It’s May!

• An anonymous person bought me a coffee last week using the button on my blog for Ko-fi. Whomever they are, thank you! Since I added the button to my blog a few years ago I have only received a few, so it was nice to see the button still works.
• Google is shutting down the mobile app for its AdSense ad program, replacing it with a Web site. The app was a nice way to see what ad revenue you earned on a daily basis... until ad revenue bottomed out for most people who put ads on their sites. Like me.
• This past week the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers Single-A baseball team offered a Ballpark Dinner To-Go program. The dinner for 4 included burgers, hot dogs, brats, baked beans, potato salad, cookies and cotton candy. It went well with watching A League of Their Own
• Draft Kings, the Boston-based fantasy sports and sports betting company went public last week. It’s great to hear about the IPO of innovative companies, and even more so when a friend works there.
• I never heard of oat whiskey until I bought a bottle of Central Standard Oat Whiskey at Tandem, a local wine and spirits store. The clear spirit over ice was very smooth, and the price was right at $8 for the bottle. As it was a closeout, and checking the distiller’s Web site, they no longer carry it, I have to go back and get what’s left.
• My good friend Alex Ryan and her Evolve Solutions Group is hosting a free Webinar next week titled Changing the way we work: Selling Remotely. If anyone can give a presentation like this it’s her, and I will be on it.
• When I registered for Alex’s Webinar through Eventbrite, I subscribed to the calendar rather than just adding it as an event, something I had never done before. It’s not obvious how to undo this on an iPhone, but I found this tutorial on how to unsubscribe to a calendar.
• The other day I walked on the other side of the street from the main street near my home, as usually I walk on the same side. Low and behold, there’s prose in the sidewalk as shown above. Many sidewalk projects in Appleton have some poetry or verses incorporated in them. I enhanced the photo so you can read it better.

So glad you could join me today.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Recently I gave a “brown bag lunch” presentation on Web Accessibility. For those not familiar with the term, it refers to an informal business gathering at lunchtime where everyone brings their own lunch (thus the reference to brown bag) and one person gives a short presentation followed by a discussion as everyone eats their meal. I have participated in and presented at many of these over the years and they are a fun, casual way to learn and connect with your team.

The audience for this were fellow members of World HeadQuarters, a co-working space in Appleton I joined a few months back. In this case, the presentation was virtual as the space is not open these days. That being said, it was as close as you can get to the in-person experience with about a half dozen online participants.

A Broad Topic In Short Time

How do you talk about Web Accessibility in about 10 minutes, and to an audience that this may be completely new to them? This was my challenge, and I gladly accepted it. I decided to keep it at a high level, not getting into too much jargon while giving the audience information and takeaways for them to explore more on their own.

I’d like to share my presentation here. While there is no recording of me actually giving it, the slides I prepared provide the essentials. The slides are embedded below for viewing from SlideShare, and you can access a PDF of it here.

I welcome any feedback, as well as if this was useful to you. As I look back in on it, I can think of changes and refinements to it, like anything you review after the fact. It was also a great opportunity for me to keep my presentation skills sharp.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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In addition to hearing my long-owned weather radio go off for the first time, there were more positive items and ideas that came before me a little more gracefully.

• The local minor league baseball team is the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, who are the Single-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. Unfortunately they are not playing now, and as a way to raise money, they are offering memberships. But what really surprised me about them is they are a private non-profit that has not and does not take any government funds. To me that makes supporting them all the more important!
• Sharpie recently introduced gel pens, the S-Gel, and I thought I’d try them as a gel-only user. I didn’t like their feel and their performance was not worth their much higher cost as compared to my long-favorite Pilot G2 gel pens.
• My friend Eric invited me to be part of a study group for the famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. As I never read the book, I took him up on the offer to be part of the 8-week virtual program, which started this week. So far I have just read the long intros and first chapter of the book, and it has already got me thinking. I am looking forward to the remaining sessions.
• There are 2 – yes, two – National Tooth Fairy Days – February 28 and August 22. Or numerically they are 2/28 and 8/22. Anyone else see the numbers are reverse of each other?
• I heard of Hanlon’s razor for the first time on Fresh Take, a local radio show hosted by Josh Dukelow that is also available as a podcast. It came up in a segment called The Professors where a history and government professor provide context to news events. I will keep this phrase tucked away looking for a good time to spring it out.
• I have been sending a lot of notecards lately, and I realize that I am licking the envelopes. As this may bother some people I sought an alternative, and found large gold seals will do the trick.
• As I have been spending more time on this blog, I have been re-reading posts and this one, There’s Never A Best Time For Anything, stuck out this week.

Have a great weekend. Yes, the weekend is here.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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A timeout for a little self-promotion as I am proud to announce I am now a Certified ScrumMaster® or CSM. Last week I took a 2-day course and over the weekend I passed the exam from the Scrum Alliance to become a CSM.

What is a CSM?

A CSM is a practitioner of the Scrum. With its origins in software development, Scrum is “framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.” The Scrum Master facilitates the Scrum and is one of 3 roles on a Scrum team. The team delivers software, or whatever the work product is, in an iterative approach over periods of time called sprints, where a sprint can last a few weeks to a month.

There is much more to Scrum, and I will be writing more about it in the future. A good guide to Scrum is called simply The Scrum Guide by the co-creators of Scrum, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, and you can read it at ScrumGuides.org. The definition of Scrum quoted above comes from The Scrum Guide. Among the myriad of books out there on Scrum is Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland that I previously read and wrote takeaways about.

Now what?

One thing that was clear to me from the course is that Scrum is a framework you must actively participate in to gain your expertise. I will be taking a two-prong approach to this. For my job, I will be discussing Scrum with leadership. As well, I will be using Scrum in my personal life to manage my multiple activities and projects.

Just the Beginning

I am excited for this certification. The course and test were a tremendous learning opportunity, and I look forward to continued learning to maintain the certification. Of course more importantly is applying what I learned and honing my skills in Scrum. Special thanks to my instructor Mike Stuedemann and my classmates Ibrahim, Nelia, Nicole and Rod for a fun and engaging learning experience.

Certified ScrumMaster® is a certification mark of Scrum Alliance, Inc. Any unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Agile / Scrum • Thrive • Web Development • (0) Comments • Permalink

The idea behind this series of posts on what I learned during the week is that I’d write on things, topics or ideas presented to me throughout the seven days. This week I had the chance to mix it up a bit.

• Scrum – I took a 2-day course towards becoming a Certified ScrumMaster. It has been a while since I have taken a formal class. Originally the class was supposed to be in-person, but was moved to being hosted on Zoom. I did try to postpone it to a later date as my preference was in-person learning for this type of course, however the vendor made it difficult to do so. In any case, it was a great class, and now onto take the exam this weekend – wish me luck!
• Miro – In said course, there would be a lot of whiteboard work had it been taught in-person. To have a similar experience online, the instructor used a service called Miro, which allows for multi-person whiteboard-like collaboration. There was a learning curve to using it and a lot of stepping on each other, but in the end it generally worked well.
• Timer – When we took breaks during said course, the instructor used a Mac program called AS Timer to track the time. It is a free program, and one I see myself using as a countdown clock to better manage my time on tasks.
• Miasma – my word for the week is miasma, which I picked up from, you guessed it, said course.
• Slanted – Actually in full Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism, is the title of the new book coming out by investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson this fall. It is available now for pre-order on Amazon. I have enjoyed Attkisson’s work and writings and have read and written takeaways on her previous books Stonewalled and The Smear, and I sure this will be equally as intriguing.
• Fifty – Easter is actually a 50 day season, with 10 days after the 40 days of Lent, as said by my priest. Yes, this former Roman Catholic alter boy didn’t know that previously.
• Snow – It’s still falling in mid-April in Wisconsin. So much for the groundhogs.
• Withdrawal – I have a lot of friends who are longing for live sports, and it is driving them to watch past games online. And text me pictures from them. And videos too. These reminded me of once when I watched the 1975 NBA All-Star Game played at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona, after a time when I went down an online rabbit hole trying to remember the name of the arena I had visited in the mid-1990’s. I share the video embedded below, for those longing for the days when basketball shorts were, well, short.

And that’s the way it looks from here right now.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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