Looking for answers

Last April 2011, while I was recovering from organising Mix-IT , I kept coming back to the proposal to be an ALE2011 organiser. While 40 people had already committed, I posted a yes, telling myself, I would only spend a few minutes per week. However, like all the main organisers, I spent a few dozen nights working and collaborating through these Internet tools. I loved it! By committing to this event, I wanted to: get back into the international scene find practical tips and knowledge related to my professional context organise an international event from home find links from the Agile Lean European community to my local on These last days, participants, speakers and organisers have already explained ( see feedback page ), that the main differentiators with any other event, were the attendees’ engagement and their willingness to spontaneously share. For the first time in my life, among the few dozen people I met, I didn’t have to make a single effort with any...

In 2011, while agile methodologies are more than mainstream, the Product Owner position is still not well understood or defined. While I’m convinced the “Team engagement in a stream of value creation” is one key factor of agile principles, I can’t find a slogan for the Product Owner. When you want to learn about agile, you browse the Internet, find the best books to read , find a local community or an active mailing list. If you want to understand the agile Product Owner thing, you have a few ways to learn about this position. To be efficient, the first step is to understand your current context: Do you work in a project world with: A unique customer who knows his end users and pays for what he specified years ago? Your customer is inside or outside of your company, but the project’s health is yours and your customer’s problem. A customer who defined several bunches of requirements and wants to implement them step by step? Your customer is inside or outside your company and h...

Keynote speaker Dino Dai Zovi explains how to think like an attacker.  A really interesting presentation for CSO who need tips to perfom their risk analysis regarding their end point configuration and infrasture design. Thank you Nicolas for the link. Source: trailofbits : Attacker Math 101 « …And You Will Know me by the Trail of Bits

I like to read books around my professional world and, a few months ago, I bought the well-known book “The new rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott ( See previous post ). I don’t want to bash out one more book review here, as many have been found on the web for years. Hereafter, I’ll just give my different steps of perception, feelings and progress, I had during and after the reading of this book. On my first reading, I was happy to discover the first chapter because I was, at this time, more of a product security software guy, than someone with marketing knowledge. Consequently, I understood that even if this book was aiming to help old school marketers, it would also help me to understand both cultures; print and digital marketing. When, I returned to this chapter, I stepped back and really felt how much the Internet had impacted the marketing world. And today, when I watch marketing behaviour around me, like spreading content to everybody and finally overwhel...

Computer security expert Mikko Hyppönen presents the history of computer virus and ends to the Internet crime. A delightful talk, with pragmatic examples and a focus to what really matters today: fighting online shenanigans. Source: Mikko H. Hypponen : short biography / bio

Journalist Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative point of view about the Internet impact on politic. After, the Tunasian revolution , I'm sure that digital devices can help, but obviously these are only tools. Links: Wikipedia : Evgeny Morozov Wikipedia : Tunisian revolution RSA : The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?

As I explained in a previous blog post , I feel that trying to progress only by using books, the Internet and our local agile community exchanges does not provide us/me the tools to be really efficient. A few months ago, Alexandre sent me an Internet link to a group of Europeans who intend to build a network with different goals. If you read Olaf’s post , you will understand the full story, but the first important event was in Madrid at the XP2011 conference, where more than 30 people proposed a vision of the ALE Network . That is summarized in the video below. Utopian? If you take a look at the ideas , I bet you would tell yourself: there are too many ideas and nothing realistic will happen. A network the size of Europe seems big to me from a transport point of view. I was thinking myself about making a call this summer, but I was thinking about a closer border. It could be the Franco-Provençal territory first, then its extension would be done step by step. But the ALE...