As this year slowly comes to an end I find myself filled with inspiration. Looking past the situation in the world these days things are not that bad to be honest, and I have a fire in my heart to build. I have struggled a bit with that this year, but now I really feel that my heart long to build and to write again.
Sure finances could be better as there have been some big costs lately and a long time without proper income. Still, I am more fortunate than most and as financial things rarely matter to me, as long as I can still pay my bills and have a little something left over.  Health wise I am mostly tired, and I don't get out much. It will get better as light returns now and hopefully the vaccination can make it safe to hit the gym again soon.
When it comes to building I feel that I am in a good place right now. I am looking into the next step and strangely enough I stumbled upon a topic on the IPS forums about a job board. It seems a lot of people want something like that and as I started to think about it, I realized that the solution for a job board actually fit what I have in mind for this site, but for a few different things.
I already have a database for people (two actually if you could Awesome People) and I was planning on adding a database for companies. This was first meant for Hosting companies, so I was thinking that I should add a database for services to that as well. Now if I think about a job board it is three types of data:
The Job Offer The company that offer the job People that want the job So if I make a database for Companies, then I can pretty easy add different offers and then connect them to different offers or services. That would work well with my thoughts to have databases for people, companies and services/products. People will be located under Community while Companies and Services / Products will be located under Resources.
There are now quite a bit of links under Resources however, and I might move things into a new section called "Databases".  This makes sense to keep things organized, but it makes the footer a bit complex, so I may need a new design for that area. Overall I need to sit down and focus a bit on the structure of the website going forward.
Things are good now 🙂

With the movies and TV shows in place I am starting to look at the IT Roles database. I notice that in many organizations there is a lack of understanding of IT roles. I also see that mixed roles like Scrum Master start to popup, which will lead to new generations of people being burned out due to poor understanding of the role definitions. So I plan to redesign the database a bit to make it more useful.
Currently, the database is named Job Titles and I will start by renaming that. Then I need to make a new design for the templates and I will probably take some from the standard design and some from the movies and TV shows design. Since the Roles will have quite a lot of information I will use tabs for sure as well as some form of representation of the role in the form of an image.
There will e many custom fields for this database and there will be a few special things going on in the form for it as well. For the fields I will prepare for more functionality than I plan to have in version 1. There are some fields that I have an idea of how I want them to work, but I don't quite know how to make it so. Yet.
The fields I plan to have so far are:
Role Description Responsibilities Mandates Report to Staff reporting Organization Placement Work Direction Related activities Related Frameworks Role Certifications People in this role I might tie in Books into this as well later, but I need to expand on that section first for it to be useful. As you can see I also have People in this role, which I will set up using the same type of link that I have in My Projects. Right now this is just a placeholder database, but I will build a proper one next year hopefully. This would be similar to Awesome People, but a bit toned down.
With this database I will be able to connect it to My Book and other areas, so I can create cross-linking between different areas. Some areas such as certifications can be extended later on and tied with eductors, so I can direct some people to them. If I build a tools database I might also tie that in here as well. For now though I start with this and see where it ends up.
It will be awhile before I get to this though because I will first do my best to get into Vue.js to build a new site with @Marko Salonen. That will be a bit of a challenge, but one I look forward to!

This week I have tinkered with a new section here on the site. I purchased a plugin for movies and TV Shows when I also bought the Books plugin. For some reason I just sat down and played around a bit with it, and it turned out great. I am very happy so far, even if I can do a lot more with it. There are a few things that I need to sort out first though...
The plugins are from the same developer and the price was right, so I bought both. As I am a long time movie lover and a frequent TV show watcher I figured I could use it somehow. As I sat down and played around with it, I was amazed how easy it was to work with, and I ended up with a design that I liked. This is something I have wanted to build for almost 12 years now.
Once I got some help figuring out how to use the custom fields I could really start  building. I have a few things that are manual that can be automated later, but it is not a big issue really. The design is pretty basic, but I think I can use that for other things as well. I might even recreate it for a blog post layout...
One thing I though was cool would be to add a movie player to the background image. Rather than build one from scratch I just used the data-ipsDialog function that are built into Invision Community. It tuned out pretty great, but I might change it a bit later to make it a bit better.
With this however I take the first step to split up the section About Me. It is a section that has not received much love yet, and I need to figure out what to do about that section. It will be a bit interesting to see what I will do about that section though as it has some potential, and yet I might not want to focus too much on it.
As it looks 2021 will be a very interesting year indeed.

In just a few days I have managed to build a new book section here on the site and update the support section that I use Jira Service Management for. It has been a burst of creative energy and I feel it was exactly what I needed. I am now tired, but filled with energy if that makes any sense.
For a while my book writing has been pretty much dead. I just did not enjoy the format and I felt I was stretching myself a bit thin with the very extensive content. In short, I have pretty much abandoned the writing and focused on writing articles here on the site instead. The idea was there that maybe I could create a database for it instead, but I was a bit hesitant due to the work involved to build a new layout.
On Friday however I just gave it a go, just to see how much work it would include. As it turned out it was not much that was needed and with some very small adjustments and a few icons designed I am pretty happy with the outcome. I feel I have a pretty solid base to work from, so now I just need to define the scope and start writing.
I have tossed up a basic skeleton, but I will break this down properly as soon as I have decided on the scope. I already have a basic process designed up and I will extend that a bit with more details. It is something that I have done multiple times in different organizations, so I have a basic idea on how deep I need to go in each area. The tricky part will be to not go to deep into detail, so I lose myself in them. I think that if I have a visual roadmap that will be a bit easier though.
I will probably add a few tidbits here and there that may be a bit out of scope though. Things like tips and tricks on how to manage teams or structure workshops for example. The advantage of working publicly like this is that I can get feedback directly, but also that I can write as much as I like and then decide what I want to put into an actual book when it is time to publish.
Last night, as I could not sleep, I also did some cleaning up in my Jira Instance. I created a new support section and created a new workflow for different requests. Then I disabled the support function here on the site and turned off the contact form that was active for some reason. The reason to do that is that I want to direct all incoming requests to Jira since I find the internal support function in Invision Community lacking a bit.
I now have a new setup, so I can receive and manage the different requests I have gotten lately. Strangely enough I get quite a few requests regarding sponsored articles and guest blogging, but also some work requests. This way I can manage them better using Jira Service Management as the engine.
Overall I feel that this is a great way to end 2020 and I might have one or two more things I want to build before the end of the year. I have already talked a bit about the database for Atlassian App reviews, but I think that the database might be possible to also use for other types of databases, like a database over JavaScript libraries or tools for the different sections. That would expand the site quite a bit, which is not a bad thing in my mind.
So, today I am filled with creative energy and I look forward to seeing what new, exciting things might happen in the future.

Another week has passed and this week I have made my final delivery for one project. This makes my head a bit less conflicting and I can focus a bit better without the need to split my attention on multiple projects. I have also played a bit Destiny 2 this week and looked into some interesting topics surrounding Agile and Story Points. Now I plan for the weekend to catch up on some things.
On Tuesday this week I made my final delivery for the Martin & Servera project. I held a two-hour-long presentation to the steering group to summarize the result of the pre-study. The delivery was well received and I will probably have a new project next year based on that outcome. It always feels good when the client is happy with the delivery and I got a lot of good feedback on the presentation to boost my ego a bit.
In my other project we are doing a lot of work defining processes right now. Next week I will hold my training course for Incident, Change, Problem and Service Request again, and we will have a retro on the first part of the POC. It is likely that I will set up a simulated workflow for the training course using Advanced Roadmaps and next year we also need to dig into Insight a bit more.
As part of this project I am working on a graphic workflow of sorts that I will use as a basis for future articles on how to work properly with IT development. It will be a continuous work where I expand the design with new workflows and try to tie it together in one big overview. Then the idea is to break out certain areas and define them in more detail. This ties well into the work I have been doing to write my book for the last few years.
Last week I wrote about estimations and this week I have followed up some discussions about Story Points and the Iron Triangle, which I will write about this weekend I think. It is a bit interesting to see prominent members of the Agile community quite clearly promoting avoiding responsibility because the work process is flawed rather than fixing the problems themselves. I think I will write quite a bit about that topic in a near future.
Updating on the site is on my agenda this weekend. I have made some changes to the form for this blog and the articles form, so now I need to build new forms for My Projects and the Awesome People section. I will probably start looking at the Atlassian App Reviews database and My Book database as well. My Book will be a bit different so it will need a custom design, but for the Atlassian App Reviews I can use the standard design.
Overall this has been a pretty good week and I look forward to next already 🙂

So this week was a bit hectic to say the least. I had a big training session for Stockholm Exergi where we started up the developers for the new work processes using Jira and Confluence. I also finished up some things here on the site and it seems that I am getting noticed because I have received multiple requests for sponsored articles this week.
The work I do for Stockholm Exergi is fun and I got great feedback from the education I held on Friday. That was the first education and it was aimed towards the development team. Next week I will do another education session regarding ITIL and ITSM for the management teams. It will be based on Jira service Management and Confluence with the focus on Incident and Change management. I look forward to that.
Otherwise, on the work side I am getting a ton of questions for employment right now and you can really tell that the market is shifting a bit. There is an increasing need for help with work processes and especially for Atlassian's products it seems. No doubt this is driven by the change in work conditions that for many are strange and unfamiliar. It means I get more work and that is not a bad thing right now.
It seems I am not the only one being popular lately. This website also start to get some attention. This week I have received a handful requests from people who want to post a sponsored article. This of course is always welcome and I think I need to work on the guest blogging page soon as more and more people are starting to ask about it. I might need to work on the Author database a bit sooner plan planned I think.
The past months I have been asked quite a few times to talk with friends about their current situation in life. Some ask for advice on work processes, others ask for help with jobs and so on. I am happy to help of course, and I am happy to have helped some friends and colleagues to find new employment. This is something I enjoy a lot and I will look at expanding that a bit more in the future here on the website as well.
I have started to evaluate a books feature here on the site. Not sure if I like it yet, but I feel that having a books feature is a definitive must. I will continue testing it out as time permit and if I don't like it then I will build a custom database for it.
Finally, I have been playing a bit of Destiny 2 now with the new expansion and I started to get a bit stressed over it. Not so much that the game itself was stressful, but the fact that I am not leveling up as fast as other players. I know it's just a psychological effect that my mind feel that I am loosing out on things, so I just had to adjust my mindset a bit. Overall I think there are a bit to many bugs right now, but overall it's a pretty fun experience.
Today is Raid day when the best raiders in the world give the new raid a go in order to try to become worlds first. I will probably watch it a bit if I can as it's often pretty funny to watch.
It has been a weird week.
How was yours?

This weekend I took a moment to first build a reviews feature for the blog and then I took a look at building a custom form, so I can have better control over the way these new fields are managed. I am also slowly getting back from last week's flu that had me in bed for way too long.
Building things here is always fun. This weekend I took some time to look at adding a review function using the star ratings that you set for each category. I added it into the standard template, so I can add the fields to any database to have reviews show up. I also defined the colors based on the category, just like I have for sidebars and so on. Overall it turned out pretty ok so far and you can see what it looks like below.
I also took a crack at the form for creating new articles. It turned out to be much easier than expected, much thanks to the help from Morrigan over at the Invision Community forum. She is always helpful and thanks to her example code it was easy to create the first version of the tabbed form. I will make a little more evolved version later, but for now tabs works pretty well.
Getting back to work again today has been a bit difficult as I am still not 100%. It is a good thing that the work I am doing now is focused work with few meetings though, so I feel I am up to speed again.
It feels good to be productive again!

To all my friends and visitors who celebrate the holiday of Diwali I just want to say: Happy Diwali. In a year when darkness truly have been more dense than ever before a celebration of light is even more precious. No matter where you are in the world and what religion you put your faith in I hope this light of Diwali will find its way into your heart.
While my knowledge of this holiday are not very good, all I need to know can be found in the eyes of those that celebrate it. It is a holiday of family, joy and the celebration of good over evil where the light break through the even the deepest of darkness. What more would you need to understand and who do not wish to celebrate such things?
To all my friends who have taught me about their culture I wish you a special happy Diwali. It is the light of your kindness and generosity that is rekindled during this holiday. I wish you the best and light a candle in hopes that the light will find its way to you and your hearts.
Happy Diwali @Praveen S, @Priya Arunachalam, @Mathan Prasad Kandasamy, @Bharath Kumar Dhanasekaran, Ruchir Shrivastava, @Sundhar Manian, @Dipayan Kundu, Martha Jennifer, Prachi Arya, Rahul Tyagi and many others.

Sometime tomorrow Destiny 2 will release their latest expansion: Beyond Light. I did lose interest in the game during the summer when Bungie announced not just the sunset, but also changed the PVP experience severely for me and many other players. Now however I am ready to go in and experience the new story and the many, many changes coming to Destiny 2.
It might seem strange to get back to Destiny 2 after the changes that pretty much killed any incentive for me to play. However, I like the changes I see and I will give Destiny 2 another shot. At least story wise and more of a casual experience than before as I am less interested in grinding now than before due to the sunsetting and the death of PVP as I see it.
The new mechanics seem awesome, the story seems intriguing and I guess there is kind of that new game feeling even if it is "just" an update. It will be interesting to see what comes of this and in a few days we'll see if I still like Destiny 2, or if t is time to say goodbye for good.
 

As I am down with a cold, again, I start to feel the need to organize a bit. Things are getting a bit unstructured outside the site itself, but there are also some things on the site that need a bit of cleaning up. As I am going to make some investments in more images, FontAwesome and so on I also need a more structured setup.
With the new designs for the site in place I feel that I am in a good place content wise. I will fine tune and fix bugs of course, but overall it is now more an exercise in updating the content according to the new design. In order to make that easier I have moved over the banners to Sketch, so they are easy to update if needed.
Sketch is also the first stop for making updates. It is now a bit messy because I have not completed the transformation from the old color system to the new with color variables. That have made  few areas a bit messy and I need to reorganize that to make sure all assets are correctly setup. It's an easy task, but time-consuming.
The CSS in the original design here on the site also have hard coded color values instead of variables. That mean that there are some areas where the colors are a bit off. I need to change that and make sure I have the color values defined properly to ensure that the colors I define are consistent throughout the site. Again, not a big task, but a bit time-consuming.
The way I organize the content also need to be updated. Right now my Dropbox storage is a bit all over the place. I need a clear definition on what is what, so I can get the structure...well, structured, again. I also need to reorganize things in Eagle because for some reason I have a lot of .eps files as .png, which is a bit of an issue. So I need to download the .eps files again and make sure I have the right structure in place. This is a bigger task, but one I have to do as I plan t make another purchase of 750 images from Shutterstock soon.
I also need to clean up my Jira and Confluence instance as it is now getting a bit messy.
There are some things to be done for sure 🙂

As a Swedish citizen I tend to look at the USA elections with morbid fascination. While we have our own issues with politics the USA seem to go all in and for months the country go into a state of near war like frenzy. While it seem obvious from the outside that the election process in the USA is a strange process that appear promoting corruption, one question always comes up for me: is the USA really a democratic country?
Why would I have this question? Well, there are a few reasons why I wonder just how democratic the USA really is and to what level you can actually claim to be a democratic country. I know this is a touchy subject for some Americans and I rarely write about politics, but I write this because for every election this question is getting louder and louder around the globe.
As I do not claim to be a political expert take this with a grain of salt. It is just my reflections based on my limited understanding of the complex presidential election process in the USA.
Indirect voting system
The USA is not a direct democracy, meaning that the people do not vote for a party or a president directly. They instead employ an indirect elector process where a group of people do the actual election for president and vice president.  This group is referred to as the United States Electoral College and while the presidential electors mostly vote according to the popular vote of their state, they are not obligated to. If someone cast their vote differently they are referred to as a faithless elector. In fact there has been incidents where presidential electors
While a federal constitutional republic is technically a democracy, I can't help feeling that if you can't really trust that your vote will actually count towards the desired outcome, then how democratic is that system really? In fairness this has not been used more than 165 times in the history of the USA, but it does happen. 33 states have laws against faithless electors, though the laws in half of these jurisdictions have no enforcement mechanism. In 2016 there were 4 faithless electors.
The Plurality System
The plurality system, or the winner takes all system, is common in the USA. What it means is that only the winner of a certain district count. This means that all votes that is not made on the winning candidate are lost and essentially useless. Because of this system there will be as few candidates as possible to avoid dilution of votes. As a result the people have very limited choices for whom they can vote for.
Not only will this make voting less appealing if the candidates are few and not to your liking, it can also lead to a situation where a presidential candidate loose even if the majority of the people vote for that person.
The Design of voting districts
This is something I did not know existed, but apparently it is the right of the ruling party to redefine the boundaries of voting districts between presidential elections. This even has its own name: Gerrymandering. What it means is that the ruling party redefine voting districts in a way that have the potential to give the best outcome in  presidential election. This to me is a very bad way to manipulate the outcome of an election by rigging it beforehand to tip the scales in your favor?
This also have the potential to make it more difficult to know what district you are in and where to go to vote.
Making voting difficult
If designing the districts add a barrier and the plurality system make it less likely that you will vote the design of the vote itself and how information on voting is managed may be worse yet. Back in 2010 there was a big debate over the design of the Florida ballot and how it might have caused people to vote for the wrong candidate. This led to a guideline for better designs of ballots, but it is not enforced as they are just guidelines.


There has been quite a few issues where legal and illegal methods of voter suppression have prevented people from voting, misinformation is used to make it harder to vote and so on. In This election we see quite a few concerns over mail-in ballots for example. Overall it seems that the fear of voter frauds seem a bit strange considering that there are almost no confirmed cases for that in the USA? To me, it seems that the risk of manipulation and corruption is a far greater threat than voter fraud?
Conclusions
Considering the way people's votes are managed, the risk of manipulation through the design of districts, information and the ballots themselves is it fair to say that the USA are not a democratic country? I am not sure to be honest, but I do think that the people in the USA deserve better. I think a good start would be to scrap the United States Electoral College and use a direct voting system so all votes count equally. Then make it as easy as possible to vote and I think many of the issues currently in the USA can be mitigated if not completely fixed?
In the end however this is not up to me to judge or demand a change for. It is up to the people of the USA if they are happy with the current system or if they want to see it changed.
 
I leave you with a presentation by Mike Monteiro who is slightly more critical than I am. This is from 2017 at a Swedish event called from business to buttons that I attended.
Mike Monteiro