So, I did it. I’m psyched. Actually, Dip.Psych‘ed to be specific. My little jamboree of academic qualifications now includes science, engineering, education, technology, theology and psychology. For the latter, I am grateful to Dr Mike Hollier for the inspiration and encouragement to turn my lifelong interest in psychology into something all together more focused, formal and useful, and to Anthony Finbow for providing me with the space and platform to enable me to pursue it. They also enabled me to turn Redcatco from half of an idea in my head, into a business that provides communication infrastructure to over 250,000 people, in more than 50 countries, for some of the largest and most profitable businesses on the planet. That definitely wasn’t something I had on my personal roadmap back in 2007.

It has been an amazing journey, and it has only just really started. Studying with the Open University has been an incredible adventure in itself. I’ve got to know many inspiring fellow students who have broken through all sorts of obstacles and challenges in order to pursue their dreams and passions. It has been humbling at times, realising how tiny the challenges I face are, compared to those that others have already overcome. It has also shown me what can be done with the technology that I love so much. Learning at a distance, sharing and managing knowledge on-line, using the Internet as a learning platform, and blending all of that with ‘real-world’ interactions. I’m proud to have been a part of it. And, finally, I can read (and just about understand ;) ) the research papers on Positive Psychology that have fascinated me these past few years. I’ve even had the chance to meet Marty Seligman and many other researchers on the way.

What next? Well, work sucks. No, really, it does, at least the kind that goes off in most modern, knowledge-driven businesses. My hope for the next part of my journey is to fix that for as large a number of people as I can manage. Work should be enjoyable, perhaps even fun! It should be social, rather than anti-social; it should flow, rather than jar and judder. Most of all, it should be purposeful – informed and encouraged rather than demanded and enforced.

Focusing people on results and  team achievements, rather than obscured organisational rules and the pursuit of individual survival, provides a way to unlock a huge amount of value for many businesses – and hopefully a cheerful amount of value for myself and those I get to work with along the way! It is once again possible to make work both ‘visible’ and ‘social’. Then make it a team-lead, rather than the structured-process model that stifles innovation. SocialOptic has got off to an amazing start. Our first product, Milestone Planner, has outgrown one data centre and is gradulally colonising a second, with customers across half a dozen countries already. Every time I look at our management dashboard, more users have signed up. There is much to add to the service, but every time I talk with people from the user community, their passion and enthusiasm for how it enables them to work gives me a buzz. The second product is already more than paying its way too, providing insight into team progress, employee engagement and customer satisfaction for some great organisations.

2012 looks like it is going to be a fantastic year. Yes, there will undoubtably be curve balls, it wouldn’t be life if there weren’t any. But I’m psyched. I’m really psyched.

Measurement and efficiency were some of the themes for 2009, and I’m sure they will be for 2010. Through Homecamp I learnt about monitoring home power use, and with Redcatco we got even better at measuring things and making business cases.

In 2009 I experienced my first ever SXSWi, which meant heading to Austin, Texas, with Chinwag and the Digital Mission crew to meet with lots of new and familiar faces from the digital industry.

And I got to see a few bands while I was out there too, including The Webb sisters, for the second time in the year!

A fair amount of the year was taken up with psychology study – reading, experiments, write ups and an exam. Probably the highlight of all of that was attending the CAPP conference, hearing some very well grounded, but inspiring lectures, case studies and talks. I ended the year with a First in cognitive psychology, so it feels like the hard word paid off.

The summer was an eventful one. Although a lot happened in the spring, Redcatco social media work started to build up over the summer, and I seemed to be speaking and doing social reporting at more and more events. I even bumped into this chap…

There was still time for fun side projects, one of the most memorable was the Twitter Cook Off, watching a chef judge a set of sandwiches via Twitter, as you do, and listening to Caalie relay the results to Nicky and Maggie Philbin.

I was involved in quite a few NESTA
related events over the year, and also a couple of Reuters ones. The meant that I got to work with some bright, fun people, and chase political leaders around London. A very different perspective from the Cabinet Office events I helped with earlier in the year. This was also the year of the Digital Britain report.

The 1pound40 event at Reuters was one of the highlights of the year, although presenting at SMiB09, Online Information 09 and the Dell B2B Huddle was close to top of the list too.

The number of meet ups seemed to grow over the year, and I added to the mix by kicking off the Thames Valley Social Media Cafe, inspired by the model Lloyd Davis pioneered in The Tuttle Club. One of the evening highlights was the Cozytweetup that ended up with a candle lit picnic in St. James Park, before everyone was moved on, in a very friendly manner, by the police.

During the summer our eldest son managed to break his arm not once, but twice. Oh, and he burnt the other arm just for good measure!

VannFest was, as the previous year, the highlight of the summer. And for the record, I didn’t get a tatoo… Although did this photo of me ever cause a saga! I’m assuming it was the QR code on the T shirt ;).

VannFest wouldn’t be VannFest without a picture of some sky candles…

There were quite a few business trips during the year. Too many to mention, although the visit to Bonn, Germany sticks out in my memory. Amazing place:

Very oddly I appeared in a Vodafone advert in Germany, both on-line and in posters. You’ll have to look closely, but you’ll see me on the screen of the phone, next to Robert Scoble (remember what I said about those faces at that dinner!)

Over the course of the year my photography set up evolved, with some new cameras and lenses. I started to shoot some video – having been won over by the Canon 5D Mark II.

I squeezed in a photo walk or two, including a memorable afternoon with friend and Flickr super star photocillin.

And Canon let me try out some amazing gear, at just the right moments during the year, including the largest lens I’ve ever handled. The photo doesn’t do it justice – that’s a full size camera body on the lens in the picture there. It takes two hands to lift and gets comments everywhere – including during the Legoland fireworks, where more than one young lad said “I want one of those!”. Needless to say, it captures some amazing images.

Seeing real-time Time-Slice photography in action at the Canon Pro Solutions Exhibition was a definite peak camera-geek moment.

The expanding photography set up meant the chance to shoot some memorable pictures at various places around the planet, as well as Sara’s amazing body painting art.

I read lots of books, not just psychology ones, including reviewing quite a few, and featuring in some too.

Oh, and printed one of my own…

Back at home, the apple and pear trees and the vines were fruitful, the kids grew up some more and the recording studio remained sadly unused – something I hope to fix in 2010.

In the autumn I got to watch two of my favourite bassists play, at the same time! Michael Manring and Steve Lawson played together in London:

And I even managed to edit together this video for the bass guitar blog:

That wasn’t the only music in the year. Later in the autumn I went up to Birmingham and photographed and interviewed behind the scenes at the UB40 Live Loud and Local gig:

In November Kate showed quite how much interest a fox on the underground can create! By then I’d also set up SocialOptic with Jim, something which will be very much at the centre of 2010. With November on the scene, I dived in and took part in Movember – growing a moustache to raise awareness of men’s health issues, including prostate cancer. It opened my eyes to a few things I will write a lot more about in 2010.

To round out the year, snow arrived. Followed by more snow, and lots of it! The roads were chaos, so I holed up in the home office and click-clacked away to close of projects, ready for a clean start to 2010.

As the snow subsided, visitors arrived, and finally the family managed to squeeze in a break down to the west country.

Including a morning on the beach in Devon, before heading home for the New Year…