Ruth Malan

Hope you’re having a lovely time!

you’re in IL??

And we need to get November 3 signup/info page up:

Bracken Mosbacker has summarized, and will lead discussion on: Eric von Hippel's MIT lectures on: How to Develop Breakthrough Products and Services (User-Driven innovation)

highly recommend @ruthmalan.bsky.social's Papers in Systems. We haven't updated the website in a minute, but our monthly virtual meetups have restarted after the summer break:

papersin.systems/about

💜

The Mountain Goats - Cold at Night / Rocks in My Pockets Choose your preferred music service

ahem

30tgrs.ffm.to/coldatnight-...

and don’t imagine me happy about this part ;)

It was so good to see you again—you bring so much to the discussions!

The “et al” is such an amazing community! For those who weren’t able to join us: the paper is a valuable read and the discussion was so vibrant and engaging, we were a minute over before I even looked at the clock :D

Thank you @rebeccawb.bsky.social , @mathiasverraes.bsky.social and everyone there

Discussion today will be interesting — illustrating examining models, with the following examples:

hierarchical, social network, and the value creation (as organizing model)

and

the Spotify Model, the Agile Fluency Model, and Team Topologies.

Discussion will be led by @rebeccawb.bsky.social and @mathiasverraes.bsky.social

Also, for those who can stay on after the hour, there is a further 30 minutes of “hallway chat.”

All of which makes for a place to have a focused discussion, and some time to range further, and connect.

People who work on big software systems, you need to read this set of branching convos/threads.

“Every model makes a choice about what is important, what categories we classify things in, what we see, what’s invisible, what’s valued, or even what’s valid.“
— @rebeccawb.bsky.social and @mathiasverraes.bsky.social

from the paper we’re discussing on Monday, Oct 6 👇

Children should be seen and heard.

cover of the linked ebook

In two weeks:

System Design and Software Architecture Workshop:

Oct 20-22 and Oct 27-Oct 29, 2025 at 11 am - 3:30 pm Eastern Time (live remote)

Info/enroll: ti.to/bredemeyer/s...

Sample sections (think FREE pdf ebook):

www.ruthmalan.com/Bredemeyer/2...

Monday! Join us?

This.

page with the Cilliers quote used upthread

Quoted in: www.ruthmalan.com/systems/2025...

Which is a useful “workshop” in System Seeing.

"Complex systems have a history. Not only do they evolve through time, but their past is co-responsible for their present behaviour. Any analysis of a complex system that ignores the dimension of time is incomplete"

- Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems

Great story. Can't overstate the desperation in creative industries right now. Nearly every person I know who previously had a viable, or even lucrative, career in media/entertainment is in a financial panic, leaving longtime apartments, desperately taking any work they can find. It is really bad.

Sketch your mind Conference promo with photo of me, description and time Thursday October 16 12PM PT

Pleased to be participating in the Sketch Your Mind virtual Conference! Lots of cool folks sharing their approaches to visual thinking - should be exciting & generative! My talk is Thursday October 16 at 12pm PT (I’ll share process…). Site & free registration sketch-your-mind.com/2025/session...

Business leader: Our user persona? Well we don't want to constrain our customer base, this product is for everyone

Designer: That's great! Let's talk about accessibility

Business leader: Oh, I didn't mean it like *that*

Love this perspective; it’s one that is overlooked so often in pursuit of “correctness.”

“Every model makes a choice about what is important, what categories we classify things in, what we see, what’s invisible, what’s valued, or even what’s valid.“
— @rebeccawb.bsky.social and @mathiasverraes.bsky.social

from the paper we’re discussing on Monday, Oct 6 👇

From advocating technical excellence in developers daily practices to exploring horizons like AI observability, machine learning, and green IT—these sessions span foundational coding practices through survival strategies for operating in unfavourable professional contexts.
👉 buff.ly/mWxJ2Mq

On Monday Oct 6:

Cover to Drome - grid of squares and figures within and without them

Interior spread - built on a grid of squares - one side has some diagonals the other circles cutting up the grid

Interior spread - built on a grid of squares action cutting through the space

Interior spread - built on a grid of squares - here lots of curves cut through it acting to create more panels

Good heavens! @jesselonergan.bsky.social - this is mind blowing out-of-this-world work! Inspiring use of the grid in relentless innovation - really blown away by it page after page. Bravo!! 1/2

In this case, I still have that physical note… from 🤫 .. several years ago :)

I find leadership hard to characterize pithily, in a way that is flexible across the various situations and styles of leaders. For example, I balk at characterizations that (further) encode stereotypes… So when i encounter a characterization that does important *work* I tend to um hang on to it.

page from material linked upthread, with quotes: The "Law of the Situation" "Our job [..] how to devise methods by which we can best discover the order integral to a particular situation." DYNAMIC ADMINISTRATION - Mary Parker Follett "understand the situation, must see it as a whole, must see the interrelation of all the parts [..] must do more than this. He [sic] must see the evolving situation, the developing situation. His wisdom, his judgment, is used, not on a situation that is stationary, but on one that is changing all the time." — Mary Parker Follett, 'The Giving of Orders' "That's always our problem, not how to get control of people, but how all together we can get control of a situation." — Mary Parker Follett

And I draw on Mary Parker Follett’s work; it’s from ~100 years ago, but not only deserves a place in the formative history of the system design (and leadership) field, but in the discourse that helps shape our understanding and approaches today.