Category: personal

Blur of Weeks Past, Two Trips

The blur of the last couple of weeks has been intense. New people, new locations, new situations and thinking in a way that I frankly had left behind many years go.

Whilst these weeks have been productive from a pure output perspective, and I think that work-life is sorta in balance: there is still a hole where technology once fit.

Tomorrow I have a quick day trip to Brisbane to capture 4 stories; and then another quick trip to Adelaide to capture at least 4 stories. Sometimes its tough to get the “Microsoft connection” with these stories: especially a new one in the pipeline about online communities and social networking. There are probably some bean counters somewhere adding up the $2.50 of time it cost and $30.00 for breakfast wondering where’s the business case. You know, meh. 

So, like all things in life, unless I do something about filling this gap: it ain’t gonna happen. Time to allocate some days to learning something new and feeling good. Some me-geek-time.

Arhhhh! Tagged.com got me

Yeah, user error. My mistake. I should have watched all the check boxes on the site. Mea Culpa. Now all my gmail contacts get spam from me. Ugly.

So, whilst I am on the topic: social networking sites should only opt-in, not opt-out. Make it a little more difficult to show your friends you are an absolute dork and idiot. Plaxo had the same effect on people, and it made your Outlook run as slow as treacle.

I am a fan of linkedin.com; myspace.com is interesting but looks as ugly as Prince Charles’ second wife; not much else has caught my eye.

Sydney goes Ga Ga over a big Cruise Ship. Or Two.

The big boats Queen Mary II arrived in Sydney this morning, and the Queen Elizabeth II arrived late this afternoon. And Sydney came to a screeching halt as people oggled the sight.

Now, if Princess Mary was on the Harbour. Wow. The productivity of the nation would fall by 2%. Now, I would even get out of bed early to see her.

Let the New Journey Begin

So, I reached 7 months before my feet started itching. Or was it that my brain was itching? Either way, I started looking seriously at contributing to the corporate world again.

After resigning from my previous job, it was clear that I was not going to do the exact same role. There were a couple of head-hunter calls, and some projects related to channel sales where I purposely said a firm no. Doing exactly the same type of thing would have probably been the easiest route to boot loads of cash, but the shortest road to insanity. Just putting the new cover pages on TPS reports was not a part of the original game plan.

Working for yourself, building a business and looking for projects to keep some income rolling in, is a tough task. Whilst self employment has it many benefits; professional companionship and intellectual stimulation are not included when self means self. No doubt, there are many things to keep your mind working: new customers, new projects, new languages, new environments, new products – however your power to influence any of these is very limited. Working with other smart people is just too darn attractive.

Knowing that I wanted to return to a technical, customer-facing, software related job filtered number of qualifying jobs diminish dramatically. Staying in Sydney, having a good manager, working for a name-brand company starts to filter down the choice even more.

So when this Microsoft Enthusiast Evangelist role appeared, I was over the moon and as keen as mustard. An excellent, well respected manager. Check. Loads of customers, buckets of technology and a strong desire to connect the two: Tick. Being a conduit; taking feedback, showing and listening in that order. Perfect.

Today, I signed on to Microsoft. Start on Thursday. Let the journey begin. WooT!

FAQs

  1. What are you going to miss about the time off?

    2. Getting up at anytime in the morning, reading lots of books, having the time to be able to research a completely new IT subject and watching TV. Chilling out and doing very little has certainly cleaned out the cobwebs.

  2. You are sucking up to your new boss, already, right?

    3. You read me like a book. No seriously, check him out. I did my reference checks, too!

  3. Microsoft is big. Can you deal with the huge-ness?

    4. Yes, Microsoft is a huge organisation with many people and lots of tools and technologies. Their products touch virtually everyone in the digital world, somewhere. Being a small part of this bigness is coolness.

  4. How much Gardening did you do?

    5. As promised, none. I did however water the garden under the draconian rules of Sydney Water during this period.

  5. So, you are never going to use a Mac nor Photoshop/InDesign again?

    6. I seriously doubt that. Microsoft creates Mac software, and Photoshop/InDesign is ingrained into my system. The world is a much more complex place than “A vs. B”.