Category Archives: I’ve seen the world

Gone hitchhiking

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I’m very grate­ful for all the work, friends and cool things that I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing during the three years I’ve been sta­tion­ary in Stock­holm.
But now it was time to move on!

  • No more known roads or paths.
  • No more vacation.
  • No more lunch boxes.
  • No more pay checks.
  • No more com­mut­ing to and from work.
  • No more signs in Swedish.
  • No more coffee breaks.

That is a lot of “no”s, yes?
So what am I really saying?

I’m saying yes to:

  • Hitch­hik­ing from Poland to India (at least) with Amanda.
  • Deliv­er­ing high qual­ity con­tent through­out East­ern Europe, the Middle East and the rest of the world (perhaps?).
  • Earn­ing my dough in a direct way by deliv­er­ing direct value.
  • Meet­ing lots of random, beau­ti­ful people during all times of the day.
  • Drink­ing coffee in dif­fer­ent places all over the world.
  • Camp­ing at random days during the whole week (I love tents and fresh air).
  • Extend­ing the very short, but oh-so-sweet Swedish summer into a 365-days long summer.
  • Learn­ing new skills, lan­guages and trades (and master some of them).
  • Spend time and really get to know the people that I’ll meet on this path.

I’ve got two main rea­sons for doing this:

  • Amanda
  • Flying dreams

First then, Amanda.
With­out her, I would never have taken this deci­sion. Not in this way. I would prob­a­bly still be work­ing at Fröjd and spent vaca­tions instead of quit­ting. Now, when we’re two per­sons trying this out together, it feels much more mean­ing­ful to me and it isn’t half as scary. “Home is wher­ever I’m with you”, is very true to me.

Second, dreams about flying.
Isn’t it a bit crazy to change your daily life just because your sleep­ing life is boring? Hope­fully you’ll think so :) .
During my child­hood I spent most of my nights flying, having lucid dreams or fight­ing crim­i­nals. Now, when I’ve been sta­tion­ary at the same work­place for three years I havn’t had a single dream where I’ve gone flying.
Unfortunately!

I remem­ber having one when I vis­ited Norway on my first vaca­tion. But that was like two years ago. My dream­ing life is at least as impor­tant to me as my waking life. It affects my deci­sions, alter my feel­ings and changes my des­tiny.
Now when I’m trav­el­ing again I’ve had count­less of dreams where I’ve gone flying. The first one when I arrived in Poland!

I’m very proud to present man​go​man​jaro.se!
Please follow me on my latest project as we dis­cover East­ern Europe, The Middle East and the rest of the world.

Vackra dem är

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Vackra dem är, människorna på bussen. Uppif­fade inför arbets­da­gen. Nyparfymer­ade, nyduschade, nyklädda. Vissa kanske har ätit en god frukost och druckit en kopp espresso. Andra kanske föredrar te.

Någon hade ett barn i sitt knä, vars hand knappt nådde runt förälderns finger. Fina kläder, kon­stiga glasögon, mustiga dofter, unika ansik­ten. Och alla stod still, på en och samma plats i tyst­nad. Några flörtade lite. Jag bara förtrollades alla dem som åkte i bussen, de var så vackra.

Making use of Web 2.0

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Today when a client asks me to build a web site containing:

  • Blogs, mem­bers need to be able to blog
  • Mar­ket­place, like eBay
  • Photo gallery
  • Forum
  • Cal­en­der
  • Edi­to­r­ial space (for arti­cles and fluffies)

my advice to them is always the same.

“You don’t need to. Let’s use what’s already out there”

Our roles as web devel­op­ers/ web strate­gists is shift­ing within this new era when most of the base func­tion­al­ity such as blogs, social net­works, cal­en­ders, project col­lab­o­ra­tion and even video edi­tors are actu­ally avail­able for free already! In this vast space of ter­abytes there is more then enough apps to meet the cus­tomers need. Why rein­vent the wheel?

Most of the traffic/market/people/users are already on Face­book for exam­ple. How do we reach them through that spe­cific chan­nel? Within Face­book there are room for groups, events, mes­sages and even com­mu­nity based games. It’s perfect!

So, insted of forc­ing the users to join yet another social net­work / sign up for a cam­paign, let’s make it easy for them. That should be our main goal, I think. To make it easy for the user.

ps. If any cus­tomer feels tar­geted by this, don’t. I get requests like these all the time, and there is noth­ing wrong with it. It’s just up to us web // whatever  (we’ve got LOTS of dif­fer­ent titles, but mostly we are the same) to get you on the right track. It’s our respon­si­bil­ity as experts to lead the field and to make the best out of your ini­tial idea.

Tips for junior developers

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One year ago I got an employ­ment as a junior devel­oper. Since then I’ve learned quite much, espe­cially things about work­ing as a junior developer.

Things that might be useful:

  • If you have some­one more expe­ri­enced on the office who could review your code before launch, insist on that they do it. She or he can tell you how they would have done stuff (and things you have missed), you’ll learn tons from it. If you’re lucky you might even get a mentor you’ll be able to ask ques­tions, and who’ll be glad to review your code.
  • Just because you just got hired doesn’t mean that you should stop read­ing. Con­tinue to read, write and eval­u­ate your meth­ods. This is a way to keep the work funny and inter­est­ing as well. Never stop learning.
  • Take ini­tia­tives, ask around. Take the chances you get to get to know your team mates better.
  • Ask your team mates what they are doing, and why they are doing it that way. Ques­tion everything.
  • Write down the stuff that you learn and share with others who are, or will be in the same position.

And then we have a few optional things that I per­son­ally do:

  • I keep my desk clut­ter free. At my work­place, it’s not a require­ment or any­thing, but I just like to be able to focus on the screen and the tasks ahead of me.
  • Always show up early, or at least in time. This is not a solid require­ment at my work place either, but I like to show up early, and then leave early. I tend to do the heavy tasks in the morn­ing, and more light weight tasks in the afternoon.
  • Be polite and gen­er­ous with com­pli­ments, remem­ber peo­ples names and details about their per­sonal life. But don’t pre­tend to be inter­ested if you’re not. False­hood always shines through.
  • Do your work. You might find this point very obvi­ous, but I’ve seen enough people show­ing up at work to just spend the time procrastinating.

Most of these things are common sense, but you’ll be sur­prised of how many who wouldn’t agree with them. The impor­tant point is that you deliver what you promised, and that you do it on time. When you work in teams of more expe­ri­enced people and you get to work with dif­fer­ent projects (both fresh and uh-oh-so-old-and-completely-idiotic) you learn the most impor­tant things. The small things that no one ever seem to cover in those books that you read, or that tuto­r­ial that you walked. You learn things that could only be learned through hard earned experience.