For a number of years the Roslin Business Community has operated from the wonderful two storey Victorian terrace (confusingly called ‘Roslin’) in Rosslyn St. West Melbourne. As the testimonials on the link demonstrate, there is something special about this property. When Derek and I first walked into the hallway more than five years ago, we experienced a bit of a wow moment, and over the years it has retained its ability to solicit admiring comments from first time visitors. As far as we know, no other co-working space in Melbourne has the same mix of classy professionalism and informality.

We have good news. Due to some changes in our own business, we are expanding the co-working capacity of Roslin. So after being pretty much fully subscribed, there are now many vacancies for new people to join the community. And there’s more (steak knives) …

In collaboration with a trusted colleague, we are opening a second co-working space in Blackburn to cater for those who live in the East and would benefit from an office environment nearer home. The Blackburn space is still being developed, but will be open for members from later this year or certainly by the start of 2013.

The link to more information about Roslin is here. If you are interested in either space, please contact us. I’ll post some details about the Blackburn space as they get clearer.

On the personal front some exciting and sad things happening too. Check out my new personal blog site here.

On Thursday, Maria and I (with Johanna) are heading westward, way way westward, on a travel adventure through Istanbul, Santorini, Morocco and the UAE. If interested, you can read our reflections on our yurting and travel blog here.

Fantastic opportunities ahead on the business and family front … look forward to updating you as things progress.

Derek and I have loved being trustees of the Melbourne Chapter of the Awesome Foundation. This month, two more great projects each received $1000. If you like hearing stories of people making a difference, check out these two amazing things:

1000 years of wisdom

Do it on the roof

Stereotypically, when I hit 30 a lost it. With young kids I stopped doing sporty stuff with my mates. I had always eaten pretty much whatever I wanted without obvious consequences … then I started getting podgy. I was watching home video one day where I was mucking around with the kids on the floor; I saw my protruding gut and thought ‘Oh crap!’. Blah, blah, typical story. So I resurrected my fitness and began swimming, and other stuff and being more careful about food. But in the meantime a subtle shift started to happen.

Again typically, mid 30s to mid 40s my mind acted as if I was still 20 something, but my body started breaking down. To put it bluntly, I kept injuring myself. And then more recently my second encounter with melanoma brings home the reality that whatever fantasy might be going on in my head, I am not immune to aging.

So these days, exercise is actually a survival instinct, rather than recreation. Not that good general fitness will necessarily fend off the cancer, but my strong will to keep living life to the full is great incentive to stay in OK shape. I say OK shape, because I have also made peace with the what I can realistically achieve in multidimensional life.

For the last few years my practice has been to exercise three times a week. Problem was that if for some reason I missed one, then two a week didn’t seem enough to ward off the sluggard in me. And during winter, if the man-flu hits then it can eat a few weeks before you realise it.

So at the start of 2012 I set myself a simple goal; exercise 5 days a week. But I had to make some changes to make it possible. Firstly, rather than an early (work) meeting knocking out the routine, I made the commitment to get up at rude o’clock if necessary to make sure the heart got started.

Secondly, what worked for me was figuring out how I could minimise the faffing around at the beginning and end … all valuable time. So I decided to compromise – when our local YMCA closed for a major (2 year) refurb, rather than join somewhere else I bought a decent exercise bike for cardio and a few dumbbells. If push-ups and sit-ups are good enough for Tom Hafey, then they’re probably OK for me. So two mornings on the floor in the lounge (Johanna gives me a hard time about the background puffs and groans that accompany her getting ready for school – but she’ll get over it), two on the bike on the back deck and then a swim on Sundays. Apart from a couple of weeks when lurgy has slowed me down, I’ve managed 5/7 every week this year.

For some people that might not be big ‘do’, but I’m feeling pretty chuffed.

My Japanese is pretty rubbish really, but long after I stopped learning I still find myself resorting to Japanese words in my head when the English phrase is not quite right. And having studied teaching second languages at Uni, I was across all the research that indicated how valuable it is for people to learn to see the world through the lens of another culture / language. We mono-lingual Skips miss out really.

So in the spirit of living with no regrets, I reckon its time for me to get learning. Given that I hope slow travel will feature heavily in the coming years, I found myself wondering how good it would be to have at least a basic understanding of the major languages of the world. My realistic aim is to be able to have basic, travel oriented conversations in at least French and Italian (to add to Japanese) If I do that, then in the years to come I’ll add more, this will be a lifelong project.

But for me there has been a psychological hurdle. One of the reasons my Japanese is crappier than it might have been was my failure to embrace failure. I am one of those people who used to hide behind a ‘natural ineptitude’ – which is probably code for “too gutless to make a fool of oneself”. Unless I figured I knew how to construct the sentence perfectly I would baulk at even starting it. So one of the things I had to take on board in embarking on my new language journey is the inevitability of feeling inadequate.

And it got me thinking again about the learning process. I realise how easy it is for us to stay comfortable in the areas in which we are competent. As we go through life we get recognised for our expertise in certain things and it is both affirming and comforting to stay within that community. Well bollocks to that … if we are fair dinkum about lifelong learning lets always be putting ourselves in situations where others are better than us, and lets embrace the inevitability of feeling inadequate and embarrassed by our elementary knowledge and skill.

… he says gulping, realising he is talking to himself.

 bientôt

It’s a strong theme of my other blog to live with no regrets. The association is usually with the bigger decisions in life, but this year I’ve also been taking on some smaller projects. In the ongoing spirit of the Do Lectures, this year there a few things that I’ve been doing rather than pondering about.

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been working on a ‘meaningful food project’. The objective is to capture the stories and recipes associated with meaningful food experiences in our family. You know how it works, over the years certain dishes get associated with particular feelings or events. Food traditions become really important in our identity and belonging. So far we’ve got 28 recipes to include.

For each one I’ve allocated 4 pages in a bound book. Page 1 is about the story – why is this food meaningful for us? Page 2 is reserved for photos. Page 3 is ingredients and 4 is method.

I decided to handwrite it rather than sanitise it digitally. The idea is to create a bit of a scrapbook rather than a polished product. Downside is that there will only be one … with 4 kids not sure how it will work, but we’ll figure that out later.

I’m not rushing it. I expect it will take a couple of years to complete. I’ve tended to fill out the pages as we happen cook a dish. Today, for example was minestrone day.

An extract goes something like this;

“When there is a pot on the stove, the house always smells good, but Maria’s minestrone takes it to another level. The deep, rich aroma from the slow cooked osso bucco and tomato broth somehow gets in your bones. Like her other Italian dishes, this food reminds us who we are and where we belong. Its good anytime of the year but especially good on a winter weekend.”

Next time I’ll share some of my feelings as I put L plates on as I teach myself French.

Wow how quickly powerful and useful ideas get traction. Here we are, at Ergo a mere tick into the future from then and we have a partnership to sell a fully developed product of which Roslings audience could only have dreamed. Instead of briefing IT development teams with report specifications that take days or even weeks to develop, leaders can now easily create and change dashboards of the most vital information and trends they need with amazing speed and flexibility.

If this sounds like a sales pitch, I guess it kind of is. I’ve not typically used this blog to talk about our products and services, but here is a tool that is almost too good to be true. I can’t imagine leaders who deal with large and complex data sets not getting excited about the power of what Tableau can do for such a low entry cost.

It was kind of predictable really. People have been saying for ages now that we are “living in the information age”; “that the most valuable commodity is information”, etc etc. It was only a matter of time before tools started to emerge that make complex data not only accessible, but useful for decision-making and other tasks that need intelligence rather than raw data.

Let us know if you want to find out more.

Robin Williams brilliantly plays John Keating, an unorthodox English teacher at an exclusive boys high school in north east USA. In the context of inspiring an appreciation of poetry as art, Keating urges the boys to ‘seize the day’, and ‘suck the marrow out of life.’ The narrative reminds us that choosing the road less travelled requires extraordinary courage and comes with no guarantees of success. We love this stuff don’t we; admiring the courage in others, but typically struggling to mimic their lead.

The next morning, with the TV on a music channel, out front of 30 Seconds to Mars, charismatic Jared Leto sings the anthem, (I will live my life …) ‘Closer to the Edge’ . So what of 2012? How’s it turning out? Routine and conformity, or closer to the edge, sucking the marrow out of life? What are the dreams? Why not go after them? Embrace risk, the consequences.

My silence on this blog is partly the result of a ridiculous and fulfilling work schedule. I arrived home Friday and with the prospect of my first travel free week this year, I’ve carved out some time to press pause and re-orient. Not that there hasn’t been some good think time this year … in fact my head has been bursting. The six projects that I’ve been working on have been wonderfully engaging. I’ve loved the time I’ve had to digest some past and current issues of Monocle – my favourite travel reading. Maria and I have been scheduling a year that includes some yurting (working and living in our caravan – Port Fairy and Byron Bay) as well as planning some more of our ‘bucket list travelling’ – as some of you know we’re in a window of opportunity given our family stage at the moment.

This is also huge year for Ergo. We are buzzing with the impending launch of a new line of business designed to expand the services we offer to our clients, one we expect will also result in growth for our company.

My silence on this blog is also an exercise in freedom. As I have written on this blog before, there is a fine line between commitment and addiction when it comes to things that in and of themselves can be good. Sometimes, for me at least, blogging can become more about the audience. As someone who has lived as an extravert, I am slowly learning to be content with my own thoughts, without the compulsion to share them. The question against every action, ‘for whom am I doing this?’ is perpetually refining and liberating.

So, not sure when I’ll get back to this blog … but in the meantime, as I process some thoughts about generative living for a publishing project, can I urge us all again not to give in to the gravity toward normal ruts. Lets keep asking ourselves, ‘Why not?’. Let’s live as if this year was our last, but without expecting it to be so.

What step changes are we shooting for in 2012? What skills, what experiences, what areas of character are we going at full throttle? If you’ve settled in, its not too late to shake it up.

Multiply that and you get a sense of how I like to finish the year. Finances in order including comforting cash flow projections, customer projects appropriately punctuated, and preparations made for the start of the next working year.

Yesterday was that day for me. Up late preparing for next years work. Reflective lunch with Derek to review the Ergo year, pottering around the yurt (caravan) parked outside our front gate getting it ready for the well worn road trip, and tying off project lose ends before the break, pausing to watch old family videos as they played on the TV. Over the last few days I’ve been nervous something would go wrong.

It didn’t.

Today is celebration day. My son Zac graduates from Melbourne Uni and middle daughter Rachel gets her VCE results. Tomorrow Maria, Johanna and drive.

Fruitcake, chocolate, sunscreen. Cups of tea in the morning while everyone else sleeps. Have a great Christmas season. If you’d like to follow our summer excursions this year, you can do so here.