A Week In The Life – 7 days, 4 cities, a hospital and a giant ski ramp

By Mike Cannon-Brookes|Uncategorized|3 Comments

As I while away a quiet Sunday drinking cappuccino at the Grove – my favourite San Francisco cafe – I’m reflecting on one of the most amazing weeks I can remember.
(Also a large part of the reason this blog has been quiet the last little while)
40-odd hours of travel, 7 days, 4 major cities, 3 countries – from a South East Asian hospital and to a giant ski ramp in the middle of San Francisco.
Welcome to a glimpse of my crazy life!
*Saturday – Singapore* – Last weekend, I was sitting at my mother’s bedside in a Singapore hospital. During the week she had been emergency medivac’ed from Japan to Singapore after having vision problems, where an MRI found a benign tumour in her brain that was putting pressure on some vital nerves. My father dropped his work and flew down from Shanghai, where my parents live, and I did similarly and flew up from Sydney. It’s quite amazing how the curve balls that life throws you “on any given Tuesday” quickly put the other minor problems you have into perspective.

*Sunday – Singapore / Sydney* – After 4 days in Singapore, I flew back down to Sydney for a “Alina’s birthday drinks”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/alinac/sets/72157594361222303/ at the “Opera Bar”:http://www.operabar.com.au/PhotoGalleries_516_n_3_0.html in Sydney. I’ve never been more stunned by the rapid change 8 hours in a flying steel tube can bring – leaving behind the IVs, stark hospital rooms and neurosurgeons of Singapore for the sunny, beautiful Sydney sky, the architectural marvel of the Opera House and a green tea caprioska.
*Monday – Sydney* – Back in the Sydney office madly trying to catch up on what I’d missed in 4 days away. Scott and the guys at work were fabulous throughout, down the point of stonewalling me on the phone and refusing to talk about work at all. The read of the day for me was definitely Susan’s “Rock Star”:http://susanitsa.wordpress.com/2006/10/26/atlasstian-why-i-luvem/ post – more on that later.
*Tuesday – Sydney* – Our semi-annual strategy retreat had to be cut down this time due to my emergency Singapore trip. Instead of heading out of town, we (Scott, Jeffrey and I) spent a day around Pyrmont’s cafes planning the next 6 months. Most of what we planned 6 months ago at our last retreat in Sonoma we achieved or surpassed, which is fantastic. There will be plenty of exciting work announcements in the next little while, that I can guarantee you!
Oh, it was also Halloween of course so I dressed as a pirate and took my nieces (one dressed as a witch, the other as Santa) trick-or-treating in the evening.
*Wednesday – Melbourne* – A crack of dawn flight down to Melbourne for the national “Entrepreneur of the Year”:http://www.ey.com/global/content.nsf/Australia/Entrepreneur_of_the_Year_-_Welcome judging evening as well as a masterclass attended by all of the regional winners. The masterclass started with Maxine McKew (sp?) leading a group discussion of various issues like people, technology and corporate social responsibility, followed by a presentation from Bill Evans, Westpac’s Chief Economist, on the state of the global economy and one from Andrew Banks, of Talent2 and formerly Morgan & Banks, on winning the ‘war for talent’.
The actual judging took place in the evening. There are 8 judges who get 5 minutes to ask questions of each of the regional winners – imagine speed dating but instead of talking about your social life you’re discussing your business. It’s a thoroughly fascinating process, I enjoyed it immensely and I think we equipped ourselves well. We’ll find out on November 30 exactly how well when the winners are announced at a black tie shindig in Sydney.
Wednesday was also the day that the news of “Jot’s”:http://www.jot.com purchase by Google became public. I (and probably quite a few others) found out about it at Office 2.0 a while back but it was fabulous to see it finally announced. I know platitudes towards one’s competitors are always seen as fake praise, but I truly like Joe and all the guys I’ve ever met from Jot and am very happy for them. I’ll write more thoughts on it soon, but overall I was happy to see that Atlassian (and our “Jot server conversion promotion”:http://blogs.atlassian.com/news/2006/11/atlassian_promo.html) got a fair bit of press on the back of it.
*Thursday – Sydney* – Yet another crack of dawn flight, from Melbourne back to Sydney. A day of catching up and planning sessions with the dev teams in the Sydney office. All our (5!) development teams are nearing major releases which is going to make for a _very_ busy end of the year.
*Friday – Sydney / San Francisco* – Did you know you can work a full day in two halves on two sides of the globe? I’ve just worked out how. Arrive at the office at 7.30am, have a few morning meetings, leave the Sydney office at 1pm and cab to the airport, fly 14 hours to San Francisco (crossing the dateline so you land before you took off), cab from the airport to the SF office arriving at 11am, an afternoon of meetings in SF followed by the inevitable Friday night drinks. Who said it wasn’t a small planet?
(Oh, the Bamboo team got out their “0.6 alpha release”:http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BAMBOO/Bamboo+Home for anyone interested)

*Saturday – San Francisco* – Catch up on some email, squeeze in a little shopping in Union Square and end up spending the afternoon / evening watching some lunatics ski jumping in San Francisco’s SBC Park. Some lunatic (presumably drunk?) decided to ship 200 tons of snow into San Francisco, build an 8 storey high snow ramp and get some of the worlds best snowboards and skiers to launch off it. And by jove, he “pulled it off”:http://www.icerair.com/2006/index2.html! It was absolutely f’ng brilliant. God bless America and its entrepreneurs.
So, I hope that explains my lack of posts – this week working in SF and attending “Web 2.0″:http://www.web2con.com/ should be a little quieter so I’ll find time to post more.
Life is not a spectator sport!
(PS I appreciate the beautful parallel that as I write this I’m wearing my Amnesty International “Citizen of the World”:https://secure3.ctsg.com/amnestyusa/store/viewProduct.asp?Product=344&CategoryName=Apparel&CategoryId=25 t-shirt!)