Welcome to my journey!

 How to save an organization when you see it is heading in the wrong direction? This is a topic and a challenge for many non-profit and for-profit organizations. Ideally, you need to align your goals and ambitions with those of the organization. But a lot of time this is way harder challenge than it seems.

 I am still trying to plan my day ahead. I am getting way better than before in achieving the extra activities I plan, and one of the reasons for that is my discipline. To be successful is hard because you need to have tons of discipline.

 In big corporations, as well as in politics, what you put as an input you get as an output. If people don’t believe in the voting process, the voting results will be low. If people don’t believe in the company and the management, the innovation and extra mile work will be low as well.

 Today was supposed to be a day where people would think about the elections. But guess what? They didn’t. Instead, the topic of the day was still about voting. If you can’t create a fair process so people can vote, don’t expect for them to vote, because this is a democracy. But for many parties, voting for people is not a good option. They prefer to have their core voters, who vote for them no matter what. The rest of the people, the political parties, would always prefer that they don’t vote.

 In my hometown, today there was a big scandal related to machine voting. The issue is no one talks about what problem that solution solves. But this is the issue when you try to elect an incompetent representative.

During election time, you can hear a lot of promises. But the trick is to choose the person who is not only good at speaking, but also good at doing the job. This is similar to some modern managers who oversell their abilities and qualities, but when they need to motivate the team, they do it so poorly, that everyone complains about them.

There are a lot of events to visit, but should you chose to visit them? It might be a better strategy to say “No” to more things and say “Yes” to the few things that makes sense for your long-term goals.

 I noticed that the BTC price is getting high this week. But why? What makes the crypto so appealing? higher interest rates are pushing people to put their money in the bank where they can get a steady returns, so who has so much free cash to buy crypto? There are some ideas where the money is coming from and all of them point to "bad actors". Just curious if the old saying "what goes around comes around" will really be applicable here.

The issue with the big corporations is people who are not motivated and not skilled, but who are “Yes, man”. They usually are promoted to a higher position. And if you have a manager who is not good in their job, might just affect the team and the moral, when you have someone who claims to be an architect, but they are not good in their job, will affect the customers too.   This is a big issue, because they will demotivate the team and upset the customer. This is really a double trouble. We need to rethink who we define as trusted people in the organization. Sometimes the people who want to put a break on bad ideas are the people you want really to work with. The “yes” people might actually cost way more in the long term, compared to the professionals who have the experience and can see the issue for a far.

People think that when you defend a design decision, you argue. This is rarely the case. But when you work with “B” players or “C” players, this is something you encounter. You will need to decide. Will you be part of the crowd or stand on your ground and this sometimes means that you need to change the place of occupation? My suggestion is simple. Find a workplace that will help you strive and be creative!

 I am doing a lot of projects these days and sometimes it is hard to find the time to catch up with people. I wrote about this before. But it is necessary to keep connections and expand your horizon. You can only do good when you do things correctly and you can do better when you expand your horizon and adopt a different way of networking, meeting people and so on.   We are unfortunately blind to new opportunities until someone else tells us they are possible.

 On the final day of the conference, I took a challenge and share my learnings on the social media. For that, I was actually awarded the first place for the best picture of the conference. I feel really proud of my social media skills, and I enjoy the fact that I can contribute to raising awareness of the conference. My message for today is simple. Think about your skills and how you can contribute to the success of the organization you are part of?

 I am fortunate enough to attend an IT conference related to Java developers called Geecon. I attended it a few years back thanks to my previous employer, and I was equally excited to visit it again. The first day turned out to be a catch-up event with people I know from the past and who work now in different company. The point is, always make the time to network and meet other people during a conference. Learning is great, but also networking can help you go further.

 I like the separation of responsibilities. But I see it in many teams where people take over additional responsibilities in order to help others. And do you know what is the end result of that? Overstressed person, who has a hero complex. They think they help the company and the team, but in reality, they are doing a very poor job in all the responsibilities. A better solution for this issue is to prioritize the work or find/hire additional people to help you.

What does it mean to lead international organization which consist of diverse professionals?   This is something I think about constantly. It is important to have leadership who can provide specific expertise. I had been part of the leadership of international IT committee and this experience taught me a lot. This is why now I can provide even more value and assist in making this organization even better. Last week we gathered to network and to discuss the things we want to work on in the near future. It is important to hear all the diverse points and decide on a common strategy. The challenge we face is a challenge many big corporations face in terms of motivating and gathering members. The difference is that we do it in the non-profit sector where big salaries and statuses are not the driving force, for us, creating change and a strong network is.   And strategic leadership, process creation and optimizations are my expertise.   We plan to create more and more event

  “What goes around comes around!” Interesting fact: Dynamic properties are now deprecated in PHP 8.2 and will be removed in PHP 9.0 This is something Java was never a fan of and it turned out that it just complicate the code and it is way better to have a clean and defined variables and structures instead of "inventing" variables out of thin air. The strong types notion seems to be also a preferred way in the JS world, where the TypeScript is the de facto standard. I haven’t done so much PHP development in the last years and I wonder if someone else still uses this approach?

 It is time to re-charge. Everyone needs to plan one day per week to do fewer things and to plan the next week. Otherwise, you risk to burnout.

Today we will explore the Signal Festival attractions. This is the 11 th edition of this amazing festival. What can we learn from this? Every city needs to invest in events which will attract attention. For Lisbon there is Web Summit. For Prague, there are many festivals, but the Signal Festival is one of those things that attracts many people. If your city doesn’t have such festival or event, it is about time to create a tradition and something to keep people excited yearly.

 Today I am expecting to meet people from my organization in Prague. I am excited to meet them in person and to network. As an extrovert, it is important to me to meet people and keep meaningful conversations and connections. Something which is not always easy to do remotely.

 It has been a few months since I switched to the platform Blogger. I am so delighted to do that! This really saves me a lot of time administrating my previous platform. The learning from this experience is the following - only the things you know will generate your income so you can hire people to help you in the future. For everything else, find a cheaper and easier way to do it. For me, this daily blog is a hobby, and I am happy to continue doing this experiment without investing a lot of effort into the non-essential things like support and maintenance.

 We can expect a continuation of war and even greater hostilities in the following year. This is what you and I have experienced in the past few years. Covid was supposed to be the end of restrictions and the beginning of something beautiful. But if only… Things become more complicated. Raising interest rates makes housing affordability a distant dream for most. The economic slowdown makes job security something you had read in the newspapers in the past. We all need to adapt and adopt a new mindset. A more risk-averse mindset. In these conditions, having less debt and a bigger financial cushion is essential. Uncertain times need risk-averse measures!

 Have you ever been in the situation where you realize someone you considered a friend was actually a fake friend? It really makes you re-think your relationship with other people. Friends are people you choose to spend time with. It is a kind of relationship that should be mutually beneficial. But when you realize that the person you considered being your friend is really an energy vampire and is only with you to complain about life and don’t share the same values as you, it is time to move on. It is a hard decision to make, but ultimately your time and energy are way more important than someone who doesn’t contribute or provide a value to the relationship.

 It is important to assess your career and life trajectory and see if you are still on the right track or not. And adjust it. This is easier said than done. I know many people who fell into the trap of familiarity and don’t want to move on to other, more profitable activities.   Don’t be one of those people and always look at the future goals and ask yourself how you can reach them more effectively and faster!

 The history of the modern debt is deeply routed with credit and credit cards. The idea that you don’t need to pay for something right now is fascinating, to say the least. The concept is a big leap from the traditional exchange practice, where someone exchange goods and services for money and vice versa. But apparently not so uncommon. In the ancient Rome times, debt was not uncommon either and if someone dies or couldn’t afford to pay back, his creditors might go after family members and ask them to pay back or the person who owns money might sell themselves as a slave. In the modern times, slavery is illegal, but we still have the concept of modern slaves, where if someone can’t pay their debt, they either need to go “under the grid” and live off cash, or if they have a job, most of their income will go to repay the debt. But there is also another way to keep people in debt. The invention of credit cards provides something fascinating, and that is you are now allowed to overspend mo

  The moment of realization when your non-profit organization email account bounced certain messages because of incomplete configuration, and someone promptly provided you with the precise cause and solutions, truly invaluable! Although my expertise lies in software development, I also possess a considerable amount of experience in handling administration and configuration tasks for various systems.  It was very easy to see the problem and solve it once pointed out and also I learned new tools to identify mail server issues.

  Innovation in your corporation or your startup is easy!   Just follow the 5 strategies I shared in  the podcast!   Let me know what you think. Is there  something more I can add or update? Enjoy the episode:  Fast Friday - Where to get startup ideas - Beyond BEST | Podcast on Spotify

 It is common for people to escape the things they don’t like. You might dislike a person and a place and will want to escape this negative feeling. But moving away from something we don’t like is seldom the answer. We need to know what we like to do as a job, who we like to be with, and so on. And then move towards that vision and person. If we fail to do so, we risk jumping off all ships and never feel we progress and achieve something meaningful.

 Is it better to sit back and accept bad decisions or to stand up for yourself and risk to be labeled as difficult? This is a hard question to answer. But ultimately a question you must answer for yourself. The outcome will determine your future career focus.

 I took part in a campaign focused on innovation. The interesting thing about it is that the product we want to innovate upon will really improve people’s life, and it is worth exploring. Also, since the campaign is public, I can see all the other people submitted ideas. Would you prefer to innovate inside a big corporation or spin off a company and pursue innovation there?

 I am writing regularly about the office politics, but one thing I haven’t write so much is about the people who work in the office and the danger to work for specific types of people. At first, I was totally against this classification. I believe all people are capable of great work and professionalism. But now I know better. There are people who will slack or will never commit to expand their skills and knowledge. They will just live their life with no need to improve themselves. This is bad news for the people who want to do, be , achieve more. So I ended up adopting the classification for the people. There are three types of people A, B, C. A type are people who constantly developing themselves, are curious about others and the world and are proactive in what they do. Those are people who others want to work with. Usually, manager of type A wants to work with type A people, unless they are insecure. If the latter is true, they will hire B and C people to ensure that none

 I had returned to my hometown of Prague to continue my work from here. My goal for this month is to keep improving my habits and to restart doing the good habits I did before and lost during my stay abroad. I will focus on some not so practical goals which stayed for a while. One of them, as you know already, is to keep getting leaner. Another goal is to start playing Ukulele again, and the third goal is to restart my learning Czech initiative. This time I learned my lesson and I will book a time slot where I will only focus on Czech and make it useful for myself to practice. What will be your goals for October?