Well, seeing as for the last 4 weeks I've been doing this new role of 'Regional Manager, Next Web' I thought it about time to get with the programme. While I will spend some time explaining more about what this role is later, suffice to say for now that it has something do with the Internet.

So, here's my getting-with-the-programme action plan:

  1. Create a new blog. Blogs are all the rage these days - all new-fangled and Web 2.0. Of course nobody knows what that means yet except Timothy Leary - an acid casualty from the 60s. Alternatively - it might have been this guy.  So, looks like I've gone all Web 2.0 on your collective derrieres and resurrected the idea of digitally documenting the inane minutiae in my working life along with a vain hope that this time, it might just garner a readership that will surpass the combined 3000 hits in 6 months of my previous (now defunct) other two blogs.
  2. Craft* a  new E-mail signature. Nothing says 'reinvention' like a new E-mail signature. In fact, now I have it, I feel like I've just spent 2 weeks at a detoxification retreat in Thailand, shedding 10 kg of flab in the process followed by an extreme makeover (yes, botox was involved) and a total wardrobe reset. Of course this also qualifies as a subject trivial enough to pander to the unwritten traditions of the blogging fraternity and makes up the meat of the perfect first post. I'm thinking of getting a Twitter account too so I can give up-to-the minute accounts when I feel like changing the colour or font size.

Old:

Old sig

New:

New sig

The signatures are telling actually and go some way to explaining what it is I did then and what it is I should do now. If they were human, the first would be a single, overweight, software developer who lives with his ma despite being in his mid-30's. He'd wear a soiled T-shirt that might say 'Pink Floyd' and he'd play D&D (pen and paper style) with some people he's known since he was 15. If blogs could smell (the technology doesn't allow this yet) and you put your nose near the screen, you might detect the odour of unwashed armpits and possibly, Mozzarella.

Conversely, the second one is sleek and ergonomic and you can imagine that if personified, he'd look like one of those Creative Design Director types, possibly wearing all black Armani or Hugo Boss duds and those shoes that you see in those boutique shop windows that you secretly covet, yet if you saw them on a friend you'd whisper to your partner that they must have been a royal waste of money. Again, if blogs could smell, you'd detect the faint sophisticated whiff of something by Issey Miyake or Davidoff.  This guy loves sushi and those impossibly small 'nouveau cuisine' dishes you get at restaurants like the one owned by those two bald brothers who are always on the Discovery & Living channel making stuff to order.

You may also notice, however, that neither of them give any clear clue via my role titles what it is that I in fact do on a day-to-day basis.

*by 'craft' I actually mean 'stole' from another Microsoftie. If it looks familiar and you think it was you, please mail me and I'll see to it that you receive more spam than you do already.