Gearing Up For Stoos Stampede 2012

Friday, July 6, and Saturday, July 7, I'll be attending the Stoos Stampede 2012 at De Rode Hoed in Amsterdam.

One of my favorite quotest from Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO of GE, is "An organizations ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage."

The Stoos Communique agrees, and states that organizations can become learning networks of individuals creating value and that the role of leaders should include the stewardship of the living rather than the management of the machine.

I have been using the Jack Welch quote as a tagline in my email for over 10 years. It has taken me at least as long to grok its real depth and truth. It has taken me a decade to move from learning from books and courses, to learning from anything and everything. To move from process improvement to system improvement. To move from work-life balance, to just balance. To move from being a true professional, to being authentically me.

Seems a bit vague right? Maybe a little example will help. About a decade ago, I got myself a nice podcasting rig, and started recording stuff. Nothing special, just me talking about things that matter to me, not unlike keeping a spoken diary like they do in Star Trek. It reminded me of how, as a child, I recorded stuff on an old tape recorder that I requisitioned from my dad. I didn't publish those recordings. The idea was to get some practice before launching my project management podcast. Then, I changed jobs and procrastinated the hell out of my rediscovered hobby. But lessons are repeated until learned, so recently, I got the recording bug again. This time, to make sure I mash-up my passions, I've made sure to immediately volunteer my recording services to anyone. First up, the StoosCast!

A week from now, on July 9, I'll publish the processed audio files from Stoos Stampede 2012 right here on this website as two podcast episodes.

After the StoosCast, I intend to revive the Xebia Podcast, and offer my services to lean/agile conferences to make sure I follow through this time. Also, I intend to start recording stuff at some of my client's in-house events.

So, how does that help me grok the Jack Welch quote and the passage from the Stoos Communique? The revival of my field recording hobby, is but an example of a trend I'm spotting in my life and some of the people I meet professionally. The trend is to approach work and other stuff holistically. I've always loved reading, recording, broadcasting, writing, and drawing. But somewhere along the way in my professional career, I stopped doing those things because of self-imposed rules and time-constraints focussing my efforts on other forms of, mostly professional, development. Now, I'm (re)integrating those passions into all aspects of my life. And I'm having a lot of fun doing it!

UPDATE 20121010: My month-long trip to the States, followed by a full-immersion return to work have so far prevented me from editing the audio I recorded at Stoos Stampede. In case you're wondering: Yes, I am still planning to publish the finished files. Probably by the end of this month...

UPDATE 20130216: Finally got round to scrubbing, editing, and uploading the Stoos Stampede interviews.

The Sudden Death Of My iPhone

Today, my iPhone suddenly got hotter than usual and drained its battery within four hours after being fully recharged overnight. I thought nothing of it, but when I got home and tried to recharge it, a message was displayed stating I should restore the phone using iTunes.

A bit annoyed at the inevitable loss of all my data, but otherwise not worried, I went about restoring my three month old iPhone 3GS 32GB. And failed. Three times.

Every time I ran the restore it ran, slowly but surely, all the way up until the end of the progress bar on my iPhone. Only to return the message in iTunes "The iPhone 'iPhone' could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (1002)."

At first, I thought it might have something to do with the firewall. So I turned it off. But turning it off had no effect.

Then, I created a new Administrator account with a fresh copy of iTunes and unplugged all peripherals except the iPhone cable. Still no effect.

So now my iPhone is dead and I'm effectively phone-less, sad, and sorry I bought a phone that lasts for three months with a two year contract. I'll take it to the T-Mobile store tomorrow where I fully expect to be charged €50 for them to tell me they can't help me either.

Up until now, I was such an Apple fan-boy my cognitive dissonance took care of issues like flaky connectivity and short battery life. But now the phone has stopped working altogether it finally dawns on me: the iPhone is a beautiful wanna-have piece of technology that sucks. Big time.

And I still have to pay for it for another 21 months... Yay!

My Favorite iPhone and Mac Photo Apps

I had lunch today with a friend who's a bit of a photography-nut (which is a Good Thing mind you) so naturally we ended up discussing iPhone photo apps. He recommended CameraBag to me to do some sweet image post-processing on the iPhone. Trusting his judgement, I downloaded it as soon as I had a chance to, i.e. ten minutes after lunch. And it rocks! With CameraBag, you can add filters to you photos before you upload them or send them. It's a simple and fast way to improve you plain vanilla iPhone pics.

Of course, using CameraBag got me thinking what else I'd been missing out on so far. After some googling and review reading, I've come up with the following must-have iPhone photo apps in addition to CameraBag:

• Photogene, for on-phone editing and filtering beyond CameraBag.
• ColorSplash, which lets you quickly and easily give photos a dramatic look by converting them to black and white, while keeping your chosen details in color.
• AutoStitch, a fully automatic image stitcher for the iPhone.

Of course, I do most of my post-processing and editing on my Mac. For that, I use Photoshop Elements for post-processing of RAW files and correcting stuff like lighting and red eyes, Pixelmator for all edits I can't do with Photoshop Elements such as advanced filtering, and Photomatix for creating HDR images.

And now, let's go take some photo's...

UPDATE 2009-10-16: In addition to the aforementioned iPhone photo apps, I've completed my collection with the following apps:

• Darkroom, for taking steady shots.
• Photo fx, to complete my set of filters by adding everything but the kitchen sink. I don't need all of this, but boy do I want it!
• TiltShift, simulates a tilt-shift lens that tricks your mind into viewing a photo as a miniature scene like a model railroad for example.

Saving up for a Flevobike Versatile

After a rather heroic commute last Friday on my Fietsfabriek transportbike from Dordrecht to The Hague, I'm seriously considering doing that more often. Intrigued by reclining bikes, I googled some this weekend and have selected what I think is an excellent commuter bike: the Flevobike Versatile.

Looking for resellers of this bike brought a smile to my face. As luck would have it, there's a reclining bike specialist right around the corner from where I live. So this weekend, I think I'll pay Maia Ligfietsen a visit.

Hanlin V3 eReader rocks!

Today, I treated myself to a Hanlin V3 eReader from PDAShop.nl, and man does it not suck! It totally rocks, displaying my entire library of ebooks, including some old copies of Crosstalk and Soundview summaries. It even displays the content of the Powerpoint presentations I accidentally copied over to the SD card.

The only thing I don't like is the crappy way the SD card slot is manufactured. It works allright, but when you want to remove the card you have to really pick it out with your finger. It doesn't do a satisfactory click-and-slide thing like most SD card slots.

Update Saturday, March 21, 2009: The SD card slot issue somehow miraculously disappeared today. I wanted to take out the SD card to put it into an external card reader, forgot all about the aforementioned card issue, and low and behold: it did a satisfactory click-and-slide-thing!

My new job?

A friend pointed out to me recently that, as jobs go, the newly created position of Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef might quite possibly be the very best job in the world. Reading the site, I have to agree. Check it out at http://www.islandreefjob.com.

Agile Beerfest

20080615118, originally uploaded by laurensbonnema.

Last night, Guido and Romina came over to catch up and taste some good Belgian beers in our favorite hangout, Café de Tijd in Dordrecht. As always, putting Guido and me together resulted in a buzz of ideas, lots of laughter, and a cavalier disregard of moderation. We kind of maxed out every aspect of the evening. So now, I'm a bit of a zombie.

New Bike

Monday, I bought myself a new bike. Seeing as I'm a rather heavy dude, a transport bike seemed like a good idea. Google told me that the best Dutch transport bikes are made in Amsterdam in a shop called de Fietsfabriek (Dutch for the bicycle factory). So I went there and ordered myself the exact same bike depicted here. It's called the Aty, and it can take 20 kg on the front rack and 80 (!) on the back and carry my weight without buckling. And yes, it will actually have my name in the your name here spot! I can hardly wait till it's ready. So far, service at de Fietsfabriek has been impeccable. I was treated as if I came in to order a new German car. I was encouraged to test-drive at least two different versions of the bike before buying, and even though NBC and AT5 were lined up to shoot some footage at the store, I was attended to as if I was the only customer in the store. Update: Tuesday, July 10, 2007: Whoa! I went to Amsterdam yesterday to pick up my bike, and man what a bike! It's solid, massive even. Yet it handles like a lightweight bike. Not even the rain pouring down on me could wipe the grin off my face as I drove back to Amsterdam Central Station. My wife immediately dubbed it "The Hummer of Bikes."

Alke & Jurgen's wedding anniversary

20070527049.jpg, originally uploaded by laurensbonnema.

This weekend, we went to Alke & Jurgen's wedding anniversary at their house in France. What a party! We laughed and drank till we dropped for three days straight, made new friends, and took some pictures.

Trip to Barcelona on Flickr

Nienke, originally uploaded by laurensbonnema.

A few weeks ago, Nienke and I went to Barcelona for a short break. I've uploaded some photos to Flickr, and found an interesting option to post images found on Flickr to a weblog. Let's see if it works!

Another try at blogging

I have had a lot of blogs over the years, but always enjoyed tinkering with the technology behind them more than actually writing something. This then, is another try at blogging: a simple to set-up Blogger template hosted at blogspot. No technology to tinker with, just content to write. Let's see what happens next.