In the support of Jesse constantly saying “document over create” I figure it would be useful to try to clear up some details and answer some questions, if not for value then at least for my own sake in trying to figure out what on earth LMN actually is and what it the point of it is… let's start with some questions.
Why is it called LMN?
There are several reasons why I called this thing LMN, firstly when you say LMN to someone, it’s a good thing because they know what a lemon is, but then the questions begin. Aren’t lemons bad? What does it have to do with logistics? Oh you mean logistics media network, that's kind of cool and clever. Sure is, but overall the reason it’s called LMN is that yes the name (logistics media network) fit nicely with the acronym. And media network for logistics generally sounded like what I wanted to do.
So the first reason is, it worked as an acronym and already had an established understanding, I didn’t have to go out there and teach something completely new. Like explaining what Twitter was when it first came out would have taken the several years it did before people knew what a tweet was. So in order to accelerate the speed at which people recognized LMN, it was called LMN, because in my mind it's just ridiculous enough.
The next step was to change that perception… and yeah, that's still a work in progress.
The next reason it's called LMN is that everyone in logistics needs to wear high visibility vests all the time, at least the front line people do. So it was a coincidental and pretty funny layer to the meta of the concept: high vis something which people pay attention to because it stands out and fundamentally it serves a purpose to people, by being aware of people in something bright you are less likely to run them over in a truck or with a forklift. And as high vis serves the purpose of awareness of people, the point of LMN is to bring awareness of logistics to people.
The final reason that I think LMN works so well as a name is that lemons can be sweet or sour, depending on what you do next. If you suck on a slice of lemon it probably won’t be a great experience, but if you use lemon to make sweet and tasty lemonade, then the lemon has served as a positive and useful contributor to your world. Granted it would take several lemons to make lemonade, which, come to think of it is also a nice metaphor - since it'll likely take a few rubbish ideas and executions before we succeed.