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Lalo Martins

WhoManifestoGamesWork
Lalo Martins
WhoManifestoGamesWork


WHO

I'm known as Lalo Martins. But who am I, really? Hm, that might be a trick
question. How do you define yourself?

I am many things and I do many things, and I don't define myself by most of
them. I'm not what I do for a living and I'm not where I'm from, I'm not my age,
gender, or ethnicity. I often describe myself as a writer, but that's not all I
am; I also often fill the “description” or “blurb” field on website profiles
with just the word “geek” (or occasionally, “professional geek”). That says a
lot about me, but it's not all I am either.

Here's a list of faces I've worn with some degree of success:

 * Geek
 * Writer
 * Steampunk
 * Entrepreneur
 * Agile advocate
 * Certified ScrumMaster
 * Game geek
 * Game designer
 * Software developer
 * Web developer
 * Software/solution designer
 * Lean Startup advocate
 * Free Software advocate
 * Otaku
 * Wota
 * Freedom fighter
 * Feminist
 * Curmudgeon
 * Nomad
 * Mentor
 * Futurist

And there are some I'm quite passionate about but I'm not ashamed to admit I
failed at… but I doubt anyone is interested in those.


MANIFESTO

In the last 20 years or so, a lot of our self-help and management literature
(it's scary how much an overlap those two have, but that's a topic for some
other time) was about values, vision, and purpose, both personal and collective.
We've been told we should figure out what we want to do with our lives and what
our set of values is.

And yet, somehow, when we bare ourselves out on the web, I don't see anyone
writing about these things. Sure, some social networks have a field where you
can write your religious views or political leanings… that's not quite the same
thing though, is it? Besides, who does fit so neatly into convenient little
boxes anymore? Ultimately, judging people by their political or religious views
is still a form of prejudice; it's just a stand-in for the things you really
want to know about someone: What do you stand for? How do you judge good and
bad? What gives you satisfaction?


VALUES

And morals should come first. What do good and bad mean for you? It's easy to
say you try to do the right thing, but I find it slightly disturbing how most
people don't seem to realise “the right thing” doesn't mean the same for
everybody.

And it's not a simple question, either; you probably have a vague, instinctive
idea, you probably have a gut reaction to certain behaviours and to most news
you read, but actually articulating it into coherent words takes a lot of soul
searching — unless you simply subscribe to a pre-built system conveniently
passed on to you. And yet, even if you do, some soul searching will most likely
reveal that you have your own interpretation…

It's an exercise I recommend, anyway; because until you do articulate it,
there's a pretty good chance you're not being 100% consistent about it. That
doesn't mean you should set it in stone and never allow it to evolve; but having
it spelled out means you know yourself better, and more importantly, a vague,
intuitive value system can only influence your decisions in a vague, intuitive
way; a well-defined, explicit statement can be used as a scale to inform your
decisions even when you're making them by a rational process.

Many systems, notably major groups of Christians and Jewish, prefer to express
values as a list of bans (such as the Commandments); others, as a set of
guidelines. As part of my professional experience, I developed a dislike for
long checklists; they tend to encourage disuse and shortcuts. I prefer to
express values as a simple statement, which I call “definition of good”.

So all that introduction aside, what does “good” mean to me?

> Freedom of choice and fair opportunity for all, to pursue happiness and
> fulfillment.


PURPOSE

That said, what do I want to do with my life? What brings me satisfaction,
fullfilment, realisation?

I tried to distill it into a single purpose statement, as Covey likes it, but I
ended up with a short list instead, because I guess I'm not that simple ;-) It's
ordered by priority, though.

 1. Helping people become better.
    
    This used to be “smarter”, but in formulating my values statement, I
    realised I need to allow each person space to define what “better” means for
    them. It's also too limiting; if I'm honest about my satisfaction, really
    any kind of better will do — in my professional life, as I transitioned
    first to team mentor in China, then to full-time ScrumMaster at Ableton, I
    found it really made me happy to see colleagues get better at their job,
    which if you think about it isn't quite the same thing…

 2. Telling stories.
    
    I guess this is my oldest passion and what I've been doing most of my life.

 3. Getting people together.
    
    I like building teams. I don't know what it is about it, but it's beautiful.
    Finding points in common and a shared goal/purpose, reducing friction and
    learning to work together, and then that ecstasy when goals start, bit by
    bit, to be achieved.

Bonus points for combos: at work, I tend to combine 3 and 1. And when I'm
writing, it makes me extra happy if I can make you think in interesting
directions, and if I hear from my readers that I not only entertained them, but
somehow made a positive change in their lives.


GAMES

Board games, roleplaying games, video games, computer games. I love playing
them, designing them, writing them, even watching. In Berlin, I regularly host
board game meetups.


WORK

(CV)

My career focus at the moment is in team formation, coaching, and leadership.
Mostly I'm doing this by joining startups and setting up their technical teams
:-) but I'd also consider a more traditional offer along those lines, as team
manager, project manager, agile coach, ScrumMaster (for which I'm certified, and
had the good fortune to do my training with Jeff Sutherland).

Before that, I spent most of my career as a software developer, and most of that
as a web developer. I consider myself reasonably skilled at JavaScript and CSS.
But ultimately, my development career was kind of a side track; my passion was
never writing beautiful code, but rather solving problems, creating software. I
consider myself more a software designer who knows just enough coding to write
his own prototypes. Unfortunately, software design is nowadays too often
confused and conflated with interaction, UI or visual design; while I'm
certainly interested in these fields, my skill is limited. Software design,
proper, is about understanding the problem and designing the solution — and in
this, I believe I excel.

I would probably not be interested in a job that focuses primarily in writing
code; but free-lance projects maybe, and if there's a coding aspect to a job
where the primary focus is either team leadership or product design, I'd be up
for that as well.

Lastly, I have also worked as a professional writer. Most of that was in the
field of Role-Playing Games (so-called “pen and paper”, not the computer
variety); non-professionally I've done a lot of fantasy and sci-fi as well.


STRENGTHS

As a professional, in both “sides” of my career (technical and creative), I
believe I have two knacks and two passions which underlie and inform most of my
work.

Two knacks:

 * Complex systems. Whether it's software achitecture, work processes, teams, or
   fictional worlds, these things have delicate balance, and I seem to be rather
   good at setting it all up so that it works. Whether I'm creating it from
   scratch, or co-creating it, or fixing one that's broken, or improving one
   that's already working well, I seem to be able to zoom easily between the big
   picture and the details, and spot the opportunities for improvement.
 * Forming teams. This came as a bit of a surprise to me when, inspired by a
   recent article, I was looking back at my life and seeing the kinds of
   positive impact I had on people's lives. As it turns out, again and again I
   gathered a group around me, identified their common goal(s), and united them
   to work towards these goals. Now if I'm honest, these efforts weren't always
   successful ;-) but I'd like to attribute that to the fact that I wasn't aware
   I was doing that, and didn't (in the cases where the group fall apart)
   prepare them to continue in my absence.

Two passions:

 * Solving problems. Again, my satisfaction comes from the feedback loop; not
   from how great or elegant my solution is, but from seeing its actual impact
   on those who had the problem to beging with. Maybe for this reason I'm so
   enamoured of Lean Startup and Customer Development.
 * Bildung, or self-improvement. Individuals, teams, and even customers, should
   always be getting better, more effective, and/or happier. That can include
   learning and adding capabilities, or assistance and automation — but it often
   also means removing waste.


RECENT WORK

(… that I'm particularly proud of)


PROVR

A virtual reality startup I attempted to launch in 2014-15. While it didn't work
out, it planted a lot of interesting seeds. My co-founder is now running a
successful business in the field of VR production.


LAVAPOLIS

Free-lance software development. As much as I'm trying to get out of web
development work, this has to be in the list mainly because it's such a cool
project; a space for political and ethical debate, a transmedia art instalation
by Michael Schindhelm.


LIMEMAKERS

A design, customisation, and 3d-printing startup I was with between 2013 and
2014; they have since pivoted into a new model and name.

My role there was, first, to build their prototype (again, web development, but
for me it was more a challenge of system architecture), and then to hire the
technical team and get them rolling.


ABLETON WEB TEAM

While I can't take credit for their excellent redesigned, reimplemented website,
it did happen during my tenure as ScrumMaster; my part was greasing the wheels
and giving the team the confidence to get it done (including switching
frameworks and throwing away a lot of code), as well as removing a lot of waste
from the process, and increasing technical quality. I'm proud of my work there,
but again it's hard to take too much credit — I had an excellent team to begin
with.

 * email
 * twitter
 * facebook
 * linkedin
 * launchpad
 * github
 * lastfm
 * google