maupuia calling

So I’m 45 today. Almost assuredly half my life has gone. It seems only the blink of any eye ago that I was 25, living in London, having just met Debbie.

The blink of any eye. I can conjure up vivid memories of those days, so young. A whole life waiting, spread out before me.

And now I sit. 20 years later. The blink of an eye. Half a life trailing behind me. A life that still seems to have been spent waiting for something.

And in those 20 years? I’m studied, married, mortgaged and parented.

I was somewhere and they asked what’s something you’d bring back from the future to now. I said my great-grandchildren. I’ll never see them. I knew 2 of my great-grandparents. A chain stretching through time, through me, from my past to the future I had a hand in creating.

The blink of any eye.

Perhaps your children are the enduring legacy you leave to the world. Tomorrow my Dad is 70. It seems only the blink of an eye ago I was sitting on his knee listening to stories.

Continuing evidence. It’s always the grammar that goes first.

Sign in a lift at Kenepuru Hospital. Note the twinked out apostrophes after “certificate” and “service”.

Said Matt today as we were walking up the path home, “You’re the best Dad in the world.” Said Matt immediately after that, “Of course, you’re the only Dad i have!”

I’m not, of course, the “best Dad in the world”. I’m grumpy and impatient with the kids lots. I’m tired all the time. I yell at them more than they deserve. I never make enough time to play with them.

But I am the only Dad they have, so I guess they’re kinda stuck with me.

Ah, but we have such fun sometimes. This morning I was dancing round like a fool and making up songs about them - songs about Matt eating garbage and Josh eating cat-food. They’re of an age where that sort of thing is the most fun in the world. Although Matt is of an age where he can do the “I’m so embarrassed he’s my Dad look”. As this morning.

We had all walked up to school - well, Josh and I had walked up together and Matt had run on ahead of us - and Josh and I were in the corridor putting his bag away. Matt walked past with him friends, ignoring us. Josh pipes up, completely happy to see his brother, “Hi Matt!!”. I piped up, completely wanting to make Matt and his friends look, “Hi Matt”. Matt half-waved and grimaced and walked on. But at the end of the corridor, he turned back, and gave me this wonderful little smile. Like, yeah, I am actually his Dad and he’s pretty cool with that.

Josh snuck into our bed last night. I woke to him curled up around me, his little leg draped over mine, both of us curled up on the edge of the bed. He wakes up in the morning, smiles and says, “I love you Dad”.

Moments like that, and Matt’s smile in the corridor and an unexpected comment walking up to the house.

They’re moments when they forgive you all your sins.

So, Jo, who made us all feel really old at Webstock Mini doesn’t know what life without the internet is. I nearly got up and did an impromptu 2 min speech. It would have gone something like this.

I’m 45 in nearly two weeks.

I was 17 before I used a computer - a mainframe, my first year at University.

I was 25 before I used a PC for the first time. And then only for two days before I got fired from my job!

I was 29 before I owned a PC and used one on a regular basis.

I was 31 before I heard of the internet. Someone showed my a copy of Wired Magazine. I had no idea what the url address meant.

I was 32 before I saw a website. My friend was involved in building one. I couldn’t comprehend what an anchor was.

I was 33 before I sent my first email. 33!!

I was 34 before I built my first website.

I was 43 before I downloaded my first mp3. Having said that, I was not much older than 43 when I downloaded my 6,000th mp3.

I was 44 before I downloaded my first video from YouTube.

My son, Matthew, is 8. He goes to www.wwe.com each day and keeps up to date with the latest wrestling news. He knows all there is to know about wrestling. Although he’s wrong thinking Batista will beat the Undertaker in at Wrestlemania. The Undertaker is a phenom.

My son, Johsua, is 5. His browser of preference is Firefox over Internet Explorer. He can’t read, but can navigate, play games, find his way around.

What amazes me is not so much how the internet has changed my life, but how it won’t change theirs.

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I need to shout-out, as they say, to Jo Eaton whom I met in person for the first time at Webstock Mini. I’ve only known her virtually for 7 or 8 years! She was of the very few New Zealand people who knew of my online journal back in the day.

And it was lovely to meet with Martha also. “Wanda Harland”, it seems, is her “porn name”. The name of your first pet, followed by the street you first lived in. Mine would be Henry Ironside. It has a certain ring.

I thought Webstock Mini last Tuesday was great! More than any other event we’ve run outside of the the main conference, there was a real buzz, a feeling of networking, and, most of all, a sense of shared community. Maybe it’s because people are recognising others from these events. Maybe it was the venue - the Paramount Theatre on a lovely balmy Wellington summer evening. Whatever, it was just plain fun to be wandering around during the breaks, talking and listening to over 110 like-minded people.

First speaker, Rod Drury, talked on “Interaction Design for Competitive Advantage”. I liked the examples, and especially the sneak preview of Xero, which looked stunning. The idea is essentially design-led development and it just makes complete sense to me. A focus on the experience of using a product, where experience is meant in the widest sense, has the potential to break open a market in the way the iPod has. Using MYOB, which Xero is directly targeting, is something I haven’t heard anyone say nice things about.

So it’s not just designing something that looks great. It’s not just making something that’s a delight to use. It’s not just developing something that is technically impressive. And it’s not just bringing something to market that fulfills or creates a need. It’s doing all of those at the same time, and at the right time.

Rod’s central point seemed to be that interaction design, used properly, allowed a lot of the things that needed to be designed, tested, refined, thrown away to be done early on in the development process. So that decisions could be made before it was too costly to change, and that development could start within the proper parameters. Like I said, it makes a lot of sense to me.

Peter Gutmann talked on the Digital Copyright Bill. I wanted to ask him whether the proposed wording of the bill was because of cock-up or conspiracy. It seems probably both. Cock-up because a lot of the issues involved are technical, and quite probably the drafters of the bill haven’t quite understand how some of these things work. Conspiracy because, well, content providers has vested interests and New Zealand’s membership of the World Trade Organisation no doubt carries responsibilities [where’s the HTML tag for “sarcasm” when you need it] as well as privileges. Peter was great. A geek in the best sense of the word - long hair and dressed in jeans and Windows Vista t-shirt. Who said irony is dead!

The final part of the evening was the “10 x 2″ session. Ten speakers for a somewhat loose 2 minutes each on a somewhat loose topic - “How the internet changed my life!” A variety of ages, experiences and presentation styles were all in evidence. And somehow it all worked. I liked Mark Cubey’s a lot. I’ve admired him ever since I arrived at Victoria University in 1980 and he was writing in and editing Salient, pumping out great concert reviews of the Fall.

So I’m already thinking up topics and speakers for the next Webstock Mini. I have no life!

On the subject of Webstock, Hustle for Russell is a great cause for one of our favourite people.