Weekendlink 2021-26

This is my second Weekendlink post with interesting links for you to enjoy in the weekend.

 

Presentation Zen on Zoom?

I’ve written many years ago on my old Oracle blog how important it is to be able to give good, clear presentations. Garr Reynolds’s Presentation Zen blog and book have been very influential on my presentation techniques. I was wondering what he was up to nowadays, apart from the 3rd edition of his Presentation Zen book. Turns out he has some good advise for your next online presentation on Zoom or WebEx.

Dr. Deming and Troubleshooting Agile

Ever heard of the Deming Cycle? That guy, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, has done way more things than just come up with Plan-Do-Check-Act. He was a driving force for how we nowadays look at quality.

Just one story about him: Japan capitulated after WWII and the US took over the country. But Douglas McArthur, who runned Japan like the supreme commander that he was, got frustrated with the lack of quality of goods produced there. So he asks Deming to come over. Where Deming often could not find fertile ground in the US for his theories on quality, Japan turned to be quite different. And the end of the story was that the quality of Japanese cars got so much better, the US car industry got blown out of the water.

I know there must be lots more to know about this man, so when I heard there was a new podcast called Profound about Deming, I was intrigued. Unfortunately the show doesn’t have exactly high production values. Not that this is always necessary, but the sound quality could have been better. And I was more hoping on a show that would tell Deming’s story from the start. But still it has some interesting anekdotes about how Demings work lead to concepts like Lean and DevOps.

On the Profound podcast I heard in an interview with Jeffrey Fredrick about his podcast Troubleshooting Agile. And this is actually the podcast I didn’t know I needed. The last few episodes I’ve listened to were actually more about crucial conversations than Agile alone. I can always use a couple of good lessons of how to approach them.

 

Vael Ouwe bikeride

Tomorrow (Saturday July 3rd) I will be riding the 160 km version of the Vael Ouwe bike ride. It’s a ride through the Dutch nature area called the Veluwe. I will be there, together with colleagues from DIKW, in a nice DIKW outfit.

A few years ago I would consider the thought of a 160 km bike ride insane. But I’ve done a similar ride in May, in the streaming rain, and that worked out pretty well. Also I’m now very well trained. So I expect this to be fun.

 

What I’m reading

Last monday I commuted by train for the first time in .. oh.. 14 months? For me train time is learning time. So I decided to pick up the ebook Data Teams by Jesse Anderson, which I already had in my collection for some time. When I started reading the first chapter, I immediately realized I should have started reading it sooner. It talks about Big Data and why the 3/4/5/10/20 V’s don’t cut as a definition and why big data engineering is so much more complex.

Also, I’ve finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir about which I wrote in last Weekendlinks. I expected a happier ending, but kudos for the surprise.

This entry was posted in Weekendlinks and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *