Paying back in spades

Since going on sabbatical in July this year, I've had the odd moment where I've been worried. Worried about cashflow (pretty much all out at the moment) and whether I am missing out on career and personal opportunities.

Those are real worries - but they are completely outweighed by the good stuff.

Today was a great example of the good stuff. Decided to get along to the Hutt Valley Gymnastics Centre for their GymPlay session. 

It's tucked away in Gracefield - the industrial area of Lower Hutt. You go inside a non-descript warehouse to find a real gym.

Sprung floors, trampolines, beams, crashpads, parallel bars, rings, pommel horses. You name it - they got it.

Kids can do what they want. Ella zoomed around trying everything- I had to show her how to use the equipment. Never used one of those springboards onto a pommel horse before - they are AWESOME!

All for 6 bucks for an hour - I easily got $30 of value myself :)

Eventually I will need to do some kind of full-time work - I am making the most of this time while I can.

Clarification of status

A couple of questions - one on my blog and one on a comment I posted to another blog - as well as some surprised looks from people in the business have led me to believe I need to clarify my employment status.

1. I have resigned from Telecom - my last day is June 30th. There's a strong financial incentive linked to this date.

2. Until recently I was working on Telecom's Next Generation Telecom (or NGT) programme. I am no longer working on that programme.

3. I am working in the Broadband part of Telecom on what could only be described as special projects, supporting the widely held view that there is only one place you can go after Special Projects. Its pretty busy and a good way to finish my time here.

4. I don't have a job lined up for when I finish - I am planning on spending a lot of time enjoying being a Dad, I have a couple of ideas which I will talk about soon enough, and I am unashamedly looking for one or two days a week work to help keep the bank manager happy. Any offers considered :)

Naturally the posts and comments that I make are my own opinion (unless I state otherwise). And they will be flavoured by my experience at Telecom as well as other perspectives that I hold.

That should make it clear.

Farewell NGT

Today is my last day at Next Generation Telecom.

I've been working on this programme for the last 18 months or so and we've been able to get it from the feasibility work completed by Group Strategy, through a very rigorous design phase now going into Build.

It's been a hard road - we had quite a frustrating period as we went through the change in leadership at Telecom. It was necessary - we weren't really ready to move forward.
I am personally very pleased at where we've ended up.

NGT was described in the investor briefing session yesterday. There is a lot sitting behind this slide which comes from the Retail Briefing.

We started this phase with 3 of us in a room having 2 'AHA' moments.

1. We will not be able to compete as a Retailer in the market on product differentiation based on Network. Everyone can pretty much have the same stuff. What we can differentiate on is service.

2. We don't know how to design 'properly' for the customer - we have to learn.

We now have a team of close to 100 including our partners at Tech Mahindra, we have a brand promise that we are designing for that will be a game changer in NZ. The people building NGT are now first and foremost advocates for the customer and have the skills and capability to make that work for NZ. We have personas we are designing to, we are directly validating our design with customers, we are constantly challenging what we are doing to deliver to the customer. This is a very different Telecom.

It's been a privilege for me to be part of this team - I have learned a lot and worked with some amazing people. Thank you.

I'll be taking some time out from today and working with the Retail Broadband business at Telecom until the end of June. The rest of the year I will have my hands full with 2 year old Ella and trying to turn a couple of good ideas into good businesses.

Ella turns 2

Cracker day today - Ella's 2 year old birthday. Highlight was cruising around Oriental Bay with her older cousin Kaspar. This photo taken after they had pretty much outstayed their welcome at the local F n C shop....

Necessity is the mother of invention

Or maybe it's this

"Financial security is the greatest inhibitor of creativity that mankind has ever known"

I'm not sure if its the 'greatest inhibitor of creativity' but I'd have to say that it's up there. In previous conversations with HP and Sun on how they manage innovation, their biggest barriers have been internal - people with existing revenue streams who see a new product as a threat to that security.

I've got about 9 weeks left of employment left at Telecom. I can calculate with some degree of accuracy what I will be paid in that period. After that it is, at this point, wide open. I can say, without doubt, that I have had the biggest run of ideas so far in my life. Not all of them are my own - it would be fair to say that I am listening much closer to what people say for triggers for ideas. Not many of them have got to the point where I could say that they are a viable business. I am getting closer though.

Makes me think there are a bunch of people out there who are financially secure who have a bucket of ideas everyday and just keep going. What do you think they are thinking ? It's not how to get the next buck - it must be some kind of internal drive that keeps generating ideas independent of their needs for food and shelter. Maybe its what Maslow meant by self-actualisation ?

Thanks to Simon for the lead to the quote and the audio clip it comes from.

Hard Handoff

14 years ago last week I started a new job at Telecom Mobile as a Cellular Engineer back in the days when that meant running around the country installing new cellsites. These days with that kind of title I'd be splicing genes...


One of the things I learned in the first week (other than sneezing next to one of my new colleagues got me banished to the other end of the floor) was the concept of handoff.

Handoff is part of the magic that makes mobile telephony work. It is the mechanism that allows a mobile to move from cell to cell while maintaining the call. Its what makes it 'mobile'. The only hitch was that 'maintaining the call' was a bit of a euphemism. The way it worked was that the system would detect that call quality was declining (or in the digital systems the mobile would detect that an adjacent cell had better quality characteristics), work out where the the best cell for the call might be, prepare a spare channel on the new cell and tell the mobile to tune to that channel.The mobile tunes to the new channel (leaving the call on the old one behind) and all things going well(there is NO such thing as perfect engineering) the call would be resumed on the new cell on the new channel.There was a noticeable break in the conversation while this process occurred - I used to think of it as a hopeful period where you'd hope that the system and the mobile had all got their act together.

I learned that belief was quite important in this process and spent a lot of time driving around testing the network, listening for breaks in calls and hoping that the calls would stay up. I guess that would be why I wasn't the best engineer - too much hope and belief!

That type of handoff is a hard handoff - breaks the connection before it makes the new one. The CDMA systems these days have a much more reliable and secure way of making handoffs work - the mobile stays in contact with a number of cells so never breaks the conversation until it gets to the edge of the system. That's a soft handoff - much better for customers but not so much fun for engineers. No so much hope and belief required.

I've initiated my own hard handoff this week and resigned from Telecom. The reason its a hard handoff is that I haven't got a new role to move to. I know what I want to do - which is to lead a company that makes a real difference for customers - and once I decided that, it would have been mercenary to look for that while I was here. Hence the resignation.

Mobile phones don't have their own emotions - but if they did they'd feel a mixture of uncertainty every time they went through a handoff. But over-riding all of that they'd be hopeful and optimistic. They'd believe that they could do it. And they'd just let go of what had been good for them and trust that they'd find something better.

It's not supposed to do that

My mum still tells me that bad things run in threes - must be an Eastern European thing, as my Yugoslavian (is there still such a place?) godmother said the same.


This morning I got a run of three in about 4 minutes. Started off innocuously enough - riding my bike in on a beautiful warm and calm morning after a 5:20 am start to do some stretches. I was just coming off the Wellington motorway onto the Hutt Road when I hit some debris - back wheel kicked out a bit and a noticed that it had lost a bit of air.

I pulled over - back tyre definitely soft. Number 1. Take my pump off my bike to put some air in the tyre, hoping against hope that it was a slow leak and I could get into the office without changing the tube. I undo the valve on the tyre, clip the pump on and realise it's set-up for an MTB valve and can't put any air into the tyre. Off course, pressing the pump onto the valve meant all the air came out of the tyre. I turn to flip the fitting over on the pump. The lock nut is basically seized onto the pump due to excessive sweat corroding the aluminium so I can't change it over and the tyre is definitely flat. Number 2. So I decide to take the wheel off, change the tube and flag down a cyclist to use their pump. I release the wheel, and start to pull it off and notice there is a bit of resistance. I jiggle it around and give it a yank. The wheel is off - I look down and the derailleur looks like this picture. Number 3.




I think I have sheared the bolts off with brute strength - guy in the bike shop tells me the bolts are ok - just too short. Pretty sure I have been riding like this for about a year since i replaced the rear derailleur - fortunately I haven't been mashing the pedals :)


The bright side to this is at least 25 people stopped this morning to see if I was ok on their way riding into work. Nice one - thanks!

Corporate Blog Guidelines

I like this sensible advice from Lance Wiggs.

Keeps it simple, and has two basic themes

1. Blogging is a conversation - it's happening whether you are there or not. If you want to be part of that conversation then make an effort and be part of it!

2. If you're going to be part of it, be genuine. And you don't have to give your company secrets away to participate.

I know its common sense but sometimes that is a rare commodity in corporate land.

I've been interested in Paul Brislen's presence in various forums, in particular geekzone. I am sure that it makes those forums richer for the fact that Paul is out there with Vodafone's view on a regular basis. I do note that Paul doesn't have his own blog - any idea why that is?

Do what I say or what I do?

Had a funny experience today - was looking after Ella this afternoon. I changed her nappy and she was playing around in her room. I told her not to touch her nappy cream and less than a minute later this was the result - her lion Frankie had his rear end covered in aforementioned nappy cream....

So after I stopped laughing (ok it took a while...) I had a change to reflect on a couple of things.

1. I've been telling people for ages to keep their presentations short and to the point, and tailored to their audience. Yet on Friday I was involved in a team presentation that could be best be described as a powerpoint-a-rama that lasted 2 hours. Broke all the rules that I hold dear - pretty clear what the message is there to people who were unfortunate enough to be on the other end of that. Garr Reynolds would have had a field day.

2. Later on that day we had an activity that was designed specifically to relieve some frustration that is evident in the same team. We did not say what the purpose was - we just acted in a way that gave people the opportunity to genuinely express their concerns in an environment that was safe to do so. Much more effective that point 1 - no fanfare but the result has been enduring.

3. David Beckham - say what you like about him (and I'm a Spurs supporter - damn you Ricky Villa) but this weekend in Wellington he showed what a professional he is. Put himself out for his fans and made every post a winner. Even with bronchitis. Can't wait for the next Phoenix game already.

It didn't matter what I said to Ella - Frankie got his tail covered 'cos that is what happens to her and why should she act any different. No different in the other world.