Episodes

  • 18 Phasma & Innovation in the gaming industry (aka "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY")

    18 Phasma & Innovation in the gaming industry (aka "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY")
    May 10 2023

    Would you wear a mask while working? Or while playing video games? You may need the Phasma mask! A problem known mostly to gamers with small apartments and a girlfriend! But also an issue because of those useless open space offices, where it’s always too loud. This is a conspiracy! Just go to another room or get a different apartment! Shut up and take my money!


    Meet Andrés, the founder and inventor from Metadox, the company behind the revolutionary 'Phasma' mask. This is no ordinary face mask from the good old Covid times - it's a groundbreaking piece of technology that is soundproof and equipped with a microphone, allowing you to communicate with the world while maintaining a peaceful environment for those around you. Let's dive into this journey of innovation in the gaming industry, crowdfunding and why it’s so hard to develop a hardware product from scratch.


    Hosted by two former CTOs who decided to stay hands-on, both veterans of the industry with decades of experience as engineers. You can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principal Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.

    Key Takeaways

    • Creating and shipping a hardware product is way harder than you might think, planning is way more relevant compared to building software products. It’s also very hard for a small company to find a team which works.
    • Move fast and start things as fast as possible. If you can start with a prototype and 3d printers, go for it. Don’t directly start production in Asia, as this is most of the time the biggest risk to lose everything at once.
    • Nothing is written when you start a company. You get a lot of advice and everybody wants to tell you something. But you have the choice and the freedom to do things differently. You can do them your way.  
    • It’s hard to market to companies and freelancers, as even giving your employees the Phasma for free would be really strange
    • Crowdfunding is more like a donation for creators, but the marketing from the big providers let it sound like you are guaranteed your selected benefits. Which is just not true.
    • Not having investors can also be a huge benefit, especially in hard times like the Covid pandemic.

    Chapters

    • 0:00 Intro

    Stuff we mentioned


    We really need to talk more about cool gadgets - I promise we will do this more in future episodes!

    • 🧑‍🎨 Phasma https://metadox.pro/
    • ⚽️ Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/metadox/the-phasma-a-voice-dampening-mask-for-gamers

    What should we talk about next?

    • YouTube:  The Innovation Engineer
    • Leave a review/comment on YouTube; it's like podcasts, but with video.
    • Check our website and find everything you never knew you needed

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    50 mins
  • 17 Should we elect an AI for parliament (aka "Computerlars")

    17 Should we elect an AI for parliament (aka "Computerlars")
    Apr 17 2023

    Lars is one of us. Would you trust an Artificial Intelligence to make the right political choices? More than you trust our modern politicians? Today we talk to Asker Bryld Staunæs, the founder and acting party secretary of the Danish Synthetic Party - the world's first political party driven by artificial intelligence. But Asker will only be the party secretary until their AI figurehead Leader Lars is legally allowed to take over!

    The official representative and face of The Synthetic Party is actually an AI called Leader Lars and also their policies are derived from AI! We talk about what happens if you have a public discussion between Leader Lars and a real conservative politician, what the name Lars stands for, why you can’t use the infamous GPT-3 model for Leader Lars and if data is objective or not.

    And let’s be honest, this interview is totally biased: With Tarek being a former AI researcher and Waschi being a real Cyborg with an artificial ear, it’s already clear what our opinion on this topic is going to be!

    Hosted by two former CTOs who decided to stay hands-on, both veterans of the industry with decades of experience as engineers. You can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principal Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.


    Key Takeaways

    • If you look at the US elections, it’s already clear that Artificial Intelligence is used for quite a while to make decisions, at least for the various campaigns. 
    • After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, many tech companies just try to close their eyes to obvious problems and just forbid any political use of their technology.
    • It is possible to have a public AI which is not going to be racist or whatever.
    • If you have a discussion between a real politician and an AI it’s surprising how similar both sides' arguments and phrases are. 
    • Data is always biased, but in the same way as our democratic system is.
    • In the future AI will be more of an assistant, not a replacement.

    Show Notes

    • 0:00 Intro
    • 1:13 The nerdiest mug
    • 1:40 Very human
    • 2:50 How the Computerlars project actually started
    • 5:50 Artist or Engineer?
    • 6:50 An anti-political party
    • 8:12 Training data for a political AI
    • 10:46 Data cares who you are
    • 12:24 The origin of the name Leader Lars
    • 14:45 The danger of using voting data to target swing voters
    • 17:47 We don’t want to f*** it up, like Microsoft
    • 19:14 The reaction of the people
    • 22:08 The debate with the mayor 
    • 23:59 Synthetic voice and people assume sentience 
    • 26:24 Qualityland
    • 29:25 What would Leader Lars vote for in parliament?
    • 33:02 What the psychology of the voters would demand 
    • 37:49 The biggest obstacle
    • 41:20 Let’s sum it up!
    • 46:53 Outro

    Stuff we mentioned

    We really need to talk more about cool gadgets - I promise we will do this more in future episodes!

    • 🧑‍🎨 Computerlars https://computerlars.com/
    • 💻 Descript https://www.descript.com/
    • 📚 Qualityland https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Marc-Uwe-Kling/dp/3548291872/
    • 📄 Cambridge Analytica https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html

    What should we talk about next?

    • YouTube:  The Innovation Engineer
    • Leave a review/comment on YouTube; it's like podcasts, but with video.
    • Check our website and find everything you never knew you needed



    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    48 mins
  • 16 OKRs (aka "Objectives and Key Reasons Engineers Start to Hate Their Lives")

    16 OKRs (aka "Objectives and Key Reasons Engineers Start to Hate Their Lives")
    Jan 16 2023

    Does every company need to introduce OKRs? Obviously not, but most do it anyway. And why are there so many engineers who hate OKRs? It’s getting hot, so tune in and learn about what OKRs are, when not to use them and what the real benefits are.


    Tarek and Waschi both have very mixed experiences with using OKRs. It’s a love/hate relationship! There is great value in using them and we saw them bringing so much value to companies! But we also saw them go to waste way too often and being burned, even hated. There is only one thing we can do: We explain why and when to introduce them and discuss the potential pitfalls of OKRs. And provide you with valuable insights on how to avoid them! Join us as we dive deep into the world of OKRs, and help you determine if they are the right tool for your company.


    Hosted by two former CTOs who decided to stay hands-on, both veterans of the industry with decades of experience as engineers. You can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principal Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.


    Key Takeaways

    • OKRs are a tool, meant for a certain set of problems. It’s not a multi-tool and not a Swiss Army knife.
    • Understand it before you do it. Learning by doing can be harmful in this case. Understanding what you are trying to do and why you are introducing OKRs is important.
    • Most of the time you actually don’t need OKRs.
    • Stay agile - OKRs don’t work against agile methodologies, always keep reflecting and check if you are still on course. Use regular check-ins and train your mind to think in iterations.
    • Less is more - start with very very few Objectives and Key Results. 
    • Technical goals are not meant to be Key Results. Except if they are your business. Always think about the business. 

    Show Notes

    • 0:00 Intro
    • 1:09 The nerdiest mug
    • 3:30 OKRs are triggering me, everyone hates them for the wrong reasons
    • 5:15 Where do OKRs come from?
    • 8:25 The beauty of it and why you should love OKRs
    • 12:29 What are OKRs and how do they work?
    • 18:50 The simple explanation
    • 23:05 Why engineers start to hate OKRs
    • 24:12 The story which made Tarek fall in love (with OKRs)
    • 27:56 Things engineers don’t understand about the value of meetings
    • 30:39 Today we have “product developers”, not “software engineers”
    • 32:52 The Five Superpowers of OKRs
    • 35:00 Does your company really need OKRs?
    • 39:09 The most common way do destroy the value of OKRs
    • 40:31 What if you work project based?
    • 48:02 Technical goals make for bad Key Results
    • 50:41 The most important point: Understanding what you are trying to do
    • 52:21 Key Takeaways
    • 55:04 Outro and Outlook

    Stuff we mentioned

    We really need to talk more about cool gadgets - I promise we will do this more in future episodes!

    • 🧑‍🎨 Bitly - the best link management of the world with a great taste in nerdy mugs

    What should we talk about next?

    • YouTube:  The Innovation Engineer
    • Leave a review/comment on YouTube; it's like podcasts, but with video.
    • Check our website and find everything you never knew you needed

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    57 mins
  • 15 Mark Jeffery and the tangled web (aka "let's combine the monkey and the computer")

    15 Mark Jeffery and the tangled web (aka "let's combine the monkey and the computer")
    Jan 3 2023
    Web3? Not needed. Let’s combine the monkey and the computer! Today we have an awesome guest - Mark Jeffrey! We met him on the social platform Polywork and that's actually the best way to describe him, as he does so many things. Up until last year he worked as a mixture between developer and product manager and as a paramedic on the weekends! And if that's not enough he has a side hustle making wooden globes. And as that's way too many jobs, he quit his work, started a podcast about quitting work and 2 other great podcasts (The Tangled web and The Last Theory) and a seriously cool project called the Open Web Mind! So let's talk about why we should combine the monkey and the computer, how augmented intelligence beats AI, why everything is going to be decentralized (again) and the reason Mark can’t use the coolest VR or AR equipment.Hosted by two former CTOs who decided to stay hands-on, both veterans of the industry with decades of experience as engineers. You can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principal Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.Key TakeawaysOpen protocols like those used for Mastodon (the Twitter competitor) may be the future of the web and we may see a movement away from centralized services to a more decentralized web, instead of single domains holding all the power. Most people either think of doing everything manually with their own decisions or doing everything completely with AI. In reality the future may be augmented intelligence, and not artificial intelligence.The only way to beat a chess computer is using a human (the monkey) and augment it with the help of AI. So a human with the help of an AI can beat a chess computer, a pure AI.The web was invented as this awesome decentral place and then with social media everything was centralized again. But now the tide is turning and everything is becoming decentralized again!In the good old days (around 2005-2008) the term web3 already existed and it meant the semantic web, which never came to be, as it required extra steps and developers are lazy. At some point of time, centralizing services simply was the practical thing tod o and that enabled us to grow as a web societyThere are many examples of the huge downsides of the last movement of centralization, like medium.com abusing their monopol and a lot of blogs dying or Mark not being able to use VR/AR from Oculus as it requires a Facebook account and Facebook does not believe that Mark is a real human being. Show Notes0:00 Intro1:51 Polywork3:58 Way too many jobs6:04 The Open Web Mind13:19 Wikipedia, but decentralized15:17 Blockchain is a really slow database17:16 It’s like WordPress, everybody can run it18:57 How to beat a chess computer20:49 Augmented Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence22:55 What's the difference in AI and machine learning?25:36 Should you start multiple podcast at once?29:46 Your individual Twitter timeline algorithm34:15 The good old decentralized days36:34 The evolution of the web38:39 Not even Facebook knows what they are doing41:06 Web3 aka the semantic web42:29 Wrap upStuff we mentionedWe really need to talk more about cool gadgets - I promise we will do this more in future episodes!🧑‍🎨 The social platform Polywork🌐 https://markjeffery.com/🌐 Good Wooden Globes📄 Join the mailing list TheOpenWebMind🎙 Podcast - The Last Theory🎙 Podcast - The Tangled Web🎙 Podcast - The Quit Work Podcast📘 Qualityland What should we talk about next?YouTube:  The Innovation EngineerLeave a review/comment on YouTube; it's like podcasts, but with video.Check our website and find everything you never knew you needed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    45 mins
  • 14 Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose (aka "DON'T DIE!")

    14 Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose (aka "DON'T DIE!")
    Nov 18 2022
    What motivates people? Obviously there is the need to eat and pay your bills. But we often do things where we are not paid, we work longer or volunteer. You don’t find motivation, nor do you get motivation, but you create motivation. But how? Well, today we talk about Master, Autonomy and Purpose - the Motivation 3.0 framework defined by Daniel Pink in his book drive. Does Mastery mean writing three unit tests for each line of code? Does every company need a big purpose like saving the world? Is it even worth working for an agency? Can you even be a good engineer if you don’t program in your free time? Do all product owners micro manage their engineers? And remember the basics: Don’t die!Actually thinking about what mastery, autonomy and purpose means helps us to see why people are doing the things that they are doing. And not only understanding others, it’s also like looking into the mirror and understanding why I have this passion for this specific project or the passion to go into that one direction. Or in leadership, understanding the people you are working with, why they are driven to a certain direction, or why they are behaving in a certain way, and trying to map this into their drive for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. You are not a manager anymore managing people. You are a leader and those are your new tools.Hosted by two former CTOs who decided to stay hands-on, both veterans of the industry with decades of experience as engineers. You can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principal Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.Key TakeawaysRead this book and understand what motivates people, it’s the first step as a leader.You should own your drive to become happy. Happiness in what you’re doing in your job, in your daily life and can be supported by understanding your own Motivation 3.0As a leader: Try understanding the people you are working with, why they are driven to a certain direction, or why they are behaving in a certain way. Try to map this into their drive for autonomy, mastery, and purpose.By understanding others and seeing what other people are driven to helps creating empathy and a very collaborative culture and this helps you align with other people. How good you are at your job has nothing to do with if it's your calling, you just do it for money or whatever reason. There is no direct correlation between it. There are software engineers out there who don't do programming in their spare time. And they can still be great. They could also be bad. But there's no correlation if they do stuff in their spare time or not.Be open for purpose. Purpose might not be that obvious, like saving the world. Your personal purpose, the things that you are striving for, can be very abstract. So be open to anything that you are striving for. It might not be obvious. As a manager and in every role, try to always delegate decisions down. Don't make decisions on yourself, except if they were delegated to you.Show Notes0:00 Intro1:00 Bitly is a great place to work2:07 Let’s talk about Drive and what the book is about8:45 What type of book is it?10:43 How good you are does not depend if it’s your calling or just a job11:58 From playing with Lego to building software 14:05 The best podcast for software engineers14:35 How extrinsic rewards or penalties undermine intrinsic motivation16:03 The Tom Sawyer Effect17:57 Purpose - New Work Wokeness24:58 OKR to the rescue (again)27:37 Micromanagement kills motivation29:10 Always delegate decisions down29:32 Micro managing Product Owners (how dare you)34:14 Mastery - the hardest topic to get your head around38:29 The goal is not only the Purpose, but also becoming good (Mastery)39:53 Mastery is not writing tests for everything34:38 Using Motivation 3.0 to think about cultural fit while recruiting45:55 I’m a Java developer, I don’t care about anything else48:50 Summary and Key TakeawaysStuff we mentionedWe really need to talk more about cool gadgets - I promise we will do this more in future episodes!📘 Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us📘 Rework📘 Management 3.0What should we talk about next?YouTube:  The Innovation EngineerLeave a review/comment on YouTube; it's like podcasts, but with video.Check our website and find everything you never knew you needed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    54 mins
  • 13 How to judge a senior engineer? (aka "employee terrorism")

    13 How to judge a senior engineer? (aka "employee terrorism")
    Oct 25 2022

    How do you measure and evaluate the performance of your senior engineers? Can you even do it as a non-engineer? And what are diminishers and multipliers in your team? I’m an introvert, will I ever become a real senior engineer! And how do you even decide who get’s a raise and who not? Clean Coders to the rescue, I need your help.


    Welcome to The Innovation Engineer Podcast, your favorite place for picking brains of your favorite engineers. This time Ard asked us how you actually evaluate and judge senior engineers. We already talked about what makes a good senior engineer in episode 2 of our podcast. Can this even be done by a manager who didn’t touch code for a decade? Or even a manager who never coded? The simple answer: Yes! Because code quality and pure technical skills are the least important thing you are looking for in senior engineers. 


    Hosted by two former CTOs who decided to stay hands-on, both veterans of the industry with decades of experience as engineers. You can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principal Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.


    Key Takeaways

    • Soft Skills are everything. It’s not the number of programming languages or number of years you have been coding.
    • It depends on your culture. What do you strive for? You need to write this down! Oriente yourself on the “Level-System” used in many US companies.
    • Performance works inwards and outwards. This includes your mindset and which value you bring to the company, but also making sure that your team performs.
    • Try to decouple the performance review and the salary negotiation. Salary is only a hygiene factor and should be orientated on the personal market situation of each developer..

    Show Notes

    • 0:00 Intro
    • 1:33 What Tarek did to impress his superiors
    • 2:58 The best metrics: Lines of Code or Story Points
    • 4:19 What the git commit history tells you
    • 9:33 The Dunning–Kruger effect 
    • 13:03 There is no linear path to increase your skill level, you can add value in different ways
    • 14:20 Multipliers and Diminishers
    • 17:45 Fire your best engineer
    • 21:13 Introverts also speak up and are productive communicators
    • 22:33 I’m an introvert, I just trained my soft skills
    • 27:57 The hard questions - how to do the actual evaluation
    • 29:03 Salary - decouple it from the evaluation, it’s only a hygiene factor
    • 31:56 Should your salary be independent from your performance?
    • 34:24 Encourage your engineers to talk with headhunters
    • 35:47 Something like employee terrorism
    • 37:55 Where does the value from that person come from? Druid knowledge?
    • 39:42 There are only bad leaders - Team performance depends on leadership 
    • 42:07 The keeper test
    • 43:45 The “We are a family trap” 
    • 47:28 Summary and Key Takeaways
    • 50:38 Next time: We talk about the book “Drive”

    Stuff we mentioned

    • 🎙 TIE POD Episode 2 → “What makes a senior engineer”
    • 📄 Dunning–Kruger effect
    • 📄 Gitlabs Engineer Career Development
    • 📘 Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
    • 📘 Netflix “No Rules Rules”
    • 📘 Clean Coders

    What should we talk about next?

    • YouTube:  The Innovation Engineer
    • Leave a review/comment on YouTube; it's like podcasts, but with video.
    • Check our website and find everything you never knew you needed

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    53 mins
  • 12 Are the Metaverse and web3 legit? (aka “markup description for a ridiculous hat”)

    12 Are the Metaverse and web3 legit? (aka “markup description for a ridiculous hat”)
    Sep 20 2022

    There is a new version of the internet coming, maybe it’s version 9 or web3? Some call it Metaverse, but nobody knows what it is. Nobody? No! Two engineers try to clarify and resist the marketing hype. Let’s find out why we need a markup description for ridiculous hats and what the Metaverse and web3 actually are. What do you prefer, Roblox or Fortnite?


    Welcome to The Innovation Engineer Podcast, your favorite place for picking brains of your favorite engineers. This time we ask ourselves if the Metaverse and Web3 are actually legit. Is it just marketing? And aren’t we already at web9 or something? We talk about our experiences using VR and AR equipment, why Facebook did change their name to Meta and how this new alternative to the World Wide Web with http and URLs may look like.


    Hosted by two former CTOs, both veterans of the industry, you can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principal Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.


    Key Takeaways

    • tbd

    Show Notes

    • 0:00 Intro

    Stuff we mentioned

    • 📘 Ready Player One (book) or movie
    • 🚴‍♂️ Peleton Bike for staying healthy
    • ⛏ Roblox the game 
    • 🔫 Fortnite the game
    • 🧤Power Glove for Nintendo's NES

    What should we talk about next?

    • YouTube:  The Innovation Engineer
    • Leave a review/comment on YouTube; it's like podcasts, but with video.
    • Check our website and find everything you never knew you needed

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    50 mins
  • 11 Will Israel be the next Silicon Valley? (aka "we need more meetings")

    11 Will Israel be the next Silicon Valley? (aka "we need more meetings")
    Aug 29 2022

    Will Israel (or better: Tel Aviv) be the next Silicon Valley? They sure already claim to be and call themself Silicon Wadi. But is it true, or is it just clever marketing? Why do people in Israel need more meetings? And where is Tarek? L'chaim!

    In today's episode, we have a special guest - Henrike Hedel. She's the Head of Tech Program at the FreeTech Academy and recently returned from a trip through Israel. Plus she's a fan of nerdy mugs. In fact, when COVID first started out, she made a series of Instagram posts featuring her particular mug of the day. She's a huge space nerd, building Lego models of the ISS, and even tried to become an astronaut herself.

    Thanks to her role in the FreeTech Academy Henrike had the chance to go on a weeklong journey throughout Israel to learn more about their approach to Innovation. And Waschi did a similar journey some years ago and he was the supervisor for a Bachelor thesis about “Innovation Factors in Israel”. 

    Welcome to The Innovation Engineer Podcast, your favorite place for picking brains of your favorite engineers. This time we ask ourselves will Israel be the next Silicon Valley? Or is it already? What is even so special about the Silicon Valley?

    Hosted by two former CTOs, both veterans of the industry, you can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principle Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.

    Key Takeaways

    • ICQ started the whole VC and tech scene in Israel when it was sold for 200M$ in 1998
    • The "Silicon Wadi" is mainly concentrated in Tel Aviv
    • Not many well known products come from Israel, except the SodaStream (at least well known for Germans)
    • Most people in Israel aim for a fast exit and don’t think about long term success, that’s also why many Israeli products are now actually part of other companies (and you may not know that they are from Israel) 
    • From the absolut numbers Israel VC scene is not that big, but per citizen it’s no. 2 world wide in terms of VC volume
    • Israel is a walled garden and that makes it hard to be as attractive as the Silicon Valley, as the access is limited and specific people have even the option to go there
    • Most foreign people would not feel safe enough in Tel Aviv or in Israel in general to consider living or working there
    • It's more a marketing claim from Israel itself to be the next Silicon Valley, even if they are very successful in founding and creating new companies and products

    Show Notes

    • 0:00 Intro
    • The infamous Star Wars XMas episode

    Stuff we mentioned

    • 🫧 SodaStream for making sparkling water
    • 💦 Brita Water Filter
    • 📺 Star Wars XMas episode on YouTube
    • 🥛🍫Koawach, Cocoa powder with caffeine
    • 📘 Startup Nation Israel (Book)
    • Startup Investments → https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/countries-most-startup-investment/
    • VC Investments → https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=VC_INVEST

    What should we talk about next?

    • YouTube:  The Innovation Engineer
    • Leave a review/comment on YouTube; it's like podcasts, but with video.
    • Check our website and find everything you never knew you needed

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    50 mins