I recall a friend once saying as we were growing up, that we were running out of firsts. By that he meant everything from your first step as a baby to your first kiss as a teenager.  At the time I thought he was probably right as I left my teenage years behind and we were becoming adults I thought yeah soon we’ll have just done everything…right?

I know what your thinking, of course he wasn’t right but we were young.  I guess it all depends on what you do with your life whether you stop experiencing firsts.  If you get one job, never go on holidays, have kids or possibly leave your house then your unlikely to experiencing anything new but not only is that unlikely it is almost impossible.

I think the most amazing firsts happen when we are kids.  There is something wonderful about discovery, the first time you see an amazing view or watch a fireworks display.  As I watch my son experience all of his firsts (which happen almost everyday) I think to myself it must be amazing to see such wonder in the simplest things. Whether its the taste of broccoli (yuck) or seeing a dog for the first time.  To him everything is an experience to be immersed in.  However, he is not the only one having first times, because its my first time being a parent.  So I get to see him experience all these amazing little adventures for the first time too.

It does something else too, it pushes me to do more, to experience all there is out there.  Whether its being a parent or going parachuting it doesn’t matter, if its a first then its exciting.

I suppose the truth is no matter how old, wise or worldly we get there is always something we haven’t done. Something that will be a first for us. So this is just a thanks to Ruairi for not letting me forget about how amazing and terrifying it can feel to do something you’ve never done before.

You only get one life, live it!

So I was hoping to do a few posts leading up to the birth of my son, however, having a kid is time consuming…who would have thought.

Plus he came on his due date! My son, insane. I honestly thought I had another week at least. In my defence so did the Dr.

His exact words were, “arrive today no, I reckon next week at some stage”. My son promptly arrived less than 12 hours after the Dr uttered those words.

So now its 13 weeks on and we are adjusting well to our new role as parental units.  tough my friends but extremely rewarding. I find myself watching less tv, I have forgotten what a pub looks like and sleep is something I read about only in books (and as most of you know, I don’t read books).   I must point out at this juncture that tho I am involved, of late by darling partner Lesley has been kind enough to do the majority of night feeds.

When people found out about my impending parenthood they would always proceed to say congratulations. This was promptly followed by so are you ready for all the sleepless nights, feeding, vomiting…etc etc.

I would smile and say as ready as I’ll ever be. As if there was some way I could travel forward in time to get some practise! The truth is, nothing on this earth can prepare you for the turmoil this one little person will reek upon your calm world. All that said there is some sort of in built instict that activates upon his arrival. Something you were only aware of when you hear a fight somewhere off in the distance and a small part of you gets ready…just in case.

Its that dormant gene that suddenly activates and makes you become more aware of your surroundings. You now have this family to protect and people who drive fast are now idiots, not cool. Yes my friends you have become your parents. It was at that moment I realised why my father always worried when I was out, even when I’m 26.  It was at that moment that I understood why my mother could not sleep until I was home from a night out and it was at that moment that I realised that all that lay ahead of me too.

The road ahead is tough my friends and I fear what I do not know, but I also revel in it. Its sends shivers down my spine to think of all the things he may accomplish and all the adventures we are yet to have. The sleepless nights and crazyiness of the last few months mean nothing to the first time we will stand on the sugar loaf together, climb Caroontoohil or maybe even Mount Kilimanjaro.

In these so called recessionary times we hear a lot of talk of doom and gloom. Over the past few months I have received numerous emails from people and companies claiming to have the one thing that will get my business through the recession.  If these people did in fact have the golden cure for recession blues they should probably be contacting they’re local bank.

Though not claiming to have the ultimate recession killer I do have a few things that have helped our business through a hectic 2008 and that will hopefully help us to grow in 2009.

Making a plan and sticking to it

We all know we should have a business plan. But active business plans can be few and far between. If you haven’t at least referred to your business plan in the last six months then it’s not doing you any good. A successful business man once said,

“I can get there without a plan, but a plan gets me there faster”

I think this is of the utmost importance in a recession because getting there slower could mean your not around for long. The second point is to actually stick to you’re plan. If you’ve sat down and thought this business plan through it is likely to be better then any decision you make under pressure. I learnt this lesson recently. When we were about to make a decision based off of cash-flow even though it went completely against our well laid plans.

Stay Positive

My third pearl of wisdom is the most obvious, stay positive. Try to ignore all the bad news and joy killers. If you’re doing well tell everyone. Pass on your positivity. I heard a great line once about a famous person who didn’t like all the bad things people said about him in the papers. One of his friends told him, if you don’t like what the papers say, don’t read them.

Easier said then done I suppose but the idea is good. If you read more positive news you will feel more positive about your business and your own life.

Networking

This leads onto my final thought which is networking.  It is one of my all time loves in life. Put me in a room with a bunch of people I don’t know and I am in my element! I have been to a lot of networking events in my short time in business but in 2008 I came across the greatest networking organisation of them all, BNI. This stands for Business Networking International. Many of you longtime entrepreneurs out there have probably heard of BNI before. I had come across it a few years ago but never truly appreciated its potential. BNI is made up of chapters all over the world.  Each chapter only allows one person from each profession to join, thus preventing any conflict when passing business.  Referrals are the currency of BNI.  As each member goes about their weekly business they keep an eye out for work for other members. If they see potential business they let that member know at the next meeting.

This is the main purpose of BNI to help its members gain more business

However having been a member of BNI Bridge now for almost a year I have found something else in these weekly breakfast meeting.  Not only does my business benefit from thousands of euro worth of business. I also benefit from simply being around my fellow members.  It is their willingness to say I don’t care if this country is bankrupt my business is stronger then this.  That we truly are greater than the sum of our parts.  For me it is standing in a room full of people who believe that they’re business is here to stay.

So while each week many people read about job losses, bank closures and countries going bankrupt.  I surround myself with positive friends, positive family and positive businesses.  My suggestion is simple, you should do the same.

Craig Weissman talking about Salesforce and Twitter integration

The party started early, at 12ish we moved onto the Com for a few hours then back to the house for a proper session.  There was guitars and singing and then, then someone found a banjo and well, I let the video explain the rest.

I had a laptop order for an important client this week.  He needed something powerful, light weight, but with a decent screen. My answer was the ultra-slim Samsung X460.

It is a masterpiece of mobility and packed with a comprehensive spec list.  This machine is taking Samsungs proven ability to design portable netbooks and bringing it to the the people who need a “real laptop”.  It offers uncompromising portability, reliability and functionality, plus that all-important touch of elegance.

At a mere 1.84 kg, the X460 is one of the lightest notebooks in its 14.1″ class.  This does not however mean they have skimped on features, boasting the latest Intel® Centrino® 2 processor technology, 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive this machine has alot of power under its sleek hood.

With Windows Vista it was good, but when I rebuilt the laptop with XP Pro it went from good to awesome!  With the spec being more than XP needed to run smoothly it flew through program installs, upgrades and was more than cabable of running many applications at once without the processor or 3GB of onboard RAM even noticing.  It was slick in design, fast in its movements and it wasn’t even trying that hard.  I look forward to getting feedback from my client on the X460 over the next few weeks as he puts it through its paces and will definitley be recommending it to future clients looking for a fully featured portable laptop.

Highlights of the Samsung X460

Intel Centrino 2 P8400 processor

3GB Memory

250GB Hard drive

Windows Vista Business (Also includes Windows XP Pro in the box)

14.1″ widescreen display

Bluetooth 2.0/7 in 1 card reader/P-Dock support/1.3 Megapixel camera

Fingerprint reader

As I’d mentioned before with the abrupt demise of my iPhone I was forced into using a windows mobile phone again.  Well it was short lived.  After just one weekend I was driven mad with this crappy device.

The main issues I found were with the fact that I had become so used ot the iPhone and its ease of use that using the stupid windows mobile pointing stick made me feel like homer and his special dialing wand.

“Your fingers are to fat to use this phone…please match your hand to the keypad now”

I eventually went back to my P910i and bought an app that could handle SSL on email.  I think this shows a fundamental flaw in Windows Mobile and Microsoft’s essential monopoly over the PDA market for the previous decade made them lazy and unimaginative in their design.

The fact that I preferred to use a device that was almost half a decade old just shows how far Microsoft have to come to compete with a now very busy market place.

It also confirmed even further to me that the iPhone is the true game changer.  They have not only created a new phone but also a new market place where people can easily market they’re application to millions with no marketing or sales budget!  Its a developers dream.

As we saw with the recent announcement of iPhone OS 3.0 Apple have enabled over 1000 additional API’s.  This means there are now 1000 more ways that developers can make their applications work, sync, push, pull, talk, text and so much more with the iPhone.  What it really means to the consumer is that there is going to be applications launching with even great potential and functionality then they have ever seen on a mobile device.  Mac have realised that the to make the iPhone the most important mobile device since nokia launch their first phone the just had to do two things

1. Create an easy way to get apps onto your phone (mirroring the iTunes store with music)
2. Open up as many doors to the devices as developers need

Now they simply sit back and watch everyone else make them money.  Genius

This is just a short video I made on Qik from my iPhone.  I was hoping to see how good the quality is as I am heading to the Cloudforce 2009 conference in London on the 7th of April and am hoping to do some video while I am there.

As a cloud computing expert my constant job is not only to convince people of the merits of cloud computing but also in many cases explain what the hell it actually is.  Most of Damson‘s clients aren’t techies and they don’t like when you make it technical.  So finding real world examples of how cloud computing/WEB 2.0/SAAS can really change their working environment is vital in helping people to understand the true benefits.

Technical explanation:  With cloud computing your data is synchronised across all your devices and is always backed up.

Real world example:  When you create a file on your laptop at home it appears on your desktop in the office (instantly!).

I know what your thinking, sure that’s just sugarsync or dropbox or putplace.  That’s easy, right?  Well for a lot of people its not, in fact most techie’s would be shocked at the amount of people out there that don’t know about these technologies that we use everyday.  More importantly then that, trying to get across the actual benefits (not features) of these services can be a challenge.  So when I come across a real life example of how to explain a complicated technology I save it away in my data-bank of analogies and metaphors, for the next customer meeting.

So, while my  iPhone was  off for repair last month it was time to find a replacement.  I had temporarily began using my P910i, great phone, but old and it couldn’t handle SLL which ment no email for me, not acceptable.

The brother was kind enough to give me a lend of his slightly younger XDA Orbit from O2.  It was running windows mobile 6.

So with my new device I formatted it (deleted everything) just to be sure and went about adding mt email settings and Google sync settings.  After about 15 minutes of synchronisation I had 1200+ contacts,  1 year+ of calendar and 200 emails on the XDA.  Impressive and it was all thanks to keeping everything on the cloud.  The mobile was simple a photocopy of the real data held safely online.

Now using the windows mobile OS, is another days post.  However, I live safe in the knowledge that come rain, hail or thievery my data is safe…always.

So with my iPhone dead and my sensitive data deleted I went about the difficult task of finding out about the repair process.

First a little history on my iPhone, it is less than a year old and was purchased in Verona Italy, as they offer a legally unlocked iPhone there.  So I anticipated some issues with Apple and I was right.

I won’t bore you with the details but the outcome of the conversation was basically that not only did I have to send the phone back to an Italian address to be collected by Fedex but I also had to talk to the Italian department of Apple.  Who by the way don’t speak english.

After much searching I eventually found a company in Dublin that repaired iPhones (www.phonevolts.ie) based in the city centre.

Their staff we’re polite and efficient and happily put up with my daily phone calls asking “is it ready yet” even though they told me it would take 14 days.
True to their word 14 days later I recieved my fully repaired iPhone with a new power connection fitted.  For an all in price of 85 euro!

I was impressed. Phone Volts have been repairing phones in Dublin for years and have evolved with the times moving with the technology they so effectivley repair.

I would recommend them to anyone needing a phone or PDA fixed.  They have a no fix no fee policy and will give you a set price before repair goes ahead.

I have been happily using my repaired iPhone for over a month now and all is well in the world.