Being in Madrid and reading Terry Pratchet

There is some strange magic in this combination. The bustling with live and emotions Madrid can give you its own visual interpretations of the Discworld. It can do so to the almost unbelievable degree when you can find the characters and situations from the book on the very streets you are enjoying while sightseeing.

This city bends the universe around its flamenco, corridas, sun and smiling citizens. Even the basic laws of the universe as we know them are distorted by the extremely powerful atmosphere of this city. The easiest example: do you know what does E=mc^2 transforms into?

E=mucho callor^2

With the Making Money as my bed time reading, my experiences from the day get mixed with the magical world. So, my recommendation if you are reading Making Money is to do so while spending money in the midst of the Spain's capital.

Docupedia

Well, the collaboration workspace, the docupedia project that I spoke about, is now live. If you want to see what the next generation of product documentation is, you can go to

and see for yourself.



As one of the main aims is to let you actively collaborate in editing the existing documentation by applying to it your professional experience, you will be asked to register.

After that, the only way is up ;- )))

Birthday Party and Presentation Preparation

Last week was my birthday. Together with this I watched several in house presentation. You might find entertaining the similarities between preparing for a birthday party and a presentation.

who has accepted you invitation / who will participate
what are their tastes / their background
what is the preferred music style / voice and body language
what do you expect as a present (have you prepared it by seeing information to them on what are your preferences) / did you warm up the atmosphere with information that leaked several days upfront

If you can find more such couples, please do share them with us:

Dying by principles in Bruges

If you want to live by some principles, then you have to be careful what principles you choose. You should also beware what are the exit conditions (to disregard these principles) you define. Or at least investigate thoroughly before applying a principle. Cause if you don't, you are a goner for no reason.

To understand what I mean, you have to watch In Bruges. However I do not recommend you do so if you are in a sensitive mood, or with a girlfriend, wife, kids... you get what I mean. This movie is a step higher than Two Smoking Barrels in blood spill, nostalgia and especially regret.

I still do not get it how the city of Bruges has allowed this movie. I shiver even at the thought of going there, not to mention that I do not want to check neither the city square, nor the cathedral, nor nothing...

On BPM Methodology by SAP

Moist von Lipwig (from the Discworld) knows that if you seek successful operations, you should make your products easy to consume.

SAP knows the same. To speed up BPM adoption, they provide their customers with BPM methodology advices available on an SCN Wiki page. There are also other materials that you might find useful.

On the restrictive side of tribal behavior

Today I participated in a very indicative meeting which demonstrated that tribal behavior can restrict communication and exchange of ideas.

One of the topics discussed was how we, in our department, use one of the company-wide systems. There were many proposals and interesting ideas. What stroke me was the assumption that we should find our own workarounds and then think about the implications they will have on the system and the other users.

I pictured ourselves as members of small tribes (departments) in the vast greatness of a dessert (the company system). Even though we all fight to survive (deliver on time), we devise our own solutions and never take advantage of the economies of scale.

This made me feel sad. We are pretty strong in our knowledge of the system, but apparently quite reluctant to share that knowledge with the outside world. Behaving in the opposite direction to what Seth Godin proposes severely diminishes the chances of spreading our ideas.

Sad but True.

Perls, Tribes and Business Processes

Is it possible to say that the following relations are true:

perfect teacher, perfect student, perfect textbook (as in The three golden pearls)

to

perfect common goal and tribe leader, perfect tribe members, perfect tool or communication media (as in Tribes by Seth Godin)

to

process optimization, process members organizational culture, supportive organization/tools/machinery (as in Business Process Driven SOA using BPMN and BPEL)

?