Continuing the trend from 2008 and 2009, here is another “year in review” post.
2010 In Summary
The early part of 2010 was difficult for the whole family. My mum was diagnosed with cancer in late 2009, and sadly passed away in May of 2010. Having not visited my childhood home very much in recent years, my mum’s illness saw me travelling back to the Isle of Wight very regularly. In fact, I started the year on the beach at Sandown, with our puppy Ruby, taking some photos of my mum’s beach hut so that I could make a photo collage for her and her husband Laurie. Even under the sad circumstances, it felt really good to re-acquaint myself with the Island, and to spend a lot of time with my mum, sisters and other family.
I still travelled quite a lot in 2010. In comparison to previous years, there was more travel than in 2009 but I still didn’t match 2008’s high standards. My TripIt profile tells me that in 2010 I managed 12 trips, covered 59,938 miles in an aircraft, visited 12 cities in 5 countries, and was on the road for 77 days. There were a number of trips to Seattle and Dublin for work, and an extended Shanghai work trip in April. I was originally supposed to go to Tennessee for the Agile conference in August, but the conference hotel was flooded and the conference moved to the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel in Florida. Two months later, in early October, I was back in Florida for a two week family holiday at Disney World! I also got to spend a fun weekend with my friend Simon at the Clonakilty Guitar Festival in West Cork in Ireland, and the family spent a lovely couple of days down in Devon with Tee, Troy, Norris and Fiona.
VARIOUS FLICKR PHOTOSETS FROM TRAVEL
Speaking of the Agile conference, this year I produced the “Building High Performing Teams” stage for the conference, very ably assisted by Troy from kingfriday.co.uk (thanks Troy!). As always, being involved with the conference was a very gratifying experience. Reviewing the submissions for my stage gave me a huge amount of food for thought, and there were so many great submissions for me to choose from that it was hard to narrow them down. Once at the conference, I was grateful for the opportunity to meet both presenters and attendees whose ideas continue to inspire me. If you haven’t attended an Agile conference, and you develop software, you should certainly consider attending Agile 2011 in Salt Lake City this year.
Having begun my exercise regime in August of 2009, I continued strongly throughout the year, with two exceptions. In June, while in Seattle, I suffered a stress fracture in my left foot that stopped me exercising for about four weeks. In October, I went to Walt Disney World, and while I did run twice during the vacation, the heat was just too oppressive. I got a Garmin Forerunner 405CX
In kid related news – well, they are growing up decidedly fast. They both got their first mobile phones earlier in the year (so that they could walk home from school alone and be contactable), Niamh bought herself a Kindle in November, both of them got their own email addresses and Facebook accounts recently, and they are settling in for their last 6 months in Junior school. September 2011 will see them going to High school. Wow. Niamh passed her grade 1 on the piano and is studying for grade 2 (although she needs to practice a lot more!), and Dylan’s trumpet playing is coming on really well.
Looking Forward To 2011
Unlike the past couple of years, I’m not going to attempt to predict the things that may or may not happen during the year! I’ve failed miserably in the past at sticking to things on the list anyway, so there doesn’t seem to be much point. You’ll just have to come back next year and see…
Well, 2011 is already under way, so I hope it has started well for you all.
