BPMN should be as important as typing

As CamundaCon is on the horizon, I started thinking about how I came to be in the automation space in the first place. As most things in life, it all started with my mother.

When I was a child, my mother felt that it was important that my skills in mathematics were accelerated.

In her infinite wisdom, she devised a scheme that one might call “bribery”. She would purchase these math workbooks that focused on skills that were required for a school grade level. This also included “flash cards” that would have math equations on one side, and the answer on the other. For every workbook that I completed she would pay me a small amount of money for my accomplishment. That money would then be saved for future purchases of Atari games and tennis racquets.

I always had a love of problem solving, so this task came easy to me. Also I wanted video games….badly. I was motivated and challenged. This ingenious bribery scheme worked so well that by 2nd grade I had a math skill level of a 7th grader.

My mother also understood that typing was going to be an important skill in the future for someone with a focus on mathematics. She saw how typewriters were becoming “electrified”, and some of those electric typewriters were coming with computer chips in them that were similar to the chips in the Atari console. These new typewriters were being branded as “Word processors”. No longer did you need ribbons that could erase letters or “liquid paper” to blot out mistakes.

It was not long after this that the Atari 800 came out.

(image courtesy of wikipedia)

Atari had combined a game console that you hooked up to your television with a keyboard that let you interface with the system. You could insert a BASIC cartridge into the system, read a book about the BASIC programming language, and start “coding”.

A young nerd’s first running program typically was a loop that looked something like this:

10 for x = 1 to 100
20 print “Chris is great!”
30 next x
RUN

So my mother refactored her bribery scheme that she used on me for math. She bought typing lesson books. We had an old typewriter from the 60’s that had caps that you could put on the keys so that you could not see the letters on the keys (no cheating). For every full sheet of practice paper that I would type I would receive $0.25.

I wanted that Atari 800.

So I typed, and typed, and typed. And I got that Atari 800 ahead of schedule. I was a full “typist” by the time I was 12 years old.

In high school, I took a typing class as an elective (just for fun). I was quickly impressed at how accelerated my skills were compared to everyone else. My mother’s bribery schemes had paid off. I had a foundation to a career that has served me well to this day.

Fast forward to today. BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is quite simply the “language of automation”. It is a worldwide standard used in many automation platforms, including Camunda Platform and Camunda Cloud. In order to prepare the next generation for the wonders of AI and automation, we need to teach them BPMN as early as possible. I see a time where BPMN would be a mandatory skill entry on any CV that a future employer would expect to see.

There is math class. There is typing class. There should be BPMN class. I believe that they will all soon be equally fundamental.

Spread the word. Learn BPMN. The only bribe that I can offer you is that you won’t regret it.

Join us at CamundaCon Sept. 22–23 2021