Essential Links in September 2023
When the leaves turn red and brown it is a wonderful time to be outside. The days and nights get colder and although it feels kind of sad to say goodbye to summer I love wandering in the woods in fall. I love long board game nights and the (presumably) last barbeque outside. I love surprising days with warm sunlight and the early day fog moving over the fields.
I will be travelling quite a lot in October. See you out there! 😉
People on the Intarweb
Airbag Industries
I have been following Greg Storey's blog for half of my lifetime. During my early phase going into web development, he was an inspiring voice when it came to design and ux - and he still is today. In his post "You can only work for people that you like he references a talk on work, his life and experiences by Milton Glaser and adds his own reflection.
Bruce Lawson
Bruce Lawson is another influencing person when it came to web standards, usability, user experience and thoughtful decisions in design and I still follow his writings. I was honored when he interviewed me after my talk Making things simple is ... complex on the nightly build conference in 2016. Unfortunately, by reading his blog was how I got notice that Molly Holzschlag left us. I still own her books and am grateful for her uncompromised work towards a better internet.
Manuel Moreale on data
Manuel confirms his disinterest in other people's data and he is writing from the bottom of my heart. I mean, I love people visiting my blog and find something interesting or inspiring. I love it, if they hook me up on Twitter or linkedin just because of that. But I do not want their data. Maybe there comes the time, where personal data is not a currency anymore.
By the way, a simple test to find out if someone is toxic is to check whether you feel energized or drained after you spent some time with him or her. You should avoid toxic people.
Product Management
- Great teams with the right mindset create an exceptionally committed product management. Here is Roman Pichler describing how you create them.
- Plan less, achieve more is what Johanna Rothman reflects about. Great post on why you should reduce your planning effort.
Software Development
- Ever since I started moving into agile software development practices I wondered, how the concept of efficiency fit into an outcome oriented thinking. You may be efficient as hell, but it does not guarantee any outcome. If you are still on the left side of the Wardley Map, effectiveness will not help you. Uwe Friedrichsen breaks down Efficiency vs. Effectiveness in his blogpost.
- Just a few days ago, Kent Beck and Gergely Orosz went against McKinseys bluntly plagiarized developer efficiency measurement. Now Gergely gives us some details about How Microsoft did QA back in the day. Great read to understand why the gap between development and testing vanished.
- Sebastian Greger writes Kirby plugins - and he comments on building and using comment forms to collect data or how you do it the right way
HTML & CSS
- A great overview over page layout implementations and their variants
- The design principles of the UK government
I wish all of you a great start into the golden season. Go out into the woods, breathe fresh air, take beautiful pictures, hug your loved ones!