What's New for the Week of August 28, 2006

Here's the host news this week:

Johanna dropped off her oldest daughter at college (phew!), and is taking a quick vacation to celebrate! took the shortest vacation on earth to celebrate. She's continuing to work on her project management book, and is editing a new Pragmatic Manager email, expected to email this week.

Jerry is spending the week consulting and writing. On September 2, he will be conducting a half-day writing workshop for SouthWest Writers, in Albuquerque.

Don finishes his latest trip to the dry heat in Southern California. He heads home on Thursday for a protracted (3 week) stay on the East Coast.

Dave has noticed that much of the technology in his life seems to
have decided to be stubborn, and is wondering what that means.

Steve is designing sessions for next week's Consultants Workshop in Crested Butte, Colorado.

Esther is packing for the last cabin weekend of the summer.

Competence Isn't Enough

There's more to being effective than competence. In this week's new article Competence Isn't Enough Stuart Scott shares some learnings.

You can find other articles in the AYE Library on the Article page.

What's New for the Week of August 21, 2006

Esther continues to work on various writing projects in Minneapolis.

After a week at home, Don finds himself headed back to the dry heat of Southern California to work with a client putting the finishing touches on an upgrade project.

Steve is enjoying the Seattle sunshine, networking, and designing sessions and creating handouts for this year's conference.

Jerry is so tired from his participation in Bubonicon that he has no idea what's coming up this week, except some sleep.

Dave is clearing the post-vacation backlog, getting is daughter ready for the new school year, and scrambling to check things off of the "do this summer" list.

Johanna is writing her next Pragmatic Manager email newsletter, her PM book, and attempting to help her daughters become sufficiently organized to start school. The college freshman leaves this week. Woo-hoo!

What's New for the Week of August 14, 2006

Our host news this week:

For Jerry, this will be a week of meetings: SouthWest Writers, Albuquerque SPIN, the Sue Petersen jewelry-modeling brunch, and the Bubonicon science fiction conference. He has so many meetings that he will miss the Santa Fe Indian Art Festival and a special conference on young adult literature.

Don looks forward to spending the entire week in the office. He'll resume blogging, and start converting an outline on creating Diagram of Effects into an article.

Esther's back in Minneapolis working on writing projects and preparing for a trip to Denmark later this fall.

Steve returns to his office after participating at the Avanta Conference, which stimulated many thoughts and projects.

Dave and family are taking the last vacation of the summer
before school starts again.

Johanna is living with the drama of a college freshman preparing to go to school, as well as writing her PM book.

AYE Classic Article - Saying No

Saying "No" can be painful -- so painful that we sometimes avoid it just to avoid short-term pain, only to find later that the long-term pain is even worse. This week's Saying No: A Short Course for Managers shows some of the costs of not saying no and how to avoid them, with lots of practical examples.

What's New for the Week of August 7, 2006

Here's our host news this week:

Dave is closing out loose ends on two projects so that he can give his full attention to the next two. He's also had to acknowledge that his summer reading plan got seriously out of control, and is now a "rest of 2006" plan. Please, nobody publish anything interesting between now and year-end.

Don's returned to a hot and muggy home. He'll spend a few days at home and then head for Southern Pennsylvania on Wednesday for the rest of the week.

Jerry received an invitation to give the September seminar to SouthWest Writers. He's hosting his Software Engineering Management 2002 group in
Albuquerque this weekend.

Esther heads for the cabin for a few days of relaxation. This time she'll be admiring the new exterior paint job rather than driving the brush. After reading Jerry's post on his writing blog, Where does all the time go? Is it Writer's Block?, Esther has set herself a new weekly word goal. It's not 20,000 words.

Monday and Tuesday, Steve makes contact with prospects and updates his website; Wednesday through Saturday, he participates at the Avanta Conference.

Johanna is completing her catching up from being on the road too many weeks in the past few months, and is forging ahead on her project management book.

Agile Retrospectives

Andy has posted some excerpts from Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great (by AYE Host Esther and her colleague Diana Larsen) on the Pragmatic Programmer site.

Enjoy!

(Even though Agile is in the title, you can apply the ideas from this book to any project or team.)

What's New for the Week of July 31, 2006

Here's our host news for this week:

Steve is sprucing up his web site. He would enjoy hearing your feedback about the description of himself on the frontpage of www.stevenMsmith.com.

Between telephone consulting calls and a trip to Los Alamos National Laboratories, Jerry has managed to get 50K words drafted on a new novel, sequel to "The Aremac Project." The novel has reached that point where the characters are writing it themselves, and all Jerry has to do is type in their words.

Don's spending the third week in Bakersfield, CA finishing the project and amazed how cool 95 degrees feels. He's looking forward to heading home to North Carolina.

Dave is recovering from an unscheduled power outage.

Esther is back in her office after a wonderful week at Agile2006. She's catching up and enjoying the company of her trusty canine sidekick.

Johanna is finally home after Agile 2006 and a weekend visiting relatives. She's trying to determine the least time-consuming course of fixing her computer and catching up with her deliverables.