Neil Vass

Just booked the next Deliver Sessions meetup! This time we're at the Express Building in Ancoats, hosted by Transform. Have a look at the fabulous speaker lineup, click to let us know you're coming along:

I recently found the What Went Wrong podcast, full of stories about how movies got made. Lord of the Rings, Ghostbusters, The Godfather, Die Hard, Gladiator ... I'm very entertained

Setting off for #AgileCam! I'm only going for 2 days, but needed to bring my biggest case to fit 45 regular puzzle cubes and 1 oversized instructor's cube. People will wonder how many outfits I have in here.

I'm off to teach cube solving later this month at @agilecambridge.bsky.social - and the cubes have just arrived! Adjustable speed cubes, default is for them to spin like tops when turning. I'll tighten them all to more "I am thoughtfully learning this" rather than have them spin wildly. #AgileCam

I wrote a longer thread on mastodon about this (against all expectations that is my 'sincere' place) but if you want more books like Psychology of Software Teams to exist: write a review for it (amazon/goodreads/storygraph/etc)! Any review at all (I won't read them haha). Reviews make books REAL

Actor: How would you rate my ability to take direction? Director: Below average. Actor: *bellows* AVERAGE!!!

So how do you help the authors you want to help? - Preorder - Tell one specific person "you'd like this book" — this converts at a far higher rate than anything! - If you're on a team or in a reading group, suggest it there - Request it at your local library! www.drcathicks.com#book

Can you, as one person, possibly make a difference in whether an unusual, creative, category-breaking book (a book without a marketing department or a budget behind it) succeeds? Yes you can, and I'm going to tell you why it's a hell of a lot more attainable than you think.

Through lockdown and a long stretch after when in-person meetups really weren’t happening, we used @ewebber.bsky.social's “in the Ether” format to turn into a remote-only meetup. This was before I was blogging about the meetup, so many good talks and helpful ideas were lost to history. Until now!

Went to put dinner in, through the open door heard a huge cheer from a beer garden. Nothing from our living room where the kids are watching football. I ran through and said "watch this!", kids impressed to see a goal 10s later. Is the pub using normal TV, and we get that delay on "live" iPlayer?

Deliver Sessions meetup is next week in Manchester, featuring: Retros by design, not by habit It's not too late to be an apprentice! and When agile goes off script: a facilitator's toolkit for staying on track

Interesting thread of organisational dysfunctions! "Permanent urgency" was the first post that caught my eye, lots of the others are relevant too. "Change agents of the status quo": "The energy that might have driven structural change is consumed in the process." mastodon.me.uk/@trondhjort@...

*Jumanji drumbeats in the distance* Psychology of Software Teams is ALMOST HERE www.drcathicks.com#book

I'll be at @agilecambridge.bsky.social in October, with an oversized puzzle cube, to help people learn how to solve these and share some ideas on how it relates to designing and evaluating all sorts of algorithms. It'll be fun! Mention my name (10Neil) for a discount on tickets. #AgileCam

The next Deliver Sessions meetup will be in Manchester on 7th July, at Autotrader's lovely new office in Circle Square! Lightning talks, a workshop on workshops, and a chance to meet lots of interesting people. Come along! More details:

"Of course, the mighty Internet mostly runs on spit and hope" 😆

4th post in my series that is letting me 1. make sense out of my old coaching notes, and 2. have an excuse to share my holiday photos. neil-vass.com/coaching-whe...

More and more people I deeply respect and have learned a lot from over the years feel like they are speaking into a void, to the point where they are losing motivation to continue making content, which got me to write my first post on my site in over a year... www.kevinpowell.co/article/tell...

Last call! Sign up for Deliver Sessions meetup, come along for an interesting evening of talks this Tuesday: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/deliver-se...

Talking-head futurism is structurally a grift - you get paid to be confidently directional about an unknowable future, and being wrong has no consequences because nobody audits old predictions.

3rd post from my piles of handwritten coaching notes neil-vass.com/coaching-que...

One week to go! Will you be in Manchester on 12 May? Come along and say hi. Details and sign up link:

From a good friend and very experienced engineer. He's cancelled his Claude subscription because he is finding open models now good enough for coding willemvandenende.com/blog/enginee...

Deliver Sessions meetup, now with twice as many speakers! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/deliver-se...

We need to show a chunky timetable on a webpage. The page is more popular on mobile than desktop. Does anybody know any better options than to overflow the page and hint that the user can swipe to view more? (... plus offering a pdf download)

This Man Was Told By His Doctor To Treat His Depression With A Trip To See Great Clown Pagliacci. His Reply Will Astound You

It’s been 10 years since I published Building Successful Communities of practice…. To celebrate I’ve published a second edition. Currently at a special price to pre-order (UK only) hellotacit.com/building-suc...