www.nickhodge.com

As Microsoft TechEd 2011 is fast approach­ing & Delic8genius has made a call-out to the Aus­tralian com­munity “What is your Geek Ori­gin Story”

So, it’s time for me to doc­u­ment My Geek Ori­gin Story

My first geek obses­sion star­ted with cats. Or, as we now call them, kit­tehs. Quiet com­pan­ions on the Aut­istic scale, kit­tehs added their warm furry friend­li­ness to my pur­suits – and were always more accom­mod­at­ing than humans. There­fore, I clas­sify kit­tehs as a key moment in my geek origins.

Along with kit­tehs in this photo are the col­lec­tion of Air­fix and Rev­ell mod­els. The his­tory of World War 2, and the mak­ing of model aero­planes was a rather unique pur­suit in the middle of rural Eyre Pen­in­sula. But I loved it. Oh, that and LEGO.

After being intro­duced to an Apple ][, on loan to our school from Angle Park Com­put­ing Centre, by a pres­ci­ent Maths & Sci­ence Teacher: Mr Peter Stew­art,  I was hooked. From this early access, I also played with a TI pro­gram­mable cal­cu­lator and CP/M based Osborne 1.

My Dad, sens­ing my inab­il­ity to become the 5^th gen­er­a­tion owner of the farm, pur­chased a TRS-80 Model I. Oh wow, the fun I had with that com­puter was amaz­ing.

I owe Mr Peter Stew­art and my Dad a great debt.

Note on Angle Park Com­puter Centre: many South Aus­tralian Geeks of my gen­er­a­tion began thanks to Angle Park Com­puter Centre. Stilgher­rian, Frank Falco, Simon Hack­ett and David Newell to name four. Being a coun­try kid, we relied on loaners.

More cats: this time Bindi; with our/my first Macin­tosh: a 128K Macin­tosh. One of the first in South Aus­tralia: so first, it only came with a 110V power board!

Thanks to Tim Kleemann from Ran­dom Access (later owner of Next Byte) – this Macin­tosh opened the door on a career & a love of Apple.

Taken some­time in 1984 or 1985, this is me at my Macin­tosh. A har­binger of the next 13 years in the IT industry.

Ran­dom Access, Adelaide. 1987. This is me at my desk, work­ing away at some Macin­tosh things. Thanks to Tim Kleemann, Tre­vor Starke & Adrian van den Bok – and many oth­ers – I worked here hap­pily doing Mac things.

This is merely a post from the Word­Press Win­dows Phone 7 app. GPLv2 licensed.

Thanks for the inter­view, Stil!

Hav­ing vis­ited Christ­ch­urch, South Island New Zea­l­and many times; and Japan at least 4 times — I can clearly state they are some of the greatest places in the world to visit. The people are friendly; the sights and exper­i­ences are extraordin­ary. The places are rel­at­ively safe.

One would think.

In both instances, they live on the edge of the “Pacific Rim of Fire”, the edge of the Pacific tec­tonic plate that rings West­ern Amer­ica around to New Zea­l­and: the ‘shaky isles’

It is with much inner tur­moil and sad­ness to see both places crumble and sucumb to devestation.

This only makes me want to revisit when the time is right, to show sup­port. That their choice to live in a shaky place is not a ghetto nor a place to be shunned.

Trip num­ber 27 to the USA. I’ve almost lost count. I don’t think I’ll be back for another 12 months. It was cool to go up the Space Needle. And then get a head cold.

Grow­ing up on a farm, as I did, provides a free­dom that never leaves you. My par­ents lived on and immersed dir­ectly in their work: the farm. It sur­roun­ded them, day in day out. I am sure I absorbed this envir­on­ment in a way where I expect little to no sep­ar­a­tion between work and my per­sonal life. From this stems work­ahol­ism and ded­ic­a­tion. A deep prot­est­ant work ethic.

There are sig­ni­fic­ant down­sides to total work immer­sion. Espe­cially in this new world of always-on social media. You tweet a response to a work related ques­tion at 11.32pm, and fol­low up with a tirade against an air­line can­cel­ling your flight. The seam­less meld­ing of what is work and what is your life is one of the beau­ties of social media. We are all connected.

Yes­ter­day, one of the down­sides firmly bit me on the bum. One of my per­sonal opin­ions; a flip­pant tweet has caused an ongo­ing ker­fuffle at Microsoft. This is not the first time I have come unstuck on the social media fron­tier; and sadly I am not alone. Nor am I the last to be bit­ten. There are many bums with bite marks.

Until now, I have res­isted the urge to have sep­ar­ate twit­ter iden­tit­ies. To me, cre­at­ing and using dif­fer­ent iden­tit­ies is the anti­thesis of social media. To be frank, I wish that I could be one iden­tity on twit­ter.; but there are forces in the wider world does not accept the sep­ar­a­tion of per­sonal iden­tity and an employer’s iden­tity. As I found in recent events, there is always the risk that someone will take an utter­ance out of con­text, and use this as a cudgel in piti­ful internal office polit­ics. Or, as oth­ers have found, fod­der for gossip.

The cleav­ing of iden­tit­ies is a topic upon which I have struggled through­out my Microsoft career. Being true to myself, whilst attempt­ing to com­ply with the weight of an employer’s expectations.

As stated yes­ter­day, I have cre­ated a new twit­ter iden­tity @RealNickHodge which is a private, for people only account. Each fol­lower is vet­ted. I am being care­ful not to let in bots and sen­sa­tion­al­ist journ­al­ists. I am also wary of “brand name” twit­ter iden­tit­ies. I fol­low real people; people who are smart enough to real­ise my opin­ions are mine, and mine alone.

My old twit­ter account is now clearly iden­ti­fied @NickHodgeMSFT, with a pro­file stat­ing my pos­i­tion and employer. As at the time of post­ing this blog entry, it has 4803 fol­low­ers. I do not ima­gine the fol­lower count will increase dra­mat­ic­ally. Thank­fully, formal Microsoft accounts such as @MSAU are doing an out­stand­ing job of present­ing a formal social face of the organisation.

Within 24 hours of cre­at­ing the new account, I have about 200 real fol­low­ers, less noise and I trust more free­dom to be real. Or at least the free­dom from guilt in speak­ing as me, being who I am.

I have been on twit­ter since Feb­ru­ary 2007 as @NickHodge. Nearly 4 years. In that time, my account has gathered nearly 5000 fol­low­ers. Whilst I have no accur­ate data on these fol­low­ers: it is fair to say a major­ity are spam­bots or dormant accounts. There is abso­lutely no way I am that inter­est­ing to 5000 people.

Con­sid­er­ing my twit­ter per­sona has been cheeky and some­what icon­o­clastic, even to my present employer; and the con­tent of 90% of my tweets are not related to work — I find it sur­pris­ing to gather so many pieces of moss.

5000 fol­low­ers does put the @NickHodge account into the top 20% of Aus­tralian twit­ter­ers. Being an open (not locked) account, this puts my utter­ances on twit­ter into the fun­nel for social media mon­it­or­ing engines. Their sys­tems will determ­ine my fol­lower count (and retweet count, and other met­rics) puts me into a “must watch” list.

I base this assess­ment on my work use of social media mon­it­or­ing engines. Keywords, key people. Asso­ci­ated, and you are prime bait for engines to watch fil­ter and report to their cor­por­ate stakeholders.

Some people crave this atten­tion. In fact, it is their life blood. I am per­fectly fine with their need for fol­low­ers, read­ers, fans if you will. But this is not for me. The dir­ect asso­ci­ation between my employer and what I say and think is not dir­ect. At best, it is loosely coupled.

There is no quick mech­an­ism to com­pletely delete all your fol­low­ers, and who you are fol­low­ing in twit­ter. As an imme­di­ate solu­tion, I have sus­pen­ded post­ing from the @NickHodge account and cre­ated @RealNickHodge. I am being strict as to whom I fol­low; the account is locked.

For me, it is back to feel­ing free to com­ment without the fear of caus­ing col­lat­eral damage.

In the middle of 1996, I was driv­ing Chris Gulker and Bah­man Dara – fel­low Apple employ­ees – to their hotel after just vis­it­ing the new Fair­fax Chul­lora print­ing plant.

Hav­ing spent hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on very large presses, col­lat­ors and dis­tri­bu­tion sys­tems – Fair­fax were hav­ing dif­fi­culty in keep­ing col­our con­sist­ent in their advert­ise­ments. For instance, a green tinged advert­ise­ment for meat at Coles would not gen­er­ate sales. The CMYK to news­print is a tricky business.

It was not the col­our prob­lem that Chris Gulker men­tioned. It was the rise of the Inter­net – and the impact the inter­net would have on the print­ing presses. At this time, Avril’s The Defin­it­ive Chris­tian Slater web site was get­ting reas­on­able page vis­its. Using the for-work of Chris, and Dave Winer, I embraced Fron­tier for the Fairfax@Atlanta web site.

Chris’ com­ments, and fol­lowup dis­cus­sion when I vis­ited 1 Infin­ite Loop (as an Adobe employee in late 1998) def­in­itely changed my out­look on the world. The inter­net was, and has, become king. Later Chris joined Adobe.

Late in Octo­ber, Chris died after a long battle with brain cancer.

Even though my inter­ac­tions with Chris were inter­mit­tent – they were impact­ful. This is the mark of a good life. Vale, Chris.

I hope you found this useful.

In the midst of the 2010 Fed­eral elec­tion, Aus­tralian of the Year Pro­fessor Patrick McGorry has man­aged to place Men­tal Health on the national agenda. ABC’s Four Corners “Hidden Voices” ded­ic­ated a pre-election show to high­light depres­sion, men­tal health: both sig­ni­fic­ant factors in suicide.

Look­ing at the data, whilst sui­cide rates are fall­ing – the rates in males 25 to 45 is still way above the norm. And more people die by their own hand in Aus­tralia than on the roads.

Dur­ing the show, I tweeted the fol­low­ing: I suf­fer from Depres­sion. There. I said it.

For me this has been a long jour­ney. Thanks to excel­lent med­ical care, and can func­tion in employ­ment and society.

So, let me high­light: If you think you suf­fer from depres­sion, are feel­ing ‘down’ – seek help. Start with your GP. Call Life­line or sim­ilar ser­vice now. Do not be ashamed in seek­ing help. You are not alone.

Whilst there is still a stigma

Being depressed, and men­tally unwell is still holds a social stigma.

Whilst pub­lic accept­ance is on the incline: pub­lic­ally stat­ing that you suf­fer from depres­sion will have a neg­at­ive effect on your employ­ab­il­ity. Whether work­ing for a large organ­isa­tion or as a single con­tractor: people around you will treat you with sus­pi­cion. Depres­sion can be a dis­ab­il­ity that dir­ectly effects work per­form­ance; and the career pro­spects of individuals.

Or as is sadly all too com­mon: no job at all..

Whilst remain­ing a sup­porter of vari­ous Men’s men­tal health char­it­ies. Per­sonal dona­tions. Grow­ing mous­taches, I am going to leave much of my per­sonal thoughts to myself for the time being.