Ben Kutil – Product and Growth Leader

Context disconnects

2023-01-04T00:00:00Z

There’s the old maxim, “Context is king“. It struck me that how teams navigate context changes over time. I think there’s a gravity that pulls teams towards a high context culture.

As a team first forms, there’s intentional effort to communicate in a low context manner. These low context conversations use explicit details, include relevant information in the communication, and are easier for new people to enter.

As a team works together, they can shortcut communication by relying on their shared understanding of the domain. These high context conversations uses implicit details, assumes a common understanding, and is difficult to enter without the status and history of those communicating.

A simple example that I experience almost every day: acronyms. A team may intentionally start by expanding all acronyms. Over time, that practice fades away, or new acronyms get created. bonding. A shared language that only people on the team know! It’s a form of team bonding or in-culture.

To combat this issue, people could look to APIs. API’s structure communication into and out of a system. They represent a great model for low context communication. They have a defined structure, define explicit detail, and even include relevant information (JSON-LD).

For people setting up or leading teams, consider the “low context” APIs you’d develop that will bring information in and out of a team. Much like system APIs, it’ll increase the use and usefulness of the team.

The stretch pants of work

2022-12-22T00:00:00Z

I’ve arrived late to the “joggers” game. I purchased two pairs in a effort to not have to change from jeans into sweatpants when trying to work out durring the day.

Since then, I can’t get out of them. I’ve given up. Super comfortable. Convient for moving around. I’ve hit a new low.

The last couple of weeks at work, we’ve talked about the need for a bit higher standards when it comes to meetings and communications.

As we’ve accepted lower expecatations about appearance, have we also accepted lower expectations when it comes to agendas, action items, and communicating status?

Order of operations

2022-12-18T00:00:00Z

I like to think about ways to more efficiently or effectively complete my tasks. Sometimes I express this as aesthetic improvements. Like rolling my towels a certain way. Or a functional improvement. Like stacking the dishwasher so that I can put away dishes in batches.

Beyond small local improvements, I like to think about optimizing the macro order of what I do. Today, I had dishes, laundry, vacuuming, and a window-sealing project. I arranged my tasks like this:

Laundry. Collect and start the first load.
Dishes. Put away and re-load the dishwasher. Hand wash knives and pans.
Window Sealing. Put tape around all windows.
Vacuum. Vacuum while waiting for tape to set.
Finish window sealing.
Put away laundry.

This order allowed me to take advantage of the long cycle times of the laundry and dishwasher. It feels rewarding to work efficiently.

I don’t often think about “cycle time” for tasks at work. I should try to use it as effectively at work tasks as I do with chores.

Debugging is hard

2022-12-15T00:00:00Z

Update: It took me another hour to debug Cloudflare Page build problems. Cloudflare stalled when referencing the package using the github short code format in package.json. After trial an error, it seems using the full https based git url works well enough.
Tonight, I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out why something wasn’t working. Found out that the package I used had an issue in its core functionality. And it wasn’t actively maintained.
Thankful someone had forked and fixed the issue.
Anyways. I don’t miss this part of programming.

Christmas lists are boring

2022-12-14T00:00:00Z

As an adult, kids Christmas lists are boring. It does make giving a “gift” easier. It removes all the thought and care that makes it a “gift”. Even more if you get them all from Amazon. Point, click, buy. Love Dad/Uncle Ben.
I think next year I’ll go rougue. No lists, only vibes and care and interest. Watch out kids.

Shipping the org chart

2022-12-13T00:00:00Z

From a person’s point of view, we’re still “shipping the org chart” of government agencies.
Sure we’ve improved the experience of those online experiences. And have tried to structure them around verbs and the way people think. But people still need to find out what benefi they need. And what agency offers it.
It’s taken us 10 years to get consistent on creating good government websites.
How long will it take us to abstract the org chart of government from people’s day to day?

Hello Again

2022-11-26T00:00:00Z

My new years resolution for 2020 was to publish more to my website. I started on January 20th, 2020, and made it to March 2nd, 2020. One Year later, I tried again. It’s now 2022. A lot has happened. And for better or worse, or because third time’s the charm, I’ve dusted off the old website.

Development challenges

I haven’t professionally written code since 2017. The 2016 version of my website relied heavily on gulp, sass, and other popular concepts at time. In 2020, I didn’t have time for that. I spent 30 minutes at a time trying to get things done and documenting the changes I made. In 2022, my environment and interest has changed even more.

👋 Goodbye computer

This time around, I’ve introduced a few new challenges. I no longer have a personal computer. I also no longer want to maintain a personal server.

Luckily, it’s been so long since I’ve written code that GitHub has made CodeSpaces available to all accounts. I love CodeSpaces. I didn’t realize how much I missed having access to the command line. Getting setup and writing code took no time. Writing code from the airport, tethered to my phone, and being able to re-connect seamlessly felt amazing.

👋 Goodbye personal server

In 2016, I was looking for a new job after 8+ years of working for myself. I used it as an opportunity to manage and setup a very fast web server on Digital Ocean. That same instance has run for 6 years. Some time in year 2 or 3, I could no longer update the server, and I didn’t care enough to rebuild its configurations. I even gave up on my intricate capistrano and gulp configs.

In an interest limit time to first bit, I had used CloudFlare as a CDN proxy to my server. Again, thanks to not having paid attention to web development for a very long time, I could now make use of CloudFlare Pages. I’m now using CloudFlare pages to host both of the previous websites (2023,2020,2016). It also builds and deploys this website.

👋 Goodbye Jekyll, 👋 hello 11ty.

I feel totally confident/happy about deciding to jettison a local development environment and a personal server. I feel less confident about my decision to switch to 11ty. Mostly because I have to relearn a bunch of configuration commands. On the upside, I have fewer depedencies, and I’m not moving around between ruby and different implementations of javascript or json.

Consistency, and low volume

Over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten serious about improving my endurance and performance on a bike. I’ve learned a lot about endurance training practices. Two concepts that I intend to transfer over are those of appropriate volume and consistency.

In an endurance sport, consistency and volume represent two of the three primary factors of training that will help you progress in developing your endurance capacity. Consistency in training represents the most important factor. The volume of weekly training is important to progressing towards your goals. However, you shouldn’t pursue volume over the consistency. For example, it is better to consistently train for three days a week over a 2 month period than it is to ride 5 days a week, but inconsistently week to week, over that same time frame.

Back in 2020, I had the goal of working on my website daily, for 30 minutes at a time. That was “high volume”. And it turned out hard to execute on daily.

This time around, I intend to apply some of the things that I’ve learned from training to working on this website. It’s more important that I continue to work on the website year over year than it is that I work on it from day to day. Setting up a pace that enables that long term work represents something I intend to create.