Thursday 11th and Saturday 13th October in Melbourne for the About Seniors week.

Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th October in Perth for PodCamp Perth.

An interesting question, who am I? This is the question that we all must answer whilst we are on this small planet. It is right up there with “What is the meaning of life?” Maybe they are connected.

My LinkedIn Profile, and more formal resume: www.linkedin.com Profile: Nick Hodge

From a duration on this planet perspective, I am 39-plus-ish. Location, usually Sydney. The family travels, and I travel for work — so there are pictures and stories from all around the world on http://www.nickhodge.com/.

From a personal accomplishment perspective, I am married to Avril and have one son, Liam.

I am presently employed as a Professional Geek at Microsoft in Sydney, Australia. I work mainly online, published here and also http://thegeekstories.com/

This web site, mungenet, has been online since 1996. It predates the current hype/craze of “weblogs/blogs/blogosphere”. Historical views of mungenet on www.nickhodge.com and mungenet on webstuff.apple.com. Apart from the design coming a long way; technologies have too.

My personal likes are books (history, specifically military history), programming languages, music; specially music of the 1980’s; and anything that is sorta geeky.

Our family has two Korats (Lucy and Mee Noi (Our Korats)). They are pure bred Thai cats, known as Si Sawat in Thailand. One is named Lucy and the other Mee Noi.

We also two MINI Cooper S’s; one named Megan and the other SCRLTT (Scarlett) Yes, the cars have names. It assists when we talk about them.

As stated, travel has been a part of my work, and thankfully something the whole family enjoy (70 Days, 7 Countries and Journeys in 2005) so I get to New Zealand and major cities in Australia regularily. Being a part of the wider Asia-Pacific, other locations such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo also pop up from time to time.

This is Avril Hodge, my beautiful wife. If you are a fan of Christian Slater, you must, must, must visit her web site.

This is Liam, our son. According to our friends, he is a splitting image of me. This photo was taken on our trip to London in 2004

Thanks for the link, Bruce.

Andrew Smith of Studio Solutions is a regular commenter here on nickhodge.com

Even when I was between jobs, he visited my site and kept an eye on me. He was “the guy” that ensured I was OK, and made me feel good. People like this are rare.

In a thankyou, I’ve decided to make Andrew famous:

http://www.on10.net/Blogs/nhodge/the-geek-stories-andrew-smith-pc-based-designer/

Is Web2.0 new? Relatively. Is the Web new? Is TCP/IP new? Are computers new? Is technology-augmented learning new? On the short bus ride home, all I could answer is “no”. The demands on the next generation is new. The generation that is going to replace the Baby-boomers and Generation-X are entering into an environment and community where pure “knowledge” or rote learning can easily be outclassed by anyone with a mobile phone to “google” an answer. Childhood Obesity is a furphy. It’s about Childhood Apathy.

It isn’t about teachers, curriculum, pedagogy, centralised testing, digital divides, politicians or departments. Formal learning about individual teachers and how they engage with their students. Engaging teachers leave a long emotional memory that has long term impact. Learning Mentor Apathy Breeds Childhood Apathy.

As the token layman at the conference, I kept quiet and listened and learnt. The challenges for parents and teachers is very similar for managers of small teams: engaging the minds of people is no easy task.

Phillip Adams was the keynote, famous speaker. His feelings in relation to the dotage of mass-media and the rising of unmediated media is interesting; and the impact the web and immediate communication have on the oncoming generation seems in tune with the current mood of the internet.

James Farmer: post-punk deconstructionist (iconoclastic education, incorporated subversion) using web2; or more importantly, using more advanced web technologies in and out of the classroom. In a multi-dimensional, non-mediated media this seems the current norm.

Annika Small: the future learner, future learning of the environment. FutureLab in UK. Not quite sure where this presentation was on about; showing off Xerox Parc or MIT Labs-like videos of learning scenarios in the UK. Any of these could have been created with pure paper technology and an enthusiastic teacher.

Whilst in these highly abstracted circles, one should be extremely careful not to project your personal life into a debate as important as education. As a parent of a teen age student, and not here to sell “stuff” to anyone. Just to listen, absorb — and surprisingly learn. Immersed into a world of instant-ness. Liam has created a digital learning environment based on strung-together tools. Creating content, and collaborating with his classmates to get work done.

The wisdom of enthusiastic teachers is long remembered, lessons from rote teachers is soon forgotten. Digital technology will rarely augment a boring, non-engaging teacher. This concept is touched on by Judy O’Connell, a blogger at today’s conference and represented by Al Upton and Immanuel College’s Kevin Richardson.

A brave and far-sighted Education Minister is going to have a difficult time moving the collective wisdom of rote learning, exams, competitive effort and incremental results into personalised learning and flexible measurement. I wish them well. All children have a latent thirst for learning; and unlocking this should not be constrained by short sighted populism

A good day out, and an excellent way to end the first week of doing something.

20 years on…and for the first time in my employable life, I am technically self-employed. Whilst my self-employment is by choice, but it’s still weird.

Do I call myself if I am going to be late to the office?

A project over the last 2 months has been to research the history of one Melville Hodge. Born in 1803 in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland (yes, this is the home of golf), he is the fifth and last child, and second son of John Hodge and Elspeth Clarke. A theory I have here is that he did not take an apprenticeship, and moved to Cupar following is older brother, James.

In 1820 maps of Cupar and St Andrews, a Hodge owns a house in each town. Again, I have a theory that John Hodge was a Baker; and his son James once trained, moved a short distance west to Cupar.

In 1854, Melville, his wife and two children moved from Fife, Scotland to South Australia. Sadly, his wife died on the voyage. Melville remarried, and had a son in Australia: David Melville Hodge. David Melville is 5 generations removed from myself. Using a new rail line that ran through Fife to Edinburgh, through to Liverpool in the north of the UK.

As Australia is just about to go through another Census, some research on Scotland People, I found that the 1851 and 1841 Census’ were online. Quick searching produced Melville Hodge living near Cupar (pronounced Cooper to Australians!) in 1841, and Leuchars in 1851. In both, he is listed as an Agricultural Labourer. It is my hypothesis that he moved to South Australia for the opportunity to own land.

Melville intrigues me: he had wonderlust at a late stage in his life (he was over 50) and left his native Fife for Australia. I need to do more research on the early 1850’s in Fife around Cupar and Leuchars to get a feeling to why he moved, and to Australia rather than the US or to a large city.

David Melville, born in the 1860s near Angaston (Barossa Valley, South Australia) inherited this wonderlust: there is a diary of his travels to the far north-west of Australia in the late 19th Century.

As a “Dawkin-ist” when it comes to the Selfish Gene, in my Y-chromosome lives a part of Melville Hodge. Could the wonderlust many older generation immigrants to Australia and New Zealand — and need to see the world genetic? More research is required, and its fascinating how much you can do via these interweb of tubes.

References:

On my –1’st day at Adobe, I jump on a plane and head to the US for Application Engineer training. Whilst some industries call this a Systems Engineer style job, at Adobe you are demonstrating and integrating applications. Along with a host of other greater Americas and Asia Pacific Application Engineers, we immersed ourselves into two weeks of intense class work. A reorganization was announced in my second week at Adobe. Having survived 3 very tumultuous years Apple, it was situation normal for me. People I met: Colin Smith, Noha Edell, Terry White, Lisa Forrester; all still at Adobe. I felt at home.

Adobe applications available 8 years ago: Acrobat 3, Photoshop 5.5 and Adobe was just about to launch Illustrator 8. In the print world, Photoshop, Illustrator/Freehand and QuarkXpress 3/4 ruled. We could call it the Cretaceous Period in the creative application world.

Whilst I had experience on the web, and using dynamic languages; Java with WebObjects, I suddenly had to reskill in the print world. A proverbial comet was about to explode and start the Cenozoic Period of creative applications.

Much travel, bring people into the Adobe fold, presented Adobe technology to over 40,000 people in the last 8 years. Untold number of hours in a plane. Showing off “cool and useful” things that applied in the real-world was, and still is my passion. Qantas Frequent Flyer Platinum, all the nice hotels. Nights alone, waking up in a city whose name you forget. My personal favourite roadshow was Photoshop 6.0 for two reasons: firstly, pioneering the re-emergency of music of 1980s as cool and hip (Generation-X now has money to spend?) by themeimg my session around “Music of the 80’s Trivia”; secondly as Liam and Avril saw the best show in Sydney. I also here apologize to all those attendees who saw pictures of my MINI in demonstrations.

There were two events in this period that I was a part of that changed the landscape. One was the change from film to digital delivery of print advertising; the 3DAP and a small company called Quickcut (now a part of Telstra) enabled the technology. The second was the move from QuarkXpress to InDesign by Australia’s major publisher, Australian Consolidated Press (ACP). Adobe, and more probably more specifically Michael Stoddart and I, saved the Packers many millions of dollars by assisting Linda Harkin in this change over. Killing the Xpress dinosaur with the introduction of a more nimble modern mammal, InDesign. Now in Australia, InDesign and PDF is the standard. I proudly look at magazine covers. There is a part of me in there. My name is in the about box on every copy of InDesign in the world. Humbling.

During my Adobe life, I also met and spoke to the founders of Adobe; Drs. Warnock and Geschke. Met and spoken to senior executives too: Mr Chizen, Mr. Narayan, Mr. Elop, Mr. Stephens. The engine of Adobe is its engineers: and I’ve interacted with many of these people too. Smart people: much smarter than I. You get inspired, and pass this on to customers. Listening to a technical presentation on how the “healing brush works” and realized that you know nothing.

There have also been some not so public events: such as Michael Stoddart, Alan Rosenfeld, “Murray” the Crocodile and I acting as “Steve Irwins” and winning the Most Creative 10 minute demonstration at an internal Sales Conference. It was way funny. OK, you had to be there.

During the most recent 3 years I decided to have a major career and job change within Adobe. Thanks to Craig Tegel for his mentorship and management (and more recently Steve Lambley); I worked with a different part of my brain. Working with an excellent team of people: Emmah, Bianca, Daniel, Gavin and Lee, and managing the Australian and New Zealand sales channel. Managing and motivating people has been the most enjoyable part of the last 3 years; as has bringing people into the Adobe company: Mark Szulc for instance: from customer to colleague. Brent Irwin, Aaron Tavakoli. Alan Rosenfeld, now a MINI owner and Mr Adobe Creative Suite Evangelist, Europe. (aside: Hey Rosie, where’s your blog?)

Influencing the sales part of the business: whether it be Licensing system changes, pricing, availability, channel strategy. Working with people such as Denise Dewell, Anna McNally, the smartest guy in NZ: Lou Nunn, Luke Ogier in our partners. What a ride.

In the end, I had reached the end of my natural ability. A change of what I had defined as “a career”, and more importantly “life”, was in the wind.

The worlds of Split Enz, I Walk Away ring through my head:

Just a slave to ambition /

Tension your permanent condition /

So much you’ve always wanted /

Too much givin’ you a sore head

So, its back to what I enjoy most; engaging with customers and technology. Realizing this, I must take time to relearn “technical stuff”.

Some Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Have you been forced to take this Leave of Absence?

No. This is a decision I’ve made completely my own, and my family’s, choice.

2. What happens to your current role?

When you take a Leave of Absence for more than 90 days, your position is deemed “open”. Therefore, Adobe is hiring for my role. I will not return to this job.

3. Is this an indicator of your opinion and/or faith of Adobe’s products?

No. I think I’ll be an Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign user for life. It’s almost hardwired. And once you have Photoshop neurons, the other applications just link together.

This leave is for me to reset/reboot and retrain for the next 20 years of my life. For the future of self. Has no relation to the incredible Adobe technology.

4. What do you think your future is?

Does anyone know, exactly? It has something to do with End Customers, Software and Technology — from a work perspective. From a personal perspective, which is way more important, I’d like to keep that personal. Thanks.

5. Do you plan to return to Adobe?

The answer to this question is a little out of my hands, but it is my wish to return to a Technical/Evangelism style role. The work I do will be completely different to what I have done over the last 3 years.

I will always have a passion for Adobe products, as I have for Apple products.

6. How did you come to this decision?

Once my “dream” was to work for Apple. I did that. Then what’s next? Originally, I moved into the channel role for a similar reason: the challenge. Once you meet your challenge, what’s next?

I had reached the end of my natural abilities and have decided to reset and go back into a more evangelist/technical/customer role. It is a strange change to “go back”; it limits your so-called career prospects and income. This is contrary to what “your upbringing” expects — ever higher, ever forward, be ambitious. This pressure is internal, and I think comes from the competition we experience in the school environment. Even my alma mater high school, Immanuel College’s motto was “Plus Ultra”; ever higher in Latin.

The scars of ambition do not heal easily. So, my career mantra is now “what’s next”, technologically. How can I help a small part of the world? Where can I assist people to take the cool technology and apply it in the real world?

It is obvious to state that the future of IT is a highly connected, yet loosely coupled world. TCP/IP packets are changing how the world communicates. Fast processors are changing how we interact with collected assortments of these packets. Somewhere in this maze is a place for an IT veteran.

7. Are you available for freelance Technical Support, Training, Consulting, Strategic Planning or Gardening?

No to the gardening; for the other categories please Email me on hodgenick@gmail.com, my rates are reasonable.

8. Hey Nick, do you want to come and work for me?

Offers to hodgenick@gmail.com. All offers are considered, but please do not be disappointed if yours is politely declined.

9. New! Do you have plans to travel anywhere?

In short, no. Because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing too much of over the last 13 years!

A Plea

As a heart-felt plea, I am going to ask you to read this post: How to Find What You Love to Do on LifeHack.org. It provides an excellent perspective on the thought processes needed to come to terms.

I’ve learnt that it is important for your physical and mental health to do what you love to do. No-one wants to, nor should have to, slog it out in a soul-sucking job. No-one wants to live their work life just for a distant chimera of “retirement”. It is a false goal. Live life for now.

What’s Next? Do something. The ideas and opportunities spin in my head.

Nick Hodge as rendered by Meego, a service I don’t quite get — but it is all the rage with the Tech.Ed AU crowd… and for some strange reason, it doesn’t like Firefox on my Mac. Booted up Parallels, ran WindowsXP and used the command-shift-4 to get MacOS X TO capture this off the WindowsXP session. Clean up in Photoshop CS2, save as a nice small compact PNG with transparency.

Here I am, in my late thirties. A potentially jeopardous time for men. They do silly things like buy fast red sports cars (Scarlett Comes out in Style). The body doesn’t look, feel and work the same old way. And they start to look ahead a little, and drive a little slower.

We are all bound by the decisions we make: what cars we drive, what houses to buy; what job to do; and further bound by expectations: what do people expect from me? Why do I have to get up every morning and go to work? It leads a difficult decision: “Can I get off this merry-go-round?”.

After weighing up these conundrums, I’ve decided to spend the next 5–6 months “rebooting”, “reseting” and “reloading”, prepapring for the next 20 years. Slow down, smell the roses. Look back and look ahead. Read some books, learn some new things. Return to Adobe in a different role. Calm down and get stuff done that matters. And as Carl Sagan said to his students: “Do Something” (Carl Sagan)

After a busy, full and fun 20 years — that “something” remains equally as ethereal, but I’ll be ready to tackle it head on.

First Vinyl Album: The Living Enz, Split Enz

First CD Album: Conflicting Emotions, Split Enz

First iTunes Album: The Darkness, One Way Ticket To Hell … and Back

Fly to Auckland on 6.30pm flight Monday evening. Arrive at hotel at 12:45am. Up and awake at 6:00am for a 12 hour day of Acrobat 7.0 Roadshow. Mid-afternoon, the Skycity Convention Centre is evacuated after our room starts to fill with water and the fire alarms sound.

To the airport, and attempt to be smart by catching a 6:00pm flight to Wellington. Take off OK, and almost arrive on Wellington airport. About 50m from the ground, landing is aborted due to weather and we’re off back to Auckland.

Arrive Auckland 8:15pm, and placed on a rescheduled flight to Wellington. Within 10 minutes, this flight is cancelled too. We’re grounded in Auckland until the morning.

After some scrambling, we find a hotel (of sorts) and check in at 10:30pm. After 2.5 hours of email and reports, sleep for 4 hours and awake at 5:30am for an 8:00am flight to Wellington.

At the airport, and the 7:00am flight to Wellington is still waiting for weather clearance in Wellington. By 8:00am, we find out Wellington airport is closed until at least 4:00pm. Wellington this New Zealand trip is cancelled.

Three days, about 9 hours sleep.

Oh the glamorous life in the Jet-set.