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My Personal Blog.

This blog is where I place my own thoughts and reflections. For me this allow me to express things that are painful and frustrating, but also things that are amazing and put a smile on my face. This is me in my most intimate form.

As a member of my site you are invited to get to know the personal aspects of me here. As I share my innermost hopes, fears and dreams I hope I can show you that you are not alone with yours. All people are complex and wonderful beings and by giving you a glimpse into me maybe I can make you see that in yourself as well.

This is my heart I present to you. Please handle with care.

My Personal Blog


“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"
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Separating Work from Personal life more strictly moving forward

After more than a decade only having my company phone and company laptop I have decided it is time to make a change. The last few years have been very stressful and not having the clear boundaries between work and private life have caused some issues. I also feel it is time I take ownership of what is and is not mine and to feel secure that I am at the mercy of my company when it comes to my data.
My first step was to buy a new laptop. I already have a stationary computer, but I enjoy watching movies, write and do some coding on a laptop. As I don't need anything really powerful I bought a Samsung Galaxy Book4 i7-1355U/16/512/IPS 15.6". It should be ready to pickup later today, or tomorrow.
Tomorrow I will also go get myself a new phone. It will be another iPhone, and I am not really picky if it will be a iPhone 15 or iPhone 16. I'll just take what is in store since they are fairly similar in terms of what I need.
I feel that this separation will allow me to better manage my time and make a clear separation between what is mine and what belongs to the company. I can now put away the work at the end of the work day and pick it back up again at the beginning of the workday. I think this is extra important when we work in hybrid or remote settings as there is no longer that sense of walking out the office door to help with the distinction between work and private life.
I am looking forward to this, and I can't wait to get my new "toys" so I can start setting them up just the way I want them to be!
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

An open letter to my amazing Sinch colleagues

As I am taking my farewell of Sinch after two years of working with all of you, I do so with mixed feelings. On one hand I am excited to start new adventures next year, but on the other hand I will miss working with all you amazing people at Sinch.
Over the past two years we have accomplished amazing things together. Despite it being very hard for you sometimes to adjust to the more structured and limited ways of a controlled platform, you have accepted the change with respect and enthusiasm.
In a typical Sinch way you have taken the lemons and turned them into lemonade, and you have done so with positive energy and curiosity. For every obstacle you have come up with a dozen solutions and when in doubt you have fearlessly asked questions. It has been a true honor working with such amazing people as you are.
Even in a time of endless changes you have surfed the waves and anytime anyone of us have fallen, we have helped each other up to try again. We have worked together across timezones, cultures, religions and experiences to build a better Atlassian Experience, and I am in awe over your dedication towards this end. Not just for yourself, but for everyone at Sinch.
While I will no longer be there to guide you towards the next destination, I am confident that the foundation we have set together will get you there and that the future will be glorious for all of you.
While I technically will not leave Sinch for a few months yet, I wish you all the best and I can't wait to see where your Atlassian Journey takes you next or what wonders you will create using the Atlassian platform.
I will miss you and I wish you all the best.
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

Getting serious about images

As a designer, graphics always has meant a lot to me and I always love to collect amazing art, but I am not very good at organizing my images. Yesterday I decided to increase my library with some new graphics from Freepik.com, which is a service I love to use. I got an annual license, which will give me the ability to download around 36,000 images over the course of a year, which feels really good.
In order to be able to handle all of those images, I really needed to get things organized. So I jumped into Miro and did some mind mapping to see what kind of structure I should start with. I then reorganized my folders accordingly, and I am now reinstalling Dropbox and work on setting up Eagle again. If you have not tried Eagle, then it is by far the best product I have ever used, but it has been acting up a bit, so I have downloaded 4.0 to see if that works better.
With the new folder structure, I feel a bit more organized, and the next step is to make sure the images are also useable since that when you download them, they are unoptimized. So I have set up a TinyPNG account to reduce the size, and then I am using Image Resizer to quickly resize the dimensions of the images. So each folder now also have two subfolders named Optimized and WebP, where I add the images I resize and optimize.
This little exercise will keep me busy for a while because I have a ton of graphics! Fortunately, this is also something that makes me extremely happy because I absolutely love to work with and look at beautiful graphics. Right now I am waiting for the 120,000+ files to resync from Dropbox and then for Eagle to pick them up so I can start working with them.
It is a pretty awesome day.
 
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

Back to Basics - the new JWSE

I have spent a few days playing around with the new Invision Community version. It feels really great, and I have a nice starting point now, I think. While there are some things that feel a bit clunky, these will all be ironed out in the coming months, I am sure. What remains for me now I to start preparing the data to make sure it is ready for when V5 finally drop.
The new Tags system
The new tags system is a big change, so I need to decide on how to use that, since it kind of doubles what I have been trying to do with Databases a bit. It is working very well and the only thing I don't like about is that it is not currently possible to work very much with it, so it becomes a bit stale.
On the upside, I can attach pretty much anything I want to it, so it is just a matter of if we can extend the tags template with data from a database or not. It might be as simple as figuring out how to move certain things around so we can add the widgets below the header and intro text...
Tags will be more interesting as well...
One thing I will work on is how to take more advantage of the Tags system, but also the Forum setup. What I might end up doing is to make certain apps for example into Tags, and maybe even allow them to have their own subforum.
This is something that I can use both for financial reasons, but also to connect closer with certain app companies.
Starting simple
I am going to start simple and see what I really, really want to add instead of taking everything that I currently have and rebuild everything again. I feel I want to focus more on content than bloating things by building things that are too complicated.
Don't get me wrong, I will still play around and try things, but that will be something I will focus less on in the next iteration. This is because I want to be able to work with the website in a much more standardized way moving forward.
Fewer colors, less clutter
While I have always loved color coded sections, I want to tone that down a lot for V5. While it is fun to play around with, I want to try a more toned down design this time around. I have tested this on the Alpha site and I like the way it look and feels with a more uniform design.
 
I am excited!
I have been missing to have something to work on, and this new setup is something I feel very excited about. I now feel that this is something I can finally start planning around, and I will start the structure work as soon as I can. There will be several updates to this website when it comes to structure and the content will be updated accordingly.
This feels amazing, and I can't wait to get started with the new V5 version of Invision Community!
 
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

Committing to this site again - Rebuilding

With Invision Community V5 slowly creeping closer to release, I am in planning mode to renew this site again. As I am no longer a consultant and I am fully committed to the Atlassian Ecosystem, I feel it is time to renew this site accordingly. I think this is an urge I have felt for a while and now that my life has changed due to my diagnosis that I have Diabetes, I am eager to do a fresh restart!
I know this is a little counterintuitive, since I just a year ago split things up and created a new site for Atlassian. I am well aware of this, but it makes sense to me right now as I am rebranding myself a bit. I have not yet decided what to do about Atlasstic, but I will take a moment to take a decision on that after the summer, most likely.
So, what are the plans for this site, then? Well, to be honest, there are not a lot of things that will change. The most noticeable change will be a new design based on the V5 platform. I will also bring more focus to the Atlassian Ecosystem, making the ways of working separate, but still very much a part of the content.
The way this will be done is that I am restructuring the Forum first to try out the structure. The way I am thinking right now, and that might change as I work on this, is that the site will be divided into 4 different parts:
Personal Atlassian Ways of Working Interesting  
Personal
This will be very similar to today, and it will be my own personal area to present myself. My blogs will be here, my projects, my gallery and my awesome people. Information about me, of course, and whatever else I feel like exploring from a personal perspective. This is not a focus on the site, but I will promote certain parts in some areas as a way to position myself on the site.
Atlassian
This is now the main focus of the site. This is the area that I will try to build a community around, and I will focus on Articles, Videos, News and the forum. I will also revive the databases for Atlassian Products, Companies and Atlassian Marketplace Apps where the focus will be on the Atlassian products first. All areas of the site will focus on the Atlassian
Ways of working
This is the secondary focus of the site, which is a shift as this used to be the primary focus. While these are areas are very important part of the Atlassian Ecosystem, they are supplemental and as such I want to place them in a less focused position. My thought today is that content related to Ways of working will be separate to really provide focus on the Atlassian content and the ways of working separately.
Interesting
This is also not a focus area, but more of a focus area for very specific topics. These topics will be connected to the Ways of working content to prevent too much fragmentation and since the areas are kind of related. They will be placed in a separate section to allow focused content, but otherwise they will be grouped together with Ways of working as a separate content group.
 
The new design
The new design will be influenced by the new Jira design language and the new Invision Community V5 design language. That means that I am aiming for a lighter, and softer, design than what I usually make. For example, I will start looking into making new icons for the Atlassian products and a new set of line art icons for the website. I will also update the colors a bit to fit a softer design language.
Example of the new Jira design language.

Things will be a bit messy for a while
As I am restructuring the content, things will be a bit messy. As this is still waiting for the Invision Community V5 release, I do not expect that this will happen before the summer. This is not just because of V5 though, I also need to keep up with the videos and I have a very hectic time ahead of me at work that will affect the pace of which I do this.
The important part for me is that I am feeling inspired again and that I can get my fingers "dirty" again writing code and doing design work. I have missed not having the energy for that for a very long time. When I also get back to the gym, I think my energy levels will be even higher and that should lead to a lot of new fun things here!
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

My Current Status - My Status and why I have not uploaded videos in a while

For a while now, I have not been feeling 100% and a few weeks that culminated with me ending up in the Emergency Room for not being able to breath. Fortunately I quickly recovered and it seems that the loss of breath was a combination of a massive pollen release, my wife cleaning the bathroom with some heavy duty chemicals...and something else.
As the clean air took care of my allergic reaction I also took a lot of tests. One of those tests was Glucose to see my blood sugar levels and those tests were very high. I took some additional tests and a long time blood analysis and was diagnosed with Diabetes.
This did not really come as a surprise as I have been suspecting this for a while. Since my dad also has diabetes and it is hereditary, I have been expecting it sooner or later. I also have been very thirsty, lost weight and been very tired, which are also signs of diabetes.  I also have been craving sugar a bit more than usual for almost a year now.
I guess I just did not want to admit it to myself, so I kept ignoring it and hoping it was something else that I could just shake off. I should have known better, but it is easy to be wise in retrospectives or something like that.
I have now been taking pills for the diabetes for two weeks and I feel a lot better. I still have insulin so I don't have to mess with that and I have diabetes type 2, which is the milder of the two. From a diet perpective a lot has changed and I am back on Lifesum again checking my food and trying to figure out what is bad and what is really bad.
I also got new medicine to try out for my SHR that is triggering badly now with the massive pollen releases that seems worse than ever this year. So far they actually seem to help a bit, even if i get a bit tired from it. I also got a new nose spray that is really helping and my breathing is so much better now thanks to that.
While going to the ER is not something to recommend, in this case it seems to have been a blessing in disguise. Finding out that I have diabetes so I can take steps for that was very much needed I think.
So I am catching my breath a bit, but I am still planning massive changes to this site as soon as I can. I will obviously continue to release more videos on my YouTube channel and I have a big backlog for that already!
Life goes on.
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

2024 and a new beginning

For a while now I have been absorbed in my work. In fact, most of 2023 I was 120% focused on it and as a result I have neglected this site. As I passed the new year, I felt this changed a bit. I am still very much focused on my work, but more at 100% instead of 120%. That means that I am now looking into how to get back to this site and what I should do with it.
Rebranding
One of the main things that I will do is to rebrand. I have already done that on my Social Media, and it is now time to do so here on this site as well. The rebranding is a fairly simple rebranding with colors and a new logo. I would like to wait for Invision Community 5 to drop, but since there is no word on when that can happen, I might have to start before this happens. I already have the starting point of the rebranding setup, and it is just a matter of completing the design aspect of this.
Based on the new theme editor, it looks like redesigning the site will be a lot different, so I will see how to handle that and what it means for setting up a design specification in Figma.
 
Refocus
I have always had a hard time focusing on just one area, but with the rebranding and my new direction in life, I feel that I now have a clear path in one focused area. This is of course Atlassian and I will refocus this website accordingly. This means that I will promote myself as an Atlassian expert and I will focus the content around the Atlassian products.
Due to the refocus, I will change the content as well so it is more focused on the Atlassian products. I will still write about other things, but the main focus will be on the Atlassian products.
 
YouTube and News
Part of my rebranding, I am also putting a lot more focus on YouTube. Unlike most YouTubers, I am not just doing tutorials, but I also put focus on news. This is something I enjoy doing, and I want to bring this to this site as well. I already have a basic setup in my Stories database, but I want to change that a bit to make it more focused and easier to curate.
As I have a setup where I use Feedly and Zapier to organize and push news to this site, I want to expand on that. I just need to make sure I do not just repost content, as many of Atlassian's feeds are full articles. So there need to be some curation going on there to remove images and ensure that the news only contain a snippet of the articles rather than the full content.
If done correctly, it should create a pretty good news section that I can then enrich with my videos and articles.
Speaking of my Videos, I need to revise my Video section since it will be more in line with what I have created over at Atlasstic. The difference will be that I will split the videos into a section for just my video and one section for other content creators. I might make two databases just for this, but we'll see what make sense as I start working on it.
 
Moving to .com instead of staying on .se
As my .se is kind of polluted with years of experimenting, I might move to my .com domain for a fresh start. It would probably be the easiest way to rebuild this site, as I can just clone this setup and reassign the license when I am ready. I have not really decided what to do as it has implications beyond the site itself and I can just as well just transfer the data to a dev site and clean up this site if I want.
 
Planning what to keep and what to remove
Looking into the current structure, I am trying to make some plan for what to keep and what to remove, or perhaps archive is the better word. I have a few areas that I want to keep the way they are and a few where I feel I need to do some serious changes. The biggest change will of course be to go from a wide range of topics to a focused Atlassian site.
The About Me section will of course remain pretty much the way it is. I might bring back the Movies section and I will of course update my projects since it is not really complete yet.
The Articles section will be updated with a new categorization, and the Forum will absolutely be updated with new discussion areas. When it comes to the databases like companies and Atlassian products, I will look into how I can use them and what benefit I will have from linking things to them.
 
New functionality as part of the new license model
As Invision Community have changed their licensing model, we now get all products. This means that we will get the Blogs and the E-commerce functionality, as well as the current apps. I am not really sure how to utilize these, but I have a few ideas. The blogs are easy to figure out, as I can just let people write on my website if they want.
I might take advantage of the E-commerce app to sell advertisement or to let companies add themselves to the companies' database, for example. I might even build new databases for different things for this purpose, or maybe just for donations or something like that.
I am sure I will figure something out.
 
Building a community
With some of the new functionality coming with Invision Community, I look forward to building a community again. With the new focus, I feel that it makes sense to take advantage of things like the new community expert functionality for example, but also to take the badges' system for a new spin.
 
I have some brainstorming to do
I think you can see that I have some brainstorming to do, and I am very much looking forward to it!
2024 is going to be an amazing year, I think.
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

I finally got a Cintiq.

After many, many years I finally decided to invest in a Wacom Cintiq. I picked the 22'' because I always wanted a big screen to draw on, and the price was very good. I don't have a lot of room for another big screen on my desk, but it actually fit pretty well once I made some adjustments. While it is heavy and not that easy to move around, it is not a big problem if I want to put it away and play games for example.
The reasons for wanting a Wacom Cintiq are many of course, but the main reason is that I am a visual person and often want to see my thoughts drawn out if that makes sense. I often scribble ideas and thoughts on whiteboards and on paper when I do deep thinking. These thoughts are often difficult to share, but with a digital medium that problem goes away.
I also take notes in meetings where I scribble down things that needs to be done or take actions on. This I can do on my iPad, but I tend to do that in a notebook instead. This I now also can do very easy on the Cintiq and I can combine that with drawings and other things if I want.
After trying a few apps out for this I have landed in Nebo since it has the features I want. The most important aspect is that it comes with an infinity canvas, meaning I can scale it anyway I want without limitations in height and width. That provides me with the ability to extend in any directions when I need it. Nebo also comes with a decent set of pencils and a nice color palette that you can set yourself. It has copy and paste and scaling objects and a dual setting for eraser so I can remove whole objects or erase small areas only. It also features a dark and light mode and you have some options for setting background patterns and colors.

Another way to use a Cintiq, which I had not considered, is to actually screen share from it and use that as a whiteboard in presentations or meetings. This is very useful, especially since I can screenshot something and then bring in as an image to draw on. As I am rolling out a big Academy program soon, I have a feeling this will be rather useful.
One interesting thing is that a long time ago I bought an Apple Magic Trackpad, but I never started using it because it was not working the way I hoped on my PC. So it has been collecting dust for a few years and I was contemplating getting rid of it. As it turns out Nebo have a zoom function, but it does not seem to work with a mouse. So I just tried it with the trackpad and it works like a charm. It is extra nice since I use my left hand now to zoom, pan and tilt things, which is new to me.
After just a few days with my Wacom Cintiq 22'' I am very happy with it.
I will probably play around with it in Photoshop later to try to make some drawings as well. I have not really done any drawings in years and I have never done it in Photoshop so that will be a learning experience.
I feel that this was a very good investment.
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

Going back to basics - making a change

In the last 6 months, a lot has changed in my life. Not in a bad way, quite the opposite, but I am struggling a bit when it comes to this site as it has become a bit too big for me. So, as I wrote in my last blog post back in September, I am splitting things up when it comes to content. I am also rebuilding this site to be more personal focused.
I have already disabled several sections and will update the navigation to better fit the new focus here. All things related to Atlassian I have moved over to Atlasstic.com, or are rebuilding there. I will keep the articles because I think they add a bit of value, but the other databases will be removed until I see a use for them again.
The sections will all go away, and I will pretty much focus on the About Me section instead. I will also move a lot of things towards the Atlassian products. This means that I am building a combined Atlassian setup with the Atlasstic.com website for support and documentation.  With the new Gallery upgrade, I will rework that area to be more used as well.
I will remove most of the users as I am getting some spammers in here now. Instead, I will manually curate anyone who want access to make sure I know who is here and why. I will probably use Jira Service Management for that purpose, because JSM is pretty awesome.
I am also considering moving my Book to Confluence since I constantly feel that I am getting stuck because of the tool and Confluence is easier to use I think. We'll see how that turns out when I have everything setup when it comes to the Atlassian Tools.
Overall I am in a good place and working on this change for this website feels right. I just need some time to get it done properly, so expect things to be a bit messy here for a while.
It feels good to be creative again.
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman

Splitting things up a bit, maybe...

At the moment, I am considering a split of content for this website. The reason for that is that the site is getting very heavy and a bit difficult to navigate. It also feels a bit unfocused and I feel that maybe it is time to change that as I am moving into year 4 of this incarnation of the site. It is not something that comes without a cost however...
As you might have noticed, I have not been very active here for a while. That is because I have not felt inspired and because I have been a bit low on energy for a while. The idea of splitting content is of course nothing new, as it is always on my mind. A split of content however comes with a cost and I am not sure if it is a cost that I am willing to pay, or if it will be a good thing long term.
Every time you divide your attention, it comes with a mental cost, as split your attention in multiple areas and content switching occur. Time is also a factor and with my work time is not something that I have a ton of. At the same time, this also provides an opportunity to focus on specific topics, which might improve the quality of the content you produce.
 
So I am a bit torn on what to do next.
 
Where I am right now in my thoughts is to split out the methodology sections to a separate site and then make a third site just for Atlassian content. This would make the content a lot more focused, but it would also split my attention and it would cost a lot more, of course.
I am looking into the possibility to set up a second site at the moment and I am playing around a bit with a new design for it. This would be the site for methodologies, where I would post about the different disciplines and my thoughts on work processes and ways of working. The idea of adding a dedicated site for Atlassian has been around for a while as well, but up until recently I have not seen the need for it. As I am getting ready to focus more on video content, however, that is also something I am considering.
If I decide to move forward with this, I will need to consider the implications that will have on my YouTube channel, for example, but also how I use social media in general. I might split YouTube into two channels, one private and one for Methodology and Atlassian. I think that should work, but I might also split into three if I think that will make sense.
Besides the higher focus, I also feel that this could be a good split from a creative perspective. One of the reasons that I am feeling a bit low on energy is that I lack a creative outlet. Creating two new websites would absolutely take care of that problem. Another reason is also that I have the need to clean things up and simplify things, and again this would certainly happen if I split things up into multiple sites. The last reason is that I am interested in if I can build a community again and perhaps monetize on YouTube.
Financially, I am looking at investing into not just more domain names, but also licenses and server space. While this is not a lot of money all things considering, it is something that I think I should try to compensate for in the long run. This is where I think that I can add a small income for in the form of sponsorship and of course monetizing on YouTube.
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So, there are some planning to do and I feel excited just planning things right now. We'll see how things go from there, but don't be surprised if there will be a new website or two coming your way in a near future 😉
 
Jimi Wikman
💫 Jimi Wikman