avoid sharing too much text and too many links, because attendees will read it and not participate.
  • Leaders must make sure the visual document is shared with all attendees at the beginning of the session.
  • The session should consist of an introduction and an activity on the shared document: e.g. select some parts of the drawing to emphasise the explanation.
  • The rules of the Open space will be applied. Well, your two feet could be replaced by your finger on your mouse.

I shared publicly the xALEc Google Hangouts circle. Please tweet me, @FranckDepierre or use Google+, if you want to join.

See also xalec open space online.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

xALEc - An ALE open space online

Last week, I talked with Olaf and Marcin about the possibility of meeting ALE guys online and sharing ideas and problems. But how could it be done?

Using Internet communication tools for group conversations became a common practice a few years ago. Skype has been mainstream for this purpose for years. Due to its paid video offer for groups, only the voice system is really used.
Google has proposed its Hangout system for a few months with a free video offer for groups. The availability of this function allows everybody to think about free group meetings online. Also, the facilities to use Google Documents in the hangout, provides a full online collaboration framework. Still to come, Google promised, a streaming facility for the people who want to listen to a conversation (on air).

The open space format is finding more and more advocates in a wide range of communities and contexts.
Future conferences will be more a mixture of different flavours. A flexible format, driven by the participants combining traditional sessions, open space, games and social exercises, all planned late or on site. The maturity of the attendees is soaring and soon organisers will probably have to think differently, because the participants will ask to have more power.

Anyway, we cannot attend hundreds of conferences a year, but we can build ways to feed our desire to progress.

So:
  • Imagine, you are at home and you have a little bit of energy to talk about a problem you faced the previous week. It would be nice to broadcast a message and to find friends to exchange with. But people are booked all the time, except maybe Monday night. Also, you would prefer a time boxed exercise, programmed when children are in bed and your stomach is well fed.
  • Imagine, you are in a hotel, a little bit tired, and you don’t want to spend too much time reading articles, but instead having a short sharing session about last week’s trends
  • Imagine, anything that you can propose to your community as a 30 minute subject, that anybody can participate in.

Draft for xALEc

xALEc will start every Monday from the 12th December, at 9:30-10:00 pm CET. Anybody can propose a subject she/he will lead, using the twitter hashtag #XALEC. The proposal can be made anytime on Monday.
If some people agree to participate in this session, its leader will open “a Google Hangout with extras” and invite the Google+ xALEc circle.

It would be nice if the leader started the session by sharing a drawing, a document, his screen or any other media.

I started to share the xALEc circle, so please tweet me, @FranckDepierre, if you want to join.

The rules of the Open space will be applied.
Well, your two feet could be replaced by your finger on your mouse.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Today, speed is the user interface reference

A few days ago, a friend of mine complained about the lack of speed of his products’ user interfaces.
Like many of us, he chose to build his user interface using an abstraction software framework. One year later, his products’ web pages are too heavy and his customers complain.

It would have been nice not to live in a world where the top Internet giants focus continuously on speed. Without these companies, one second to return the result of a web page would be the norm and browsing would be a peaceful activity.
While today, web pages are displayed in less than the blink of an eye (0,2-0,3 second), many desktop applications still seem incredibly sluggish.

When you look at the data presented by Stoyan Stefanov at Velocity, you would understand 2-3 seconds to load a view is still acceptable, if the user is working only with your application.



But, today most users are browsing and searching while using applications at work.
If you listen to Marissa Mayer at Velocity, you will understand that in an experiment where the search results were delayed of 400 millisecond, visitor loyalty slightly dropped.




So in an environment where the reference search tools display results in less than 0.5 seconds, you should really consider it as the reference. The user experience is not only about the perception of speed in your application but also by comparison with others.

You can also consider Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics for Interface Design to think about good design pratices.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Read bead experiment

The "Read bead experiment" was created by Dr. Edward Deming and aim to demonstrate the ineffectiveness (sometimes effectiveness) of the various management methods.
At the end of the experiment, a statistical
graphical tool is used to analyse the experiment's results.
By following this exercise, you will understand that actions taken by the people playing the managers are detrimental to the employees, but after the analyses are shown to have no impact on the efficiency of the process .
The conclusion proposes ways to properly use performance data in a quality environment in order to achieve continual improvement.
The several videos by Fluor Hanford (Steve Prevette) posted below, will help you to understand what is really important in a process.
Meet the  company  with its "willing workers", quality control personnel, a data recorder, and a foreman. All wish to produce white beads using a 50 holed paddle, but unfortunately there are bad quality red beads.
If you are in a hurry, go directly to part5, minute 2:40 of the video to watch the conclusion of the experiment.




If you don't know Dr. Edward Deming, whatch the video below.



Alexis Monville  has published another refreshing video with the same experiment: Expérience des billes rouges (French speaking).



Uodate:
01/07/2011: Published,
11/20/2011: Insert Alexis's video.

Sources:
Wikipedia : W. Edwards Deming
shmula : Redbead Experiment
Discussion Group : Red Bead Experiment
Ayeba : Expérience des billes rouges

Thursday, November 17, 2011

ALE2011 by example



At the beginning of ALE 2011, the program sofa (Oana, Olaf, Marcin and myself) proposed an explanation of the organisation. Please find hereafter the session video and the Prezi used during this session.





ALE2011 is already the past, but every day I learn something new from someone I met there.

Sources:
OlafLewitz : ALE2011—The Story of Organising with a Purpose

Friday, November 4, 2011

Alison Gopnik: What do babies think?

"Babies and young children are like the R&D division of the human species," says psychologist Alison Gopnik.
Take a break, watch this video and then step back. Why adulds are so bad about innovation? Could you build a culture based on these considerations?

Monday, October 17, 2011

Call for speakers to share with our Local Agile community


 During the ALE2011 unconference, a few of us spoke about local communities and ways to improve them through the ALE network.


Hereafter, I tell you about what we are doing in Lyon this year and then ask you how we can share tips and get speakers to come here.


What we used to do
When we started having monthly meetings two seasons ago, we tried to produce slide-shows by ourselves or we took them from the Internet. Then, we presented them to the small group of attendees.
We really understood we were missing interaction with people and also that the core volunteers were getting tired.

The second year, we mixed games and conferences in different ways. But even though the sessions were improving, we were struggling to satisfy all attendees. Beginners felt the sessions were too high-level, and others were expecting more expertise or a different format.

While writing these lines, I feel like we still miss something. Although we want to spread the best AGILE/LEAN practices to our area,, we have to encourage attendees not to act like consumers. Anyway, this year our new model will shake up this mindset.. At least, I hope so.


What we plan this year
This year, the core team is stronger and we had some interesting feedback from a wider range of people.

Apart from the conference we organise with the local JUG team (Mix-IT), we plan to have two types of sessions:

Running thread: For beginners and people who want to improve their skills, we have a full season, running thread session, from the product vision (product box innovation games), to the “Done and Deployed phase”. Organising linked sessions may be seen as a V step model to explain agile, but we haven’t found something else yet except to focus on one category of knowledge in each session.

The full year running thread session:
  • Define your product vision
  • Elaborate your backlog
  • Lean and prioritize your backlog
  • Planning and estimation
  • Daily meeting and self-organisation
  • Definition of done
  • Retrospective
  • Others methodologies and tools

As I’m writing these lines, the second session is over. 33 people met there to play games, learn and share. So, compared with the format of previous sessions, a running thread seems to have more permanent adepts, but we still have a small turnover between sessions.

Expert conference
There is nothing new here, but we aim to have experts to come and speak here for an end of day or Saturday session.
We haven’t defined the format yet, or the type of activities.
That’s where we need help and tips from you.


Please help us improve our skills
I’m asking ALE network today, because this is my community, but everyone can answer and share.
We found a format this year with the running thread where people learn, share and play games. How could we add an additional session every 3 months, that provides content to people with already a good knowledge.

Do you have small conferences, like this one?
If you have a talk ready to be launched, do you think it could be the place to test it?
Are you going Skiing in France this winter? Could you stop to give your talk while travelling to this destination?
Are you interested in visiting Lyon? If so we can help you come here and talk?
Any others suggestions?


Please feel free to post comments.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Scrum introduction in 10 minutes



There are several ways to advertise your products and publishing a video tutorial on YouTube is a pragmatic one.
Have a look at the one below from Hamid Shojaee from axosoft to understand the Scrum roles and artifacts.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Thoughts after ALE2011













Last April 2011, while I was recovering from organising Mix-IT, I kept coming back to the proposal to be an ALE2011 organiser.
While 40 people had already committed, I posted a yes, telling myself, I would only spend a few minutes per week. However, like all the main organisers, I spent a few dozen nights working and collaborating through these Internet tools. I loved it!

By committing to this event, I wanted to:

  • get back into the international scene
  • find practical tips and knowledge related to my professional context
  • organise an international event from home
  • find links from the Agile Lean European community to my local on
These last days, participants, speakers and organisers have already explained (see feedback page), that the main differentiators with any other event, were the attendees’ engagement and their willingness to spontaneously share. For the first time in my life, among the few dozen people I met, I didn’t have to make a single effort with anyone to freely communicate and exchange. I can’t explain if it was due to the common purpose of our presence there, but even the “rock stars” were really pleasant.

Culture in question 
Regarding my professional activity, I don’t think I could afford the pleasure of attending more than 3 conferences a year. So it was a surprise for me, to meet people who attend so many conferences per year. I’m not talking about writers, coaches who need to get this visibility, but developers, scrum masters, managers and product owners. There is a real culture gap, between Anglo-Germano-Scandinavian countries and mine. It seems so easy for them to get an agreement from their companies, to travel to an event and gather knowledge there. The language barrier is still there for French people and it dramatically breaks our capacity to exchange with the experts from the other countries. I hope we will survive this weakness, but after meeting all the brilliant representatives of Mediterranean countries in Berlin, I found that neither language nor the Catholic self-flagellation mindset is the main constraint. This culture debate will need to be discussed next year in order to understand what could be the levers to minimise these issues.

From the outside 
Back home, I’m also understanding the power of flowing content mark with the ALE2011 hashtag. People with an average understanding of the agile/lean principles are astonished by the quality and the diversity of knowledge found in these tweets. One month before the Unconference, I was the first to say that we should cut the wi-fi expenditure to balance the budget and to prevent bankruptcy due to unpaid fees from the participants. Olaf found a much more affordable guerrilla wi-fi and thousand messages were brodcast. I should have agreed, I didn’t understand how much twitter used by a gathered group of hyped adults, could help others to enjoy the essence of the debates.

A learning curve to Berlin 
While this thing was growing, I understood, step by step, all the ideas coming from the brainstorm in Madrid. To be frank, I really thought: why do these guys make things so complicated? In fact most of the ideas and concepts were already in practice by these visionaries, so only a small number of innovations had to be devised.
One tricky point was the participant subscription process, where a first preregistration step was intended to get people from every European country. Then the real registration process started. It worked because Marc spent hours checking and asking people to pay, but we understood this part was too complicated. By reserving 30 seats for the non-represented countries and having a straightforward registration process will make ALE2012 much easier.

To learn more, please have a look at the following concepts:

  • sofa: a conference chaired by more than one person
  • lightning talks: short talks where anybody can be an apprentice speaker
  • open sessions: session proposed by anyone, where you go if you like
  • dinner with strangers: having a restaurant meal with people you don’t know to find ideas. 
Further details are available on the website.

Lastly, as Marcin was explaining in his post, the venue was located 500m from Checkpoint Charlie. This location really emphasised the European idea and it would not have been the same with the wall still there.

I'll talk later about the manager problem and I stil do not know where the hug come from.


Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Who is the agile Product Owner?

In 2011, while agile methodologies are more than mainstream, the Product Owner position is still not well understood or defined. While I’m convinced the “Team engagement in a stream of value creation” is one key factor of agile principles, I can’t find a slogan for the Product Owner.

When you want to learn about agile, you browse the Internet, find the best books to read, find a local community or an active mailing list. If you want to understand the agile Product Owner thing, you have a few ways to learn about this position. To be efficient, the first step is to understand your current context:

Do you work in a project world with:
  • A unique customer who knows his end users and pays for what he specified years ago? Your customer is inside or outside of your company, but the project’s health is yours and your customer’s problem.
  • A customer who defined several bunches of requirements and wants to implement them step by step? Your customer is inside or outside your company and he can decide to change sub contractor at each step.
  • A stream process where your unique customer has a short regular deployment schedule and where all content is evaluated by the end user and the contract can be continuously renegotiated.
A contract definition and a delivery process were deliberately linked in the previous description. But obviously you can also multiply the context possibilities by splitting them.

Do you work in a product/service world where:
  • Your several customers are identified, meet in customers’ conversations, and understand either a stream or an iterative process.
  • You have identified a few customers but do not really know where your market is.
  • You have an idea, but like as a start-up, you do not know yet if the people that you consider as customers will buy your product.
So regarding each situation, the Product Owner skills are different, but there is clearly a difference between a product context and a project context.

There are a few interesting ressources about the Product Owner in a Product Management world.

For example, in his 2008 talk “Product Companies Need Product Managers, Not Product Owners”, Rich Mironov clearly explains that the agile alliance view of the Product Owner is a developer’s inside-out view.

Still in the product management world, an interesting stream of posts have been published following Saeed Khan.‘s bomb: The Scrum Title “Product Owner” must die!"

Backlog manager, Technical product manager, I do not know the perfect term, but these discussions really emphasise the need for clarification.

Custom software supplier
To start from the beginning, a post from the brilliant svproduct blog explains that the origin of agile comes from the custom software world.

“The custom software world – building special purpose software for specific customers - has long been a brutally difficult type of software. This is partly because customers notoriously don’t know what they want, but they have a need so they write a contract with a custom software supplier …”

This notion is really important because making a project for a specific customer who has order something that is different in his mind every day, needs pragmatic processes and people. The agile methods with a pragmatic PO who understands the technical principles and has the ability to interview, exchange, influence the customer, really fits the situation.

In the IT world, customisation for a specific purpose is common. The Business Analyst (BA) is well-known as the person who identifies business needs and determines solutions to business problems” (see BABOK).
So as per this description, this person must be the Product Owner at least in the IT custom software world. But sometimes for a BA, the transition from Traditional Requirements Definition to Collaborative Requirements is a difficult cultural change.

In the software world, a technical person with a great openness or a marketing/sales person who enjoys complexity, are both good candidates.

Independent Software Vendor
Now, if you are an Independent Software Vendor (ISV), with a working software product, you either need to add new features, lean your product or kill it.
When you build a new one, you may follow the traditional product management principles or use the “Lean Startup” ones. But in each case you need to understand the difference between your customers’ needs and those from the market (VOC versus VOM). So not considering product management principles for a PO in an ISV context will drive your company to death. So you need someone with market analysis skills and regarding the size of your company, it could be either the PO, a consulting product manager, a combination of PO and PM, or the CEO.

Source:
Jurgen Appelo : Top books list
Pragmatic Marketing : Product Companies Need Product Managers, Not Product Owners
On Product Management : Why the “Backlog Manager” fits best for Scrum focused ISVs
Wikipedia : Business analysis
Wikipedia : A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge
Agiledad : Agile BA
svproduct : The Origins of Agile
Wikipedia : Independent software vendor
On Product Management : Guest Post: Voice of the Market vs. Voice of the Customer

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Attacker Math 101 by Dino Dai Zovi

Keynote speaker Dino Dai Zovi explains how to think like an attacker.  A really interesting presentation for CSO who need tips to perfom their risk analysis regarding their end point configuration and infrasture design.



Thank you Nicolas for the link.

Source:
trailofbits : Attacker Math 101 « …And You Will Know me by the Trail of Bits

Monday, August 1, 2011

The New rules of Marketing & PR


I like to read books around my professional world and, a few months ago, I bought the well-known book “The new rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott (See previous post).
I don’t want to bash out one more book review here, as many have been found on the web for years. Hereafter, I’ll just give my different steps of perception, feelings and progress, I had during and after the reading of this book.

On my first reading, I was happy to discover the first chapter because I was, at this time, more of a product security software guy, than someone with marketing knowledge. Consequently, I understood that even if this book was aiming to help old school marketers, it would also help me to understand both cultures; print and digital marketing.
When, I returned to this chapter, I stepped back and really felt how much the Internet had impacted the marketing world. And today, when I watch marketing behaviour around me, like spreading content to everybody and finally overwhelming them; I realize how lost people are.

The next chapters present the current situation of the web, with online content, videos, buzzes and social networks. To be frank, on my first reading, I didn’t understand why presenting life on the web was important.
Life, I said life! As an always-connected guy, presenting the context of the Internet was for me, useless content, but is this book really aimed at people like me?

The last part of the book propose some tools and principles to market on the web. At the first reading, I felt it was obvious to implement them. Later, I had to prepare a plan and I really appreciated having such a reference tool.

I was wondering if a transitional book like this, would have a long life? What will a twenty year old guy think about it in ten years?

Monday, July 25, 2011

Mikko Hypponen: Fighting viruses, defending the net

Computer security expert Mikko Hyppönen presents the history of computer virus and ends to the Internet crime. A delightful talk, with pragmatic examples and a focus to what really matters today: fighting online shenanigans.


Source:
Mikko H. Hypponen : short biography / bio

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Evgeny Morozov: The Internet in Society...

Journalist Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative point of view about the Internet impact on politic. After, the Tunasian revolution, I'm sure that digital devices can help, but obviously these are only tools.



Links:
Wikipedia: Evgeny Morozov
Wikipedia: Tunisian revolution
RSA: The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

ALE Network, my first understanding

As I explained in a previous blog post, I feel that trying to progress only by using books, the Internet and our local agile community exchanges does not provide us/me the tools to be really efficient.

A few months ago, Alexandre sent me an Internet link to a group of Europeans who intend to build a network with different goals.

If you read Olaf’s post, you will understand the full story, but the first important event was in Madrid at the XP2011 conference, where more than 30 people proposed a vision of the ALE Network.

That is summarized in the video below.


Utopian?

If you take a look at the ideas, I bet you would tell yourself: there are too many ideas and nothing realistic will happen.

A network the size of Europe seems big to me from a transport point of view. I was thinking myself about making a call this summer, but I was thinking about a closer border. It could be the Franco-Provençal territory first, then its extension would be done step by step. But the ALE machine is in progress and my first opinions are positive.
Today, the ALE Linkedin group is active, twitter #ALE has his bag full of RE-REs, and online conferences named bathtubconferences have been programmed.

Bad opinion
A few mistakes created scepticism.
While many ALE initiators are coaches, writers, or are in the agile star system, a part of the European Agile community are sceptics. I tell you, I'm not a smart guy and up to now I met only great people.
Also, the idea to have a list of people relaying the ALE Network in local groups (communicator) has been opened. After this call the list could be filled by anybody. So some communicators saw their names without having committed to ALE. We have to explain this notion of communicator to the community.

I'm in
I commited to the organisation of ALE2011, Berlin 7-9 September, I’m a lynchpin. As the preregistration is over tonight, we can observe that the intentions to participate is quite encouraging from a diversity point of view.

The keynotes speakers are confirmed:
and the call-for-speakers system will be opened the 15th of June.

Source :
OlafLewitz : ALE network—What’s in it for Me?
alenetwork.eu : Agile Lean Europe (ALE) - Vision & Purpose
Wikipedia : Franco-Provençal language
Bathtub Conferences : Online Talks, Ideas and Visions on Agile
ale2011.eu : ALE2011 Unconference

Monday, June 13, 2011

CARA Lyon Retrospective 2010-2011

The “Club Agile Rhône Alpes” was born in Grenoble and then, its creators helped us, Lyon citizens, to develop a section in our town.

On Tuesday 7th of June, we hold a retrospective of this year’s activities. This backward-looking session also helped us to exchange about our general feelings of Agile/Lean in our area.

Previous to the retrospective, Stephane made a brief introduction of his telecom lab and concluded by asking questions like: How could I teach agile to my students? What is the first step for agile in a research context?
I understood Stephane is interested to be more active in our community. This is great news, because our active group was mostly composed of coaches and industrial profiles. Having a researcher will probably help us to define clearer goals and also push us to review the new research papers in our fields of knowledge. Welcome Stephane.

Romain led the retrospective and proposed the speedboat game to achieve it. We didn’t accurately follow the final steps of this game, but regarding the diversity of feedback we collected, I will probably use it again.

Romain drew a boat on the whiteboard and asked us to show anchors. The boat was not a product but our local organisation, CARA Lyon. We started to display anchors, which slowed down the speed of our boat. Soon, we understood we didn’t know where we were coming from and where we were going to.

Romain drew the departure dock to the right (No agile community in Lyon) and a big question mark to the left of the boat.
I mentioned again the CARA aims to promote Agile/Lean practices in the France - Rhône Alpes area, but this goal was not really understood by the participants. As the session was a retrospective we added this remark to the whiteboard.

You can have a look at the following pictures of the whiteboard if you want more details.



Also, we only identified a few groups of important topics and listed proposed actions. A second session will occur at the end of June where goals and actions must be defined.

While writing these lines, I also have thoughts about Mix-IT. It brings us local visibility but CARA is a mandatory structure for maintaining the sensation of having a sustainable core of practitioners.
Also these social/network exchanges generate pleasant rewards.

Free sessions, paid sessions, budget, content, format - all need to be rethought.
But, I personally feel that we need to have a wider community and a better network. I don’t have solutions yet, but the ALE Network vision seems to have common problems as us to solve.

Sources:
Stephane FRENOT : Stephane FRENOT
Romain Couturier : L'agilité en vrai
Innovation Games : Speed Boat

Friday, May 27, 2011

Mix-IT, my own retrospective

Two months ago, Mix-IT took place in Lyon, and our team (JUG Lyon +CARA) will soon give some feedback about this event.
For my part, I learned a lot. Below are a few points that I want to share with you.

Context
The idea of a conference in Lyon was initiated by JUG Lyon, and then they proposed that we (Lyon Club Agile Rhône-Alpes) co-organise it with them.
For me, Agile Grenoble is the main Agile conference in this region and organising a similar event would be pointless.
Therefore, a combination of Agile content with technical knowledge was a clever way to not tread on anyone’s toes.

Self-organised team
We talk a lot about self-organised teams in the Agile world, but most of the time someone defines the scope of the work. To be fair, Agnes’s (JUG + Jduchess) expertise in event organisation really, made the difference, because she really made sure everything was covered.
For the first time in my life, I saw a group of people in which ideas were generated every day, and were collectively agreed on or dropped without upset.
Then, the ideas were transformed into tasks, and without any pressure people proposed themselves to handle them.

I will really remember the feeling of beeing in a engaged self-organised team. No annoying boss, only pleasure and effectiveness.

Connected. Always
That’s really funny because when I started blogging in 2005, I felt like getting myself up to date - I was in the Internet mood!
6 years later, nobody talks about the Internet as a tool in itself anymore, people are just always connected.
During these conversations, I really understood how common and natural is the use of collaborative Internet tools by young aware people is. Also, for the first time, I really understood the need to avoid the overload of messages. Yes, I confess, I have been a big spammer myself. Collaborative tools are burning out our capacity to work, they need to be used with simple but shared rules. Defined tasks must be agreed upon and the review process must be planned between the co-workers. Others exchanges during the tasks’ progress must be minimised or non-existent.

Collaboration systems and meetings
We tried several collaborative tools and physical meeting places. The conclusion will make you laugh, but we have really been efficient in a Belgian beer bar.

Defer commitment
This expression comes from lean principles and is really a key concept. We never tried to really decide about something if it was vague. It appears that the decision matured in our minds and one day, on time, it was ready. Consequently, we never wasted time during our meetings.

Adapt the rate to the context
From the beginning we all agreed on two main goals: affordable and good quality knowledge.
I really thank the team and the speakers for the quality of the contents. Affordable in this case means: entry could be paid by local people from their pocket money. This is probably different for a conference for experts, but in this case, it was appreciated.

Anyway, the great feeling I have, is to have produced a valuable event with one of the best teams I have ever met.
Thanks guys.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Guy Kawasaki "The Art of the Start" @ TiECon 2006

A few days ago, when I understood teenagers do not know who is Bin Laden, I really feeled that 5 years is a lots.
So I don't wait anymore.  I posted this video which is one of my favorite. A golden oldie!.



If you want to know more about the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint, read Guy's article.

Sources:
Yahoo search Blog : Teens Don’t Know Who Osama Bin Laden Is, According to Yahoo! Search Trends
Guykawasaki : How to Change the World: The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Important things

A colleague posted the following video to emphasize his thoughts about important things.
Do we need a break in our life to understand what is important?


There are a few similarities with Steve Job' Stanford Commencement Speech, where he tells three stories...