Flow Focused

2025 Year in Review

A look back at what happened in 2025

2026 Year In Review

Tracking what I've done in 2026

A Catalogue of Problems

Looking at the different kinds of problems teams face.

Alternatives to American Services

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

Building Team Flow Mapping

How I built the teamflowmapping app.

Burnup Forecaster

An Excel workbook that uses historical throughput to provide probabilistic forecasts for project completion.

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.

Janky but Effective

Too many organizations strive for high efficiency and order, but often it just worsens outcomes

My Emacs Writing Setup

How I've configured emacs for the goal of writing

Kanban and Pulling Out Agility

1 Window

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

2011 Accomplishments

My personal accomplishments in 2011

2013 CrossFit Open Recap

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

2021 Schulich MBA Agile Presentation

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

2022 Recap

A recap of my accomplishments in 2022

2023 Year in Review

An overview of my accomplishments in 2023

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.

4 More Ways to Get The Most Out of University

Four more ways to maximize university.

5 Ways to Get The Most Out of University

Recommendations on maximizing the benefit you get from university.

6 Ways Learning Linux Can Help You in 2009

9 Golden Rules for Agile Teams: Principles to Improve Collaboration

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

A Better Facebook Won't Help You

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.

A Quick Look at the Surface Site

A short critique of the Microsoft Surface website.

A Great Storyteller

Storytelling is leadership tool.

A Recap of 2010

A short list of my accomplishments in 2010.

A Risky Approach to Feedback

Achieving Agility Through Strong Mechanics

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

Advice to Writers by Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut's 7 writing tips.

Adding Some Mint to Real-Time Search

Digital Strategy & UX Strategy

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

After The Digital Handshake, What Comes Next?

AI Transformations Are Hard-Agile

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

An Agile Alternative to “Fixing”

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

An Introduction To The New Life-Streaming

An Office on Every Surface

Analyzing The New Mac Ads

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

As Tumblr Changes From Platform To Network

Tumblr is evolving from simple blogging platform to social network.

At Odds

Attention to Detail Versus Features

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

Avoiding Agile Must-Dos

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

Avoiding The Pitfalls of Cross-Functional Super Teams

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

Avoiding the Practice Trap: Fostering Genuine Agility

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

Back. With Style No Less.

Be Your Own Purple Cow

Bean: An OS X Word Processor

Because The Market Needs Non-Value Creators

Being Obsessive Is Part of The Fun

Being Real About Tools and Work

Best to Wait on Ebooks

Better Planning with Two-Sided Dependencies

Learn how to improve planning and reduce delays by managing dependencies effectively.

Beyond Practices: Behaviours and Goals in Agile

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

Blog More and Do Less

Blogging and Toastmasters

Blogging: The Long Term Relationship

Blogging to Push Ideas

Boards of Canada - Reach for the Dead

Brands Faking Human

But What Do You Do?

Capturing Customer Jobs Using a Mental Model Diagram

Chatting About Event Overload In Toronto

Christmas Turkey!

Chrome + CrunchBang Linux

Clear and Paper

Cloud Factory - Blog - The Surprising Story of Simplenote

Coffee Hop: March 20, 2011

Colemak Keyboard Layout - Better Than QWERTY, Better Than Dvorak

Colemak Keyboard - Still Better Than Dvorak?

Comparing and Remixing the Gemba Walk

Compromise

Corporate Control of Social Media

Could Dropbox Do This? A Business Idea

Create Share Consume and Organize

Creating A River of Web Media Content

Creating Communities Through Experience Blogs

Creating Focus Through User Needs Mapping and Core Domain Mapping

Criticizing Your Friends is Hard

Cross Post - Announcing Toronto Dev

CrossFit Update

CrunchBang Linux, Netbooks at High Speed

Curating

Daily Photo Logging with Google+

Day One and Learning to Journal

None

Designing A Better Email Client

Designing Metro Apps on iOS

Desktop Mouse Movement

Diluting Brands in the World of Smartphones

Don't Let the Interruption Become Your Focus

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

Don't Write User Stories, Tell Stories

Drift to Waterfall

Driving my Elize in Forza 3

Drumbeat and Project Orange

Drumbeat Models for Discussion on the Open Web

Drumbeat The Open Web Lens

Drumbeat Will The Internet of Things be Open?

Each Platform Has its Own Story

Email Declining

Empowering Teams Instead of Telling Them What to Do

Engagement and The Long Tail of Social Media Discussions

Examining \"Share of Conversation\"

Experimenting With Controlling Cycle Time Instead of WIP

F the File System

Face it Linux, Most Netbooks Will Sell Windows 7

Facebook, Fear, and The Risky Devide

Facebook Home

Facebook is Like a Chair… That Confuses and Surprises

Favourite Things

Fear Of Freedom

Flipboard

The Reason for Innovation

Four Platforms That Are Changing Writing

How Customers Engage With a Brand's Story

From Big Bang Projects to Iterative and Incremental Development

From Searches to Apps to Siri

GameStore

Gamification Must Be Addictive

Get Into a Better Routine

Getting a Slight Idea

Getting Excited About Computing

Getting Into The Mixx

Getting More By Acting Early in Social Media

Give it Your Best Shot

Going Nowhere Without Mobile

GoodBye Tests And Quizes, Hello Comments

Gowalla

Have I Not Explained It All Yet?

Tekkonkinkreet City

How Agile Coaches Can Empower Teams To Deal With Uncertainty

How Can I Improve My Blog For You?

How Creative Is Your Business Technology?

Use Stories to Affect Stories

How Evernote Made Remembering Everything Simple

How Free Software Changes The Educationial Culture

How Good Is the Asus Eee 1000?

How I Use Scrum to Teach Agility

How the iPad Shattered The PC

Future Stories

The Purpose of Each Platform

Story Gets Us to Emotion

Putting Metro on iOS

I've Won "How To Be a Rockstar Freelancer

iCloud Storage: Many Shallow Ponds

Identity 2.0 - An Introduction to Identity On the Social Web

If I Had Asked

If You Expect Them to Talk

None

Immersive Apps vs Immersive Content

Improving How I Use Evernote

In 2 Months

App as Digital Proxy

In PostRank We Trust

Innovating For a Windows Tablet

Internal Micro Messaging Platforms Are Gold

Introducing BM Stack

Investing In Yourself: A Practical Guide

iOS's Disposable Games

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

Is This How Brand Squatting Will Be Defeated?

It Works Just Like Your Phone

It's All For Happiness

A Network of People, Devices, and Things

The Social Story of a Brand

Customers Create Stories for Every Interaction

Just Do Something Different

Just Enough Kanban

JustNotes

Languages Evolve, Twitter's Should Too

Learning Agile with ChatGPT

Learning to Trash It and Start Over

Linux + Chrome + Flash

Listening to Two Conversations is Hard

User Experience Strategy

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

Making Change Where Change is Possible

Making Media Easier

Making Products Last

Making Progress Through Questions

Making Work More Human

Making

Malcolm is...

Malcolm Visits the Zoo

Manage the Value, Not the Work

Mapping Options Using a Risk-Value Matrix

Maximize Productivity by Minimizing Context Switching

Stories and Understanding

Mind Map of Issues Surrounding Identity 2.0

Minimal Mac

Miroverse Template: Squad Health Check

Models to Focus Your Thinking

More Focused Writing With OmmWriter

Moving Towards A Self-Hosted Cloud

Music made using only sounds from Windows 95 and 98

My 14 Most Valuable RSS Feeds

My Agile Sketching Experiment

My AI Learning Journey

My Favourite Korean Dish

My First Contribution to TechVibes.com

My Goal For The Summer? More Seesmic

My Initial Experience With iCloud

My One Keyboard Struggle

My Problem With Anti-Social Networking

My Vibram FiveFingers

Navigating the AI Shift With the Wardley Doctrine

New Facebook, And Everyone Hates Malcolm

New Job: Social Media Analyst at Blast Radius

No Battlestar Love?

Story Makes it Relevant

None

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

Notes from Gary V. at DemoCamp24

Notes from Gary Vaynerchuk at Rotmans

Notes From Roger Martin on Design Thinking

Om Malik's 10 Years of Blogging

Basic Business Metrics

One-Time Efforts

Only The Hard Stuff Matters

Open Conversations Will Kill Your Company

Optimal Connections

Paleo Mode

Papercut

PayPal's One-Stop Flop

People Are the Heart of Any Practice

Persistence and Momentum

Phones That Feel Like Magic

Plattan Plus

Pomodoro Everything

Pomodoro Timer by Navel Labs

Pseudo Augmented Reality

Publishing Markdown

None

Put it Down

Quick Jira Control Chart Aging WIP Hack

Rain in Roncesvalles

Re-Reading

Readability2 – A Readability Mod

Real-time Brands

Real Virtual-Neighbours Are The Best Kind

Reblogging - Not So Much

Renewal

Repeated Focus

Rethinking Retrospectives

Recommended Wordpress Plugins For New Bloggers

Revisiting the Guidance on Cross-functional Teams

Reeder for Mac a Sign of Things to Come

Refining The Innovative And The New

RIM Honestly

Running, Falling, and the Core of Agile

Ruthlessly Reveal

Ryerson's Digital Media Zone

Search Ad Search Ad - Recursion Problem?

Searching for Focus | Ryerson Digital Media Zone

Sentiment Strikes Back

Sentiment Vs. Engagement in Online Listening

Share Your Data

Shut Up and Take My Money!

SIFE Ryerson With CakePHP

SimpleText for Mac client

Single In, Single Out

Slap On Social

Snapshot: Introducing Ready Options to a B2B Service Team

Social Being, Media Meaning

Social Media Is Not For You

Social Media Without the Tweets and Check-ins

Social Networks as Trust Building Tools

Some DISQUS and Intense Debate Thoughts - They Both Need Work

Something Routine

South Korea, April 2023

Speak Loudly

Splitting the Social Network for the Best User Experience

Start Small

Starting a Wardley Map with a Mental Model Diagram

Starting Agile With Retrospectives and Continuous Improvement

Stop Being So Damned Shady On Twitter

Stop Blaming Teams: See the System

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

Media Tells Stories

Stories = Understanding the World

Research & Insights Into Stories

Students Are Faced With An Education Problem

T Cafe

Take Your Learning To The Comments

Taking A First Look at Digital Marketing

Teaser - Toronto Dev Interview 2

Test-Driven Goals: A Scalable and Effective Pattern

The Best Motivational Speakers Say "F*ck"

The Better Tech Conference Survey

The Crowds I Own

The Death of The Boring Blog Post?

The Desktop Is Done, Think Like iOS

The End of Failure

The End of the Feature Economy

The End of the PC Manufacturers

The Evolution of Story

The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy

The Future of Real-time Chat and Beluga

The Hidden Costs of Over-Collaboration

The Importance of Work

The Invisible Bridge

The Logic Baffles Me

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

The Micro-Blogging Enabled Company

The Mobile Context

Success for the Mobile Context

The Most Enjoyable Reading Experience

The New Air

The New Outlook.com

The Newness and The Promise of Windows Phone 7

The Next Step For Net Geners

The Platform Owners Are In Control

The Power of Framing Social Dialogue

The Power of Predictable Delivery

The Prize of Attention

The Real Limit Of Social Media

The Reality Of The Crowds

The Reason That Social Analytics Will Succeed Over Traditional

The rules for computing happiness

The Sandwich Rebuttal

The Secret to Twitter Monetization Is...

The System That Works

The Team Dependency Matrix

The User Interfaces of CrossFit and Paleo

The Value of Tablet Huddle Experiences

The Whole Thing

The York University Strike As A Great Opportunity

There's No One Right Way

Learn how to navigate the complexities of Agile practices and make informed decisions that balance trade-offs.

Thinking About Technology Innovation That Sticks

Thinking About The Newsstand of The Future

The Digital Strategy Process

This Virtuous Circle

Thought Process

Three Years of GTD and Things

Transforming Agile Practices with the Kano Model

Trying to Find the Smaller Conversations

Digital Strategy

Tumblr and Posterous In Every Possible Way

Turn Anything Into a Social Something

Turn Jira's Control Chart Into a Lead Time Scatterplot

Twitter Style Redesigns And What They Share

Twitter’s Inevitable Consistency

Ubuntu On Netbooks - NBR VS Keyboard Control With Gnome Do

Ulysses 3

Unbundle the Value

Uncovering the Compromises of Metro Style Apps

The Social Context

Understanding OmniFocus: Attention

Unmasking the Invisible Overhead of Meetings

Use Your Blog as a Notetaking Tool

Using Culture as a Lens to Solve Organizational Challenges

Using More of Apple's iOS Apps

Clear from Realmac Software

Paper by FiftyThree

Video Review of The Paradox Of Choice

Virtual Bookshelves Are a Pain

Watch Out - Great Looking Ubuntu Intrepid Apps

We Don't Know

We Notice What We Choose To Notice

West Toronto CrossFit Featured on BlogTO

What happens when all search becomes instant?

What Has Microsoft Learned From Metro?

What I Want To Podcast

What Text Editors Tell us About Apple's Ecosystem

What The Heck Makes Tumblr a "Designed" Company

What's Next For The Mac?

When Identity and Blogs Don't Mix

None

None

Where Are The Problems?

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

Where's The Innovation?

Which Platform Is For Creating?

Who Would Go To A University Unconference?

Why BNET.com Is A Really Good Site

Why Can The iPad Be Frustrating?

Why Do Location Sharing?

Why Do You Fan Companies on Facebook?

Why I Don't Like New Charities Every Month

Why Laconica Means Big Things For Corporate Micro Blogging

Why Laptops Will Replace Professors

Why Work Waits

Why You Might Be Using Linux in 2009

With Books Like These, Who Needs School?

WriteRoom for iPhone 2.4 now in app store

None

Mapping the Brand Story

Your Ideas And Blogging the Crap Out of Them

YouTube Direct

Zenbe Is A Good Attempt At Enlightened Email

Stop Blaming Teams: See the System

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

There's No One Right Way

Learn how to navigate the complexities of Agile practices and make informed decisions that balance trade-offs.

Better Planning with Two-Sided Dependencies

Learn how to improve planning and reduce delays by managing dependencies effectively.

Navigating the AI Shift With the Wardley Doctrine

AI Transformations Are Hard-Agile

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

Unmasking the Invisible Overhead of Meetings

Making Work More Human

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

Capturing Customer Jobs Using 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

None

None

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

None

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.