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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What I Learned • (2) Comments • Permalink

A popular feature of the videoconferencing platform Zoom is virtual backgrounds. This allows you to show a picture or video behind you, transforming whatever bland background you have into a scenic vista. If you have a newer Webcam, either built-in to your computer or standalone, it will easily isolate you from whatever is behind you. However not all Webcams can do this. But with Zoom there is another way to achieve this, by using a green screen.

A green screen, or chroma key screen, is a solid green background behind you that, in simple terms, will isolate you in the picture and put an image or video behind you. This technology is common on TV and in movies, as this is how weather reporters present the map behind them and in movies it is used instead of building robust set backdrops. As my own Webcam didn’t work with virtual backgrounds, I sought out a green screen. What I found, however, was more expensive than I wanted to pay; I am simply trying to leverage this feature while I am in this current work situation. Then is dawned on me, there could be another option – green poster board.

A visit to a local dollar store found options for poster board – light and dark green, and only 69 cents per sheet. As I wasn’t sure which shade would work, I picked 4 sheets of each, all for under 6 dollars. With some masking tape, I was able to hang them on the wall, as shown in the opening photo. Where the sight of this in itself doesn’t look professional, in its use it’s quite the contrary.

Below, without turning on the virtual backgrounds in Zoom, the camera image looks like this.

When I turn on virtual backgrounds, there is a sunrise over Cocoa Beach, Florida behind me.

You may have noticed I used both shades of green, as I tried this when I realized I needed a larger area, and they both worked together. A bonus of this solution is the poster board is made by a local company here in Appleton Wisconsin, Pacon Corporation.

Deconstructing a Low-Budget Green Screen

When a situation changes, it is easy to pivot to another solution and spend to accommodate it without thinking of the short-term vs. long-term cost implications. When I put thought into it, ingenuity found an alternative solution that completely solved the need.

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

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Business • Technology • Thrive • (3) Comments • Permalink

It’s not only Friday, but Good Friday. For those who believe, have a blessed Easter. For those who do not, have a nice weekend!

• If you have videos displayed (or embedded) on your Web site, you may see at the end related videos shown. In many cases, those videos don’t necessarily compliment the video, and you have no control over them. However, I did find this code on the blog of Maximillian Laumeister that can hide YouTube related videos.
• Speaking of videos, for some reason actor George Takei, who played Sulu in the Star Trek franchise, made a commercial for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin’s public transit system years ago. Where I couldn’t find a connection of him to the city, I do know several large ad agencies are based in the Cream City and that could have been the catalyst for his appearance. I have embedded it in the post below, using the code above.
• A product that has been very helpful while spending more time at home. The Dash Mini Maker Electric Round Griddle allows you to cook with minimal mess an egg or pancake with ease. And did I mention minimal mess?
• Another helpful product is the JOOLA Table Tennis Set allows you to easily convert your dining room table to a ping pong table.
• I often remind myself of a quote from the late, great sales guru Zig Ziglar, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly... until you can do it well.” This past week I had the opportunity to pass along this advice to someone who had never heard of it. The quote came up in the context of setting up a personal portfolio site and their concern it wouldn’t be perfect right away.
• I know someone who changed their name from a name that someone else I know changed their name too. If that makes any sense! Out of privacy to both I won’t share the name.
• The blog post I published last week, A Personal Business Dilemma, was actually written over 2 and a half years ago! I found it in a notebook among others that I had written and published. I don’t recall why I never typed up and published it. Perhaps because it was over 7 written pages? I made some heavy edits, but the gist of it remained.
• As shown above, there are some interesting street names in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Hopefully next week’s list will not include anything about snow that forecasted for this weekend.

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

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Thrive • What I Learned • (2) Comments • Permalink

What the hell have I gotten myself into? I was just looking for a place to stay!

These were just some of the thoughts racing through my head as I was white-knuckling the drive to our hotel outside of Bozeman, Montana as part of our family cross-country road trip. We were booking hotels along the way and The Lodge at Big Sky was the closest hotel available to Bozeman, where we planned to anchor our trip to Yellowstone National Park. We didn’t get to Bozeman until sunset, and by the time we went thru the city and towards our hotel it was pitch black – too dark for my liking with trailer trucks coming and going around us. The fact we had no sense of where we were truly heading added no comfort either.

What was in actuality under an hour drive seemed like an eternity, and upon arrival I was drained. Soon after we checked in and arrived at our room, a corner suite with high ceilings and big windows. About all we could see outside at this hour was a firepit on the patio below us. Closing the curtains, I thought about warming by the fire with adult beverages the following night.

In the morning we slowly rose and I made my way to the lobby for coffee. Back at the room we were slowly rustling the children for our day trip to Yellowstone, and I decided to shed a little light on the situation. Fumbling with the curtains until I found the pull rods, in unison I pulled them apart, opening them not only to a bright sunny day but one of the most beautiful natural sights I’ve ever seen.

In awe, I grabbed my phone and snapped the picture at the opening of this post. It is Lone Peak, part of the Big Sky ski resort. Of course, I say this with great knowledge now, but I had no idea where we were heading or what we would encounter once the new day arrived. We bookmarked these views and prepared for our trip to see Old Faithful, and ended up spending another day and night longer to explore the beauty of this area. What was pure chance became a highlight of the journey.

Recounting this story – and this is my deconstruction as well – I am reminded that you never know what will arrive in the morning. Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of stress, but some bright spots as well, as we adjust to events we have no control over. In telling this tale from last summer I am offering hope – to you my fair reader, and to myself especially.

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

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Diversions • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink