Piece of Mind

Be like the Internet

Occasionally I meet someone who makes me want to be a better person.

This slideshow makes me want to be a better planner.

Damn. I've been found out.

Heading home...

All the programmes I came to New Zealand to deliver are done. Hurrah!

It's been a enjoyable and full-on couple of weeks in lots of ways. I'll probably post more about this when I get back home.

Talking of which, I've been missing Fio and Callum like crazy. Can't wait to see them again.

I have one more business meeting over lunch today then it's off the the airport to puddle jump via Melbourne and Dubai back to Glasgow, arriving Tuesday lunchtime.

See you on the other side of the planet...

Friends

Chris & Lainy threw a BBQ in my honour last night. Top time had by Paul!

It was great to have so many old friends in one place, all with wonderful stories to share. The last ones standing, sitting, are captured above.  More photos here.

I also got to see my new 3-week old niece Kendra. Very cute. Funny to see my little brother in 'dad mode'. Both he and Di will be great parents I'm sure.

Short post today, as I have to go help Chris pack the boat for our two days up North for a bit of waterskiing and boogie-boarding action.

Still have quite a bit of preparation to do for the two days of work I have later this week, so it'll be good to relax and subconciously mull over a few things before getting back into it proper on Wednesday.

Now all I have to to is avoid any waterskiing injuries!

Touch wood.

Magnificent you

"Most of us want to practice the things we're already good at, and avoid the things we suck at. We stay average or intermediate amateurs forever".

Best post I've read all week, courtesy of Kathy Sierra.

Strangely comforting.

Hmmm.

Me too!

Courtesy of gapingvoid.

I may not return.

Back with 'the lads' for Tuesday night swimming, followed by a spot of Japanese.

Got a few jobs to take care of on Friday in Auckland and Saturday in Wellington. Then it's BBQ Sunday and off up North for a few days of surfing, water-skiing and fishing.

It's like I've never been away.

Snowboarding as a business strategy?

Great article by Max McKeown...

"This snowboarding philosophy is a wonderful illustration of the difference between traditional text book strategy and unorthodox emergent strategy. The former imagines a planning process that produces a, "perfect line", to be executed through blind obedience obtained by the carrot and stick while the latter assumes strategy to be something that emerges from diverse places, people, at various times, and for a multitude of reasons."

I gave up skiing for snowboarding years ago - literally and figuratively.

Eight years old!

Found this nice wee story earlier today from the blog of a Venture Capitalist...

VentureBlog: Company Building For Eight Year Olds.

When you're a doctor or an architect, it is relatively easy to explain to your kids what you do for a living. "I help make sick people healthy." "I help build houses." When you're a venture capitalist it is not quite as straight forward. What would the one-liner be? "I help small companies to grow into big companies." "I give people money so that they can teach computers how to do stuff that the computers couldn't do before." "I type lots of emails and go to lunch a lot."

When my eight year old asked me what it meant to be a VC, I tried to explain it in terms that he could appreciate. He is a skate board fanatic and has been talking about starting a "skate brand" where he could sell shirts, hats, decks, etc. with his particular logo (needless to say, practically everything he wears has some skate logo or other on it -- Etnies, NorCal, Element).

He spends his day drawing potential logos, shirt and skateboard designs, and telling me which professional skateboarders his brand will sponsor. So I tried to describe venture capital in the context of a skate brand. I explained to him:

    Ok, you would come to me with the idea of starting a skate brand. I'd spend a bunch of time talking with you about your business. I'd get to know you and the people who would run the business with you. I'd ask you to tell me how the company was going to make money. I'd ask you how much money your skate brand might make. I'd call lots of people who know you and see if they thought you were smart and a really good guy. And after that if I thought you could make a lot of money with your skate brand, I'd give you money and work with you to help build your company.

My eight year old listened intently and I thought that I had done a fine job of explaining my profession. But apparently my son's take away was different than mine.

A couple nights ago my son came to me with a handful of papers with various designs and announced that he was ready to start his skate brand. After an exhaustive process, he had decided to name his company Ollie King (tm), and he was ready to go. I told him that he would have to wait because I was reading to his sister, at which point he stormed up stairs to his mother, ripped up his skate designs, threw them in the trash, and screamed to her "daddy won't fund my company!"

This did not sit well with my wife -- apparently, as his father, I have an obligation to fund my son's skate brand. I was instructed to do something to fix the problem I had created.

Luckily, thanks to the incredible web services that exist today, I was able to fix the problem without having to actually write a big check to my son the CEO.

First, since my son already had a typepad account, he was able to create a new blog and make it the home page for his Ollie King website. I then showed him how to look for domain names on GoDaddy. We tried to buy OllieKing.com but to no avail. It was already taken. So he had to settle for SkateOllieKing.com. Through the wonders of modern domain hosting, I was able to nearly instantly redirect SkateOllieKing.com to my son's new Ollie King home page on typepad. Unfortunately for my budding entrepreneur, at that point I had to go take his brother to theater practice, so I left my eight year old tweaking his web site.

But when I got home I found him on Cafepress making t-shirts and hats with the various designs he was able to rescue from the trash. Apparently he had been on Cafepress before looking at his uncle's crazy t-shirt designs. Once he had created a bunch of products for his Cafepress store, he then linked his home page to CafePress and voila, my eight year old had his own skate brand.

These are precisely the sorts of on-demand services that are driving massive online activity today. I have written a lot about the increasing importance of user generated content and watching my son put together his skate store drove home that fact. User generated content is going to continue to proliferate as the eight year olds of the world create MySpace pages and blogs and skate stores. Who knows what they'll create when they are nine.

I really hope my 3-year old son Callum gets the entrepreneurial bug too, as I have high expectations of rest homes.

Ahh, how I miss my old IT consulting days