For several years I’ve visited other’s blogsites and read their posts on various topics. There are several I visit often because of the beneficial material and learning I’ve found there. A few are related to my personal interests, such as physical fitness, turkey hunting, fresh-water fishing, and drumming, but most I visit are related to software development. In particular, ones related to applying lean-agile principles, the kanban software development method, and XP practices but also those related to using domain-driven design, pattern-oriented software architectures, and object-oriented design.

After seeing how others were using blog sites to capture and share their learning, thoughts, questions, and reflections on these topics, in the last couple of years, I too began giving serious consideration to creating my own. My “seriousness” began by creating a folder on my computer hard disk to collect ideas, mostly from threads of responses and replies from emails, discussion groups, and other blogsites, that I had found interesting and felt would be great “blog seed” material for me in the near future. I had established a domain name years ago as part of being self-employed in the past and had maintained it. Last year, when renewing this registration, my “seriousness” for creating my own blog site went to the next level with a “five year” discounted hosting package.

But it has only been in the last couple of weeks, I took the next “real” steps and built my initial blog site pages and now with this first “practice” post I am “Oh, so close to my first official post.” What “pulled” me over the top?

In late June I traveled to Iceland, where I attended the first-ever Kanban Leadership Retreat (#KLRIS). There I met some truly interesting and motivating people who happen to share some very similar passions and interests. Some were from the U.S. (Seattle, St. Louis, Boston, Cleveland, New York, D.C., Omaha), but most were from elsewhere (England, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Israel, Brazil, Germany, and even Iceland, who were our gracious hosts). I can’t say enough about the people of Iceland and the country, truly impressive and I’d love to go back and visit with my family.

I only knew a handful of those attending this retreat from seeing them present or talking with them briefly at previous related conferences. Still, it was through their posts and blogsites that I had really learned some about them prior and even more about them since then. But many more there I was meeting for the first time, especially those from outside the U.S. What I quickly discovered was most of them too had blogsites. Through reading their recent posts, I have gotten to know more about several of them since then and learned some beneficial things via their blogsites. So, now with this next step, I’m looking forward to using my own blogsite and posts to help contribute to and continue the conversations and relationships we started in Reykjavik as well as to start and build new ones.

As I continue to collect and incubate a few ideas in my “blog seed” folder, I hope you will return periodically to see what hatches. Until then, visit my Events page (and links there) to see where I spend some of my time, visit my Resources page to see the books I read (for any we might discuss), the groups I participate in (and links there), and coming soon, other “nuggets” will be here, and lastly visit my About page to learn a bit about where I’ve been, where I’m at, and how to contact me.

Take care,

Frank