During my life there have been several important learning paths going on parallel. Among them are personal growth and healing, sustainability and software development. Although I am focusing here on information technology, all these paths have a common thread as Berta pointed out to me - systems design. There are many common aspects to designing a software system, a social system, a land use system or a community system.

Many of my natural and acquired skills have to do with being able to organize, analyze and plan in great detail pretty much anything. These skills I apply in various ways, be it for starting up a business, for software development projects, for reorganizing business processes, for planning events, design and many other areas

Project Management:
With any IT project it is critical to define the scope of the work, develop a reliable agreement and clarify who the client is. The financial benefit needs to be contrasted with a cost analysis. A risk assessment, easy progress monitoring based on the project schedule as well as management of essential communication is needed. Resources have to be acquired and actions taken to ensure the quality of the results. Over all, flexibility to change with the understanding of the effect to the result, finances and timeline as well as the ability to communicate effectively and with care are required. The ability to alternate between a whole systems- and detail-view is very helpful to achieve the overall goal and knowing what next steps to take. Holding only necessary (not too many) effective meetings, that are informative, clarifying and empowering is an art that can be always improved. The understanding that people are the greatest resource and managing means to support them in what they are doing goes a long way to complete a project successfully.

Organizing:
Bring information, tasks and things in an order so that it is understandable, storable, and retrievable and makes sense. Find patterns in information and organizational processes. Design organizational structures that meet the needs. This skill seems to come to me naturally. Even though at time it can be overwhelming, I seem capable to create new ways to organize things on the spot or through reflecting about them, often without needing to do a lot of research.

Writing specifications:
It is often necessary to look at some existing process and describe it how it works so others can understand it. This can be from an overview perspective or in great detail. It requires structuring the subject in logical sections and paragraphs or to develop a visual representation. Reviewing existing processes includes descriptions of how things work currently, what does not work, what works well and what is missing. Describing business processes and procedures step by step is part of this skill, as well as proposing how things could work, could be redesigned and what steps to take in the short and long term.

Analyzing and synthesizing:
Once knowing how something is working today an analysis finds out what the current process achieves, what things are the key ingredients that are necessary to make it work and what materials, information and energies are used. Also it is determined what role human intervention plays. This is, for example, done by looking at inputs, processing and outputs, or starting from the end, the outputs, tracking back to the needed inputs. Looking at different options shows how to achieve the same result and evaluate the benefits or disadvantages of each. Important to learn in this process is to avoid “analysis paralysis”. Once the analysis is completed to a satisfactory level, is followed by making a design, which puts the different elements together, some new, some existing and forming relationships between them to achieve the wanted result. Herein lies one of the crossovers between information technology and design in general.

Choosing between alternative methods:
Given different alternatives - one needs to choose the "best" one, based on a set of parameters, often including available budget limits, time constraints and minimum necessary functionality. To achieve all three parameters equally well is considered an almost impossible task in software development. Often, out of the three 2 are achieved and the 3rd one not.

Planning and dependencies:
In projects that involve long periods of times, lots of people, resources and complex processes, many things happen at he same time and need to be planned and coordinated, as one process or task can depend on several others to be in place and itself might be necessary for several others before they can happen. At the same time re-adjusting the schedule when the need arises, taking different routes, changing dependencies and honoring and integrating different viewpoints brings great flexibility to a project.

Commitment and accountability:
There are projects where a lot of money, time and people are working very hard and an option of failure does not really exist or otherwise would cause catastrophic results, including material destruction, disease or even death. Similarly, being account able, doing what one says with integrity to the agreements and commitments made, can make or break a project.

Grace, Murphy's Law and catastrophic events:
Sometimes, when everything possible has been done, but things do not come together, suddenly, out of the blue, a solution shows up from nowhere - it is like magic. And also, count on it - things that can go wrong will go wrong - be prepared for that. Huge changes in a short time, often called catastrophes, can be anticipated by worst-case scenarios and exit strategies as they make the often unconscious assumptions, expectations, agreements and other parameters become very clear.

Research Methods:
Methods of finding information is a skill that requires looking at patterns as well as details, make new mental associations and being open to the various ways information reaches us, by electronic means, talking to others, looking in libraries and just being attentive what comes ones’ way.

Working in groups:
Many projects involve groups of people working together. Learning how to communicate in an effective, clear and rational way is as important as well as allowing the whole person to be present and moving mental or emotional blocks out of the way. It seems to me, one of the fundamental reasons why we as humanity have created so many difficulties is because we are not really able to talk to each other, understand each other and make decisions together without forcing something on someone.

Some other IT skills I have learned are software and database design, programming, testing, installing and training. Additional principles of planning and designing I have learned are the concept of single point of failure, redundancy (cross over to the principle of multiple functions/elements) and the balance between centralized and decentralized (or distributed) systems (cross over to resilience).

I think I have a natural talent of bringing things into some type of order, organizing them in a way that works for me to, break larger tasks and problems down into smaller ones and put them back together. Also, I like being organized and can do this easily. I enjoy asking the question behind the question and look for the pattern behind the pattern. I observed my father how he worked, quite organized. I have been learning a lot by doing many projects without prior formal training or having done them before. I learn by mistakes and trial and error. Then from that experience, refine my skills further. Sometimes I take courses and get some formal training. Working on a specific problem talking to others and doing research has been a very successful learning tool. Following my intuition and being curious both have proven often very fruitful. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between intuition and deeply internalized processes.

Many methods and skills I am using in software design can be translated into skills for ecological design and vice versa, like systems thinking, interface development translates into relationship analysis, function specification translates into input, outputs and intrinsic functions, etc.

I learned to concentrate for long periods of time on one subject and stay extremely focused to the extend that I forget my physical needs. Trying to visualize all steps from beginning to end, every single step, and what action or resource is needed to get to the next step is something I have been doing in event planning as well as in process development.

The only way to validate what I learned is to look at the results when applying it. What has changed over time is how to look at results. Is it within budget, within time, does it do what it is supposed to do and does it do it well and efficient, is it sustainable, does it use renewable resources, is it restorative in nature, accessible to everyone, socially connecting people and communities, etc. This includes personal aspects, like how does everybody feel about it, is anyone burned out, neglected or disrespected, how did we follow our sense of integrity and ethic, what do I feel about it. Even when failing, looking at the outcome or absence of it and what was happening and why, holds valuable lessons to learn from and change direction.

Many skills that I used developed and learned I can use in several areas. Being good at solving problems helps in many areas – be it finding a solution to a software issue or in designing a product or property. Having patience and persistence is something I learned in the IT field and helps to get through time consuming, sticky projects. Discipline helps to get tasks completed.

And then there are a bunch of skills, like basic sewing, cooking, ironing, laundry, house cleaning, using tools, driving a car and following technical specifications that are very handy for the day to day things in life. I am also bilingual, fluent in German and English, have some skills in gardening and can listen and be still for long times.

After my IT experience with Dakotah Direct I decided that, if I work in this field again, to only do this if working for sustainable projects. I can build on a lot of expertise from the past and use my knack for figuring out things, puzzling, finding solutions, doing online research, etc as well as my organizational and planning skills. I might choose to make this a larger endeavor later or not. My passion is to move into the design of sustainable, ecological and community projects, services, products, systems, etc. that use these skills, but also require understanding of how nature and ecosystems work, how groups and people “function” and require a mixture of other skills from architecture to landscaping, mediation, conflict resolution to group work and self development.