As discussed in my previous post, 2009 was not exactly a banner year for me.  I've identified that there were some things that were problematic with my own thinking, so I have some things to work on.  I've also started building plans to work towards more financial freedom and greater job satisfaction.

First I need to fix some of the more twisted thinking that's been allowing me to make bad choices with respect to time management.  In no particular order:

• I need to start thinking in terms of the sense of achievement in completing work, not in terms of the imposition of the effort required to do so.  The completion of things that are hard offer higher rewards than completing things that are simple, or simply not completing them at all.  It's better to put in a genuine effort from day 1 with no procrastination, but only work an 8 hour day than to put things off until they're already overdue then put in 16 hour days to get them done.
• I need to start getting better at saying no to clients, managers and colleagues/friends.  In the last year I have said yes to too many things and been set up for failure by being overcommitted.  As discussed in the previous post, I tend to deal with stress by retreating into indulgences such as computer gaming or watching DVDs, so making sure that I'm not putting myself under too much stress is a big part of managing the avoidance strategies.
• Like many people, I still hear the disapproving voices of my parents telling me that what I've accomplished isn't good enough.  Rationally, I know that all my folks were trying to do when they pushed me for better results, etc... was to get me to maximize my potential and do better in life than they did.  However, I internalized that pressure as a kid and one of the big work stressors is that I imagine them telling me that the work I'm expected to deliver doesn't meet the required standard.  Because of my avoidance/cram approach, I've effectively guaranteed that my work products are not going to be good enough as I simply haven't given myself time to get things right.  However, all I need to aim for just enough, not too much or too little.  I don't need to write 60-page white-papers when a 20-page specification will do, nor should I be satisfied with handing in 5 pages of bullet-points because that's all I've left myself time to deliver.
• As I mentioned above - part of my avoidance strategy has been indulgence.  When I get stressed I get the urge to spend money to prove to myself that someone feels I'm important.  This is something I'm learning not to do.  Over the last year I've probably spent $2000 on audio gear, the same again on laptops, computer peripherals and parts, another $500 on DVDs and $1500 on booze.  Even worse, I've probably spent close to $5000 on take-out or restaurant meals, which is clearly insane. If I had only spent half of that $11,000 I'd have fewer toys, but be a lot closer to achieving my financial goal of getting debt free. 
• I've hinted at this above, but I also need to spendless time on the work treadmill - instead of living to work, I need to reorient my values and my self worth in new areas.  As such, I want to make sure some of these things happen over the next year.
• I want to join a jazz choir.  I've played in bands a lot, but never really had a chance to explore singing as deeply as I'd like.  My voice is untutored, and generally a bit undisciplined... but with some training and use I think I could get quite good.  More importantly, singing is a kind of therapy in its own right.  Singing is a great emotional release, and I really need to find that kind of release right now.  So - first step is probably some singing lessons, and the second is to hopefully find a choir to sing in via my voice teacher.
• I want to spend more time composing and recording.  This is something I promised myself I'd spend more time doing this year, but because of travel and other emotional demands, I wasn't able to make the time or find the inspiration to do this.  In the upcoming year, this will change.  I fully intend to produce a minimum of 20 songs.
• I want to invest some time doing .NET training for non-work purposes.  For example, I have friends in Sydney who are interested in playing dice-n-paper RPGs, and I'd like to build an app that would help facilitate that.  I also have some ideas for how I could use a SharePoint solution for facilitating backstory creation, world building, etc.  It would be interesting to see if I could build an ad-funded site that other dice-n-paper devotees would be interested in using if I can get some legs under this concept. 

My professional objectives for 2010 are as follows:

• Move out of the "permanent" job market into the contracting/consulting area - running contracts via my own ACN.  This will have some key learning outcomes for me:
• I'll be forced to get more disciplined about money management, dotting the I's, crossing the T's.
• I won't have quite the level of risk of pure consulting or service-based/product-based business
• I'll have the opportunity to set up the company infrastructure required to get better leverage on my income (company tax vs PAYG; operating expenses before tax, not after)
• Get MCTS certifications for SQL Server and SharePoint
• Look into Dynamics certification and registration and a Microsoft partner.
• Start working towards MCA and MCT qualifications
• An MCA qualification puts me in a particularly good position with respect to architecture and consulting gigs.
• Getting an MCT qualification means I get access to Microsoft's official curriculum, and can offer my services within the Adelaide market, which is notoriously under-serviced in non-mainstream products.
• By March 2010 I want to start getting the tech blog at http://ozziemedes.blogspot.com running in full swing, with articles about Visual Studio, Team System, .NET and SQL Server being published at least weekly, and ideally 2-3 times a week.
• By July 2010 I want to have the poddify.com.au website fully online and operational.  I also want to have the infrastructure code to support media streaming and storage completed, tested and in production.  The proof of the pudding will be a .NET/SQL Server podcast that I'll start producing around that time and publishing through the site.
• By the end of 2010 I want to have at least 5 ongoing clients for Poddify signed and being recorded on a regular basis.  I'd like the Poddify brand to be earning at least a quarter of my earnings from consulting and contracting gigs.
• I intend to expand the number of people I know in the local IT and media production sector in order to: A) drum up some new business opportunities, and B) identify opportunities for small business alliances and joint ventures.  As an owner-operator, my bread will need to be buttered mainly by recruitment companies for the first 6 months of the year.  However, as I get myself better established, I'd like to become more independent as well.  One way to spread the risk of this is to work collaboratively with other small business operators.  The networking opportunities I'll be particularly focused on are as follows:
• Join the AIIA (Australian Information Industry Association) - the peak body for IT companies, and offshoots, such as the SA.NET joint venture that AIIA and South Australia's Department of Trade and Economic Development have put together in the last 18 months.
• Attend industry conferences such as Microsoft's Tech Ed, Professional Developer Conferance and Mix; and start looking at media production conferences/conventions such as Integrate.

My hope is that by following this path I should be in a much better position by the end of 2010.  I hope to be financially better off - I know contracting has its risks, but unless HP comes to the table with a better offer I don't see any other way of making the money I'm worth in the immediate short term.  Additionally, I should be emotionally better off as a result of getting more down time and taking some pressure off myself in the work environment.  I'll be more creatively fulfilled as a result of achieving my gaming software, singing and recording goals.  I'll also have a better industry standing than I currently have in the IT and media production sectors, and hopefully be in a position to put my hand up as a regular presenter at major Microsoft events over the coming year.

So... 2010, I'm ready - I know what I want and I know how I intend to go about getting it.  Look out - here I come!

I'm a big believer in the statement that we create our own realities, and the reality I created for myself this year has not been a fun one.  As such, I think it's important to acknowledge where I went wrong, and make some decisions about what I want to change for the future.  These kinds of "gestures" have more juice when they're made publicly, so here goes.

2009 in review

2009 was an odd year for me.  It was full of "hurry up and wait" moments, and I ultimately feel I've gone backwards over the year in many respects. 

•  I went into the year hoping to start up a small business on the side building online marketing strategies and producing podcasts for small businesses, but ended up so swamped by work from my employers and their clients that I have had no chance to get anything useful done on the business at all. 
• I fell into the trap of spending more on the corporate AMEX than I was getting back from the company in "per diem" allowances while while travelling interstate (somewhere around 90 days since July), and have had to juggle some finances as a result. 
• I went over time (and therefore budget) on a couple of projects I was working on for various reasons, with one of the big ones has been that I've fallen back into a fairly deep bout of depression, and been dealing with other people's expectations by hiding from them until things get too political for me not to complete and hand off the work products they've been sweating on me to deliver.  This is not a rational choice, but mental health problems are rarely grounded in rationality. 
• I've struggled with exercise and weight this year - they were going to increase and decrease respectively, but depression, travel and working from home have all had an impact on my activity levels and motivation.
• I was going to get some serious recording done this year, but I've had to deal with hardware issues on my main recording workstation, and have not had the free cash to perform the required upgrades to deal with the problems.  As a result, I've got big fat diddly zero done creatively this year other than writing a couple of tunes.
• I also had intentions of doing some serious tech blogging this year over at http://ozziemedes.blogspot.com/ but as discussed earlier, I've been too swamped with wortk (or too busy with work-avoidance strategies) to do the kind of experimentation and tinkering it takes to create blog material.
• Despite a job-code promotion in 2008, the pay-rise promised me when my new employer (which bought my previous employer in July last year) was buried in the dust of my performance review (less than stellar as a result of depression) from this year.  My expectations for additional "Variable Performance Bonus" allocations have not been met either - I've had bigger annual bonuses from my old employer.
• Oh - and then there's the matter of the car... I had a Suzuki Grand Vitara on a novated lease that I took on holidays to Western Australia in March.  I got back to Adelaide at the end of March sans car, having tipped it on its side not far from Pemberton, down in Karri country.  The trip itself was still good, but dealing with not having a car for the latter half of this year has been a further blow to my self-esteem which I could have gone without.

Basically, it's been a shitty year that has left me financially worse off, less inspired, emotionally exhausted, continually on the verge of tears and feeling betrayed by the company which is currently my only source of income.  There are changes I need to make in the coming year, issues I need to resolve from this year, and a bunch of fires I need to stoke up to start moving my life forwards again.  I'll write more about them in my next post.

Minister Conroy,

I am writing in response to your much publicised plans to apply content filtering on Australian IP based networks.  I am opposed to this direction for a number of reasons, many of which you will either have already heard, or are about to be inundated with.  These include (at a summary level):

1.       The fact that I am an adult living in a home not frequented (or even “occasionallied”) by children.  I have no interest in kiddie-porn, snuff and other materials that would be considered illegal, but I also see no reason why I should not be able to download adult material that is freely available in other jurisdictions.

2.       The fact that I am an adult, with the right to go to a video store, adult-shop or game store and buy/hire any number of games, videos and other materials which could be classified as inappropriate for children on the basis of:

a.       Sexually explicit content

b.      Graphic violence

c.       Emotional content inappropriate or confusing for children

My understanding is that there would be nothing in the legislation that makes it illegal for me to obtain these materials from a retail store-front, so why should internet delivery of this content be considered any different from a legislative perspective?

3.       The proposed content filtering solution is going to be difficult to administer, practically impossible to enforce and do harm to the performance of Australian broadband infrastructure to the extent that there would be little point in proceeding with the much-vaunted broadband infrastructure refresh proposed by the Labor Party not long after its election.  Note that a very significant percentage of broadband content streamed to homes is downloaded using tools such as Bit-Torrent and peer-to-peer file-sharing tools.  Unless you are going to ban these tools (also impractical from an enforcement perspective) you are going to miss a lot of the illegal content, and most of the stuff that would be inappropriate for children.

4.       As far as I can tell, the primary driver for implementing this policy is the hysteria of quasi- or overtly-religious parent groups, who want to abdicate their parental responsibilities to the government.  To me, there are inherent issues with falling in line with these kinds of groups:

a.       They do not speak for the entire electorate.

b.      Their points are made with the voice of brute electoral force, not with a view to identifying a solution that meets the needs of all parties.

c.       They are effectively bullies.  The people who speak loudest and longest get the biggest share of the attention.  If they also have the ability to slap you at election time, this makes them even more dangerous.

d.      You have been elected to represent your entire electorate, which – once you take on the mantle of a federal government ministry – means the whole country.  The rest of us didn’t get a chance to vote the parental advocacy groups into a position of influence, but we DID elect you.  Kow-towing to single-issue groups such as these is undemocratic.

e.      While we may have voted Labor in this time, you should also remember that this was a vote AGAINST the Howard administration, and Labor was simply the next best thing.  Roll in legislation like this and we might change our mind.

f.        This approach provides the Libs with an easy chance to trump you with a more comprehensive approach that looks less like it got put together on the back of a matchbook.  While that might not bother you right now, it might by the time the next election rolls around – especially if Tony Abbott successfully woos die-hard conservatives and small business operators back to the Liberal side at the ballot-box.

g.       Don’t forget that many of the people who will be furious at this policy are swinging voters who take the time to educate themselves on policy and issues using (amongst other things) the Internet as a means to rapidly index and aggregate information.  If you disenchant the swinging vote, you’ll need to beef up your base.  Just between you and me, conservative parental and religious groups are not a traditional Labor Base.

5.       There are transparency issues in your policy as currently stated:

a.       Who defines “inappropriate”

b.      Who decides what content is “inappropriate”

c.       Who chooses the content reviewers

d.      Quis custodiet – “who watches the watchers?”

e.      Where are the advocacy and appeal points? 

f.        Are you going to appoint an ombudsman to respond to complaints/issues with this policy?

g.       If so (to f.), how will this office be funded, and to what degree will it be resourced?

6.       This whole policy is basically constructed to give parents a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card for failing to provide adequate supervision to their children, and putting technology in their child’s hands that they are either too ignorant to understand the impacts of, or too lazy to review with a critical eye.  Of course, critical thinking is the enemy of faith, so this approach also meets broader objective of faith-based groups advocating this policy.  Wouldn’t it be more equitable and democratic (and possibly cheaper) to create a policy which endorses the following?

a.       Technology education for parents (compulsory if you really think that’s necessary, or perhaps if parents are proven to have failed in their own obligations to protect their children)

b.      A system of fines, tax disincentives (e.g. loss of family allowance, baby bonuses, etc) and other penalties for parents that fail to fulfil their obligations to supervise their child’s use of electronic communications systems (including -but not limited to - the internet, mobile phones, file-sharing via removable storage media, eBooks, MP3 players and gaming devices such as the PSP or Nintendo DS.

c.       Legislative support for parents to allow them to inspect storage devices used or owned by their children without the need for probable cause

d.      Legislative support for human services and education departments to confer on educators and family/youth services staff the same right of inspection as conferred on parents above.

This could result in parents:

a.       Taking responsibility for the upbringing of their own children.  God forbid, they might even learn what they’re up to!

b.      Detecting inappropriate content and reporting of illegal content sources to authorities

c.       Identifying cyber-bullying being perpetrated either against or by their children

d.      (and gods forbid...) Actually getting a clue about what’s going on in their children’s lives, rather than expecting governments and educational institutions to do it all for them.

I understand that we are currently being governed by the Labor Party, and that Labor historically moves towards centralized control in situations where complexity is involved (e.g. Banking, Utiltiies Management, etc) – however, this is a step too far.  Through this policy, you are trampling on individual liberty and choice.  I am certain that there will be consequences if you do not come back with a more measured and practical approach in the future.

Regards

Jeremy Huppatz

Proud IT professional, blogger, long time internet user and libertarian

Federal Electorate of Adelaide

SA State Electorate of Ashford