Flow Focused

2026 Year In Review

Tracking what I've done in 2026

Alternatives to American Services

A comprehensive directory of non-US tech alternatives to promote digital sovereignty.

A Catalogue of Problems

Looking at the different kinds of problems teams face.

2025 Year in Review

A look back at what happened in 2025

Building Team Flow Mapping

How I built the teamflowmapping app.

Decision Making as the Source of Problems

Expectating leaders to all be expert decision makers is the source of many problems.

Getting Started with Your Digital Garden

Learn the basics of maintaining a digital garden and how to use this template.

My Emacs Writing Setup

How I've configured emacs for the goal of writing

Kanban and Pulling Out Agility

Stop Blaming Teams: See the System

Problems are typically predictable outcomes of flawed organizational systems and project structures

AI Transformations Are Hard-Agile

AI requires the same organizational agility, decentralized decisions, and cultural shift as Agile.

Maximize Productivity by Minimizing Context Switching

Transforming Agile Practices with the Kano Model

People Are the Heart of Any Practice

Unbundle the Value

From Big Bang Projects to Iterative and Incremental Development

Favourite Things

My AI Learning Journey

Just Do Something Different

We Don't Know

Beyond Practices: Behaviours and Goals in Agile

Focus on behaviors like improvement and collaboration. Practices are secondary.

Achieving Agility Through Strong Mechanics

It's easy to copy the idea of what to do. It's much harder to actually do it.

The Hidden Costs of Over-Collaboration

Avoiding Agile Must-Dos

Agile means adaptability, not rigid practices; focus on outcomes over process compliance.

Making Progress Through Questions

Starting Agile With Retrospectives and Continuous Improvement

Drift to Waterfall

One-Time Efforts

9 Golden Rules for Agile Teams: Principles to Improve Collaboration

Some universally applicable guidance for Agile teams I've found helpful.

How Agile Coaches Can Empower Teams To Deal With Uncertainty

Avoiding the Practice Trap: Fostering Genuine Agility

Foster agility through mindful problem-solving, experimentation and continuous improvement.

Using Culture as a Lens to Solve Organizational Challenges

2023 Year in Review

An overview of my accomplishments in 2023

The Team Dependency Matrix

Creating Focus Through User Needs Mapping and Core Domain Mapping

Just Enough Kanban

Mapping Options Using a Risk-Value Matrix

Experimenting With Controlling Cycle Time Instead of WIP

Don't Write User Stories, Tell Stories

The Power of Predictable Delivery

Manage the Value, Not the Work

Avoiding The Pitfalls of Cross-Functional Super Teams

Cross-functional teams good, but avoid super teams; use enabling teams to reduce cognitive load.

An Agile Alternative to “Fixing”

Instead of applying one-time fixes, empower teams and manage constraints.

Where Are The Problems?

Rethinking Retrospectives

Why Work Waits

Running, Falling, and the Core of Agile

How I Use Scrum to Teach Agility

My Agile Sketching Experiment

Revisiting the Guidance on Cross-functional Teams

Miroverse Template: Squad Health Check

2021 Schulich MBA Agile Presentation

The slides and an overview of a 2021 talk I delivered to an MBA class about Agile

Making Change Where Change is Possible

Empowering Teams Instead of Telling Them What to Do

Test-Driven Goals: A Scalable and Effective Pattern

South Korea, April 2023

2022 Recap

A recap of my accomplishments in 2022

Starting a Wardley Map with a Mental Model Diagram

Learning Agile with ChatGPT

Turn Jira's Control Chart Into a Lead Time Scatterplot

Comparing and Remixing the Gemba Walk

Quick Jira Control Chart Aging WIP Hack

Snapshot: Introducing Ready Options to a B2B Service Team

Boards of Canada - Reach for the Dead

Facebook Home

Real-time Brands

Ulysses 3

West Toronto CrossFit Featured on BlogTO

2013 CrossFit Open Recap

A recap of my performance and experience participating in the 2013 CrossFit Open

Tekkonkinkreet City

Facebook is Like a Chair… That Confuses and Surprises

A Quick Look at the Surface Site

A short critique of the Microsoft Surface website.

Social Media Without the Tweets and Check-ins

Success for the Mobile Context

The Social Story of a Brand

Mapping the Brand Story

Each Platform Has its Own Story

The Purpose of Each Platform

Use Stories to Affect Stories

How Customers Engage With a Brand's Story

Story Gets Us to Emotion

Customers Create Stories for Every Interaction

The Reason for Innovation

Basic Business Metrics

Research & Insights Into Stories

Stories and Understanding

Media Tells Stories

Stories = Understanding the World

The Mobile Context

Story Makes it Relevant

The Social Context

App as Digital Proxy

A Network of People, Devices, and Things

Future Stories

The Evolution of Story

Digital Strategy

Digital Strategy & UX Strategy

A sketch depicting the difference between digital strategy and UX strategy.

User Experience Strategy

The Digital Strategy Process

iOS's Disposable Games

Paleo Mode

Twitter’s Inevitable Consistency

Four Platforms That Are Changing Writing

The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance – Marco.org

iCloud Storage: Many Shallow Ponds

What's Next For The Mac?

Immersive Apps vs Immersive Content

From Searches to Apps to Siri

It Works Just Like Your Phone

The New Outlook.com

Designing A Better Email Client

Splitting the Social Network for the Best User Experience

The End of the PC Manufacturers

Uncovering the Compromises of Metro Style Apps

Putting Metro on iOS

Analyzing The New Mac Ads

The Desktop Is Done, Think Like iOS

Designing Metro Apps on iOS

What Has Microsoft Learned From Metro?

The User Interfaces of CrossFit and Paleo

Understanding OmniFocus: Attention

RIM Honestly

Re-Reading

The Most Enjoyable Reading Experience

Daily Photo Logging with Google+

Three Years of GTD and Things

Improving How I Use Evernote

Clear and Paper

Using More of Apple's iOS Apps

Paper by FiftyThree

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Clear from Realmac Software

It's All For Happiness

A Better Facebook Won't Help You

Brands Faking Human

None

Om Malik's 10 Years of Blogging

Gamification Must Be Addictive

A Brand Is Not Your Friend

Although brands can help fill a need and provide relief, they're not real; prioritize real people and quality products.

Shut Up and Take My Money!

Why Can The iPad Be Frustrating?

Making Media Easier

Email Declining

My Initial Experience With iCloud

Thought Process

Advice to Writers by Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut's 7 writing tips.

GameStore

2011 Accomplishments

My personal accomplishments in 2011

CrossFit Update

Publishing Markdown

Because The Market Needs Non-Value Creators

PayPal's One-Stop Flop

Getting Excited About Computing

Papercut

The Platform Owners Are In Control

Compromise

An Office on Every Surface

Which Platform Is For Creating?

The End of Failure

How the iPad Shattered The PC

My Problem With Anti-Social Networking

What Text Editors Tell us About Apple's Ecosystem

Where's The Innovation?

Give it Your Best Shot

Only The Hard Stuff Matters

Refining The Innovative And The New

Day One and Learning to Journal

Learning to Trash It and Start Over

Making Products Last

The New Air

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Plattan Plus

Coffee Hop: March 20, 2011

Blogging and Toastmasters

The Prize of Attention

Making

The End of the Feature Economy

The Future of Real-time Chat and Beluga

Put it Down

Being Real About Tools and Work

Thinking About Technology Innovation That Sticks

A Recap of 2010

A short list of my accomplishments in 2010.

The Value of Tablet Huddle Experiences

F the File System

Get Into a Better Routine

Blogging to Push Ideas

How Evernote Made Remembering Everything Simple

Getting a Slight Idea

Reeder for Mac a Sign of Things to Come

Introducing BM Stack

More Focused Writing With OmmWriter

The Importance of Work

Phones That Feel Like Magic

Diluting Brands in the World of Smartphones

Don't Let the Interruption Become Your Focus

Slap On Social

notepad table is a table that is also a notepad. WANT

The Newness and The Promise of Windows Phone 7

Innovating For a Windows Tablet

Going Nowhere Without Mobile

This Virtuous Circle

The Whole Thing

As Tumblr Changes From Platform To Network

Tumblr is evolving from simple blogging platform to social network.

Start Small

Gowalla

Models to Focus Your Thinking

What happens when all search becomes instant?

Ruthlessly Reveal

Searching for Focus | Ryerson Digital Media Zone

1 Window

Having only a single window open increases focus but creates discomfort; It takes practice.

Pomodoro Everything

Repeated Focus

Attention to Detail Versus Features

Apple's attention to detail wins compared to competitors' feature lists.

Your Ideas And Blogging the Crap Out of Them

Optimal Connections

Trying to Find the Smaller Conversations

When Identity and Blogs Don't Mix

Create Share Consume and Organize

Flipboard

Where I Learn I Suck at Reading, But That's OK

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Something Routine

Best to Wait on Ebooks

Virtual Bookshelves Are a Pain

The Better Tech Conference Survey

Drumbeat and Project Orange

Drumbeat The Open Web Lens

Drumbeat Will The Internet of Things be Open?

Drumbeat Models for Discussion on the Open Web

But What Do You Do?

Malcolm Visits the Zoo

Desktop Mouse Movement

What The Heck Makes Tumblr a "Designed" Company

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Real Virtual-Neighbours Are The Best Kind

Why Do Location Sharing?

Reblogging - Not So Much

Share Your Data

The Sandwich Rebuttal

Christmas Turkey!

Back. With Style No Less.

Ryerson's Digital Media Zone

Pomodoro Timer by Navel Labs

Notes from Gary V. at DemoCamp24

My First Contribution to TechVibes.com

Cloud Factory - Blog - The Surprising Story of Simplenote

SimpleText for Mac client

Notes From Roger Martin on Design Thinking

The Death of The Boring Blog Post?

YouTube Direct

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) | 43 Folders

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WriteRoom for iPhone 2.4 now in app store

The Logic Baffles Me

If I Had Asked

Readability2 – A Readability Mod

Bean: An OS X Word Processor

Driving my Elize in Forza 3

Notes from Gary Vaynerchuk at Rotmans

The rules for computing happiness

Why Do You Fan Companies on Facebook?

Search Ad Search Ad - Recursion Problem?

Adding Some Mint to Real-Time Search

JustNotes

Minimal Mac

Have I Not Explained It All Yet?

Being Obsessive Is Part of The Fun

Could Dropbox Do This? A Business Idea

Tumblr and Posterous In Every Possible Way

Chatting About Event Overload In Toronto

Music made using only sounds from Windows 95 and 98

Pseudo Augmented Reality

My One Keyboard Struggle

Turn Anything Into a Social Something

An Introduction To The New Life-Streaming

The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy

Malcolm is...

Linux + Chrome + Flash

Chrome + CrunchBang Linux

Corporate Control of Social Media

Engagement and The Long Tail of Social Media Discussions

Social Being, Media Meaning

The Power of Framing Social Dialogue

Persistence and Momentum

My Favourite Korean Dish

Rain in Roncesvalles

My Vibram FiveFingers

The System That Works

The Invisible Bridge

Sentiment Strikes Back

Teaser - Toronto Dev Interview 2

Blog More and Do Less

Sentiment Vs. Engagement in Online Listening

T Cafe

We Notice What We Choose To Notice

Curating

Speak Loudly

Ubuntu On Netbooks - NBR VS Keyboard Control With Gnome Do

Renewal

How Can I Improve My Blog For You?

Examining \"Share of Conversation\"

The Next Step For Net Geners

Colemak Keyboard - Still Better Than Dvorak?

Criticizing Your Friends is Hard

Creating Communities Through Experience Blogs

Listening to Two Conversations is Hard

If You Expect Them to Talk

A Risky Approach to Feedback

What I Want To Podcast

My Goal For The Summer? More Seesmic

At Odds

Open Conversations Will Kill Your Company

A Great Storyteller

Storytelling is leadership tool.

Is It A Site? A Business? Or Mostly Just Twitter?

Why I Don't Like New Charities Every Month

Internal Micro Messaging Platforms Are Gold

The Reality Of The Crowds

The Crowds I Own

Twitter Style Redesigns And What They Share

Identity 2.0 - An Introduction to Identity On the Social Web

After The Digital Handshake, What Comes Next?

Is This How Brand Squatting Will Be Defeated?

Mind Map of Issues Surrounding Identity 2.0

New Job: Social Media Analyst at Blast Radius

6 Ways Learning Linux Can Help You in 2009

New Facebook, And Everyone Hates Malcolm

Getting More By Acting Early in Social Media

Are Brands Better Off When They Act Like Their Customers Online?

The Reason That Social Analytics Will Succeed Over Traditional

Stop Being So Damned Shady On Twitter

Thinking About The Newsstand of The Future

Facebook, Fear, and The Risky Devide

How Creative Is Your Business Technology?

Investing In Yourself: A Practical Guide

Some DISQUS and Intense Debate Thoughts - They Both Need Work

Use Your Blog as a Notetaking Tool

GoodBye Tests And Quizes, Hello Comments

Students Are Faced With An Education Problem

Video Review of The Paradox Of Choice

Blogging: The Long Term Relationship

Languages Evolve, Twitter's Should Too

Social Networks as Trust Building Tools

Face it Linux, Most Netbooks Will Sell Windows 7

Creating A River of Web Media Content

Colemak Keyboard Layout - Better Than QWERTY, Better Than Dvorak

Recommended Wordpress Plugins For New Bloggers

CrunchBang Linux, Netbooks at High Speed

How Good Is the Asus Eee 1000?

Single In, Single Out

Take Your Learning To The Comments

The Real Limit Of Social Media

The York University Strike As A Great Opportunity

Social Media Is Not For You

With Books Like These, Who Needs School?

Why You Might Be Using Linux in 2009

Watch Out - Great Looking Ubuntu Intrepid Apps

Cross Post - Announcing Toronto Dev

The Best Motivational Speakers Say "F*ck"

The Secret to Twitter Monetization Is...

Zenbe Is A Good Attempt At Enlightened Email

Getting Into The Mixx

In PostRank We Trust

3x3 Lessons From My Summer Reading Part 1

Lessons from my Summer reading, including: The Paradox of Choice, The Dip, and The Laws of Simplicity.

Why Laptops Will Replace Professors

Moving Towards A Self-Hosted Cloud

The Micro-Blogging Enabled Company

Why Laconica Means Big Things For Corporate Micro Blogging

Be Your Own Purple Cow

Don't Take This Personally, I'm Blocking You On Twitter

Taking A First Look at Digital Marketing

No Battlestar Love?

Who Would Go To A University Unconference?

My 14 Most Valuable RSS Feeds

4 More Ways to Get The Most Out of University

Four more ways to maximize university.

I've Won "How To Be a Rockstar Freelancer

5 Ways to Get The Most Out of University

Recommendations on maximizing the benefit you get from university.

Why BNET.com Is A Really Good Site

SIFE Ryerson With CakePHP

Fear Of Freedom

In 2 Months

How Free Software Changes The Educationial Culture