Amobia recently started sponsoring a touch rugby team called The Amobia Untouchables. They have been doing pretty well and are ranked 2nd at the moment. More pics at the usual place.
..and I’m getting an official team shirt soon :-P
Article about the new Blio PBX on Tectonic today: SA-born Asterisk PBX now shipping
The MOPP opening night was fun. Lot’s of arty looking people. It’s interesting watching the reactions of complete strangers when they look at my pictures.
It’s sad how often people miss an opportunity to tell their story. At the last GeekDinner Callum asked me if Frogfoot would sponsor the hosting for MOPP.
Sounded like a good cause. I figured it was a bit strange to register mopp.org.za for the project when I could just register mop.org.za.. it’s “month of photograhy” right? Seems I did not know the story.
Tonight I hooked up with some friends from Stellenbosch days. I was sitting in Royal eating my seared tuna burger with salad (for a second night in a row).. when Will told me the story behind the month of peoples photography.
Turns out there was a ‘month of photography’ for all the groovy brand name artists. But then a group of people figured.. hey, what about the rest of us?.. and created the ‘month of peoples photography’ which was open and served the people.
I love stories of revolution. “We’re just going to have to see about that”, “by the geeks for the geeks”, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
It’s a story that’s been going on for centuries. Open and free wins (Linux). Empowering people to share and contribute wins (Wikipedia). Collaborative efforts make people feel included and keen to engage. I think the GeekDinner movement is a story of revolution.
If you have story of revolution.. tell the story.
I just returned from adding a series of my panoramics to the MOPP Open Wall photography exhibition.
Glen Beach, Prague, Pamplona, Stellenbosch and Cape Town stuff.
Not the greatest printing quality in the world.. hey, it was a 15min job.. but it’s up.
Real artists ship.
Some new toys arrived. Pics are here.
Extreme Networks BD8k core switch and two Summit series access switches. This is most probably the same models we’ll use for the Teraco switch fabric.
Also added some pics of setting up the Blio PBX demo kit.
Larry and Bob get into an argument where Bob comments that Jesus stated that lusting after women is just as bad as having an affair. Larry then replies that Jesus never saw a woman in a business suit, and that if he did, we’d have a different kind of religion where lusting would be a sacrament.
Had an interesting meeting today. Somewhere in the discussion we talked about competitors for Frogfoot and Amobia. I realised three interesting things about at least two of our competitors:
1) at an early stage we were involved in consulting and advice in their businesses
2) we were in conversation with both of them about working together before we became competitors
3) I think we still have a good working relationship with them today
which kinda means we have some catch-up work to do,
or you could read this as, at some point we figured..
“we’re just going to have to see about that” (-:
(-:
A good friend got engaged recently. The wedding is planned for September in Belgium. I think it’s safe to assume the bachelor party will be in Amsterdam. All good reasons to travel.
Maybe I’ll go visit a few data centers.
Frogfoot was awarded the Entrepreneurial Company of 2007 award by Frost & Sullivan after we participated in their South African Broadband market survey.
Now I just need to frame it and hang it somewhere.
I realised I’ve been blogging for more than a year now.. about 14 months.
I watched Into the Wild at the Labia tonight. Pretty good, a bit boring at times but a nice way to end a busy week. Definitely not a Hollywood ending. “Happiness is only real when shared”. Makes sense.
Monday I had a VC meeting. It’s a nice feeling to convince people that your idea will fly when they start out being very sceptical. I’ve been working on the Teraco Spec Sheet and Price List document since Monday.. it’s almost ready. Can’t show it to you just yet, maybe next week. The Teraco business plan is turning into an impressive document.
Tuesday I attended a full day WAPA strategy workshop in Noordhoek. Monkey Valley is a really nice setting to get away and single-task for a day. I think it was very productive.
Wednesday was mostly a Teraco day which ended a long negotiation phase.. and turned out being positive. Had a Frogfoot staff dinner at the Brass Bell. Always nice to visit Kalk Bay.
Thursday I visited Parliament, wearing my WAPA co-chairman hat. Had a meeting with Dene Smuts (MP), the DA spokesperson on communications. I’m happy to report there is a person in parliament with a clue. I was very impressed by her understanding of our industry. We mostly talked about the challenges our members are facing in the license conversion process.
Friday was a full day Frogfoot dev team design session. These sessions can be real mind benders, chewing on lots of complexity and distilling it into a plan. Always fun.
The Frogfoot Portal is the heart of our business.. it’s an automation and configuration management system, a network policy database, it manages IP allocation, (ADSL, Wifi, Dial) Radius, Timesheets, DNS.. etc, etc. You get the idea, we’ve been working on it for about 4 years now.
Frogfoot has written it’s own accounting system from scratch over the last ~14 months and we had to plan making it live before the new financial year. We built a debit order automation module last week. Some of the next steps are to better define a “product layer” to manage our LDAP tree, add an order queue, more product focused user interfaces, a product builder tool and integrate all this with our new general ledger.
Sounds like fun?.. makes you mildly sad you forgot all that accounting knowledge from school days.
Amobia is doing well.. we’re about to light up the first Joburg ring.
We added the new PBX to the Blio website.
This made my week.
Ok (fellow) crazy kids, must sleep now.
I just submitted my request to be invited to TEDAfrica.
Monday to Wednesday
September 29 to October 1 2008
in Cape Town at the CTICC.
Let’s hope we’re elite enough to be invited. See you there.