Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Thoughts on writing and publishing a non-fiction book. This book strongly recommends having a plan for the business and a plan for the book’s content. I recently finished “Hungry Authors” by Liz Morrow and Ariel Curry, Rowan and Littlefield, 2024. I like the book. It focuses on knowing why you are writing […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes, the one thing needed for a person to do something new and frightening is simply permission. Here is how to write a book: Simple? Yes. Works? Absolutely, I have done this about a dozen times. You start. When you reach the end, you stop. But what about…? Yes, we can ask […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We can have too many people in the room to discuss something. We can also become locked in an inner circle where no one else understands what we are doing. There should be a balance. There are too many people in the room: Twenty people (pick a number) is too many. There […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It is easy to use vocabulary that is popular at this moment. It is a bit more difficult to explain the situation in plain English. That exercise, however, is often well worth the effort. Here is some popular vocabulary in the endeavor of software development: It’s nice to toss out one or […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We have computing power a thousand magnitudes greater than what took us to the moon and back. And we use it to play checkers. Sitting here in the coffee shop writing these blog posts, I look across the room and note someone playing checkers on their new Windows 11 computer. Also on […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let’s review some basics on telling another person about something they do and did that affects me and us. The basis of this post comes from consultant and writer Esther Derby. Over the years, we’ve discussed this topic, and I have learned much. I hope to pass along some of Esther’s thoughts. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An old political phrase can be applied to just about any endeavor as a test of how awful bad something is. Once again, we are in the time every four years in America when we have the seemingly endless campaign for President of the United States. This year, more than in the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When someone is quite specific in what they convey, they often mean the opposite. “I will inject some humor here,” often means that nothing funny will be said. “I don’t care about the money,” often means that I really do care about the money coming my way. “We are transparent here,” often […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let not check a communications channel using that same communications channel. It is pretty silly to do so. Since the great pandemic of the early 2020s, I have been part of countless ZoomerTeams meetings. Almost every one starts with, “Can everyone hear me?” Let’s pause and think. If a participant cannot hear […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes it is worth the effort to make the output “look good.” Sometimes this pretty printing is a waste and only aggravates those involved. This past week at work I spent hours and hours pretty printing. We had “done the work” and were trying to make a printout of the work for […]

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