We’re all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits — from happiness to obesity — can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don’t even know.

What became very clear for me in a short time that there is not much interest in a professional organization. So after struggling for a few month last year, I turned my attention to other things, mostly to work, and starting my business.
This year however I had a lot of free time again – see my previous post -, and picked up the thread.
It is definitely a difficult endeavour. Most of the local business analysts I contacted last year has expressed no interest at all in the initiative, but this time I had more results.
I am not sure how successful this will be, I have hopes, and have gathered some support, but I am well aware of the possibility of failing spectacularly.
But no matter what, I will keep on trying so I can say in the end: I did what I could.

Why form a local chapter?

IIBA has the stated goal of advancing the profession of business analysis by providing standards, best practices, and a supportive environment including meetings, conferences, webinars, and finally, a certification for those interested.

The local chapter would do the same on a local level, promoting the necessity of the BA profession, hosting conferences, meetings and providing a venue for local? professionals to exchange knowledge and ideas.
In my experience a much needed thing.

If you happen to be a business analyst or an IT person working in Hungary, and you would be interested in helping us, please contact me.

So for the last 4 months I had no contract at all, only vague promises, maybes and “come back in half a years”.

It was awful, and I have been on the brink of bankruptcy.
However, at the same time I am grateful for this.
I’ve gone independent only a year ago, forming my business, and having this crisis so early is a good thing. Drives home a few points, and I have had some necessary lessons very early, which is better than having the same lessons says five years into the business.

What were the most important lessons?

1. Minimize your dependency from your bank. They won’t help you when you need it, and when you hit hard times, an outstanding loan makes it even harder.
   Yes, that means cutting up credit cards too. That will force you not to count on them as a “last resort” financing option.
   N.B.: Here the annual interest rate of credit cards is 40-45%. If yours have a better interest rate, then maybe you shouldn’t get rid of them. Your choice.
2. Don’t depend on one client. If you can, have more than one, even if individually all are smaller clients.That’s something difficult to achieve in my field, I usually work on a project 40 hours a week as a business analyst. Then again, it can be that I have a small sample yet.
3. Even when you are in a really tight spot, don’t roll over for your client. They won’t acknowledge that it was just out of necessity that you worked for so little, or with such bad conditions, and they will expect it.
4. Don’t accept favours from your client. They will bring it up over and over again, trying to use it to bargain for lower prices.
5. When you say no, people are prone to get offended. Tough. Actually, if someone gets offended because you said no, it’s just as well, you wouldn’t want to work with them anyway.
6. People will try to take advantage of you. And sometimes they will go snarky and nasty with you when you don’t let them, sometimes going to such a length as to call you an ungrateful sod. Deal with it. And if you can, stop doing business with them.

Now looking over these lessons I can tell you that they are geared toward a certain, “can’t trust anyone” kind of market, not the?Seth Godin kind. I really like him, but to reach the permission and trust based market, now that is a difficult thing around here.

So far, I came out alive. I can see the end of the tunnel, not quite there but close.
And looking forward to what the rest of the year brings.

It’s been a long time since I have last written here – I don’t really count the last two posts, and even if I did, 2 posts in 3 months is not that much.

Anyway, kind of back, but still not completely – and it’s not lack of time, more like lack of subject. I could not think of anything I could write about. None, nada, zip, nil. Ideas for posts has been swimming in my head when I was relaxing, but then I stood up, and started to work, or think, or plan, and the ideas whoosh – flew away.

Now I try to get the ideas together, and sew a beautiful tapestry of words – I mean, try to type in some meaningful sentences forming a coherent post.

So, as I have written a few times in the summer, for various reasons I have started my own small company, business, which seemed like a good idea – and actually the only way to get some paying job.

Of course, I have always wanted to do it sometimes in the future, so I was content with the way things went, at least until I started to meet the traps, tricks, roadblocks and all the funny things that come with running a business.

Nothing, nothing in my previous experience as an employee has prepared me for this. School? Forget it. Sure, I have had some “Entrepreneurship Course” and we have studied some basic Marketing, and Market Research, and Business Finances, and such, but what I had to realize is that the things I have learned at college has nothing to do with reality. No connection at all. For some weird reasons, the real world works in a totally different way. Plus, all my life I was expected to behave the opposite way I have to behave now. Different mindset, different way of looking at things. But I am learning – and I hope fast enough.

The most important thing I’ve learnt this past 6 months is that I have to say No. No matter that you don’t have another contract, that you probably won’t have any income for the next month if you don’t get this one, you have to say No until the offer is good for you too, not just the other guy. Because next time he will expect you to do it with the same bad conditions, and in the long run you lose more than one month worth of income. And that’s difficult, especially when the other guy is an old co-worker, former boss, or another acquaintance of yours.

Another thing is what you really need is a LOT of discipline. Being your own boss sounds cool. “Hey, I can wake up whenever I want, I can work however I want”, but lets face it, that doesn’t work. On the one hand you still have to do a job on someone else’s terms – deadlines, meetings, deliverables -, on the other hand time has a habit of flying fast, and it is awful to start to work at 4PM with the knowledge that you have to finish something by next morning.

And last, but not the least: financial planning. Bills and taxes have to be paid on time, and there is a good chance that even if you issue the invoice right on time, you won’t get paid by the due date. So you have to plan forward at least two months. Somehow companies have the idea that paying a salary on time is important, but paying an invoice on time is optional, and they are confident that you won’t complain because “you want us to hire you in the future again, right?” – hint: this is the part where saying No can be necessary, but tough.

So that’s my last 6 months in a nutshell – I am on a learning curve, learning things I have never had the chance or the need to learn on the run, and that takes time away from everything. But I am learning – and it worth it.

So, the list so far:

1. Discipline
2. Plan ahead
3. Learn to say No

Now I wonder what other lessons will I learn.

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Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly , from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

I usually like the books of Seth Godin, and sharing is caring, so I downloaded, started to read it and decided to put it up here. The book has over 71 thought provoking chapters, with some photos spread around – focusing on children, education and Room to Read – and beside the having a great content, it shows a very useful initiative, which I think deserves the “eyeballs”.

Below are my favourite chapters, with some samples – in case I have to persuade you to check out a free ebook.

Elizabeth Gilber – EASE

The world will still need saving tomorrow. In the meantime, you’re going to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in somebody else) if you don’t calm the hell down.

I don’t know who and where said it, some reformed movie hero probably – “All my life I was chasing everything and I missed everything”. We dictate a speed which is needless and useless most of the time. Where are we running?

Howard Mann – CONNECTED

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before.

We have friends all over the globe, yet we don’t know our neighbours. So immersed in global events we have no idea what happens in our streets.

John Wood – EDUCATION

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.

Education is a ripple. And there are too many still waters in the world.

Mitch Joel – COMPASSION

“It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”
We spend more than 50% of our lives at work. Why would anyone want to wake up in the morning and go to work with that attitude? If you don’t make it personal, and if you don’t make it count, what’s the point?

Should we really leave ourselves at home when we go to work?

Jeff Jonas – CONTEXT

When information is evaluated without context—regardless of highly sophisticated analytics, an infinite amount of compute, energy or time, little if any relevance can be established with certainty.

When information is evaluated without context – it’s not information. It’s just meaningless data. I have 500 HUF in my pocket. That’s no information to you unless you know current prices in Budapest. Without context, it is not information.

Chip and Dan Heath – CHANGE

We’re wired to focus on what’s not working. But Murphy asked, “What IS working, today, and how can we do more of it?”

Indeed, talking about what does not work solves nothing. Concentrating only on the symptoms won’t give you a solution. And CHANGE links so nicely to CONTEXT. Without CONTEXT there is no information. Without information, we can’t find a solution.

And more. 82 pages with short, thought provoking chapters. The book is free, and freely distributable – through Twitter, Plurk, website, whatever, write your review, your thoughts, your comments.

And after you have read it, share what you liked.

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The full story of Uganda: A little goes a long way can be found on the website of Frontlineworld, and there you can find the full length video – but that site does not allow embedding, and the stream is slow and freezes every few seconds, so I got it from causecast.org instead.

So how does UML models asynchronous messages, and how can you tell from a sequence diagram if a message is asynchronous? During the talk there were four signs mention that shows that a call is asynchronous:

1. There are dashed arrows showing the return calls.
2. The activity boxes are not continuous on the main lifeline
3. The arrowhead is not filled for the asynchronous message
4. The asynchronous message is not horizontal but diagonal.

My favourite one is the diagonal message, and I first I intended to write only about that, but then I thought better and decided to write bout all four statements above.

I will show you which ones are false statements, and why the last one – which was called simply nonsense – is actually true.

1) There are dashed arrows showing the return calls.

Well, asynchronous messages definitely have return calls. But so does synchronous messages. The UML specification does not restrict the use of return call to either of them. So having return calls on your diagram is not an indicator of whether the call is asynchronous or synchronous .

UML Superstructure Specification, v2.1.2 page 472 Figure 14.11

2) The activity is not continuous on the lifeline of the called or the calling object

That can be true. Or not. It actually does not show with 100% certainity if it’s a synchronous or asynchronous flow.
The activity can go on and off for a couple of reasons.

a) On the called object’s lifeline it goes off after a return call (whether shown or not)

b) When you do a callback from an asynchronous call

c) When you do a callback from a synchronous call with an explicit End Source Activation on the original synchronous call

NOTE: Ok, this is a red herring. It only seems to be a synchronous message, and the only reason you can do this is because the CASE tool allows you to do stupid things. This is an asynchronous call despite the misleading arrowhead. Now, can you tell me if the guy who drew this diagram was doing it deliberately to mess with the reader, or wanted to create an asynchronous message and did not bother with the correct arrow heads, or tried to be clever, and this is a synchronous message and wants to get a point through in an awkward way, or simply does not understand the whole synchronous/asynchronous business? No? Thought so.

So this one you can discard, bad use of the modeling tool / notation is simply that.

d) On the calling object’s lifeline the activity rectangle gets disrupted when you start a new message group

You have to take into consideration that although it is not a good practice – at least in my opinion – nothing on Earth prevents or forbids you from displaying more than one flow on one diagram, and that can mess up the activity rectangles even more.

On the activity rectangle

This activity rectangle thing, where we state that the object is “active” or “inactive” based on the presence of the rectangle, is not well handled. For one thing in the UML specification they are called: ExecutionOccurences (that name is telling a bit more about the meaning of it). The other thing is, if you think about the rectangle as an indicator of whether an object is active or not, then why does a callback from an asynchronous call disrupts the activeness of the object? The object does not become less active when he receives a call back.

Notation

ExecutionOccurences are represented as thin rectangles (grey or white) on the lifeline (see “Lifeline (from BasicInteractions, Fragments)” on page 490).
We may also represent an ExecutionSpecification by a wider labeled rectangle, where the label usually identifies the action that was executed. An example of this can be seen in Figure 14.13 on page 475.
For ExecutionSpecifications that refer to atomic actions such as reading attributes of a Signal (conveyed by the Message), the Action symbol may be associated with the reception OccurrenceSpecification with a line in order to emphasize that the whole Action is associated with only one OccurrenceSpecification (and start and finish associations refer to the very same OccurrenceSpecification).

Overlapping execution occurrences on the same lifeline are represented by overlapping rectangles as shown in Figure 14.15

UML Superstructure Specification, v2.1.2 page 479

If you think about it as an Execution Occurence, and not whether the Object is active or not, it will make more sense.

3) The arrowhead is not filled

Actually that’s the only way to show an asynchronous message according to the UML Superstructure specification.

Notation
A message is shown as a line from the sender message end to the receiver message end. The line must be such that every line fragment is either horizontal or downwards when traversed from send event to receive event. The send and receive events may both be on the same lifeline. The form of the line or arrowhead reflects properties of the message:

• Asynchronous Messages have an open arrow head.
• Synchronous Messages typically represent operation calls and are shown with a filled arrow head.
• The reply message from a method has a dashed line.

UML Superstructure Specification, v2.1.2 page 493

A quick note: some books and CASE tools use the half-stick arrowhead to differentiate the asynchronous messages – an open arrowhead with the bottom half missing -, because for a time that was the UML specification. But even then, the asynchronous message is shown by a different arrowhead than the synchronous message.

Sadly, on big diagrams printed on small papers that’s not too easy to read – Martin Fowler proposes the us of the half-stick arrowhead, stating that the filled/open distinction is too subtle. I am not sure that the half-stick arrowhead will solve this, but definitely was a bigger difference than the current one.

4) The message is not horizontal but diagonal.

It seems weird, doesn’t it? An asynchronous message “does not cause the invoking operation to halt execution while it awaits the return of control.” That means it can take it’s own sweet time to execute and that means it is not neccessarily an instantaneous call. So, we can define how long it can take to execute and return a result for example – i.e. timeout.

As the lifeline of an object in a sequence diagram represents time, the simple fact that an asynchronous message have 5 seconds to start, or 5 seconds to execute, can be shown by a diagonal message line – plus we write the Duration and Timing constraints – as it happens that’s the way you show it in UML.

Of course most of the time we don’t apply timing constraints on a message. But it is good to know that there is a possibility to do that. So you can say, that for simplicity’s sake an asynchronous message is diagonal except when the set of timing constraints is empty. Then it’s a diagonal with an angle of 0 degrees.

{ Don’t do that. It’s pointless and just shows you always wanted to be a theoretical mathematician, and failed for a good reason ;) }

And if we are talking about time, there are a few other possibilities according to the UML specifications.

Figure 14.26 – Sequence Diagram with time and timing concepts

The Sequence Diagram in Figure 14.26 shows how time and timing notation may be applied to describe time observation and timing constraints. The :User sends a message Code and its duration is measured. The :ACSystem will send two messages back to the :User. CardOut is constrained to last between 0 and 13 time units. Furthermore the interval between the sending of Code and the reception of OK is constrained to last between d and 3*d where d is the measured duration of the Code signal. We also notice the observation of the time point t at the sending of OK and how this is used to constrain the time point of the reception of CardOut.

UML Superstructure Specification, v2.1.2 page 513

We can define the timing interval for the message, and we can define Observation timing and duration for the message – useful in the case of time sensitive systems, and contrary to what some people maintaint, that there is no possibility to define time related behaviour in the UML, there is a few ways to show that.

That was it. All my first thoughts on the sequence diagramme and the asynchronous message notations. I had an inclination to cut it into two separate posts, but in the end, I think it’s complete this way.

As always, any criticism, comment, question or idea on what I have left out, or what should I delve into a bit more, or mistakes I made are welcome.

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Finally, got it working too. It is easy, everything is a snap, except when you have want to make some really “fancy” thing on your site – like the Video Posts on the right -, then it’s php coding. Or when it chokes on plugins, like on Disqus. Don’t know why, but it simply could not handle it.

I wonder what can cause this behaviour, as people say they are running it without trouble – I am well prepared now for the flaming I’m going to get for pointing out problems :) – but below you can see the problem in all it’s glory.

The tricky thing is what I have discovered is that it only happens in the Featured leaf, and then only when I set it to Rotate the posts.

The solution for now was pure hacking. The Disqus code that seems to be the cuplrit – or the victim, depends on how you look at it – can be found in the disqus.php:

function dsq_comment_count() {
  global $dsq_cc_script_embedded;
  if ( $dsq_cc_script_embedded ) {
    return;
  } else if ( (is_single() || is_page() || $withcomments || is_feed()) ) {
    return;
  }
  ?>
  <script type="text/javascript">
  // <![CDATA[
   (function() {
     var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
     var query = '&';
     for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
       if(links[i].href.indexOf('#disqus_thread') >= 0) {
       links[i].innerHTML = 'View Comments';
       query += 'wpid' + i + '=' + encodeURIComponent(links[i].getAttribute('wpid')) + '&';
     }
   }
   document.write('<script charset="utf-8" type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo DISQUS_URL ?>/forums/<?php echo strtolower(get_option('disqus_forum_url')); ?>/get_num_replies_from_wpid.js?v=2.0' + query + '"><' + '/script>');
 })();
 //]]>
 </script>
 <?php
   $dsq_cc_script_embedded = true;
}

This only happened in the Featured Post leaf, and only when I enabled Rotate – maybe the rotate script and the Disqus script get tangled. I don’t know.

For now what I have done is pure, and serious no-no hacking. I have commented out the code between <script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[ and // ]]></script>.
Evidently it is the wrong solution, but for now it works, and I am going to find out the proper one.

UPDATE: After a bit of thinking I have decided to instead implement a more cultured temporary solution.
I have changed this line:

} else if ( (is_single() || is_page() || $withcomments || is_feed()) ) {

to this line:

} else if ( (is_home() || is_single() || is_page() || $withcomments || is_feed()) ) {

Yes, I know that was the logical thing from the start.

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The Wizard of Waukesha, Lester William Polfuss has left the stage. But not before he gave us the Les Paul , the first multi-track recording, the world’s first commercially-produced reel-to-reel audio tape recorder and a lot of good music.

Your guitar – or at least a cheaper version – gave me countless hours of pleasure and joy. I would like to thank you for that.

Rest in peace, Les Paul. You made this world a better place.

Ok, I want to ask you something. Minimize the feedreader, the e-mail client and tweetdeck. Done?

Now maximize this window.

Thank you.

Ok, just joking, but, did you notice how much we “multi-task”? We are at so many place at one time that, well. we are nowhere actually. We read a blogpost while simultaneously respond to tweets while chatting in Skype. Whatever we do, we either are doing something else at the same time, or already thinking about the next task. So, we are not there. And it’s not good.

Disclosure: Yes, I am absolutely guilty of riding more than one horse at the same time. That’s why I started to write this post.

Slow down. Take a deep breath.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi has written a wonderful book titled Flow. Tom DeMarco in Peopleware also wrote about the effect. When you gather your mind, your attention and do one and only one thing, getting into the Flow, concentrated, effective and enjoying it.

You know, the thing that happens in the Magical Hours of After 5PM, when the office is empty, everyone went home and you actually can do some work. No phones ringing, no boss running in and dragging you away for a meeting, no co-workers jumping on you: “Hi! Can I disturb you for 5 minutes?” which is a pointless question, as you are already disturbed, dragged out of the flow, and it will take about 15-20 minutes to get back into it – if it happens 4 times a day you lost 1 hour of effective work time.

But we all know this, I don’t want to talk about that.

However, did you notice that you actually bring it into your out-of-office life too? Always doing 3 or 4 things, not really being anywhere. Joanna Young wrote about The Art of Paying Attention. You can say it’s not about “don’t multitask it’s about watching flowers”, but do you think if she tried to watch the flowers AND watch the bees AND tweeting about the flower AND Qik it at the same time she would have enjoyed it and really notice all the things about the flower?

I know that “faster, higher, more” is the way we ought to live, but do yourself, and those around you, a favour. When you don’t have to multitask, then don’t do it.
Pay attention to the post you read, the people you are talking to and do only one thing at a time.
I am well aware that being able to multitask is a kind of achievement and it is regarded as the most desirable skill in the whole world, but frankly, if you think about it it simply means you don’t think that much of the tasks you have to do. They are so simple, menial and irrelevant that you can do them with just a small part of your attention.

And before you go to the next site, post, tweet, watch this video – Mihály Csíkszentmihályi talking about the Flow.