I'm at home for a brief stop between two events that I've anticipated all year.
The Consultants' Retreat and Network (founded in 1997 by my friend Norm K.) celebrated its 10th anniversary year this week. We gathered in Newport, Oregon, USA, once again for a week of unexpected surprises, generous idea-sharing, and the kind of insights into my practice that I've come to expect from the event. Charlie Poole convened it this year.
As time passes, I will discover more benefits from attending, but so far I have a very cool new sweatshirt and a terrific quote from Rosabeth Moss Kanter, "Everything...
I read Garr Reynolds' blog, "Presentation Zen," on presentation design and skills.
Today, it features an excerpt from Bill Clinton's recent speech at Georgetown University.
Reynolds highlights two paragraphs from Clinton's speech.
"We believe in a politics...dominated by evidence and argument. There is a big difference between a philosophy and an ideology, on the right or the left. If you have a philosophy, it generally pushes you in a certain direction or another. But like all philosophers, you want to engage in discussion and argument. You are open to evidence, to new learning. And you are certainly...
Pssst! Hey, look over there. You know, just over there to the right. See the events list? The next "Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills" public workshop will happen Dec. 5-7. We have a few spaces left for folks who want to get good at this "individuals and interactions" and self-organizing teams stuff. Click over there and get more information.
While you're there, notice that the "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great!" first public workshop since we published the book is also coming up soon.
Wow! What a wealth of opportunity awaits...just over there to the right. :->
I mentioned a book in my last posting, Deep Survival by Lawrence Gonzales. I keep finding things in it that seem so relevant to teams and Agile. I wouldn't say that writing software constitutes a life or death activity for the development team, but Gonzales' two "Rules for Life" certainly apply: "Be here now" and "Everything takes eight times as long as it's supposed to" (which he also calls "the friction rule".)
"Be here now" Gonzales translates as "pay attention and keep an up-to-date mental model." In other words, accept and work according to what is, rather than following the plan,...
One of these years I'm going to attend the NASAGA conference. Until I get there, I read Willam Wake's blog to catch a bit of the flavor.
Yesterday he wrote about Bernie DeKoven's session:
"Bernie described Csikszentmihalyi's flow model; with challenge and ability on two axes - too challenging, we're anxious; too simple, it's boring; right on the edge - we may get flow. Flow is characterized by a sense of timelessness, focus, stillness, vividness, oneness.
Bernie has another model to go with it: "we" is on one axis, "me" on another. With way too much "we" or too much...