Recently one of those inexplicable coincidences happened to me again.

Being extremely busy last month I thought that some ToDo list-like software can help me to keep track of all the things I need to do. I did some search over the Internet and came across MindJet MindManager and decided to give it a try.

The very same day I finally decided that I need to subscribe to Controlling Chaos podcast. And one of the two latest episodes was devoted to ... MindManager! I'm still evaluating the product and so far I like what I see.

This is not the first time when I look at one new thing and magically come across information about it the same or the next day. I wonder what will be the next such coincidental sign of stars.

When I was reading A Conversation with Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore in the latest issue of the ACM Queue there was a passage that really touched my heart of software engineer:

PAWEL JAKUB DAWIDEK At first I just wanted to see how much work it would take to port ZFS to FreeBSD. I started by making it compile on FreeBSD, and once I did that, I was quite sure it would take at least six months to have the first prototype working. The funny thing was that after another week or so, ZFS was running on my test machine. It was truly surprising that the code was so portable; it was self-contained and I had initial read-write support after 10 days of work.

Isn't it really the essence of internal quality of a software system?

You may disagree but to me software product|design|implementation|etc. is great when you get something that you originally did not plan to get. This happens when you do not compromise a single bit of quality of what you do even it is not stated in the requirements. Quality always pays-off, but you have to invest in developing "101% quality" mindset in you team before you get dividends.

This year I haven't had a chance to visit Software Engineering Conference (Russia)although for some period of time I was thinking about writing a paper for this conference. I've attended the first such conference back in 2005 and each year it is very interesting for me to see what they have on agenda.

Looking at this year's conference agenda I'm a bit surprised to see 9 presentations out of 62 delivered by people from one company. It is nearly 15% of all presentations! Looks like organizers had to fill agenda somehow and called out for help. But if we look at 2006 statistics we see that acceptance rate was about 25% I just do not see why they could not select a few eligible papers from other submitters.

Anyway I haven't been to the conference to make far seeing conclusions but this really makes me think twice next year. We'll see.

By a reference from a friend of mine I came to know Shelfari - a service to share and comment on books that you own and love. With this service you can now review My Shelfari bookshelf. Recently I've bought only books I've learned about through references of other people and I hope my references will also help you.

I also hope that I will find some time in nearest future to provide some sort of reviews for books I've read or I'm reading now.

When I came across the Mathematical Fortune-Telling article (article in Russian) the first thing I remembered was psychohistory. When I studied in university theory of games was one of my favorite parts of mathematics and it is amazing to see it in action on such a scale.

When I first got familiar with the psychohistory through one of the books about the Foundations I was really impressed. It took me somewhat around two weeks to read the whole Foundation Series. I think I will take some time to take a deeper look at Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's research. And then probably reread the Foundation Series.

Several days ago I returned from Microsoft Academic Days which this year were held in Yalta. It was the first time I've attended this event and I've delivered two presentations there. On the first day I presented my view on key principles and ideas behind the 4th version of Microsoft Solutions Framework. The next day I delivered an introduction to Microsoft Robotics Studio. You can download these presentations here:

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Revisited
• Introduction to Microsoft Robotics Studio

BTW You can also download my other presentations.

I've already mentioned several times that I absolutely love Advanced Selling Podcast since the first episode I've listened to. One day I said to myself: "If there is selling podcast, there should be project management podcast". I went to Google and found the Project Management  Podcast. I've downloaded a whole bunch of episodes some dating back to year 2006. And I have to say that I'm happy with what I hear so far. One particular merit of the PM Podcast site is Helpful Resources section which references all the books, articles or whatever that Cornelias interlocutors mention during the show.

These days I'm highly into team dynamics and all other questions related to building effective team. So I particularly enjoyed the "Overcoming Team Dysfunction" episode and the following articles that were mentioned:

• Functional and Dysfunctional Teams
• Dealing with Dysfunctional Teams

This was the first time I attended Microsoft Academic Days and I delivered 2 presentations there. In the first I described some of the ideas behind the Microsoft Solutions Framework version 4. I focused more on "mental" aspects of MSF, technical aspects of process support by Team Foundation Server were covered by other speakers. The next day I gave a presentation about Microsoft Robotics Studio. Both presentations are in Russian. Introduction to Microsoft Robotics Studio Presentation (PPT)

MSF Revisited Presentation (PPT)

Somehow (and I would even say magically) when I open Seth's Godin blog the very first post appears to be very relevant what I'm thinking about at the moment. That day it was When you are ready to stand up to speak. And I was thinking about people who have active position and what it means to have an active position.

I came to conclusion that active position is about commitment to your goal and manifests itself by behavior biased towards the goal. This means that you do not wait for John or Peter to come and give you what you want instead you go and take it. And when you stand up to speak you do that because this will get you close to the goal and not because you just need to fill your time with something (or waste your time to be precise).

This really has much in common with the 4th Core Commitment:

Speak always and only when I believe it will improve the general results/effort ratio.

Speaking is not only about the speaker but also about the listeners. When you will be about to stand up and speak next time think if there is at least someone who is about to sit down and listen to you and how your speech will benefit them.

Nowadays (and even many years before) we often hear that this or that technology which promises to allow building fantastic user experiences came out, that new version of this or that application with dramatically improved UI came out and nearly everybody promises more features under "intuitive" user interface.

Recently I happened to witness how users interact with two uncommon types of systems: medical device to test and measure how electric impulses go through tissues and air tickets selling terminal in local tourism agency. I was literally amazed how similar these two systems were from UI standpoint.

Was their interface intuitive? No, not nearly! Medical system had so many different items on the screen with labels I could not even parse let alone understand what they mean. It even did not have a keyboard in usual sense - only about 20 or so buttons. Air tickets terminal stared at the clerk with black screen waiting for him to type in some commands. Definitely not the kind of intuitiveness you would expect from XXI century software, more smells like 1980s. But we've got much beyond that with toolbars, tooltips and context help, aren't we?

Was their interface fancy? No, not really! 80x25 text screen of tickets system and mostly B&W interface of medical system are far from modern standards for UIs with bells and whistles. I guess, younger generation of computer geeks would not even say that tickets terminal has UI - user has to type in mysterious sequences of symbols to make something happen.

Was their interface effective? Oh, yes! With both of the systems users were able to complete required operations with just a few key strokes not wasting the time on moving a mouse, going through menus and so on. If you are able to serve 20 people who want to buy tickets per hour instead of 18 that makes difference. If you are able to diagnose 7 patients per hour instead of 6 it is even more important.

Do you know what I want to say here? Think of how many minutes your software will save for its users multiply that by frequency of use and feel satisfied only when you save your users 3-digit number of minutes per month.