While taking some time out in Fiji I returned to my backed up reading list. One on the books that I has started but failed to complete before was Josh Kaufman’s The Personal MBA. I spotted this in an airport bookshop on a different trip, then cheekily downloaded it to the kindle app on my iPad for a fraction of the shell price. Sorry traditional retail, but get over it.

When I first picked it up i was struck by how closely the themes of the book mapped to the thinking and approach of the brainmates Product Management methodology. What I have really been enjoying is the very clearly articulated thinking that chucks down many of the terms that we use and disambiguates them very effectively.

For example he has by effectively differentiated between a product and a service. His definition of a product is something (almost anything) that can repeatable deliver value without the direct involvement of person. A service on the other hand does requires a persons direct involvement to deliver value and therefore lacks scalability. I think a this is a very useful distinction. I have often been asked if software is a product or a service. Under this definition it is clearly a product as it does not require a persons time and effort as part of the the delivery process.

There are many other examples of concepts that are very familiar yet are difficult to clearly articulate. Josh has tackled this challenge and has delivered a package of neatly summarized tools to test and support any business idea against.

When I get back to Sydney, I will review my notes and create a checklist of things to consider that will make Brainmates and the training business in particular more effective for 2012.

When i first came across them i thought that they were a ridiculous idea. Yet the businesses that are investing in them suggest that there is more to it than that. Why would a business offer a such huge discounts to such a a large number of potential customers? It doesn’t seem to be a sustainable model to me, yet every day there are hundreds of people that sign up for the deals, handover their cash and presumably get a product at a great price.
The businesses offering the deals get a flood of sales at (i imagine) much lower margins than normal but they get a chance to prove themselves to a new customer.

OK, so this can work for products where the main component is a service where the margins are generally higher than for a physical product. This allows a steep discount to be applied without making a horrible loss. business that offer a deal that give them a zero or negative margin are in for a rough ride. It also requires a product that has excess inventory that would otherwise be wasted. Again this can apply to services where there are peak times and quite times. The business can require that the offer be channeled in to the quiet times to improve the overall revenue, again providing that this is not done at a loss.

The biggest problem that I see here is that the type of customers that these group voucher deal sites attract are the least loyal, price sensitive bunch around. They will hop off to the next deal without even remembering who they last bought a product from.

At the same time I want to try and make time for running again. I had a run yesterday that was harder than it should have been, but it was also the first run in a few months, on the back of a year with practically no exercise. I am hoping that these two initiatives will start me on the path to a healthier 2012.

The idea is to deliver a presentation with 20 slides, 15 secs per slide for a total of 5 minutes. Kinda like PowerPoint on speed.

I am also here to network so I will update the notes as I meet some folks.

Started in Seattle in 2006.

Rule of ignite, no bullet points.

You are helping us by drinking.

Hanah Law. Don’t eat meat. It is bad for the environment. Solution – meat free mondays.

James griffins – my mums on Facebook. James discover instant messenger. Mum works out email. Yay! Omg sh found her house on street view. Now my mum is on face book. “Dog has died – LOL” au uses the Facebook bore than anyone else. fB makes a ‘crapload’ of money.

Darryl – garage sale trail. –

We don’t know our neighbors but we have 100′s of facebook friends. Make a name for you garage sale makes the event fun. Every second hand item had a story behind it and over all it created new real social connections.

Mark Fennell – the worlds biggest pacman.
IE9 promotion – bullet points have been revealed! messed with Mark’s flow. Used facebook to moderate due to transparency of profile of creator.

Lots of designs – from wants ads to a map of Europe.

He’s Nicoles – how to be awesome –
“the awesome foundation” – $1000 for an awesome idea. No strings attached. Goal is to grow awesomeness around the world.

Awesome is abundant and you know it when you see it. Uses a kickstarter page to raise capital. Eg random swings of joy.
How to get an ‘aw’ idea funded.

Missed a couple while queuing at the bar.

Luke drumm – How many really annoying people are there in the world. Very fun iconography to tell the story. Idiots are prolific. 8billion kilos of dumb flesh. Danger of irritating people breeding. Be in the zone an ignore irritating people. For ever irritant petal there are 24 bearable people.

Fredric koshpff – the internet of things.
The Internet is like the phones in your hands. more devices than people talking to each other, not to people.

There are more things than we have the ability to deal with. Why would steve (jobs) do? WWSD?

It was quite a gutting feeling to see that happen and know that they were gone forever.

One thing that is has made me think about is what I want to do with this website. I think that it would be good to go through and get rid of a lot of the idle posts (a bit like this one) and get back to thinking about some of the issues and ideas on the internet that really interest me.

So if you are reading this then hope to see some reduction in the posts that are here something between here and eternity.

It is my second day with it in my hands and I am not quite sure how well it is going to perform for me. As a piece of technology it is simply beautiful. It is light and thin with a beautiful screen and fast performance. At the moment though it is hard to see that it is a ‘game changing’ as claimed by some of the commentators.

The fact that I am using it before the official launch in Australia has revealed just how much control Apple has over their devices. It only works as an Itunes accessory. I could not even turn it on without first synching it to my iTunes account. Once powered up and synched, I wanted to see what new apps I could find, except the app store doesn’t work in Australia yet. The official launch is not until the end of next week so it looks like i’ll have to wait until at least then before accessing the really interesting stuff. Similarly it seems that I will not be able to use the iBook service just yet either, or buy the Apple iWork applications either, so it’s current utility is rather limited.

One thing that is good, unexpectedly, is the typing on the full size virtual keyboard. I expected it to be quite difficult without the physical response of the keys, but it is actually very comfortable. The auto correct that it uses probably helps me a lot as well too, and the fact that my typing was pretty crap in the first place.

I will keep playing with it an try to generate more output with it than I have done previously with the more mundane PC keyboard.

Tonight Jack is having a hard time getting some sleep. We have been pretty lucky lately with his sleep. He has learned to relax himself and sleep on his own in his own bed – most of the time anyway. Tonight however he is sick with a cold. This is making sleeping flat a difficult proposition since his throat seems to fill with goop, causing him to cough and wake himself up.

Right now he is draped across my lap, asleep with the tele filling the empty silence of the dark night. I am going to have to try and get him to sleep before I doze off myself.

In the mean time Seth Godin raved about a micro loan project where instead of donating money to a cause that is (at least to me) quite faceless, i loan money to an individual investor to help them achieve a particular goal.

And then they pay it back, which gives me the opportunity to give again later with the same money. So I am going to pledge here that I will invest USD$50 a month to this process.

While it doesn’t payback any interest there is a different kind of return. A human return. I will get to hear how the loan has effected the lives and the family who has less than me but is doing something about it. Now that I am a father, thinking about the future of the world and setting an example in it feels rather important.

I think that this is a great idea and the longer I contribute the more value I will be able to add over time.

Imagine what $700Billion might have done for these sort of people…

Adrienne got herself a blackberry and can now get emails anywhere. This is something that I have resisted while working for other companies, but now that we run our own business it is incredibly useful.

So with Adrienne getting email and being able to respond to it anywhere, I started to get more than a little envious. I had to at least consider an iPhone.
I am now continually surprised at just how much I can so with this device.

It covers the obvious basics. It makes and takes phone calls, and synchronizes with my calenders. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. After playing with some of the fun but pointless applications I have started to find some amazing tools.

This post is written entirely using my iPhone. Now that I have this I might actually make the excuse to write some new random stuff.

From our new apartment we will be able to amble into our office in the city in just 10 minutes. We have free parking in the city! As well a gym and a swimming pool. All this comes at a cost though so there will need to be some careful budgeting ahead.

Of course the catalyst for all of this is the news of little Jack. We need a nice safe place to bring him into the world. The initial plan had been to buy a 3 bedroom place that we could be comfortable in. Unfortunately there are a lot more adventures going on in our lives that just the arrival of our first baby. I had previously referred to our business as our baby if any one asked when we were planning to start a family. Well the business is approching it’s fourth year in operation and things are gaining momentum which is very exciting but it takes a hell of a lot of effort to keep everything running smoothly.

To help keep it running smoothly, when Jack arrives in October we will be nice and close to the office, such that it is effectively an additional office space. Either of us will be able to dash back and forth from home to office, which is something that we just couldn’t do from any other suburb in Sydney. Not even our beloved Cammeray.

So tomorrow will be our last full day here. I am now really excited to be on the move since everything in the place is all packed into boxes.

Since it moves with time I’ll mark here what it says today.

‘twenty more weeks before Mommy can have a nice strong, margarita…or five. I’m 19 weeks & 4 days old, only 143 days to go!’

Wow. Only 143 day’s. To say the least it has been ‘exciting’ trying to make competely new plans to accomodate this new adventure.

On one hand this is really good news since it means that business is busy, but the flip side of that is that it is hard to find time for ourselves. This is really going to become more important very soon.

I was sad to hear that he recently passed away and was cheered up and saddened at the same time when I saw this fun picture.

see more crazy cat pics

I remember my first adventures at the keep on the borderlands (from the first basic set) , and again when my character visited the Village of Homlet. Adventure after adventure was played out with the stories that Gary either wrote or inspired with his creations.

In many respects is work can be compared to Tolkien, not because of any literary prowess but because he took us further into the Fantasy worlds that Tolkien inspired. As players of Gary’s games we did not just read the story. Instead, through our characters we donned sword, bow and magic wand and explored these worlds for ourselves. Farewell.

One New Year commitment that I like to make to myself at the beginning of each new year is to start the year with an alcohol free month. So far so good, but it is always a bit un-nerving just how difficult a habit it is to break. It is day 7 now and from previous experience I know that this is the hardest time. After next week it won’t be a problem.

Of course now that I have told you I should probably go and grab a beer.

• Keep going with the daily 100 words (or more) posts and generally get better at writing.
• Improve fitness (I have a bit more around the belly than I am happy with)
• Be the best CEO of brainmates that I can be

Let’s see how we go this year.

It would be nice though if we could get just one bright sunny day while we are on the road near the beaches. We went for a post dinner stroll along the beach here at Kingscliff and were just awed at the raw power of the vast ocean. Looking out to the horizon the sea met the storm clouds.

I took this little snap of Adrienne with my phone.

Even with the wind howling around us, it was beautiful to be out there. Just watching the news as I write this they are talking about a new 30 year weather pattern that will bring rain and storms to the coast.

Today though, we waved goodbye to the Brisbane clan and are having a quiet little rest at the Peppers resort here. Not a bad start to the new year if you ask me.

These two are the master chefs in action. Mark and Marie cooking up a satay extravaganza!

After much drama throught the year, the result is this amazing kitchen. Adrienne and i have threatened to bring in a film crew to televise the cooking activities that will be going on in here in the future. Mark has his dream Kitchen.

The two best friends in the world – Adreinne and Nicole. Somehow even though we have started off with completely different holidays we have bumped into each other all along the coast.

Let the party begin…

I should be able to see exactly what data is being shared and be able to limit it and control its use. Until this happens I am unlikely to signup to too many more applications on Facebook.

It is fascinating watching how the “gen y” crowd is using this and other social networking services. They are totally fearless about sharing every last detail about their lives. It makes me feel like an old fart to say so but the way that they these services is completely different to my own. They practically live in these worlds; or rather they co-exist in both the online and offline worlds.

For me though these worlds are still quite separate and the world of Facebook has taken a noticeable back seat to the rest of the non-Facebook universe.

I always find this a joyous but difficult time. It is joyous mainly because Adrienne is the living embodiment of Christmas Spirit. She delights in everything related to Christmas and more often than not brings everyone else along with her energy. Even more exciting in the past two years has been seeing this same excitement being shared with her delightful Goddaughter who is nearly four. In fact it is this little angel who has become the key focus of this time of year.

The difficulty comes from the multiple challenges of having family located all over the place and the desire to try and use the slow business environment to take a holiday of some sort. Lately (past 3-4 years) Adrienne and I have tried to escape the contortions of being everywhere and have opted to travel overseas to experience Christmas’s around the world. Well that was the plan anyway. This idea has appealed to others in the clan and instead of a quiet little escape we have ended up with a travelling Christmas family circus.

The difficulty increases for me because my side of the family no longer gets together in the same place, live in different places and don’t get excited about Christmas anymore. This year I have seen more of my family that normal, although it has been more of a drop in to my brother and dad than any sort of Christmas event. It is my mum that I miss right now. She has moved to central New South Wales, between 3-4 hours drive away (depending on traffic) which means that it is pointless to do just a day trip and even a weekend is half consumed by the driving.

Ultimately I really don’t know what to do. Christmas is complicated but we will wait and see what 2008 holds.