Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Brenda Michelson[Originally posted at brendamichelson.com in May 2017. Moved here 12.23.2020.] I think best with a marker in my hand. Always have. My workspace, and all paths to and from it, are littered with box and line diagrams, doodles, code snippets, and my (at that moment) best idea ever, on any scrap of paper, notebook or […]
[Moved from brendamichelson.com. Original publish date: May 29, 2018] Back in January, I was asked to participate in PEW Research’s survey on the impact of digital life: “Over the next decade, how will changes in digital life impact people’s overall well-being physically and mentally?” The choices: more helped than harmed, more harmed than helped, not […]
Because people still swing by here, and subscribe to this feed, recent posts from my new writing venue:
Lessons from Critical Making: Thingking
Experts Sketch
Comics & the Curse of Knowledge
Oh, and My Current Path, which is a work (exploration) in…
In a long overdue move, I’m now writing at brendamichelson.com. My prior works 2004-2016 will remain archived here, at elemental links. No changes to my consulting and advisory practice, Elemental Links, Inc.
As technology is everywhere, it’s important for everyone to have a basic understanding of technology matters, in the same way people should understand societal, political and financial matters. To understand how the world works, how we fit in, how to instigate or participate in change, or create what’s next. — me, 6.19.2015 [lifted from my 100Stickmen […]
[Originally published in my 100Stickmen Tech musings notebook. Before it was 100Stickmen Tech.] The main cause of incomprehensible prose is the difficulty of imagining what it’s like for someone else not to know what you know. – Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style From The Sense of Style: The Curse of Knowledge: a difficulty in […]
Often, the work of problem-solving spurs the creation, or escalation of other problems. Most are implications of solution execution; expected or not. Sometimes though, the new problem is a result of poking and prodding the original problem, long before solution work. While considering your problem, you unearth a better problem. Not better as in more […]
I recently unearthed my (real world) drawing pencils and purchased a pixel point stylus to add more illustration to my public works. If you’ve worked with me, you know that drawing — on a whiteboard, legal pad, printer paper, using Visio, wherever — is a huge part of my process. Drawing helps me understand new ideas, think […]
I never intend to halt my public writing. It just happens. A client invites me to work on interesting problem, which can lead to another interesting problem or client, and before long only the crickets remain here. During this latest, much prolonged, cricket chorus I’ve been helping clients pursue digital agenda items. It is critical to […]
Some years ago, I was engaged in a discussion with leadership peers on tackling a particularly challenging issue that seemingly had no answer to satisfy the trifecta of ambitions, resource constraints and ability to execute. We’ve all been in this meeting. You circle until one of two things happens. Some person or faction gives in, […]
From the esteemed Jeanne W. Ross on studying customer obsessed, digitally ambitious Nordstrom: DON’T: Only a small percentage of companies will gain competitive advantage from [social, mobile, analytics, cloud, and internet of things] SMACIT technologies. Those that do will focus less on the individual technologies and more on how they rally all those technologies, in […]
“The informational value of a message, whether it’s spoken, written, or encoded in silicon, is a function of how much the recipient already knows. If an outcome is highly unpredictable, a message communicating the outcome carries more information (and requires more bits) than if the outcome is more predictable (e.g., learning that a two-headed coin […]