Read my post on what a backlog is.

On my work bench

The Roots. Lean, Agile, Design Thinking. (M)

Next two in line

Coaching Kata. Repetition is the Mother of Skill. (S)

Northern Star and Design Principles. (M)

Backlog

Lean is counter-intuitive: back to basics and “The Book”. (M)

Space: Double Productivity! (alt: Space is more than just a room!) (M)

Customer Experience Design Principles: How to! (M)

Imagine if… The role of the Customer Experience Manager. (L)

3 Tweets per book. My darlings. (S)

Continuous Improvement: Mailbox or Grass Roots? (S)

Social Media. Dog Attack. (M)

(and collecting …)

Production notes

Jan. 12: “Experience has Economic Value. Bubble Gum.” published within a week. Yeah! First time with pictures – still all in different sizes. What a mess. Haven’t figured out to only show the first paragraphs per post or so on the front page. Next post, I’ll try with video. Need to figure out how to moderate comments, as well. Still holding back with promoting my blog over LinkedIn and or Facebook. Step-by-step. Will be interesting, though.

Jan. 15: “The Amtrak Acela Customer Experience. Hair on my Seat.” published in less than another week! Woohoo. First time with a video. Needed to upgrade for $99 for that. Still struggling with picture sizes and video embedding size an still/cover picture. Also, I strive to find a better balance between amount of content and readability. Step-by-step. My mother promised to deliver a testimonial for “pebble on the beach”. Production/writing times are still high, hoping to get quicker quicker.

March 19: I am trying to find a better “home” page layout, to display my blog post as tiles versus a 3m long scroll-down page. Don’t pin me on that background picture, please. I am searching. It opens that chapter of visual ID, etc. Allow me some time or a step-by-step approach to this. Also, I corrected a couple of typos and learned that this won’t alter the publishing date. Good. And – as promised – there’s that contribution from my mother and from my friend Patric in “Pebble on the Beach“. Next up: “Lions” and looking forward to “Sticky” (as a free download). I am trying to use Jurgen Appelo’s Blog Post Checklist for Great Authors.

March 23: “Experience the Customer. Lions don’t learn to hunt in the Zoo.” is complete, including the review by Nick. I need to figure out how to publish to someone first (Nick) to proof-read, validate, feedback before I publish all the way. I am getting ready to promote my blog. I’ll start with posts targeted to my Facebook friends. Luckily it’s snowing on this Sunday.

March 24: I completed “Agile@Home. Sticky in the kitchen.” in record time (in 2 hours of writing, and 1hr of toe nail biting before sharing it on Facebook) thanks to the lousy Sunday weather and to the motivation to finally go public. 12hrs later I’ve had 94 views. Nice! (That’s  half of my facebook friends…) Writing was quick, as I had this one ready in my mind for quite a while and as its a short post, as well. Embedding the canvas as a PDF to download worked only as a link. Haven’t figured out how to display thumb nail.

March 31: I busted another out “Visualization & Storytelling. A Pig does the Trick.“. In a 90 Min. time box. I had to go back to do some editing (10 mins.). I got a couple of compliments for my blog from my friends. Thank you! Keep coming back, please. And, start daring to comment. I’d love to interact with you, here!

April 1: Another one out in 24h: “Creative Reframing. Dr. House at your Bed.” I tried with more picture material – and a bit less text. Not sure wether it’s clear enough how it links into the overall innovation process. Let me know with your questions in the comment box. Due to popular demand, I have moved up “15 Meanings. Who are you?” on my workbench. That’s how Backlog Management works.

April 2: I am on a roll! Just posted “15 Meanings. Who are You?“. It’s so much easier to write/post, if you know that someone requested the topic and is waiting for it. Eager to hear the feedback. Also, I am learning that you can’t follow this blog unless you register with WordPress. Don’t know what to think of this. Good/bad? I am almost up to 500 hits, yeah, but only have 5 followers (understandably). Ideas welcome. Also, look at my Backlog and let me know what you favor. Again, it’s so much easier to write knowing that it hits a need. Thanks!

April 3: Now “Pitching and Watering Hole. Months become Days.” was a big one. Too big, maybe? But, at least it’s a start into innovation craftmanship. I will have to write a couple of posts that pick up on important aspects. Once I am trouhgh with the most important parts, I could build one page that connects it all in an overview – almost a book :-). I’ll keep that in mind. My blog has 575 hits. Nice! Amazing how many more hits I get, if one of you posts and promotes one of my posts. Thanks! I just posted my backlog on LinkedIn – another first-timer. Let’s see what happens.

April 4: “Green and Red Feedback. I hate String Beans.” just went live. I thought it was going to be shorter, quicker to write. But as I invested into that Feedback Sheet, it turned out to be about as much work as the previous one. So, that’s 5 post in 5 days. Ready for vacation. Let’s see how well I manage to take “off” from “work”. ludens faber, really! Let’s see whether some new dynamics start around my blog, as I have asked friends to pass on the word, if they like it.

April 4: I couldn’t wait to write “Thinking Preferences. Paint the Psychologist.” Have fun! I had. We had. I finally found out how to select the picture that will be featured on the “Home” page. Next to figure out the still picture for the videos that I embed. And, I need to look at these background flowers. My daughter finds them awful. (She’s the only one who gave me feedback on it, though.) I should be getting at “Timeboxing” right away, as it would complete and/or clean up the mess I made with “Pitching and Watering Hole. Months become Days”. But, now I need to go do something, else, really! Thanks for tuning in.

April 23: I wrote “Timeboxing. Get in Survival Mode.” in a bit less than 2 hours (my target for a post). Had a hard time getting back into blogging mode (after vacation and the post vacation buzz). I hope to have cleaned up the most important loose ends around “Pitching and Watering Hole. Months become Days.”. Over 800 hits by now. WOW! Thank you. Also, I looked into signing up and following my blog. You don’t need an account. Just type your email address in the field and click the “Follow” button under it. You can find field/button at the bottom of every page or blog post. I would love you to not miss out on anything I post here. Now, off to decide what to take on the workbench next.

May 2: “Complex or Complicated? The Rubik’s Cube.” was a bit more difficult to write. I am well over 3hrs as well. I could have gone deep, back into my books and papers – but didn’t want to. I had a storyline around the Rubik’s Cube but couldn’t really stick to it to bring my point across, I found out while typing. But that is as well the point of the post, again…. Now, I was wondering what point is coming across. I opted to publish (to find out) versus wondering and trying to rewrite, and rewrite (without finding out). On another note, my hits shot over 1’000 last Saturday. Whoohoo! I celebrated with an orange juice for brunch. Also, my signup followers have almost trippled (haha. Some number sweetening….) We’re at 16. It’s very simple: Just type in your email address at the bottom of each page and click “Follow”. What do I need to do to make you comment, engage in a discussion? Also, Domenic explained me the basics of tagging and I dared posting “Timeboxing” on LinkedIn in the Certificed Scrum Masters group. I think that got me 50-100 extra hits, 4 likes and 1 comment.

May 21: It took awhile but then things fell into place to write “Gemba. Our Office Cat.” in just under 2hrs. Yes! Gemba should collect the views to reach 2’000. The previous post “Complex…” had a massive effect on the views, as I had promoted it in a LinkedIn group with a provocative statement. The discussion it lead to and my intervention not only got it more views, but also more views per visitors. Interesting. Daniela contributed to “Pebble on the Beach“. Thanks! Next up is some tweaking and tuning on connecting my blog with other blogs and some stakeholder management. And then I want to enter the world of “Emotion Curves”. Big one (for me, at least). Let’s see. Ah, and sign up, by entering your email…

June 20: Almost a month since the last blog, but finally “Emotion Curve. The Circus Experience” published. This is a topic very dear to me. A night in Paris with great impact on Swisscom, even years later. Great stuff! I hope you can relate why, when reading it. My view numbers are steadily climbing, I was surprised to find out that they are well over 2’000 by now. Amazing! I keep getting 30-50 views per week. Nice. I need to reshape my backlog a bit, also a friend contributed the idea of guessing my resources by adding a S, M, L to each possible topic. S: 1h, M: 2h, L: 4h. Also, on my todo list: a list of stakeholders to target more specifically. I can’t really get many to sign up for my blog (that is entering their own address). Wonder why? Gotta try to find out. I have failed to find some suitable other blogs to connect with. This blogosphere is just a huge, impenetrable ocean to me, still. And, I am contributing some drops to it even …

August 31: After a summer break, I wrote the post Lean Leadership. How to Foster Fruit Farmers. to get started into the field of Continuous Improvement. I didn’t find it too to difficult to come up with basic content in my head, but found it a lot harder to write, and impossible to stick to my time box and my principle “to publish and then improve based on feedback”. But I finally did push the “publish” button. Now, I can go into more details on methods and approaches that we were able experiment with in our projects.

November 11: Finally, another post Dynamizing Metrics. Boys on Bicycles. This has been the hardest to write in a long time, and I am not so happy with its quality. But I have been tossing it around in my head for too long. My choice was to try to write something useful anyway (vs. just discard it). Let’s see if some readers will find it useful. Anyway, there’s only one way to find out – and then take it from there. In the previous I have managed to add my Twitter feed – but not where I wanted it. So, if anyone has got an idea on how to add my Twitter trail on the home page in the right column, please get in touch with me. Now, I need to clean up my backlog, as I jumped the line with this post.

December 3: A week or 2 ago, I had fiddled around on the layout and looks of this blog – and didn’t report this here. Done. I have adjusted my expectations to writing a post per month. Now, I am early in the month with Flammogramm. Fire up your Cultural Transformation. but I maybe have to consider that December seems shorter than other months. Lots of fun to go back 5 (or more) years, and try to find a story line interesting and short enough to create context on how we used the Flammogramm. I pulled it forward as I had had several interaction off-net that showed high interest. So, my discipline in applying the backlog is a bit compromised, but primarily due to the fact that my “customer feedback” doesn’t come through the comments here, but from face-to-face interactions.

March 19: An extra-ordinary post Scandinavia. LUDENSFABER GmbH, about me founding my own company. Also, as an explanation for the silence on this blog – and of course an invitation to swing by my business website (www.ludensfaber.com). As I had focussed my energy on founding, I wanted to clarify that the background (me as the author) of these posts has changed. I promised myself to get back to a writing routine, again. First thing: update the backlog above. Keeping fingers crossed.

June 4: I am not too proud that I missed out on doing a retrospective on my two posts Value Stream Optimization. Marco the Mechanic. (March 25) and Sleep-deprived? Cheers. (April 3). Business has kept me busy. But at least I got back to writing, and I liked it. I just wrote Know your 3 Brains. Amygdala. (May 30). A post I am really proud of – and I am getting excellent feedback from my friends and network. I am no longer surprised to not get it through the comment box (it’s just not a preference), but just as pleased. Thank you.

Yesterday I spent several hours trying to understand copyright issues when we’re using pictures in our blogs, Facebook, Instagram etc. I learned that I was unknowingly wrong in quite a few instances.

It’s very interesting, takes a lot of time to understand, and a bit scary. Here’s a great blog post by Roni Loren to get you started getting scared and then do better. Roni references Meghan Ward and her blog post on where to get photos for your blog. Also, I got to understand what Creative Commons (CC) does. In times of wanting to share content with others – with creative, collaborative, good intentions -the “(c) all rights reserved” (That you automatically own once you type, draw, save an article, picture or video!) gets in the way. I can recommend their brief introductory video on how the 6 CC licenses address this “problem”.

My key take aways from my deep dive into copyright:

1. The creator of a picture, article, etc. automatically earns the full copyright “(c) all rights reserved”.

2. CC licenses allow to “soften” that full copyright. The idea is to enable sharing and building upon someone’s artefact.

3. You have to own the right to use a picture, etc.. It’s either yours, or you get permission to use by asking the copyright owner or by buying a license (for example to use a picture from a stock photo service). You need to have express and written permission.

4. You can buy licenses to pictures from different stock photo services (like iStock, 123RF, etc.). The standard licenses seem to cover well what I want to do with my blog, and also use the same pictures in presentations, my documentation, on conferences.

5. No matter where and how you get the permission to use the picture, you must always show attribution to the copyright owner. This is usually done by adding “(c) Name”. I’ve checked back with 123rf.com, and according to them it is sufficient to “(c) username/123rf.com” for photos I licensed through 123rf.com (123rf.com is the “middle man”.) versus having to find out the actual name of the copyright owner.

6. Forget about googling for a lion and if you like it, just use it in your presentation. I have now started to clean up, first my blog. And bought licenses to the pictures I use, and/or get the permission to use them. It takes more time and effort, unfortunately. But it seems to me really the right thing to do. I want it that way just as well, with the artefacts I create.

7. I’ve organized my copyrighted photos rather pragmatically and added the “(c) name/organization” directly in the file name. So, every time I used it now, I can just copy+paste it. The license receipts are kept in my email.

8. I have added a copyright note on my blog’s pages. I feel a bit police-y about it. But after my research, it is the recommended thing to do. At least, I tried to adapt the note a bit to not sound too lawyer-y. Check it out at the top of each page.

I am no expert. So, my take-aways are my take-aways, only. No legal advice. They may be helpful, if you’re just as much a rookie, as I am. Hope this helps.

Let’s get creative and share upon each other’s output again, now!

August 19: My train-ride to the airport served me as the time-box. My introductory course on “Design Thinking and Agile Implementation” together with Andreas Erbe (www.launchlabs.ch) provided the content. The feedback from my friends said: shorter posts. The result: “At the Core of Agile. Limited WIP.” I am so out of shape (blogging) that I first wrote/published it as a page instead of a blog post. Gotta come back more to write. Also, I need to take myself some time to stack up my backlog. If you have ideas and wishes, please let me know.