On Monday we had a proper thunderstorm here in Berlin. Of course at a time when kiddo and me had to get somewhere outside. We hoped we started early enough with our bikes to be at the destination without getting too wet … but that was futile. It started to downpour about when we were about 100m from our destination. But it was raining so heavily that these few meters were enough to soak us completely. But it’s just water and it was anyway too hot that day. Fortunately our area didn’t had too much damage. Across the street a branch of a tree came down and touched some parked cars. That wasn’t too bad from what I’ve seen.

On Tuesday however there was again thunderstorm and took out a whole tree. That tree decided to lay down on a power distribution box on the curbs. Our whole apartment block was without power for a few hours. Still not really a tragedy in my eyes. Nobody was hurt from what I could see and just a few parked cars slightly damaged.

reunion

On Thursday I met with a friend I hadn’t seen in more than 24 years. He was my flatmate during my apprenticeship at SIEMENS back in the late 1990s. He’s occasionally working Berlin and now we took the chance to meet over burgers and drinks while he was in Berlin for a few days.

Crazy to meet someone you haven’t seen for such a long time. But it felt a bit like not much time has passed since then. Still the same funny guy.

Charity concert for est Templin

On Saturday my wife got us tickets for a charity concert in Templin. A special orchestra played baroque and classic songs from the archives of the “Joachimthalsche Gymnsasium”. While admittedly that kind of music isn’t my favorite music, I did enjoy the concert very much. The ambience in the old auditorium of that old school was appropriate for the occasion and the musicians performed with a lot of passion, enthusiasm and a very high level of professionallism.

There was a narrator who explained each song and provided historical context. This was really well prepared and delivered and enriched the whole experience.

I didn’t know that this school was more than 350 years old. While originally founded in 1607 in Joachimsthal near Templin, it moved to various locations in Berlin before this ensemble of buildings in Templin were built in 1912 for the school.

There are plans to turn it into a public school again and this concert was raising funds to renovate the clock tower of the school. The area is really beautiful and the buildings will make a wonderful place to learn.

The full concert will be aired in Deutschlandfunk radio station on 27. August 2023 at 21:05 CEST. I can wholeheartedly recommend the session.

Had a few conversations with ex-colleagues about company culture and challenges we face in our special domain of knowledge work. Also Kris posted a collection of thoughts he had shared on Mastodon on his blog about the current wave in resignations we see in management of tech companies.

Project Finalization

This week we made the final cut-over on the migration project I’m working on for the last 6 month. Feels good to finally finishing this thing off.

But of course the work isn’t over yet. There is quite a bit of aftermath that we’ll have to take care of. And there are side projects that have been neglected which will need attention now. There is definitely no shortage of work.

I enjoy working directly with people and solving their problems again in this project. They also seem to appreciate talking to a real person who knows about the stuff and not just conversing with a ticket system.

Of course we’re using tickets to track the work as well. But also engage with the people directly via Chat and Meetings to talk about their problem and how we can solve this. This in person communication leads to results much faster for both parties. Because often times its really just a matter of getting on the same page and understanding the problem. The classical tale of: once you explain your problem to the admin it solves itself 😉

Another observation I made is, that people don’t take the time to think about their problem. Something doesn’t work and they jump to a support channel and blur out: “X is not working, can you help?”

How am I supposed to help here? There is no useful information provided on what the person was trying to do in the first place, nor what error message they might have gotten etc.

It takes a few rounds of questions to figure out the person is using either the wrong system or the right system in a wrong way.

But then you also have to experienced engineer which will prepare their question in the most helpful way. They did their homework by double checking they are using the correct system (providing information about this), provide detailed log messages of their problem, naming exact times including timezones and sometimes even provide further information in a machine readable format for further processing.

My point is: it’s a pleasure to work with professionals. And user support is rather time consuming because the average user can’t be bothered to read even the most simple documentation..

No Hello

The page nohello.net summarise a common digital communication problem. I’m really just ghosting people which start conversations like that. Get to the point!

It really boils down to be mindful about people’s time. If you want something from someone else, help them to help you by providing the information they need to fulfil your request. Don’t waste their time with chatter. Do you homework by checking whatever your can upfront and provide the information in an easily consumable format.

Put yourself in their shoes: would you be able and willing to work with the request you just received?

Long table public Dinner

On Saturday we had our 2nd long table public dinner. This is where the people from the village meet at the central place in front of the church and have dinner together. Everyone brings some food to share and their own tablecloth, plates and drinks. This is low effort to organize but really delicious and fun.

We had really good food and plenty thereof. I love the variety and the ideas people come up with. Of course we had interesting conversations and fun as well. Really looking forward for this event next year.

Random Pics from the week