Famous for 15 minutes

Reflections from above

Well I've never written a blog post at c.37,000 feet before, but this seemed an appropriate time to reflect. I'm currently sitting on an American Airlines flight to Boston and watching the film 'New Year' which in itself is gonna get some serious reflection going anyway (well - no doubt helped by a couple of small bottles of complimentary Merlot ;)

So other than an overly sentimental (but perfectly harmless & quite enjoyable it has to be said) movie there are a number of other reasons to have a peep back & little look forward:

1. We're screaming in on the end of year 4 of this little 'ole business : and goodness gracious me, what a ride it's been. Let's put aside that we've just lived through the worse depression since the 1930's (or are we still living through it? I've given up watching 24hr news channels as I believe they're as bad for your mental health as smoking is for your physical health and should come with an appropriate health warning) so 4 years and still here is something to celebrate in itself I reckon. Probably write up more on that in about 6 weeks time though :)
2. We're in the process of sprinting past the double figures threshold in terms of employees: yup - as I write this we're just over a week away from welcoming on board a new member of the client facing team and perilously close to expanding our dev team too (there's been a lot of "frog kissing" of people who really don't get close to cutting the PHP mustard TBH, but we've finally got some decent looking prospects). It seems to me though that it doesn't matter wether you'd producing sprockets or screwing on oojimaflips, in most instances it's who you employ that makes a business. We "do software", but without the best people to code it, the right people delivering solutions and then attentive & empathetic support we may as well pack up right now. Whatever your business it's the people (or lack of them) that can break your business and as virtual as the world seems to become it's very much people who will always be at the heart of any success. Here's to learning lessons hard learned over the past few years, to not letting those lessons make us too hard hearted and to continue hunting out and then bringing on the very best people we can get our hands on - our future success depends on it.
3. This trip could well represent a significant step up for HARBOUR - or not of course, but it still feels pretty big to be doing our first North America instillation. This at a time when our Asia partner is seeing some significant growth themselves & investing in a sales push, so who knows, maybe, following on from Tesco & Microsoft in China, in the year when the world comes to East London it'll be the year when we really step into Global service provision proper.
4. 4. I'm 40 at the end of the month - nuff said. And no - no big bike or little sports car. I've often said that 3DMarComms is my mid life crisis - so here's to whatever that may mean :-) So think that's just about enough reflection for now. Just wish that the film didn't have SJP in it - still, have to say that life and business is pretty good even with the odd horse face spoiling the view ;)