Moving on.

I’m writing this from my favorite cafe at the moment, The Falconer, in Sydney. I’ve had a terrific night tonight, attending Share Space and geeking out over all it had to offer. It’s the kind of night where the chill in the air is in perfect harmony with the stillness of the back-streets of Surry Hills. It’s the perfect night to write this post, which has been percolating in my head for a few weeks now.

I’m moving on from Ai-Media. About 3 weeks ago, I was told that the little company that we had managed to build from about 16 people when I got involved to about 75, needed to shrink it’s staff. There was a large cut-back announced, of which I was one. The product we’ve been working on, Ai-Live, is not yet generating the cash required to keep it sustainable and so as a result only staff directly involved in revenue related activities have been kept on. It’s a tough call, but the right one for the company to continue it’s journey towards ending disability.

But this isn’t a sad post! I’m so proud of everything that we’ve achieved at Ai’ in that time and personally am proud of my own contributions towards that. Unfortunately, these things just happen sometimes. I can’t wait to see what the remaining team deliver to all those people who require access in the future and can’t wait to take the valuable lessons I’ve learnt in my time onwards to the next adventure awaiting me.

In the time I’ve been at Ai-Media I’ve had the chance to experience and learn so many things and I’m a better person as a result. I’ve…

– Understood that the process of creating societal change is a long one, but still a worthwhile one to make.
– Better understood how communication amongst people in an organization works and how to amplify it.
– Played around with (and implemented) cloud/SaaS platforms internally with some stunning results.
– Helped grow a Yammer network to the point that it plays an important role in our organization.
– Learnt about how to work with a development team offshore, and how to be a product owner/product manager.
– Got my head around the principles of the Lean Startup methodology and begun understanding what it looks like to implement them in an organization.
– Learnt how to make an impact at an organization by being pleasant, playfully relentless and leading by example.
– Took the lessons of ecosystem management into an organization and actually did it.
– Started to learn how to code in Ruby on Rails and attend my first #railscamp.
– Helped build a continuous integration server and educate our team in the ideas behind Test Driven Development.
– Worked with many wonderful people who have all had a ‘special something’ that is worth sharing in and celebrating. 
– Understood myself better as a person. 
– Got the Sydney chapter of the Awesome Foundation started.
– Got started working on an awesome slow project with my man Bruno called Road.ly, which i’ll tell you about as soon as I get around to writing the post.
– Picked up very little AUSLAN, German and Spanish (Sorry Vic!).
– …learnt how to make amazing pizza on a Chimenea at #tbpsyd.
– …probably forgotten to mention many other things I’m sure I won’t realize for a while yet.

I’m excited by what the future promises and what it holds for me. I’m really looking forward to taking a slight pause, breathing in for a moment, before finding the next exciting journey and beginning it. Of course, i’ll let you know what that is once I do.

To all of those people I’ve share this time with, especially my darling Rose and the crew from ‘The Strathfield Office’, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You’ve made it the terrific experience it’s been and I can’t wait to share the rest of journey with you.

If you’re interested in catching a coffee and chatting opportunities, drop me an email. I hear The Falconer is pretty good…