I genuinely think there's a lot of similarities between management and parenting - and I'm not looking to demean, belittle or disrespect either practice by the way. Parenting lately, particularly with Aurora who is almost 4 years old, is dominated by bartering and negotiating. "We can read stories after you clean the play room". "You can watch something after you've had a sleep". And quickly becoming my favourite seasonal saying... "You don't want me to have to call Santa, do you?". Whilst these exact phrases don't exactly work for the office, there's often a lot of negotiating in my day to day activities and I find the lessons that I learn from Aurora are also in use in the office everyday - patience, clear communication, concise reasoning, and quickly determining what the "real" driver is.

Labels: Aurora, Work

I've been pretty flat out at work for the past couple of weeks, thus the lack of blogging. Among other things (including my "normal day job"), I've been doing a lot of Performance Reviews with my team. Although it takes a huge amount of time and preparation, and it can get a little bit chaotic seeing so many people in the space of a couple of weeks, I honestly find it really rewarding to sit down with each member of the team and have a "quality" catchup. Our actual process for the chat is also pretty good. I went along to a training course last Friday on "Managerial Leadership", and some of it touched on the exact stuff I'm going through right now with regards to managing and reviewing staff. It was pleasing to see that we were already doing all the "best practice" stuff and even excelling in some areas (i.e. the presenter actually had me present back some of our process to the group!). As much as I'd like to take credit for it, the process has been worked out by far smarter people in OBS over the course of a few years :) One of the best things to come from these chats is understanding where not only the individuals are heading in their career, but putting the bigger picture together and seeing where the team and the company is going - that really excites me. Anyway, it'll all be over soon - I have 3 more today to do, 3 next Monday, a quick trip to Adelaide next week and maybe a Sydney visit (trying to get out of that visit though - done enough travel lately). Better get back to writing documents :)

Labels: Work

Today the BRW listed out it's "50 Best Companies to work for in Australia". I'm extremely proud and pleased to not only announce that OBS made the cut, but we were Top 10! (just, we came in at Number 10). I'm so very proud of our company - the fact that a small-ish (100 people) company, based out of Melbourne can compete against the bigger players with a lot more money, prestige and glamour really makes me happy. We also managed to score a great looking full page back cover ad (seen below). Massive kudo's to the marketing folks for pulling that one off!

The list itself got some coverage in The Age as well as The Australian - and even on Channel 7's "Sunrise" program.

Congratulations to all the OBSers out there :)

Labels: Work

It's been a long time since I've blogged about work. I thought to keep a well rounded, nutritionally sound blog, I'd better at least mention what's been going on. Otherwise, in years to come when the aliens discover this blog, they might be reading it thinking "This guy never did any work!". So, without hitting too much commercial-in-confidence stuff re: work, here's a quick update. I'm having a ball (still) and things are really going well. The main thing on my radar right now is balancing the number of people we have in the team with the work coming down the pipeline (which is one of the main parts of my job). I want to be conservative, given the current economic climate, but we have so many great jobs coming up (and have won a whole stack of cool ones in the past month as well). It's quite an exciting time to be in our industry (and in particular our business). There's a stack of opportunity right now in IT if you have the right mix of government clients and small to medium businesses. Big corporations on the other hand I think have tightened their belts quickly and are not exactly the best basket to place all your eggs in.

Anyway, I'm having a great time at work - really enjoying it and haven't had a bad day yet. And considering tomorrow will be my 5 month anniversary of employment at OBS, that's a good batting average thus far :)

Labels: Work

Today has really stuffed me up - I've worked today, but not for the rest of the week, and now it's the weekend! It doesn't really feel like Friday night - that sense of "ahhh... I'm knackered and I can't wait for a beer at 4pm". Don't get me wrong - I had a great day at work today, and spent the majority of the day with the CEO (my boss) planning the next 6 months. Although we did do a tiny bit of web surfing trying to work out which brand of guitar amp John Mayer uses. But it was an enjoyable, productive day - which makes it an enjoyable, productive work week... but it's just a little strange to think "that's it" for the work week. I'm sure I won't feel the same at the end of next week (a full 5 days).

Labels: Work

On the back of my last post about the Wattyl Silverlight webpart, OBS (my employer) also launched another public facing website today; the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) site. Nice work fellas!

Labels: Work

Here's some really cool stuff that my work released today; Wattyl's online colour designer. It's a Silverlight webpart that allows you to mix and match colours for various rooms in a house. I particularly liked the email that went around the company today;

(Warning; Sharing of this site with wife may result in excessive re-painting of house before Xmas)

I don't necessarily agree with "the wife" part. After about 5 minutes of playing with the site I had great ideas for our virtually brand new house... and had to close the browser down :)

Labels: Work

Warning; relevant to Microsoft nerds only...



Just had a laugh at my own expense. Got an email from a guy I work with who is involved with an internal project we're doing around CRM. Anyway, CRM isn't behaving itself very well performance wise, and his words were;



"In the keynote at the PDC this morning, they demo'd Microsoft's hosted CRM platform. I'm sad to say, but, some of the screens he was clicking on (like opening an entity) took 3-5 seconds to come up. This is in the same continent using $TEXAS worth of hardware. I plan to go see the CRM dev team tomorrow to see what they are going to do about it."



So, I got a little confused thinking "What could *our* dev team do about that?!?"



But, just prior to pinging him an email asking what the hell *he* was on about, a light came on in my head...



It's not *our* dev team he's talking to, it's *Microsoft's*. He's actually at the PDC right now. With another (I think) 2 guys from Melbourne and a few guys from Nintex's Seattle office. He didn't see the PDC (like the rest of us) via webcast. He saw it live. And he *can* actually go and talk to the team in Microsoft that built the product.



Pretty cool, huh? I've obviously still got a bit to get used to :)

Labels: Work

So, I've wrapped up my first week at OBS. It's been a bit of a whirlwind, but I think I've done pretty well, and I'm sure as hell enjoying it, so that's the main thing. I met the team (Aaron, Adam, Adrian, Alex, Blair, Brett, Chris G, Chris S, Damian, Daniel, David F, David H, Dean, Euan, Ian, Jason, Julian, Lindon, Marina, Marty, Michael, Mike, Mohsin, Patrick, Paul, Rick, Sen, Terry, Terrence, Will.... phew...) this week and hopefully "made a connection" with most people - there's still a few to sit down with. I also worked / met with a few not in "my team" this week; Brian, Bea, Elyse, Denis, Bruno, Daniel, Jess, Kara, Amanda, the "backoffice team", Wayne and the Nintex team. So... a lot of new faces, and that's just Victoria... Other than that though, have settled into the new office, am working well with the processes and the people and (I think) contributing already to the direction of the business. Ahhhh... life is good.

Labels: Work

Today was my first day at OBS, and I'm just as stupidly positive about it as I have been for the past couple of weeks... perhaps more so. I spoke to a lot of people today; and one of them, who had been at OBS for about 14 months told me "the gloss doesn't really wear off - the worst thing you can say is that you get quite busy". If that's the worst, that'll be great - I like being busy :)

I met most of the Melbourne OBS and Nintex teams today I think - all very nice, smart, fun people. I got to set up my office a little bit today (which I'm still getting used to - it's a lot bigger than I really need, but I'm sure I'll get stuff strewn across it soon enough). I (well, Steve Heaney) got to christen the whiteboard. I beamed a big smile when on the way out to lunch, I walked past the Xbox room to see one of the guys ripping through a game of Burnout (Yes, an Xbox at an IT company that actually gets used!) I read a blog today about a SharePoint conference coming up, and upon visiting the site, saw our name at the top of the sponsor list. I probably saw a dozen people wearing OBS shirts around the office. And the thing that made me smile most today? I sent out an email to the team prior to starting telling them a few things about myself, including the fact that I hate banana, beetroot and tomato sauce. When I arrived this morning my desk held a single banana, a tin of beetroot and a tiny bottle of tomato sauce. I'm still chuckling over that one (and I found the perpetrator as well). But most of all, after only one day, I already feel quite comfortable, and excited about what I'm going to be able to do in the coming days, weeks, months and years. It's not going to be easy at times, I'm sure, but boy is it going to be fun.

Labels: Work

I'm yet to actually start working for OBS (that will happen in just over a week from now), but I wanted to take some time to share my impressions thus far. At the moment, they rank as an outstanding "employer" (I use that term loosely, because I haven't actually done any work for them, and I haven't been paid... so it's more like a friendship than a marriage at the moment). Many aspects of OBS appeal to me, but I think most of them are all summed up in the surprise that I received in the mail earlier this week. There I am, sitting at home, when there is an unexpected knock at the door. I open it up to find a courier standing with a huge white package for me. He hands it over, I'm intrigued and take it inside, inspecting the outside. Immediately I see it's from OBS.



Maybe they've sent my laptop over... but the package is too light. So I take it into the kitchen to open. Once opened, I'm presented with the following. At this point I took a picture, knowing that I would never be able to get it to look like this again;


So, what's inside? I received;

• A nice welcome letter
• 2 OBS shirts
• 2 OBS pens
• 1 jar of OBS lollies
• All the necessary forms I need (super, employee profile, ATO TFN, Credit Card application form and a workplace relations fact sheet)
• 1 "Hitch Hikers Guide to OBS"; the guide and welcome to all things OBS... which is comprehensive, entertaining and very, very slick
  

I was stunned. I immediately jumped on email to Brian Cook (CEO) to tell him "You do know I've signed a contract, right? You don't have to butter me up anymore!" - his response? "Dude, that's standard issue".

And that's why I'm excited about joining this company. Prior to leaving SDM I gave careful consideration as to where I might go next. I knew what I wanted and what I didn't want, and thought that of all the companies I knew, OBS would be the one most able to fulfil my list of must-haves. From what I've seen of the culture and the drive, combined with the investment in their (our!) people, I'm feeling good about my decision thus far.

BRING IT ON!

Labels: Work

What a wild ride the past 4 and a bit years have been. Initially I started life at SDM as a Project Manager, interviewed by Jamie and Marc Soester. I had actually spoken to Brett Penno a year before that (when I was applying for the job that went to Alan Coulter, but at the time I decided it wasn't the role I wanted to do). I was poking around during the week and found the cover letter for when I applied for the job with SDM. For a laugh, you can read it here. In all honesty though, what I said back then still stands now, as to where I want to work and why... which is quite reassuring, as the company I'm about to join fits this criteria :) But this post isn't about where I'm going, it's about where I've been.

It would be an understatement to say that SDM has been a big part of my life. I've had a lot of great times here over the past 4 years, and have done everything from Project Management to managing the EPM team nationally, managing the IW team nationally to running SDM Victoria. I've been to the US twice for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference and I've worked with some of the best names in our industry (that I was able to employ or work alongside). I've worked on some big projects, some small projects - I've made some great friends within our client base and delivered some real value to customers through the solutions we've implemented. I've learnt a hell of a lot. Prior to starting, I'd never seen Project Server or CRM, and only used SharePoint in one project. I'd never considered that we would be doing projects on mobile phones or using Virtual Earth technology, and certainly never dreamed we'd be able to build the best EPM business in the country.

So here's to everyone at SDM I worked with throughout the years! If I've missed your name, forgive me, as it is a very long list ... (here we go)

Adrian Bear, Browney, Andrew Buttigieg, Paul Daniel, Ravinder, Rob Buttigieg, Ryan, Justin Ammerlaan, Peter (Phanney), PK, Piet, Karen, Karl, Liam, Stu Holding, Ben and his MVPness, Daniel Colarossi and his friendly wave, David Bustos, Rohan Cook, Andrew Jacks, Chris Gerrard, Coco, Rohan Ahuja, Dave Sampson (Davo Sammo), Emmanuel (E), Grant, Ashley Cornelius, Dave Brebner, Jag, the one and only James Boman, Jay LeRay, Cary, Vashti, George, Daniel Edwards (Woody), the quite mad Peter Teichert, Mark Fuller, Emily Mostyn-Taylor, Alex Burton, Stephen Kennedy (SK), Tones, Alain, Ali, Chris O'Connor and his puns, William Cornwill, Alex Angas, Henry, Ushi, Deon Taylor, tiny Sara Alag, Laith Al Khalil, Paul Hales, Greg Butler, Janet Hewish, JN, Brett Penno, John Flynn, Kath Isitt, Aaron Saikovski, Brett Tyrell, Andy Howard, Gordo, Ian Bouchier, Grayden, Michelle (who taught me PeopleTime), Mikey, Nat, Nicola, Paul Turner, Sarah Morris, DK, Chris Gillis, Nikki, Paul Bosher, Shona Grant, Stuart Penny, Darren Deason, Aaron Tamblyn, Renee, Simon Chin, Ian March, Gwynne, Hayes, Lester, Kristine Todd (KT), Mini-Mike, Alan Coulter, Iman, Mark Miller and Matthew (Dr.) Vink

And just to play favourites (I can, because it's my blog :D), I'd like to specially mention a few people;

Jamie and Geoff have both played a significant part of my enjoyment of SDM whilst there. Initially, working with Jamie closely in the VIC business to then reporting into Geoff in SA (and heading O/S with him), to then working back closely with Jamie with the DWS adventure, I learnt an incredible amount from these two, and would count them amongst the people I most respect from my working career. They are both intelligent, passionate people who both challenged and nurtured my ideas and always had time for my ramblings (good or bad). I wish them nothing but the best in the future.

I feel blessed to have made such a good friend in Marc Soester at SDM. Marc, otherwise known in our household as my "EPM Wife", is a one in a million and I have no doubt we'll remain close friends for years to come. Marc is the most genuine person I think I've ever met. Enough said, Marc knows that I'm in love with him (for those who don't believe it, ask around about either the Sparkles & Andy song and dance from earlier this year, or the Kochy show from last year)

And of course, my left AND right hands, Elaine Van Bergen and Darren Lans. I've worked with these two for about 8 years now (although Elaine did get a couple of years off for good behaviour). In all seriousness, I'm going to miss working with both of them. And even though we didn't see each other every day, there was just that familiarity of history together and the
"Howdy" every morning. They are both a million times smarter than they let on, and no doubt whatever they do in the future, they'll both shine.

So that's it. The last blog about SDM I suspect. Onto new adventures, but with SDM firmly in my heart and fondest memories. Thanks one and all.

Labels: Work

Well, it's the end of a very long, very interesting week for me at work. Never have I really quite felt like I have this week - in a kind of limbo with work. The last job I left (which was Hyro, just over 4 years ago), I honestly couldn't give a shit for the organisation, the clients or any of the people there (with the exception of Darren). So that was just going through the motions to get to an end date. Before that was Wijojo, which was a self-initiated winding up of the company, and a different situation. Right now at SDM though, I still exist and am employed by a company I loved (and still have strong feelings for). I guess it's like still living with a long-time girlfriend you've just broken up with. You still have to share the house, do the cooking, watch the one TV together, but there's an unsaid "you don't love me anymore and we both want out!" going on. I'm still doing some quite important stuff, and have a bit of stuff to handover, but I'm also sometimes at a loss at what to do next. I find myself questioning every thing I'm doing, thinking whether I need to involve someone else in this exercise (whereas normally I'd just get on and do it). It's very weird. From the looks of things, I have one more week of it (finishing up next Friday) and then 2 weeks on leave before starting my new job.

I'm listening to the most appropriate music I could find; At the Drive-In's "Relationship of Command" album (what a great album)

Labels: Work

Yes, I did. I resigned from SDM/DWS, my employer for the past 4 years, earlier this week. There have been many guesses as to why I quit from various folks and without recapping the entire past 4 years, it's hard to explain to anyone succinctly as to why I've decided to leave. Sometimes these things are easy to explain; they wouldn't pay me enough, or I hated my boss, or they made me do things I didn't want to do. None of those applied to me. In the end it came down to a philosophical difference between where SDM/DWS were heading and where I wanted to go. Do I think that SDM (or DWS) is a bad place to work? - definitely not. A lot of people have tried to pin it on the fact that DWS acquired SDM - and that's part of my decision, but certainly not the sole reason. Some people have assumed I'm taking a "step up the ladder" - I don't think so at all. My new role is probably on par with what I do now. The simple fact is that SDM and I have grown apart in the past few months, and if my philosophy aligned with SDM's (or DWS's), I'd think it was a great place to work. Both organisations have a great history and a lot of potential for the future. DWS's business model is incredibly strong and very clever. And there are some great people at SDM/DWS to work with as well. So, yes, I think it is a good place to work, unfortunately I just want something different (note, I am not using the word "better") in my life right now.

At this point I'd like to say I get really annoyed at people who take swipes and stabs on the way out of a company. It's usually a very short term view and pretty ugly behaviour in my opinion. And I've had a few comments from people who have left SDM who have heard my news, saying things along the lines of "good on you for getting out" and "the place was going down the toilet". In this case, I don't share your views (I think the opposite in fact), and I think it's disrespectful to assume that I would. I have my own reasons for leaving, and it is certainly not constructive for those who are staying at DWS to start openly and publicly bagging their current and your ex employer. It essentially says to them "I'm better than you for leaving" - it's ugly and is a sure fire way to lose friends and piss off future referees, employers and business partners quickly. Enough on that rant...

I'm excited about the next step in my career, but I need to remain focussed over the coming weeks until I finish up with SDM. I've still got some big jobs to complete and a few things to handover. I'm not sure when my last day will be... that will become clearer in the coming days.

So, where am I off to? That's for another post I think.

And a reflection on my time at SDM? That's another post as well. Guess you'll just have to keep checking back for updates if you're interested :)

Labels: Work

So, what's been happening since I returned to work? Here's a quick update;

• We've been trying to sort out how the acquisition by DWS is going to practically work.
• We've had a couple of good sessions on it, but there's still a lot to be worked out. I think this will keep us busy for a few weeks yet...
• We had our internal company-wide conference (called "Away Days") for 2 days in Adelaide last week. Well, it was actually a bit south of Adelaide, at a resort nearer to Victor Harbour. It was a lot of fun, and resulted in not a lot of sleep for the majority of attendees. I also managed to successfully deliver a kick-ass preso with Marc which consisted of him singing, me playing guitar. I tell ya, I was a bit nervous how it might work out (given our first rehearsal was only the night before for 15 minutes), but I think it was well received
• We've moved offices! Yep, from South Melbourne to South Yarra. I'm already a massive fan of the new office - it's just got such a great feel to it, and with the stuff that's still yet to happen (sorting out the courtyard, filling the upstairs bit with people yet to be hired), it's going to be a good home base for us in Melbourne
• I'm managing to keep my inbox under 20 a day! This is a good start to the year... wish me luck in it :)

All in all, pretty busy. Good thing I've got 2 days off this next, 3 days next week. And Dream Theater is only 9 more sleeps away!

Labels: Work

Well, last week was the end of the (official) working year for me. And it ended with an absolute bang. Besides being a stupidly busy last week of 2007, we've had two huge things on the plate other than the normal goings-on of work. The first has been an impending office move for the first weekend we return to work in 2008. The new office (in South Yarra) is going to be fantastic; much bigger, much more conducive to work and in a much funkier location. So, my last day was spent trying to pack up my desk as much as possible (reasonably successful). The other huge news has been the acquisition of SDM by DWS. What does this mean? Well, a number of things, but in essence it's all very positive. Of course, there are some unknowns involved in any merger / acquisition, but both sides are being very open about intentions, plans and details. And for me? Well, it's likely to involve some more responsibility - but there's still a bunch more details to work out first. Suffice to say, 2008 is going to be a MASSIVE year on the work horizon from the looks of things.

Labels: Work

I've recently joined the ranks of the elite. The club of kings. ("What?" I hear you say, "I thought you were already Mr. Bigshot around town!"). Alas no, (well, in my mind, yes). As a result of my flying here, there and everywhere, Virgin Blue has awarded me a Gold membership to The Lounge, their business class lounge within airports around Australia. And yesterday I was able to make excellent use of it. I ended my day in Sydney early, so headed to the airport to attempt to get an earlier flights (bad idea on a Friday afternoon). Anyway, after being told that I wouldn't be able to get an earlier flight I decided to spend the next 2 and a half hours in The Lounge, where I was met with an array of goodies, including food, comfy chairs and the 2 most important things in my working life; electricity and free alcohol. Yes, free beer. Anyway, a productive and comfortable way to spend the afternoon in the end. Good on ya Virgin Blue!

Labels: Travel, Work

I had a flight cancelled on Thursday. What a pain in the ass. I'd booked this particular flight to Sydney to get there at a particular time (duh!) and then my whole afternoon's schedule was thrown out, having to take a later flight. And then coming home last night, the flight takeoff was delayed by 15 minutes - not a massive amount, but again, enough to put me smack bang in the middle of peak hour traffic - something I had planned to avoid... Then again, what am I going to do, I can't fly my own plane yet, so I have to bow to the whims of Virgin Blue for the time being I suppose. On the flipside, my flight to Adelaide on Wednesday was perfectly timed. Did I mention I've been travelling a bit lately?

Labels: Work

Word of the day for me today. Dealing with problems. Problem after problem at work. Not particularly bad problems (don't want you to think the sky was caving in), but all of 'em seem to have found their way to me today. I found myself saying "I'll call him after this" or "Leave that - I'll respond" or just dreading the shit-bombs littering my inbox throughout the day. Heh. Shitbombs. I don't think I've ever used that word before (or likely will again). Oh well, the day is over, time for sleep and back into it again tomorrow!

Labels: Work