View source for people

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A while ago I was watching Mr. Robot. There's this great scene where Elliot (played by Rami Malek) is talking to himself and asks a very interesting question:

“I remember when I was a kid, I got into web design by ripping off sites I liked. All you had to do was view source on your browser and there it was, the code. You could copy-paste it, modify it a little, put your name on it, and like that, it was your site. View source. What if we had that for people? Would people really want to see?”
— Elliot in Mr. Robot

Zoals verwacht loopt alles anders

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The goal of this blog was to post more things that interest me (hello 9 month hiatus đź‘‹), improve my thinking process and write in English.

But the title is just too good in Dutch to leave it out. In English it would translate into something like:

As expected, everything turns out different

Plan 2016

At the end of 2016 I had a pretty good idea of what 2017 would have in store for me: the biggest personal project being our wedding (it was beyond awesome!). Work related I had a rebuild project of one of Elision’s oldest clients and had a pretty good idea of where I would like to go with my career within the company.

I didn’t have any other big goals in mind and would see where 2017 would take me. So far, 2017 is a year full of great surprises!

On a personal level

These things “just happened”:

  • joining a working group of ’t hART which is researching (symptoms of) burn-out within Generation Z (7-25 year olds now).
  • quit spinning/indoor cycling and replace it with crossfit. Yes, it’s as addicting as people say it is.
  • next to my weekly futsal game, I also joined a team that plays “cafĂ©voetbal” on Sunday AM.

Career wise

I’m not entirely sure what’s different this year, but I guess I’m saying “yes” to even more stuff than I used to. This is creating awesome new opportunities.

A bit unexpected, I got in touch with the wonderful people at madewithlove. After talking and meeting with Andreas and his colleagues, it became clear that I shouldn’t let this opportunity slip. As of 16 August, I will join their team as a Product Manager! I’m super excited about this!

2017, I love you already, let’s make the rest of this year awesome as well!

Be the type of person you want to meet

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I've had this screenshot on my desktop since 1 April 2016. It's taken from the Momentum extension for Chrome. Each day, it gives you another image and quote when you open a new tab.

So why this screenshot?

Last Friday I was talking to one of my best friends about how people seem to behave differently when you change job titles. Why is that? It's just a title, the person behind the title is still the same one you talked to yesterday. Yes, responsibilities might change and in a hierarchical organisation (yuk!) your relationship might change. But those aren't good reasons to behave in another way than you did before.

I take pride in being the same person day in, day out. I'm no different at work, than I am with family, friends, clients, strangers,... What you see is what you get! ;-)

To me this seems like the only way to stay true to your values and be authentic.

What person do I like to meet?

I like to hang out with people that:

  • are ambitious
  • are full of energy
  • radiate positive vibes
  • are happy
  • give back
  • keep their word

Next time you see me failing on any one of these, tell me, otherwise I'm not the kind of person I'd like to meet.

So how about you? What kind of person do you like meeting?

Hasselt Lean Coffee

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On Tuesday I went to the Hasselt Lean Coffee Meetup at the Corda Bar (Hasselt). It proved to be a great evening with some smart people.

What's Lean Coffee?

It's a nice way to connect with likeminded people and discuss topics in your field.

From the Lean Coffee website:

“Lean Coffee is a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting was democratically generated.”

What did I learn about?

  1. The concept of nemawashi: in our discussion it centered around changing a company's culture. You can't just pull the company from it's current culture and drop it into a new one. It takes some careful digging around the roots, before you transplant the tree.
  2. Coworking location Seats2meet: the idea is that you can book a workspace or meetingroom and share your knowledge with other people in the building. You can see what everyone in the building has to offer, and meet up for an informal talk and share some ideas. They only have one location in Belgium (if I'm correct), but it's definitely something I want to check out when I'm in the Netherlands.
  3. A lot of angles/concepts in how we approach agile working. The topics I proposed where: "How to approach Product Ownership at the client's side?" and "How to teach agile to people without prior knowledge or people just coming from school?"

When's the next meetup?

The next Hasselt Lean Coffee will be held on Tuesday 6 December 2016 - 19h00 at the Corda Bar (Hasselt). If you want to join, make sure to RSVP on meetup.com

Thanks Wim Bollen and Tim Pijpops for organizing these meetups, I'm definitely attending again.