Nobody said parenting was simple. Having two very different parents makes it even more interesting.

You may know of the little custody battle that was starting to unfold recently. It seems Mia’s mom has changed her mind and now wants to live in South Africa again.

Things have become very businesslike. Meetings have agendas, minutes of meetings get signed, with witnesses, things we can’t agree on move to mediation, contracts need to be drawn up. We have a formal change request process for visiting times. You’ll be surprised the little details which need to be clearly expressed.

Sound like fun?

Yeah, it’s a pain, but I’m starting to think this is maybe a very realistic way of dealing with the responsibility of parenting. The last thing you want is an expectations mismatch. Maybe all parenting partnerships should have contracts..

“See, families should be run like companies…
…with everybody’s responsibilities clearly defined.
All the best relationships are based on contracts.”
– D.H. Banes, Igby Goes Down

I attended the 3rd Cape Sotware Engineering Colloquium this week at the Radisson.

In short.. it was pretty cool. Good topics, good speakers, nice snacks. Jenny McKinnell and her CITI team did a very good job.

Two thoughts:

1) I think the word “engineering” is used too often in software development. (Yes, yes, it was an IEEE thing). Software development is not engineering, it’s a knowledge discovery process. It’s about people, not maths. It’s a journey. I think that’s the essence of Agile. Knowledge + Experience = Understanding. Knowledge and experience grows as you start to understand the problem better.

2) Conference name tags, on lanyards are not cool.. unless you print the name on both sides. Over tea I was chatting with one pretty cool individual, but her tag was facing the wrong way and I got interrupted so I did not ask for her details. Dagnabbit.

Thanks to Gerhard from Yila Consulting for the invite.

A week in the life of Joe..

• Monday, swim, gym, swim, Naulene meeting number 3, swim, run, swim, work, swim.
• Mobilising Mia on a Monday is like mobilising a small army.
• Tuesday, admin day.. apply bottom to chair, a run and Clifton beach walk, TF meeting.
• I’ve been tinkering with my homepage. Some of the content is really starting to become old now. I guess the best strategy is just to keep updating the things that really bug me and make peace with the idea that all homepages are out of date.
• Wednesday, dental surgeon visit, Frogfoot office visit for photo processing, Kauai wrap, watched A Single Man at the Labia on Orange.. very good.
• Sadly, I think I’m not going to get around to a Suicide Gorge trip this year.
• Thursday, lunch with PW at Greens, dentist, 1km swim, shopping, braai in Bakoven.
• Friday, UX meeting with Phil and Debre, fish and chips with Jonathan and Aiden at Foresters, Somerset House school tour with Mia and Naulene, cheesecake at Manuka, Beta Beach photo session with Mia, bath, read, sleep.
• With a bit of luck we seem to have sorted out the Mia school story.. and the more interesting part: which country she will be living in.
• If you can negotiate with Naulene, you can negotiate with anybody.
• I managed to confirm the date and venue for the next GeekDinner.
• Saturday, tea, breakfast with Cath at Knead, gym, swim, Stellenbosch slow food market with Andrew, Bell and Jess, a virgin cocktail at Buena Vista, book shop, shopping, I made a very nice spinach and Ricotta Tortelloni with an olive tapenade based sauce, bath, read, sleep.
• I was pondering.. if success is compounded opportunities, what do we give children to give them that advantage.. it used to be as simple as access to a computer.. I’m thinking the answer is in an attitude towards life. Education, believe in what you can explain, negotiation skills, how to spot value, how to communicate your ideas well.. hmm, not a trivial question.
• Sunday, tea, made fresh juice, watched Duck Tales, some drawing, sent Mia’s 4th birthday party invites, aquarium.. bumped into Paul, icecream, gym, swim.. bumped into Jess and Jade, pizza at Buzz Cafe.. bumped into Carel.
• Thinking about the effects of the cyclists on my mood today, I should really make a plan to exit Cape Town while the soccer is on.
• I think I’m officially undergoing a bit of a slump in my photography.. but then again, I have enough interesting things to keep me busy.
• Remember kids, it’s not the model of your iPod, it’s what you are listening to.
• It’s not good enough just to reproduce. You have to have cool children.
• Tune of the week: American Pie, Don McLean.. Mia and I like to sing along in the car.
• It’s not about the idea or the technology anymore, it’s about the community.
• Sometimes I wonder how humans made it through the dark ages without face cream.

Have a fun week crazy kids.

This morning, I’m unhappy because some muppet phoned me without sending caller-ID.. I just love those random very lame customer service calls.. the muppet was going to conduct a survey taking “a few minutes”. I did not take his survey because on Saturday I had another random no-caller-ID person following up on a service. I explained to that person why I was not currently a happy camper. They obviously don’t share notes.

Here we go.. my problem is the roof of the car.

I’ve had an Audi A4 Cabriolet since mid Oct 2008. I can probably count the weeks in which the roof was fully functional on my one hand. Just for fun, let me count the number of times the car has been back to the dealership by browsing my iCal records week by week:

Car Service scheduled 31 October 2008 from 07:00
Car Service scheduled 05 December 2008 from 07:30
Car Service scheduled 06 February 2009 from 07:00
Car Service scheduled 20 March 2009 from 07:00
Car Service scheduled 17 April 2009 from 07:00
Car Service scheduled 22 May 2009 from 07:00
Car Service scheduled 05 June 2009 from 07:00
Car Service scheduled 09 October 2009 from 07:30
Car Service scheduled 23 October 2009 from 08:00
Car Service scheduled 06 November 2009 from 07:00
Car Service scheduled 27 November 2009 from 07:30
Two weeks over xmas and newyears, got it back around the 8th of Jan.
Car Service scheduled 26 February 2010 from 07:00

13 times in 16 months.. or about 26 days in 16 months… and the roof is still currently not fixed. Since 26 Feb (about two weeks later) I’m still waiting for the audi service advisor, who is very, very, very well aware of the problem to contact me and suggest how he is going to fix the problem.

I like Audi. I understand a convertible roof can be tricky, but this is insane.

I was seriously looking at the A5 Cab. Parri thinks I should just get a Boxter.

Anybody else having this kind of hassle with their Audi?

ps. Why do I spend this kind of money on a car if they can’t even phone me with caller ID?

I joined something called the geeklist this week. You need to answer some questions to be accepted. I was pondering this question on my sunset run today:

g) What is your definition of a geek?

My answer was:
http://www.swimgeek.com/me/geek/
Something I wrote a pretty long time ago.

My new definition is a bit simpler: A geek is not lazy. The END.

Geeks are passionate. Geeks crave knowledge. Geeks find enough reward in doing something just by finding it interesting… and herein is the real clue to what a geek is.

Your average muppet walks the earth with an insect-like reward framework. Their expectations for reward are very simple: do a bit of work, just enough, ask people to pay them, instant gratification, drink beer, watch TV.. be lazy.

Most geeks I know are successful because for a long time they did not care to be paid for working on the things they found really interesting.

Geeks have a longer term view. Geeks will say, screw you, your OS sucks, we’ll build our own even if it takes 10 years. Geeks need things to be done the right way.. so they can’t be lazy.

Go read this.

ps. I guess I also wrote this because it annoys me when people call themselves geeks, are aware of the right way, but just don’t care enough to do something the right way.

Another one from the CITI questionnaire:

What words of advice do you have for budding technology entrepreneurs?

My answer was:

1) Get everybody on the bus and then figure out where the bus is going… the team is often more important than the destination. (an Alex Meiring idea)

Also:

2) A key part to success is hard work and access to things others don’t have (an idea from Outliers). You need to spend 10k hours (ten thousand hours) on something new and interesting. In my case it was Linux and networking. If you combine these skills with business you will soon be sucked into 10k hours of business and entrepreneurship experience.

3) Learn to spot value. Invest in things where others take 2-3 years see the real value. Don’t follow, find a way to be first, find a new category. Think: the first vendor neutral data centre business in South Africa.

I was filling in a questionnaire this week for a CITI “IT Heroes” thing. One of the questions were: Why did you become an entrepreneur?

I answered: I did not want to be an engineer.

Then I figured, hmm.. that’s not really true. Maybe at the time it was.

Maybe I like the idea that all progress depends on entrepreneurs.. who would governments tax if there were no entrepreneurs?

I think my current answer is: adventure. I like the discovery process. I like the problem solving. I like the negotiations. I like convincing people of the truth. (-:

Yes, adventure.

Getting on with it..

• Monday, tea, Incredibles, made fresh juice, lunch with Naulene at Cafe Zest, nap, a run, burger with Kris at Da Vinci’s Kloof St.
• The Naulene thing seems to be making progress at last. We have Monday meetings, a clear agenda and detailed (signed) minutes of meetings.
• After the Monday meeting I get to the parking area, where I find Naulene about to drive off with Mia in the front seat, with no car seat. Major sense of humour failure. I stop her and explain what happens when you break suddenly. Mia says something like.. but we often do this. W.T.F. Obviously I sent her lawyer a note about that.
• Tuesday, admin and pool cleaning, TF tech meeting at RCYC, a quick run and swim, TF meeting.
• So, we think in language. I think programmers and engineers are just by nature more hardcore because of the language they get used to.. “failure case”, “an exception”, “deterministic process”, “transactions” etc.
• Wednesday, tea with Simon at Neo, dentist visit, Frogfoot office visit, haircut at B’s, watched Up in the Air at the Labia.. very good, food shopping, a run to Bantry Bay.
• I enjoyed Up in the Air.. I liked the way the he had a methodology of dealing with the world, it made him self-contained. Kinda like a modern day Batman story.. and then a woman gets involved.

• “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a
  hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build
  a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate,
  act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a
  computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
  Specialization is for insects.” — Robert A. Heinlein, via Goof

• “Joe is the kind of guy who believes something must be done right even if it’s hard.” — or something like that.

• Thursday, breakfast at Paranga with Gerald, admin, a salad and a swim with Ingi, meeting with Aiden, walked around Table Mountain with Georg.

• “Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” — Georg

• Friday, St Cyprians open day.. a potential Rushmore for Mia, Crush summer smoothie, bumped into Elan, a long swim, chai latte with Aiden at Neo, Mia time, Beta Beach walk, supper, bath, read Mr Fox, 10h sleep.

• “It’s about excellence, not perfection.” — SCS Principal

• Saturday, tea, Mulan, made fresh juice, made music compilations for Mia, we browsed some old photos.. mostly to figure out what birthday cake she wants this year, nap, gym, swim, sunset pizza on Camps Bay beach, bath, read Planet51, sleep.
• I had a bit of a thing for Lipton green iced tea this week.
• Sunday, tea, Monsters, Inc., gym, swim, lunch at Knead, book shop, Goldfish at Kirstenbosch with Georg (with the tickets I won).. Mia managed to get lost even though she asked to be left at the supervised play area.. not fun, found her soon afterwards.. I think she now understands why it’s not a good idea to run off, Ravioli at Bella Italia in Vredehoek.

We have a big milestone to reach by the end of this month. Have a fun week kids.

A week of relationship pains all around.. 3 friends on the point of ending relationships it seems..

• Monday, tea, watched Mulan, smoothie, gym, swim, lunch with Naulene at Knead, house shopping.
• Tuesday, swim, webui design session, photo processing, had an interesting chat with a life coach, dinner at Nobu with Jonathan and Georg.
• The life coach asked me what the overriding emotion was I was experiencing over the last 6 months: excitement / optimism.
• Idea of the week: are we asking the right questions?
• Finally finished reading Outliers.
• Wednesday, admin day at home, swim, work, Beta Beach swim with Ingi, UX forum meeting at the Barn.
• That big Telkom sponsor banner in the reception area of the Bandwidth Barn is a sad sight.
• Thursday, lawyer meeting, another (unproductive) lawyer meeting, lunch with Aiden, a run to Clifton, TF meeting.
• The only upside to the lawyer meeting was to see Naulene’s lawyer roll her eyes every time Naulene went on some emotional tangent rant.. that “they don’t pay me enough for this ….” look.
• I was pondering Mia’s mom’s decision tree.. when I realised she had fallen out of the decision tree a long time ago.
• This week we discovered that the hot waitress index does not take hippie behaviour into account.
• Friday, up early to get my car serviced, breakfast on the green sofa (Crush), gym, swim, pizza at Bravado with Andrew, Naulene dropped Mia off, toy shop, food shopping, book shop, a visit to Sidewalk Cafe.. Mia did some party tricks with her iPod.

• “That gay midget waiter must get some interesting requests around this neighbourhood.” — Andrew

• “The butcher, the baker and the leather jacket maker.” — Andrew

• Saturday, tea, made fresh juice, gym.. where I bumped into Naulene’s lawyer, swim, braai in Bakoven with Georg and Parri.
• Mia really seems to like driving lifts. She’s very good at controlling where we go.. -1) parking, 0) food, 1) gym.
• Sunday, tea, watched Spirited Away, smoothie, admin, moved Mia’s toys into her new play room, gym, swim, smoothie, tea and cupcakes with Thomas at Lazari De Waterkant, De Waal park with Bella and Alexander, swim, bath, dinosaur pasta salad, read Jumping Jade, sleep.
• Tune of the week: Bad Day, R.E.M.
• This ten year detox program is working well.. sorry, ten day detox.

• “I’m thinking that having to relocate is looking not as potentially vital as anticipated.” — Naulene.. I shit you not.

Last thought: hippies.. stop selling heart attacks, we’re all stocked up. Go find real jobs.

7 months later.. the follow up to : The Way I Work.

Again you may recognise some of this from ma.tt’s blog. I still see Matt as the benchmark for the new productive geeky entrepreneur.

The new Joe at work:

On a good morning there’s no alarm clock. I wake up with the sun. I make tea (I don’t drink coffee). I put on some music. I check my mail, Facebook, news feeds and Twitter. In that order.

I’d like to say I read business books or even novels, but I probably only read about one book per month at the moment. I just finished Outliers.

I don’t really have an office at the moment but I go to Frogfoot’s office maybe once a week to process and upload my photos. The rest of the time I work from home in Bakoven (kinda like a seaside village inside Cape Town) or I’m a mobile warrior working from coffee shops or any random location.

I often work for about an hour or two at home before going to gym or I walk up Lions Head early in the morning. At the gym I go for a morning cycle, power-plate, weights and swim. I find morning exercise suits me.. easier to plan and get it over with.

My preference is to work from home where I have a good selection of music, nice views, a 26″ LCD and a Herman Miller Aeron chair.

I use mostly email and mailing lists for communications. A bit of Skype, Facebook and Twitter.. but I maintain my own micro-blog which syndicates to Twitter, so I don’t see myself as really using Twitter. I very rarely use the SIP phone on my desk and these days I seem to do most of my required telephone time in the car (with a Bluetooth car kit). I figure driving is pretty unproductive time so I may as well catch up with a few people. I use Mutt.. it’s a text based mail client. I’ve been using it for more than 10 years.

In my home office is a Macbook Pro 13″.. nice and portable, but with 8GB memory so it’s snappy. I have a Nokia E71, which I guess is also part of my home office, but I’m thinking about getting a new phone. iPhone seems cool, still have to convince myself about the closed nature of it. Oh, and there is an Ubuntu PC in the lounge that plays the tunes, or movies for Mia.

At the office I have a Debian Linux workstation and a Mac. I say workstation because it’s a pretty high end machine with redundant disks in a fat server casing. I have two LCDs on my desk, not linked.

Most of what I do happens on my laptop now. The keyboard is, of course, Dvorak, a more efficient keyboard layout that I switched to 8 years ago.

My biggest time-suck is email. I used to have a pretty complex procmail setup to sort mail into 42 different inboxes. I’m getting better, I’m down to about 20. I send about 800 emails on a busy month. I sadly check emails every 10 to 15 minutes. I often respond immediately.. if it’s a small bite-size thing. If it’s more complex I flag it and work on it later. I keep my primary inbox below 15 emails.

I like to listen listen to music all day. There’s a lot of jazz, Madeleine Peyroux, also things like Fleetwood Mac, The Talking Heads, Morcheeba and R.E.M. I use a pair of Sennheiser headphones at the office and I have a pretty cool hifi system at home.

I seem to have two modes of working. 1) Road Warrior 2) Apply bottom to chair. On “road warrior” days anything goes, meetings, short projects, emails, phone calls etc. On “Apply bottom to seat” days I make a list of longer attention span projects and try to complete one or two. I also have a “working out of phase” mode usually starting at around 20:00 and working till 0:00ish.

I don’t do much people management these days. I don’t think I’m that bad at it, it just got a bit much at some point, so I try not to demand much time and effort from people around me. Working with self-motivated people rocks!

I go out for lunch on road warrior days, which fits well with my preference for no meetings before 10:00. Most mornings I just make myself an uber-healthy smoothy which I’m almost convinced is really all I need to eat. Weekends are usually fresh juice days. I love making fresh juice.

In general, I’m pretty organised, not often late and good at keeping a schedule. I don’t have a PA at the moment, but it seems like a good idea. I don’t like to travel (for work). I try to limit things like Joburg trips to about 1 per year. I’m very happy in Cape Town.

My primary job is MD and Product Owner of a new start-up called TrustFabric. I recently sold my shares in three businesses so I can focus on this one project. A big, scary, global, change the world idea that’s been bugging me for the last 6 years.. a.k.a. a dream. I believe in the idea that we are drawn to exciting projects and happiness is a product of excitement.

I used to do lots of non-profit work (WAPA and ISPA). It was fun to unfocus, but I’m very happy to be focused again.

I’ve been called a “social media slut”. I like to network, meet interesting people, connect people and ideas and generally have fun with social networking. I help organise GeekDinners and I often speak at geeky events.

My photos are autobiographical — though I have a good memory, photos help trigger memories. I’m maybe a bit overly sentimental about photos. If the difference between an amateur photographer and a pro is that the amateur shows you everything they shoot.. I’m an amateur.. but I also have a photoblog now where I publish my better work. I need to have a bit more discipline in keeping the photoblog active.

I have a Canon 5DmkII SLR at the moment and I sometimes take photos with my little waterproof Canon Powershot D10. I have two lenses for the 5D: a 16-35mm f/2.8 wide angle and a 85mm f/1.2. I like these because they are so different to what the human eye can do, the first is very wide and the second lets through an insane amount of light. I’ll probably get a nice zoom lens soon.

I never really cared to build an audience for my blog. I blog for me and maybe about 15 friends.. and Mia, my daughter who is almost 4yo, if she cares to read the stuff I write one day. I try to at least write one post per week.. a brief bullet list style diary of sorts. The rest of my posts are a bit random.. I write when I feel like it. I figure I have about 70 regular readers.

I used to go out for every meal, but I’m getting better at simple and practical cooking. To be honest I really only make an effort to cook when Mia is around. I’ve taken and published about 2400 photos so far this year (two months).. I published about 11000 photos in 2009. Probably about 60% of these are from time I spend with Mia. She’s fun to work with as my primary model.

My blog does not get lot of comments but I read and manually approve each one. I’ll happily approve a comment from someone who completely disagrees with everything I believe in. In fact I really appreciate it when people point out when I’m wrong. What is a mind worth if it can’t be changed right?

I’m a bit sad that Twitter seems to have taken over much of the blogging time of the friends around me. I love reading interesting blogs. I like it when people sit down and do some longer attention span writing on a topic close to them.

I do my best work mid-morning and late at night. Some people don’t need sleep, but I actually need 8 hours a night.

On weekends I don’t do much work, mostly because I’m entertaining Mia, but I still check email or write the odd blog post after I put Mia to bed. I now see Mia 3 days a week. In some ways it’s nice.. work life separation vs. work life balance. I think many people have flexible work times (balance) but clear “no work” times (separation) are good.

Yes, my Mom reads my blog.

I would have loved to write about a really cool open source software project, rapid growth stats, building something which would last 15years+, BDFL role and 24-hour nature of a business… then again, we have to leave something to aspire to. Still not there yet, but I think I’m much closer. I’m in the process of convincing people to invest in our new project which has an open source business model.. you could call it a bit of an “ethical empire” business model. Doing well and doing good.

I’d like to read about how other people work, so if you find this useful, please write your story and link here. I think it’s useful to track how we evolve in out quests to work smarter.

A week of shock, little sleep and Bircher Muesli.. hard to say if Knead’s or Neo’s is the best..

• Monday, monthly health check-up and vitB shot.. made some good progress (lost 4kg, 18% drop in cholesterol), book shop, Bitcher Muesli at Knead.. very yum, gym, swim, dropped Mia off, photo safari with Andy around Stellenbosch, Glen Beach walk, astronaut smoothy, business plan writing.
• When you put 13 ingredients in a smoothy it gets a bit hard to name it.. I just call it the astronaut smoothy.. it’s like a green brown, but it tastes good.
• Tuesday, day of working at home, ran to Bantry Bay with the new Nike+ toys, dinner with Keith at Bravado, almost fell off my chair reading a legal document informing me that Naulene wants to take Mia to Germany permanently, major sense of humour failure.
• I’m fed up with all the heart attacks. I think we have a winner in the category of best way to make other people feel the impact of your poor choices in life. Is there an Ayn Rand pill I can administer? It’s not easy working when somebody is busy plotting to take your child away.
• Wednesday, working from home, day of nasty phone calls and talking to lawyers, TF meeting, a run to Bantry Bay, a walk on Clifton, business plan writing.
• Thursday, meeting with Edward and Caveau, bumped into Gia, lunch with Dave at Greens, business card printing, Talking Heads at the natural history museum.. good fun.
• Friday, Lions Head walk with Dave Duarte, tea with Simon at Neo, lunch with Chris, presented on TrustFabric at an entrepreneurship group in Somerset West (which still needs a name), fetched Mia, supper, bath, read Planet51 book, sleep.
• Saturday, tea, watched Mulan, made juice, gym, swim, Knead pizza, toy shop, made Mia a music compilation (on her iPod), nap, Beta Beach session.

• From Twitter:
  “Not until you go all in does the Universe really believe you want something. Dipping a toe in the water ain’t swimming.”
  “One day Batbro wil wake up and realise that Bruce Wayne is the costume.”

• Sunday, tea, watched Mulan, made juice, Geek Cricket visit, Knead, gym, swim, nap, Keith’s farewell dinner at Simply Asia in Park rd.. he’s off to the US, Mexico and Japan.
• I was thinking, it’s interesting how my journey in business naturally progressed to a wider scope.. Frogfoot: mostly Stellenbosch and Cape Town, Amobia: Cape Town then Joburg, Teraco: Cape Town and Joburg, TrustFabric: Global.
• I think the recession is over.. based on the Cape Town hot waitress index.. the hotter the waitresses, the weaker the economy.

We will not go quietly into the night, we will not vanish without a fight..

I presented a few ideas around the need for TrustFabric at a Talking Heads session last night.. part of the Infecting the City movement.

There were 100 visitors and 50 “talking heads”: 4 * 20min sessions with 2 people.

I was expecting to get feedback from more than 8 people, but at least this way they could all ask questions and I could figure out their concerns.

I had to explain why peer review and open source is a good idea a few times.

Most people loved the idea. At the end of the session I asked them to say if they would use it by placing a card in a red or green box.

I got 7/8 (yes votes).

The person which I think voted that she would not use it was a muppet.. but then again I guess I’m supposed to say that. She obviously did not get the idea.

The other cool bit is that over the break/stacks time I was walking around and overheard somebody who attended my session explaining TrustFabric to his friends. Seems to suggest it’s word of mouth-worthy.

Closed Alpha starts around mid March kids.