It doesn’t matter if you make or sell physical products, software products, or service products. If you’re in “The Other Bay Area” and you manage (or want to manage) a product — a thing or service that you sell to customers to fulfill a need or want — you’ll want to attend this meetup.
This group is for professionals who are passionate about Agile, Product Development, and Product Creation. We connect to share experiences, knowledge, and best practices in Lean Product Development. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting out, this group is the perfect place to network, learn, and grow in the field of product development. Let’s collaborate, innovate, and elevate our skills together!
The hosts will be:
Nisha Patel, Product Manager at RevStar, S&R Candle Company, and 3T Career Institute, as well as a co-organizer of Tampa Bay’s chapter of Women in Agile, and all-round regular at local agile events, and
Om Patel, Enterprise Business Agility Consultant at ClearlyAgile, organizer of the local Lean Beer events, and co-host of the Arguing Agile podcast!
If you plan to attend, be sure to register for it; registration helps meetup organizers figure out how much food to order. And yes, refreshments will be served.
Location note: For those of you who haven’t been to Kforce in a while, the Kforce office is no longer in Ybor; it’s now in Midtown Tampa, a stone’s throw from the Whole Foods.
Notes from my new work notebook. Tap to view at full size.
To me, it always felt that I learned better and retained more if I took notes by hand rather than typing them in, and there’s research that backs up my hunch!
More notes from my new notebook. Tap to view at full size.
The gist of the Scientific American article:
Taking notes by hand versus typing results in more electrical activity across many interconnecting brain regions that handle things like:
movement
vision
sensory processing
memory
It’s slower than typing, which means you have to pick and choose what you record, forcing you to:
prioritize the information you’re presented with
figure out what the main points are
relate what you’re writing notes about to what you’ve learned before
…and that means you’re more likely to stay engaged and grasp new concepts better
Writing by hand means that your motor and memory systems have to work together, which improves your memory of what you’re writing notes about
My new notebook and many colored pens. Tap to view at full size.
As Unified API’s newest member and Supreme Developer Advocate, I have a lot of work ahead of me — and a lot of note-taking. So I customized a notebook from a Scrum software vendor (I can’t even remember when I got it) with Unified’s octopus logo (see the photo above) and have been taking furious notes. As a result, I’m retaining what I’m learning, which is very, very important at this very early stage in the game.
If you’re learning something new, trying breaking away from the computer as a note-taking device, get a paper notebook, and try writing notes by hand! You may be pleasantly surprised.
Haraldur “Halli” Thorleifsson. Tap to view at full size.
Pictured above is Haraldur Thorleifsson, better known as Halli. He founded Ueno, an agency that designed digital brands and experiences for a fine list of clients that included Airbnb, Apple, ESPN, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, NY Times, Oculus, PayPal, Uber, Venmo, Visa, and Walmart. As a result of their success, Ueno was acquired by Twitter in 2021. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Twitter was then acquired by Elon Musk in 2022.
Halli had a problem: he had no idea if he’s still a Twitter employee or not.
Here’s his situation, explained in a tweet made at 3:38 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5) on Monday, March 6th:
Tap to view the original tweet.
About four hours later, Musk replied.
Tap to view the original tweets.
Halli made a very good point there. Musk replied with this:
Tap to view the original tweet.
That definitely doesn’t look legally binding, but what other path of communication did Halli have? He replied, carefully treading the line between providing enough information to explain the work he did and not breaking any non-disclosure agreements. What he did required a fair bit of effort; everything Musk did so far required little or none:
Tap to view the original tweets.
Here are Musk’s responses: an adolescent “pics or it didn’t happen” and the “What would you say you do here?” clip featuring “The Bobs” from Office Space (which, ironically enough, was about working for a terrible boss at a soul-crushing workplace):
Here’s what happened in the end, as explained in a couple of tweets from Halli that appeared a few minutes ago at the time of writing:
Tap to view the original tweets.
Halli was definitely the better person in the conversation, but when Elon Musk is the other person, the bar’s pretty low.
Some notes
What Musk demonstrated in this exchange wasn’t leadership, nor was it management — in fact it wasn’t even decent. It was simply Musk being what he is at his rotten core: an asshole. I’m using philosophy professor Aaron James’ definition from his book, Assholes: A Theory: someone who “allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.”
More irksome than Musk’s behavior is the number of responses by others cheering him on, questioning Halli’s value, or calling for Halli’s firing. I looked at a number of these fanboys’ profiles — and yes, they were largely male — and while many of them liked to portray themselves as independent thinkers and savvy businesspeople, most also appeared to collect a paycheck every two weeks, live vicariously through Musk’s public persona, and their Twitter feeds looked like laundry lists of grievances against “others.”
…I think these readers are tripping on the story’s considerable jolt of machismo. It’s a commonplace that our civilization is soft and sentimental. It’s less remarked that soft and sentimental people — particularly the chair-bound geek variant — often idolize brutality. The actual inhabitants of barbarian eras don’t necessarily share this feeling; they often took pains to appear as refined and cultured people.
There were a few posters for whom this was the incident that caused them to question their admiration for Musk. It might be that this is the first time they could picture themselves in the position of the person having to face off against Musk, instead of seeing Musk as the movie protagonist you’re supposed to identify with.
Stop worshipping Elon Musk. He’s not Tony Stark; he’s Justin Hammer.
If you’re still using Twitter, give Halli a follow and drop him an encouraging line.
Also: Did you know that Halli is Iceland’s Person of the Year?
Haraldur Þorleifsson, known as Halli, has garnered multiple Person of the Year Awards from various Icelanidc media outlets, including from national broadcaster RÚV, Morgunblaðið, and Vísir.
Halli, a 45 year-old designer, gained nation-wide recognition this year when, after the sale of his tech company Ueno to Twitter, he chose to be paid the sale price as wages. Normally in such large sales, the payment comes in the form of stock or other financial instruments, which categorize the sale as capital gains, meaning it is taxed at a much lower rate. Halli, however, gladly paid the higher tax rate, having spoken publicly on many occasions about the benefits he has received from the Icelandic social system.
Halli was born with muscular dystrophy and came from a working class background. In statements about his decision to pay back into the Icelandic social system, he cited both healthcare and education in Iceland as keys to his success. Notably, he was one of the highest tax payers in the nation after the sale of Ueno.
If you work on a team that produces software, and especially if it’s supposed to be an agile team, do yourself a favor and check out Arguing Agile, the YouTube channel and podcast produced and presented by Tampa Bay’s own Brian Orlando and Om Patel.
@laugh_track_nat: For those that work remote: What are the pros and cons?
@SayitAintSooph: Pros: sleeping in, showering on my own time, no traffic, peace and quiet, running errands in spare time, taking my life back, not being overly tied to my work
Cons: people making up articles about wanting to return to office
On this episode, Brian Orlando and Om Patel talk with Sr. Product Owner Anitra Pavka about her experiences across the software development and agility field – from Web Developer, to Business Analyst, to Scrum Master and Agile Coach, to Product Owner/Manager and beyond. …and BEYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOND!
Anitra has been a regular on Tampa’s tech scene since 2011, and chances are that you’ve seen her at a local event — perhaps at one of our local agile or UX gatherings, or at the Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer meetup, which she co-organizes. She’s a Senior Product Owner at Deque (pronounced “D-Q”) Systems, creators of the axe line of tools for measuring and monitoring the accessibility of your sites and applications.
You may often see me hanging around Anitra, but there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation: I’m married to her. We met at BarCamp Tampa Bay in 2011, which makes us the prime example of why you should attend tech events here — you never know what’ll happen!
About Agile Podcast
Agile Podcast is Tampa Bay’s own video podcast on all things agile. Host Brian Orlando — often with co-host Om Patel — are joined each episode by a professional in or around the agile space for unscripted conversations about getting work done in an agile way. In one year, they’ve put together almost 60 podcasts, and they’re worth checking out whether you manage or are in an agile team!
