Merry Christmas

Ben Gracewood's Year of Love post kicked me into action to post my own Christmas message.

Ben wrote:

2009 helped me see the things that really mattered.

I have similar feelings and applied them in a slightly different way to Ben. The death of my dad in 2009 helped me see opportunities in the fear that we carry with us that holds us back. I ended 2009 with a simple vision to connect people with an understanding of what drives and motivates them. Partly to set others free from the fear and guilt that they carry into their life choices and outward projections.

My daughter Molly made her public debut during Mike Brown‘s opening keynote at Webstock 2010. This set the stage for the overarching theme of Webstock

We fall in love with something that is made with love

I saw the future promise of ubiquitous computing during Adam Greenfield’s awesome walking workshop in Wellington.

 

MIX10 in Las Vegas was an exciting adventure that underpinned the beginning of the Windows Phone 7 journey for NZ developers.

Tech.Ed in September was a bit of a swan song for me. I planned and delivered a keynote that told the story of what many screens and a cloud really could deliver in the future. Just this week I was stoked to learn that three of the applications (Blackcaps Video Vault, Alphajax, MyTours) that I presented during that keynote have made the finals of the ONYAs.

After Tech.Ed I was presented with an opportunity to stop doing a job that I love that I had been doing for 5 1/2 years.

I stepped out of my Web/ Mobile evangelism role and became acting Lead of the Microsoft New Zealand Developer & Platform Strategy Group.

The almost four months that I have been in this new role have been enlightening and fulfilling to my vision of connecting people. DPE NZ is a great team that has so much impact across so many parts of the Microsoft New Zealand business.  I joined the Microsoft New Zealand senior leadership team at a time of change, this team has taught me so much which I’m very thankful for. During the last few months I’d like to think that I have contributed deeply to our team, the SLT and our organisations transition to “The Cloud”. I am also unashamedly responsible for our team’s slightly macabre entry into the Microsoft New Zealand Christmas party Oscars event.

 

I’d like to thank you for reading and supporting me over the year and leave you with a montage that Paul from our team has put together to call out some team activity during the last six months.

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2010
  It's quite amazing when you put a year's worth of work onto a single page. It puts those moments of self doubt into perspective. Have a fantastic Christmas!

• Anonymous
  December 30, 2010
  Merry Christmas to you all from me.