Cartographer, introduce yourself!

This thread is supposed to serve as a way of introducing yourself.

My name is Chris. I am located in Poznan, Poland (GMT +2 Timezone).

My daily work is almost all about mapping - I teach, explain and write about mapping, do some research about/around mapping, and used to code a little bit.

I am heavily interested in strategy (once military, now mostly business), conflicts and psychology, and currently I am working hard to acquire knowledge in adjacent domains (marketing, UX, finances).

I am open for a chat most of the time (albeit it might be difficult to catch me in the afternoon).

My name is John. I am based in Cheshire in the UK.

I am a researcher specialising in digital skills and ICT labour market trends. I have a background in software engineering, but my primary focus is data science.

I have a keen interest in Wardley Maps and consider myself a trainee cartographer.

Hi there,

My name is Alexander, I’m living between Paris, France and Belgrade, Serbia.

I’m a senior software engineer, consultant and author of “Serverless Applications with Node.js”. Also AWS Serverless Hero.

I loved Wardley maps the moment I saw them, would also consider myself as trainee/novice. I’m trying to organize Map Meetup in Belgrade and have “infected” dozens of individuals with Wardley maps. I’m also writing a blogpost now on how I’ve shown the Wardley Map of the my current company on my first interview and impressed the COO. Also, as an experiment, I’ve made a serverless JARVIS Alexa skill to develop applications by talking to Alexa.

Hi,

I’m Marcus. English but based in Moscow.

Ex-GM in professional service firms in Russia and Asia. For my sins also ex-strategy guy in Big 4.

Started own business (narrative insights) in 2013 to take complexity-based approaches to Russian companies (Cynefin, SenseMaker) but challenging economic times forced me to become global, which has had significant benefits. Still want to crack the large Russian market so started using Maps about 12 months ago to just get decision-makers to understand their context better and where they might need complex approaches. Turned out Maps bit – people just get them and business is moving over to Mapping in Russia big time.

Launching Russian site to help spread Maps across the country – using it to undermine traditional consultancies hopefully as they are ripe for disruption. Network forming round it here and through my connections with the Cynefin global network we’re also spreading it to a few other countries hopefully.

Not a tech guy at all – so learning a lot from people and hoping that I add a bit of diversity for resilience.

Hi,

I’m Julius. Currently based in Düsseldorf, Germany.

I’m also a Consultant - about 70% on the tech side (software engineering, architecture, and teams) and 35% on the business side.

The old PDF book “The Future is Predictable” (can’t remember how I came across it) was the final piece that got me hooked on Wardley Maps. Since the maps cover a lot of different aspects with varying levels of complexity, one has to learn to make them, use them, teach/persuade others, etc, I find it exciting and tiring

In that aspect, this community helps. A quote I find helpful:

“One begins with enthusiasm, then as some difficulty arises, the demon of laziness whispers: What is the good? Our vision of the goal grows dim; the fruit of effort is too distant or appears too bitter; we have a vague sense of being duped. It is certain that the support of others, their example, the exchange of ideas, would be admirably efficacious against this gloomy mood; they would supply the place in many people of that power of imagination and constancy of virtue which only the few possess, yet which are necessary for the persevering prosecution of a great purpose.” (page 55 in “The Intellectual Life” by A.Sertillanges)

Thanks for the channels (here, slack, etc) and the events (meetups, mapcamps, etc) that help bring us together

I’m Tony - UK-based user/trainer of Cynefin and SenseMaker.

Was enticed here by Marcus recommending me to take a look at Wardley Maps as a complement to the Cynefin work we’ve been doing with clients. Global client base, frequently NGOs and UN agencies but also government departments and corporates.

I’ve been narrative-focused for 19 years - starting my own consultancy Narrate in 2000 after a decade working for big corporates in comms/change across Europe. I’ve worked closely for a while with Cognitive Edge and Dave Snowden, but resorting now to taking a slightly different path looking at other tools and perspectives on complex problems.

Hi, I’m Mladen - an Australian based in Paris for the last 3 decades.

I’m a telecom/hi-tech engineer however I stopped being an engineer around 20 years ago. Done the big & small companies. Now freelance for 15 years - interim management, COO, turnaround, strategy, business plans, international business development. The Wardley Maps make for an easier way to present strategy to non-technical people. Presently using these maps for 2 clients - one in museum space, the other in petroleum exploration. Free to chat…

Greetings -

My name is Robert Lamb. I’m an independent consultant based in Melbourne, Australia, who has spent over 20 years consulting and training in process and organisational improvement. I started off my career in IT, back in the “craft” days of Cobol and Basic-plus.

Having recently discovered Wardley maps, I am enthusiastic about their utility for facilitating organisational dialog and decision making, especially in providing guidance to appropriate management strategies suggested by the economic maturity dimension.

Looking forward to learning and sharing insights with this group…

I’m replying here because I found where future is predictable is hiding. It’s penflip, here. I found it after LEF threw a 500 server error on it and so searched elsewhere. It was linked to from the Pearltree collection.

As I’m in the introduce yourself thread, I’d better do it. Unlike everyone else I’m not a consultant. I suspect I’m too interested in solutioning to be able to step back and ask the big questions (and then shut up).

I have worked for a “professional services” company, starting as the “applications solutions mobile lead” and leaving as the “master agile coach”. Neither activities seemed authentic.

I’ve done the introductory online mapping course and I do create maps. When I do, the result usually horrifies me. How have the perpetrators stayed in business?

Like restaurants, most businesses have a short lifetime and I can see why. Irrational management. Why do people start up businesses if they don’t know what they’re doing?

Oh, wait, I’ve been in over 10 startups.

Mundane stuff in the profile.

Hi, I’m Doug from Vancouver, Canada.

I had a longish career in tech doing everything from Design Engineer to CEO and now mentor and lecture in entrepreneurship and innovation at a local university.

I’ve been reading and thinking about mapping and context for awhile now and have decided to dive in by applying mapping in the work I do with the incubator and business school I’m a part of.

If anyone else has applied mapping to similar challenges to entrepreneurial education, I’d like to hear about it!

I must also say that I’m glad to know there’s a community here to ask when I have questions.

Doug

@doug, I think you should talk to @marcusguest and potentially Prasanna.

Hi, I’m Arttu from Turku, Finland.

I’m currently doing everything related to sales/business development/client interfaces in a 10-man machine vision company. Being small but technologically very capable we need to be able to focus our scarce resources into the right things. I bumped into mapping a few months ago and since then have been quite vigorously utilizing mapping in sectors such as video surveillance, security and smart city automation.

As a side note I’m finishing my prolonged university studies and am doing my masters thesis (tech) around mapping in the sectors I mentioned earlier. If anyone happens to have any good leads for relevant (academic) research or even an interesting research question, don’t hesitate to mention.

Hi @arttu, welcome!

You may want to look at this link https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333340193_Building_situational_awareness_in_the_age_of_service_ecosystems. There is very little research around Wardley Mapping, so if you will have anything I could read - ping me!

Hi everyone, I’m Mark, a PMO based in London responsible for strategy execution for internal IT at a software consultancy. I first became aware of WM in 2018 but have only this year started to use it. The first proof of concept was working with the IT Head of Technology to challenge assumptions and bias in the existing strategy, and am now looking to showcase it to others. I’ve also been participating in some mapping workshops, which have been really great.

Hi all,

I’m Joni, an aerospace systems research engineer.
Looking at mapping to help conceptualise and discuss certain problems within the aircraft operations, maintenance, and logistics domains.

Hi all,

I’m Jesper, located in Aarhus, Denmark. I’m a senior test manager that leads testing activities in all kinds of IT projects, software, transition & transformation, COTS etc.

I have been following the works of Wardley from at least back in 2012 (we were both at CSC then): Wardley mapping, P/S/TP… the works. I use the models to understand teams, evolution, game play, trends etc. I write about it on twitter @jlottosen and my blog: https://jlottosen.wordpress.com/

cheers

I’m Christian, I’m a CTO in Austin, Texas. I’ve always had an interest in visual languages for notes and engineering concepts (I worked with the UML and BPMN working groups for example). I came across wardley maps several years ago when trying to organize my engineering team around shifting diverse goals and have used it ever since.

I’ve shared the concepts with early stage startups I work with and it’s always shone a clarifying light onto the work we’re doing.

I’m only recently joining online discussions around strategy but I’m looking to meet like-minded individuals and learn from more seasoned practitioners.

Welcome Christian. I can’t help with the seasoned practitioners. I’m an enthusiastic amateur.

@doug Does your University currently teach strategy or a similar course as part of the entrepreneur curriculum?

Hi Christian,

There are strategy courses taught as part of the entrepreneurship program at my university; however, they tend to be fairly traditional in nature.

When I introduce entrepreneurial strategy In my own courses in which students typically develop go-to-market plans and build startups, I draw on some of Simon’s concepts (e.g., his framing and introduction to strategy in Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones) and material from Scott Stern at MIT.

Scott teaches a popular entrepreneurial strategy course at MIT.

You can learn more about it at https://www.entrepreneurial-strategy.net/, which includes links to a pdf of his textbook, a number of his published articles, as well as access to the full courseware that he uses at MIT.

The license for his courseware is quite flexible and allows you to leverage it in your own teaching or work.

Does this help?

Doug

It does, thank you. I don’t think I’ve read Scott Stern’s work. I’m always curious to see if a program teaches courses on strategy specifically or folds into other concepts along the way

Hi all. Matthew here, from Bangalore.

I run Typito, a startup that enables marketing professionals to design videos for their business. I got to know about Wardley Maps in the later half of 2019 and I just finished reading all the essays written by Mr. Wardley this week. I found the body of work extensive and the framework powerful for decision making.

Looking forward to learn from all of you, and get better at strategy management (hopefully with a map in my hand).

Hi Mathew, welcome aboard.

Hi everyone. My name is Graham and I’m located in Preston in the UK.

I’ve bene using mapping on and off ever since I attended an LEF study tour where Simon explained how it worked. Most of the maps I’ve produced have been in the Workplace services arena which is my speciality.

I still regard myself as a mapping trainee with some experience.

Hi, my name is Christina, located in Wellington New Zealand.
I have been learning Wardley Mapping for the last four months.
I am quite taken by it, watching the videos and reading the book.

It makes a lot of sense to me and I am working towards using it as one of my tools.

Not there yet <:slight_smile: > still time.