A travel journal from two weeks across Europe — Warsaw, Brno, Frankfurt, and Regensburg — visiting the teams building on SpiffWorkflow and seeing the continent up close.
June 16–17 · Warsaw
I arrived in Warsaw in the early afternoon of Tuesday, June 16, and visited the PGE office, where I met Kris, Maciej, and Anton. PGE is using SpiffWorks to handle some aspects of their SIM card activation process.
We worked on a few problems together, and discussed improvements to the core library. We discussed:
- Dynamic network configurations
- API retries (I discussed some of the recent service-task enhancements we've developed with Kiwi)
- Process-instance "reaping" — clearing data that is no longer relevant
- Analytics Engine deployment
I was invited to enter their "control room" where they have a large 20' by 10' screen on the wall. It showed the location of hundreds of cell towers PGE has deployed across Poland to monitor electricity usage. Europe is energy-conscious (a very good thing). I noticed that in the hotel and offices, all the lights turn off almost instantly when someone is not actively using the space. AC is rarely used in homes (it's very temperate here in Warsaw), and I didn't use it in my hotel room — at least, I made it till 3 a.m. last night, and then turned it on for a few hours till I left at 6 a.m. this morning.
In the evening, I took a walk along the river, close to the hotel. People were everywhere — not in a crowded way, and not rushing about. There are so many inviting community spaces here.
For more than a mile, groups of two to six people were sitting by the river in chairs, or on steps — among beautiful wild flowers and tall grasses that are planted everywhere. It felt… alive, thriving. It was good energy. There were lots of cool posters pasted to the walls around the river.
On Wednesday, I spent the morning working from a coffee shop. It is exceedingly influenced by US culture here. Every coffee shop, every cab, every lobby is playing some form of music from the States — mostly classic rock, but there was a good bit of modern music as well. It is hard to avoid the Starbucks, Hard Rock Cafe, H&M, and 100 other US companies. I took a walk through the mall at the train station, and it could have dropped directly out of any US city. But there is a different culture here. And with a little effort, you can find food courts and music in the parks that are authentic and truly Polish.
After lunch, I did a little sightseeing. I visited the "old town," which is entirely rebuilt.
Every single building in Warsaw was destroyed by the Nazis in an act of sustained violence that boggles my mind. When they could not bomb it further, they sent teams in to dynamite the buildings that were left standing. Every book in every library, every church, every piece of culture was burned to ash. A population was reduced from 1.3 million to less than a thousand — all in retribution for the Polish uprising. I have incredible respect for the young people who gave their lives and fought for their beliefs in the face of that insane force that was the Third Reich. I've seen all the movies, but it feels different when you are standing here. There is a museum about the uprising that should not be missed. There is also a massive modern city.
Last night I visited the giant park Łazienki, and took pictures of peacocks, foxes, statues of Pan, and everything else that delighted me as I walked around one of the most picturesque parks in the world.
This morning I'm on a train to the Czech Republic, to visit the Kiwi offices. The trains are clean and new.
It is safe here in Warsaw. It is cleaner than every US city I've visited in the last 10 years. I see no sign of crime. People don't even jay-walk here.
June 18–19 · Brno
On June 18th, I came in on the train from Warsaw, arriving in Brno in the late afternoon. I met up with a pleasant local Czech when transferring trains. He, I, and a young traveler from England doing a three-week holiday sat on the train and talked for an hour. Everyone I've encountered here is fluent in English. I've tried to learn to say a few words, but didn't have time to practice like I did in Warsaw. I can say Good Morning (Dobré ráno) — but I only mastered that today as I sit on the train headed back to Germany.
I walked to my hotel, about a mile, going through the downtown area, with St. Peter's cathedral peeking up behind the mix of modern and historic buildings.
Everything here is of a different scale. 90% of the buildings are five or six stories tall.
Many are elaborately decorated and beautiful.
The time difference between the public trams and walking was always around three or four minutes, so I just walked everywhere. That was wise, with one very notable exception. I made a long evening of the first night. It gets dark here around 10 p.m. I visited Špilberk Castle — which is up a small hill that sits close to the downtown. It offers a great view of the city.
I also walked by the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul.
The following day I spent with the Kiwi team — Lada, Mathieu, and Dejour.
The walk there was hell. It seemed temperate enough in the shade by the hotel, but Kiwi is in an old industrial area they are rebuilding — there is no shade, no grass. Just 90 degrees for 20 minutes in the baking sun. I got there and was drenched in sweat. The satchel strap painted a strip across my shoulder and chest, and my face dripped on the coffee counter like a faulty drain. Lada very kindly sat with me, got me a coffee, and waited for me to cool down and dry out before taking me down to meet the team.
At Kiwi we talked about:
- The transition from Camunda to SpiffWorks, and the method of replacing one sub-process at a time.
- The use of BPMN as a high-level orchestration process.
- Kiwi's value proposition, and the importance of tight collaboration among diverse teams and skill sets.
- The effects of AI on their business processes, and how they are working with many tools to find the right benefits.
- The importance of an analytics engine, and the value a high-level BPMN orchestration engine can bring to a company's self-awareness.
- Where to draw the line between BPMN and software development, and how BPMN is, to quote Lada, "very good at doing nothing," and why this is a valuable attribute.
I really like Lada. I learned a lot about the company and its backstory. Lada has been there since it was just 30 people — it's now in the thousands of employees. And they drink a lot of matcha.
They took me out for dinner that evening. They fed me some traditional Czech dinner that was a beet cream sauce pooled over several slices of roast beef, with dumplings on the side. Very delicious.
We also toured a few sites — they pointed out this weird solid black bullet-shaped sculpture in the middle of the square, which is in fact the town clock. Every Tuesday at 11 a.m. it spits out a marble. Folks collect them, but you don't have a shot against the locals.
We climbed to the top of this bell tower at the Church of St. James.
Over dinner we talked about politics (they have many of the same issues we face, with strong feelings on both the liberal and conservative side about immigration). Lada said many times that they "are the same thing (as the US), on a smaller scale." I think he meant it in a self-deprecating way, but it isn't a fault — it is a strength. It is the ludicrous scale of Trump, Elon, Bezos, and Zuckerberg that makes them so terribly dangerous. If we could see these things play out several times on a smaller stage, we would get some pattern recognition. Like an inoculation. And then we wouldn't catch the actual disease.
June 20–21 · Frankfurt
Saturday the 20th was a travel day — and with catching trains, switching to planes, and getting into Frankfurt, there wasn't much that happened of note. Though I was pretty damn happy to make it through the airport.
When I arrived in Frankfurt I got in contact with Jan Alsters, who was meeting me at the main station. All I needed to do was make it from the airport to the station — a short 15-minute train ride. It took me two hours. I didn't know it at the time, but the major music star in Germany, Helene Fischer, was playing at the stadium, which was a stop along the way to the station. When I got down to the tracks it was solid people, from the wall to the tracks. A train left every eight minutes. I missed it multiple times trying to find my way through the crowd, then being right at the door, but unable to fit. When I finally got on, there was a large woman behind me, with her breasts pressing into my back, and her husband's nose 10 inches from my own. I had no idea about the concert; I assumed everyone was headed to the main station. We got to a stop called "Stadion," and everyone poured out. It did not look right, and I paused for a minute, but stepped out when someone encouraged me to do so. Fucker. And then I was in a world of hell for an hour as thousands of German fans poured around me while I stood there looking lost with my luggage. After several failed attempts at finding Track 1, and discovering there is very little overlap between Helene Fischer fans and English speakers, I found Track 1, hidden behind a crowd of 20,000 hot-dog eaters, and made my way home. Did I mention it was 93 degrees out? I would far rather go see a Dire Straits or Deep Purple tribute band myself.
On Saturday night, the Germans were playing the World Cup, and all of Frankfurt went out for what they call a "public viewing." I told Jan that when someone invites me to a public viewing in the States, it means we are headed to a funeral. He got a big laugh out of that.
On Sunday I met up with Daniel Lübke, and he and Jan took me out to tour the city of Frankfurt (home to the biggest stock exchange in Germany).
We went to the downtown square and got a few pictures together.
Jan said, "All these old buildings… they were constructed in the last five years. It is basically Disneyland, but with less pink" — and then five minutes later, I kid you not, someone in a Mickey Mouse costume walked by getting pictures with folks. There was a note on the wall that said Greenland is not for sale. Nice work, Mr. Trump.
Much like Warsaw, Frankfurt was devastated at the end of World War II — only the Cathedral walls were left standing. So they have been rebuilding ever since. Jan and Daniel introduced me to Currywurst for lunch. To any US citizen, this is going to look like a lunch for a five-year-old: a cut-up hot dog in a pool of ketchup with fries on the side. But this is not a hot dog; it is a proper German sausage, and the ketchup is flavored with lots of curry powder, which definitely elevates the flavor.
Vivien (Regensburg) is also attending the conference and met up with us — Jan took us to a beautiful shady spot by the river, and we drank light German beers at a picnic table all afternoon. For water and beer, they will ask "with, or without?" without specifying what in the hell they are asking about. When you ask the same question 1,000 times, you tend to want to keep it short. If it's water, they are asking if you would like it carbonated, and if it is about beer, it means do you want it with alcohol. It seems most beer here is available in a non-alcoholic version. More breweries in the states should do this.
Frankfurt is called Frankfurt am Main, as it is on the beautiful Main River.
We had a wonderful time. Here is what I learned from my German friends that sounded a lot more important when I was drinking beer than as I stand here writing it:
- Tom DeMarco has a book that was suggested to me — maybe Slack: Getting Past Burnout is worth reading and writing about.
- Die Fantastischen Vier, Peter Fox, Seeed — these are German bands I need to check out.
- "Es war Sommer" is a German song about a young man, in high school, on summer break, who has an adventure with an older woman.
- "Schöner, jünger, geiler — Layla," translated "Prettier, younger, hornier Layla," maybe worth a listen.
- Lichthupe — flashing your lights when someone is going too slow in the left lane.
June 21–23 · The Conference
Conferences are hard. They are hard to pick. Hard to participate in. They take a lot of social engagement. I am not adept. It's difficult to get an honest read on how well they are run. The talks here were very focused on use cases for specific companies. SAP did a great job of making this about SAP. This audience was partially owned before we got here. Jan and Viv both left early. The room with the booths had been empty all morning, but it did fill up after the break. I've taken to walking around and inviting myself into conversations — that's proven far more effective. But it's exhausting. After yesterday, I went back to my room and slept for 12 hours. I'm still wiped out. There are a handful of contacts, and we get some substantial visibility with the 5-minute talk. But overall, this is an expensive learning experience. I've handed out around 50 cards and fidget spinners and talked to 20 companies. Some are potential future partners: ARIS, which shares our mission to improve communication and collaboration among diverse people, and Phoenix Contact, which provides enterprise level consulting services.
June 24 · Regensburg
Vivien took me on the Autobahn. We hit 128 MPH (206 Kph). It was a great drive. We also hit all the big topics about life on the way down while listening to Depeche Mode, Madonna, and the Pet Shop Boys. Vivien listens to a set of CDs her father gave her. Good memories all around.
I visited the Regensburg office, where I was reminded of the US's sad addiction to Keurig coffee pods while sipping freshly ground and brewed espresso. When SpiffWorks opens it's corporate office in the US, I'll have to make sure our employees are all trained in how to brew a proper double shot of espresso. While sipping the good stuff, I met with Vivien, Hans-Jürgen, Martin, and Bastian to discuss recommended changes and updates to SpiffWorkflow.
Here are a few of the items the Regensburg office would like to see added:
- Form editor plugin / extension — so you can select your own form builder; Hans-Jürgen is working on his own new form editor. A grid-layout option is critical, along with the ability to easily drag and drop form components and shift around the layout of fields in a form.
- Testing — they specifically mentioned the "ability to test workflows," which I was able to demonstrate with Ed.
- Task assignment — as with GSA, they want the ability to assign tasks. In this case, they also want the ability to delegate to a "Representative." When this is enabled in their central HR app, they want Spiff to allow this representative to complete any tasks on behalf of the main user.
- Files — deep integration with an existing Document Management System would be most useful.
- Type ahead — they want some kind of connection to their company HR system so they can find people. We offer this via data stores, but may need to deliver more.
- Style sheets — would like the ability to update / edit / override stylesheets in the SpiffArena UI.
- Error messages in Arena — "model not saved" cannot be dismissed, and obscures things they would like to see. (This should be a quick fix.)
- Better breadcrumbs — would like easier navigation, something that understands how you got to a sub-process or call activity, and allows you to navigate back cleanly. This is better in the new Editor, but well worth some time improving.
Afterwards, Vivien and Hans-Jürgen gave me a tour of the beautiful historic areas of Regensburg. We visited the old town hall, where people get married on a daily basis, and walked along the stone bridge across the Danube River.
That bridge, built in the 1100s, opened up major trade routes across Europe.
We then sat in the shade by the bridge and shared a wonderful dinner together.
June 25 · Home
Uneventful ride home. I miss Europe already.