graham at home

As you know I’m a strong supporter of Going Far’s upcoming conférence, Going Solo in Lausanne. It will be happening just up the road from me in Geneva on the 16th of May. This is why there is a badge in the sidebar.

I learnt that registration was open the other day through Twitter and today through Facebook.

I also noticed that there is a special Earlier Bird price if you register this week and I wanted to draw your attention to it so you don’t miss the opportunity.

As for me, and as surprising as you might think, I’m hesitating. It’s certainly affordable and definitely worthy of my paid support but I’m not really a freelancer in the real meaning of the term. I work for the Geneva State at 90% spread over four days instead of five which doesn’t leave me a lot of useable time on my hands.

I am however launching my own business very shortly and definitely well before the conference day.

Why? Well it’s because I want to put the fun and excitement back into my professional activities and I regularly get frustrated in my main job as it is very conventional and far from social webbish. What excites me is the Social Web and the possibilities it opens for discovery and working together on media and projects. I have a lot of experience and I know how to use this to help and accompany others in setting up their web identities. It is a reality that decently priced quality hosting is available and that with open source software and some help from professional web developpers and graphists it is possible to establish your home on the web and sustain it either with a little help or with more substantial support packages. The hurdles are therefore financial, skill sets and disponibility. I can successfully address these issues and that is what I am going to do.

I am therefore launching for the experience and excitiement of doing something new and for opening up new horizons. At my age I don’t see myself freelancing myself to retirement and it wouldn’t be fair on my wife and children to jeopardize our current situation which is the fruit of our labours.

So to be brutally honest I’ve just reserved our holidays for September and have to put aside for the taxman and I’m finding it a little difficult justifying the expense for a conference that I’m sure will be useful, pertinent and fun but would only be of use to me. My wife and kids won’t get much from it directly.

I still have a few days to make up my decision though and there is a good chance that I’ll attend anyway. It’s only a fool that can’t change his mind.

It is going to be a fantastic conference from what I can see and we don’t have a lot of these in Switzerland. We are indeed lucky that Stephanie is organising it and this a pre-indication of how successful it will be.

There is strong sunlight coming into my office and this is preventing me from working on my flat screen.

Today I will not close the blinds or draw the curtains but will wait until the sun passes behind the hill opposite.

I’m giving into the sun and enjoying it’s rays. It will soon be Spring and I want a headstart.

Rounding off the week it’s been busy at work with some nice projects on the go, mostly to do with records management and document handling. I’m still intrigued more than satisfied with my Logitech Digital Pen and appalled at my bad handwriting.

This is probably where mobile computing comes to the rescue of hidden social handicaps like bad handwriting and uncomprehensable speech. Fistly you have to write decently to increase the succes rate in transcribing handwritten text and lastly it is preferrable to have good speaking skills in order to use speech recognition correctly.

I try to have a social life and not spend more than 50% of my leisure time in front of a computer which is not as easy as it sounds - what’s your percentage?

So at home I watch some TV (mostly the BBC channels) and some shows on DVD. After reading Kathy Reich’s book “Cross Bones” I obtained the first season of Bones and my wife and I are currenlty watching it. It’s not bad. Not excellent but still very watchable. I like the characters and geta few laughs. The quality of the French subtitles leaves a bit to be desired but at least I don’t have to watch it dubbed in French. Quel horreur!

When I’m “working” at the computer I like listening to music but if my wife is watching TV at the same time I sometimes try listening with headphones and I’m getting quite a collection. The last ones I bought are a Logitech USB headset with mike but although I can dictate with them, too much ambient sound from the TV comes through and I have to push up the volume and it all turns into a sound-fight in the end (the TV almost always wins). I have some cordless headphones for use with my iPod or other MP3 players but these are not comfortable for more than a half-hour or so.

I’m contemplating getting some “real” headphones with noise cancelling  and ear covering features. What can you recommend? You will have to be quick as once I have something in mind I usually rapidly pass to a purchased solution!

I’ve been very busy lately with my various web activities.

Firstly I have been making progress with my professional site. I have set up the domain names (two actually) and have chosen to continue with my Web Host Siteground because I have had nothing but good experiences with them since hosting my first site a few years ago. I have chosen and modified a theme and worked with my personal graphist (my daughter) on the artwork. I’ve added some content on what the business is all about and layed down the foundations for the rest of the site. The hardest part is defining the details of what I am offering and laying the groundwork for what I will charge for doing it. It’s not a get rich quick scheme but I don’t want to lose money either. I also have to decide and give limits to the time I am willing to devote to these activities so that my employer (of my real job) gets what he is paying for.

Secondly I have been working, once again, with my daughter, on a website for some clients. They want a website and wish to manage the content themselves. I’ve arranged the domain and the hosting, installed the software (WordPress) and I am currently adapting it for a non-blogging website. In doing so I am using a theme that lends itself to using pages in preference to posts and that can accomodate different headers, footers, widths and lengths. I’ll write more on this later.

Lastly I continually find new andf exciting stuff on my travels around the web. First you might have noticed the new badge for utterz which is a great service that even has a local number here in Switzerland. The base activity is phoning the number and leaving a message which is automatically added to the website but also to various blogs and social media depending on configuration. Any image, text or video sent 10 minutes before or after the call is mashed into the resulting post. I should perhaps have said “maybe” because I sent some images to calls I made early this morning but I had to add them manually afterwards. Perhaps I did something wrong?

The other service I subscribed to this morning is Issuu which transforms pdf files to “books” on a public timeline and viewable a lot like the previews to Amazon books (You flick through the pages). It’s rather neat although most of my PDF files aren’t that interesting at first sight.

Over to you. What’s up and happening around you?

I’ve been working with my daughter on the artwork for my new “enterprise” and it’s coming along nicely. I’m so lucky to have such a talented daughter and we’ve been using the screen sharing capabilities of our Macs (iChat) to brainstorm ideas without having to email files. Being able to have a conversation while working on something turns out to be a very creative experience.

I don’t want to get into trouble with the taxman so I’m having to hold up while I investigate what form my new part-time self-employed job will take.

I could of course just do things discretely but the whole idea here is to have a second professional identity during my free-time and time left over by working fewer hours in my full-time job. I don’t want to get into trouble but I do want to have fun and learn what it’s like to have my own little business. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. It’s more of a learning and sharing experience.

More of this later.

Last year I decided to work less and profit from life more. I reduced my time to 90% but worked that 90% over 4 days instead of five. It was a good arrangement because my wife, who works at 90% anyway, synchronized her working week with mine and we shared long weekends for most of 2007.

She is changing employers at the end of the month however and her new bosses prefer her to be present each day of the week. The long weekend idyll is almost over.

Change is good. Resisting change is futile. I’m embracing this opportunity to restructure.

For a while now I’ve been active professionally outside of my day job, mainly to assist NGOs and friends in their web activities and have often turned away opportunities.

I’ve decided to change that and to freelance part-time and this post marks the change from then to now and beyond.

I’m currently working on an identity for my new status and leading up to a launch. I’m very excited about having two jobs and the synergies I will be enjoying between my various activities. I think there is a niche for what I can offer and my business and management studies are going to come in very useful indeed (at last). I will probably learn as much about building a business as doing the business itself but I’m going to have fun and it will be recreational rather than essential. That is a good place to be. Don’t you agree?

An illustrative post this morning. Habitually I start work early and am here just after 7am. This morning I was greeted by a moonset over the Jura mountains.

I’ve been too busy to even Twitter these past few days, with appointments back to back throughout the working day. Incidentally speaking of twitter you can catch up with my timeline here. Don’t forget to follow me with your own twitter ID!

I’m also available on the newly launched Pownce that has been in private beta since last summer but although I was quite active in the early months most of my Pownce friends have left and I can’t really update both services.

I’m testing speech recognition, GPS enabled digital cameras and Digital Pens for my organization. I’ve already reported on the first two but have said little about Digital Pens.

My report on Mobile Computing recommended all three technologies but when I asked our purchasing department to obtain a few examples of each they reported that the Logitech Digital Pens were no longer available for purchase. Frustration.

Further investigation has revealed that Logitech appears to have transferred their Digital Pen concerns to an American Company. On checking further the pens are available at Logitech USA but are listed as having been discontinued all over europe although stocks of Paper and ink cartridges are still available.

I have managed to get my hands on an older model and the drivers and software so I’ll be checking it out. With no support in French however I anticipate having to abandon this track.

Personally I think a better route to take would be Java/Symbian/WindowsCE development on mobile phones either with touch screens or pointing devices.

I will be investigating further but if you have any ideas could you leave a comment or contact me? Thanks.

I went for my annual outing to Lausanne this morning to record the oral part of the Apprenticeships exam this summer.

I go to a recording studio near the lake just outside of Lausanne and spend a few hours recording the texts.

This year we were three instead of two as my colleague’s daughter made her debut and did a mighty fine job of it. I was picked up and dropped off at the station and was back in Geneva just after midday.

I have been testing a GiSteq GPS and Phototracker software so this morning I synchronised my mobile phone with the little GPS before leaving home and took a few pics (of little interest I might add) and will be adding some Geolocalisation data to the pics once I get home.

This is a fascinating photo of a Lausanne Trolley Bus taken from the car…

If this sort of thing interests you let me know and I’ll give you more details of exactly how it works.

Although I am testing this for work, I am seriously thinking of using a GiSteq for my own personal usage.

It’s a pity I didn’t use it during our holidays in Scotland as then I would know with certainty exactly where each photo was taken and the altitude it was taken at.

Une vidéo trouvé chez Metacafe. Je ne pense pas que ceci est possible ici en Suisse et surtout pas dans l’administration cantonale. Mais qui sait ?

I think this clip is worksafe but is it safe to work in this office? I had fun watching it though and hope you do too.

Have a nice day. Unless you have other plans.