Who is Mike2.0? What I did then and what I do now.
Notes for the video/podcast with Sai about going from IT Tech to Thinking Tech.
I’ve just been interviewed by Sai for his YouTube channel . Ideally during that chat I’d have been drawing and pointing at images, but online interviews don’t work like that.
The video is here. Thanks for Sai for the opportunity and the great questions.
This post is notes to go with that interview, including some images that I would have shown and referred to. This post is standalone, the hour interview has more stuff in it and you should totally watch that.
The interview was about the work I do. And this can be summed up with the progress from Mike1.0, to Mike1.5 and Mike2.0.
As the title says, I went from ‘Linux Tech’ to ‘People and Thinking Tech’.
Read on to find out how.
Who was Mike 1.0?
Mike 1.0 did IT tech stuff and unix/linux. Full stack, including on-call-getting-out-of-bed when things broke.
This Wardley Map canvas is a good start. It’s fudged to show skills, but it’s a good conversation starter. The purpose here is my job, the users are my employer and the colleagues who I build and maintained IT systems for.
The map itself shows how there is a set of skills underpinning my ability to do things. In this case the skills came together to something that was a job
.
You can see here that I was selling my skills that fit together as ‘IT Bloke’. Note that I did have and use ‘People Service Requirement Skills’. So I could talk to people about what they needed, but this is in the far-left ‘genesis’ bit of the map. I just worked this out myself, and was ‘good enough’, but I was a bit of a dick at times.
Learning Tech - Principles First
Mike1.0 learned Linux 'principles first' from a friend (Hi Michael!) who was happy to answer all my 'Linux what if....' questions.
I've written about how I learn things in a work in progress google book. I say book, but it’s not got too many words.
Mike 1.0 just smashed ahead a learned things, or struggled making progress without really knowing why. The book referenced above has examples version1.0 of me successfully learned and things that never got too far before I gave up, with an analysis of why it didn’t work.
I find learning from a single (or book full) of examples hard, but learning from principles is easier for me. I got to Mike2.0 by accidentally finding stuff I could learn fairly easily. Learning from principles is the most import thing.
What do you mean ‘Learn by Principles’
Learning from principles is Big Picture first. Learn the principle and the details are obvious.
The opposite is learning by collecting examples.
For example, Linux Computing principles are
Everything is a file
Commands do one(1) thing well
You pipe the output of one command to the input of another to do things
Users and files have permissions (and with selinux, files have allowed uses too)
Things have a 'proper place' in the filesystem. (at least per distro, I used debian.)
So with these principles, man pages and logs I could do just about anything.
Mike 1.0s Identity
Tech Problem solver. It was literally my job to have or find answers and solutions. I was good at it, for I was asked to solve. This was designing installing and supporting big global 24/7 365 IT solutions. The team I was in build and supported stuff.
This is an actual 60k Sun Solaris server set up I did. Glorious.
Change 1
I had a break from learning, coupled with a change to tech that wasn't based on 'easy to learn' principles meant my skills were not up to date. I couldn’t easily catch up, but I spent a lot of time trying.
I started learning systems and complexity science (https://cynefin.io), coaching (https://cleanlearning.co.uk) and other tools and approaches. Once I knew these things existed, and could help me work with situations I could see, I was hooked.
This timeline shows up to ‘06 when I was learning IT stuff and guitars. I then had a break for kids. It was about ‘14 I passed the test for dyslexia and realised that I found some stuff much easier to learn than others.
Mike 1.5
Halfway. “Hey there is this new thing/idea I have!” “You need to know this! “(a bit of 'ha those idiots don't know this too, to be honest). I was still using a combination of an IT problem solving approach and a more complexity based approach.
Mike 1.9
Working as a 'Visual Information Model Developer' for 2 years. Basically drawing the university from a students perspective and how all the bits fit together. Using Clean Language Interviewing and the systems/complexity ideas. The purpose was for an implementation of some experience management software. We needed to have an agreed understanding of what the experience was, and I drew it.
Mike 2.0
Learning complexity, drawing, team and individual coaching. I learned from people who I could learn from. I’m writing up what these people did that made it easy to learn from them.
What I do now
1) Help people learn to draw ideas, starting with a blank page. I run a workshop for 1-2-1 or small team where the attendees do the drawing. I show examples and work through problems.
2) I draw peoples stuff. I've worked with authors, coaches, technical teams, startups and educationalists. I have skills to get stuff out of people heads.
My Current Challenge
Right now the challenge I'm working on is how to gather data about 'What to do about ChatGPT?'. It's just gathering data - there will need to be some real written and real life actions taken.
So the questionnaire, using Sensemaker® from thecynefin.co will need to be carefully designed if the results are to be used to help guide future actions.
There are some
Designing Journeys
This is a visual example of a Mobile Application Development Course. The visual can be pointed at so students can see what the overview is, and can also be told of specific problems at specific times.
This picture is for accompanying a conversation, rather than replacing one.
An example visual from my work as a 'Visual Information Model Developer' is this big picture of a students journey through university. The 32,000ft is the overview level. There were also 10,000ft level journeys with more detail,
Mike 2.0
Mike 2.0 is not the same as Mike 1.0. I’ve now got a different set of skills with a different focus.