Steps and missteps on my path out of poverty

At 18 I was skint and got made homeless. It took a lot of graft, patience and mistakes to get out of that and into a moderate middle class lifestyle. Here’s how.

When I was 18 I found myself in a weird situation. October 1987. I’d just started my first job, straight from 6th form, and was happy with that. My favourite song the year before had been The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades. I was optimistic and hopefull. I’d done my A levels finally surrounded by people who actually cared about education. I was no star pupil at 6th form, except at computers, but computers were the big thing so I had confidence.

All good then. I mean it wasn’t perfect, but I just had a fresh optimism. I’d lived with my grandmother since I was about 12 (my childhood memories are imperfect and I have few witnesses to refer to. I’d been casually fostered for a number of years prior, was fed up, and had been dumped with her. She was one of the few consistent things in my life and could see I was breaking in front of her. So I in effect ‘divorced’ my father and she took custody of me. She lived in a mobile home type caravan at the time. She was poor, but stability mattered more to me. I got my education. The future felt very bright.

I got through the various stages of ICI (then one of the largest chemical firms around) to get a job in their computer centre as a trainee printer operator, with the idea being to climb into a programming job. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, my grandmother had been in a lot of pain and, within a day of being admitted to hospital (this is another story to tell) where we discovered she had terminal cancer. Very terminal. She had less than a week left.

I was so very alone. My father turned up, signed over to me to handle everything, then disappeared to South America, never to be seen again. In 1986, my mother who I had some mild relationship with, had taken her family to Spain and, for some reason, me being told and having a goodbye seemed to be forgotten… so I’d accepted they weren’t a factor in my life. That was it. Me, alone, in the world.

Things got quite bad, quite quickly. Here’s what I learned, what I did wrong, and what I think I did right.

The world is not your friend

When you grow up, generally there are adults who look after your interests and needs, until you’re old enough to do it for yourself. But often you feel this interconnectedness with everything being generally good. Often in adulthood we discover things can be quite different – especially if we have some failures. I think learning that the world isn’t your friend is important. I discovered, for example, that if you have no cash, you can’t just take over a substantial asset (a house, in this case) and expect to not pay off debts that your grandmother had. The answer should be simple – I could have borrowed from another bank or building society to buy the house off my grandmother’s estate. Except her bank refused unless my grandmother’s estate was up to date on the mortgage payments. And because my grandmother’s estate had debts and no income, it couldn’t make the mortgage payments, and I was advised that if I paid the mortgage it would potentially make me liable for everything. When you’re an eighteen year old that leaves you in a bind.

The bank took the house, and I was made homeless, briefly (I kept a spare key and let myself in at night to sleep on the floor!), and I quickly organised myself and bought a tiny flat. Good job, because the council wouldn’t help me, the bank wouldn’t help, renting privately was almost impossible for me. Thank heavens I was organised and found the right combination of people.

Finance is risky and can be expensive

Because I was young with little credit history, all finance was risky. I figured that with my job and my flat I could now live a little and went stupid, bought myself a small engined sports car – a Scimitar SS1 1300 if you’re a car geek – a tumble dryer and washing machine all on credit, and thought everything was great. But I had nobody around to advise me I was being dumb, remember? No parents, and even most of my friends had gone off to university.

What happened was that when something went wrong with the car, it really stretched my finances to fix it. Then it got stolen and damaged, and I either repaired it myself or my insurance would get really expensive. Every little bad thing that came up, made life harder. But I discovered that I couldn’t just sell the car and forget about the finance – the interest and the way they did it meant that I’d need the value of the car plus another £1k to pay it off. I was trapped.

Toxic parents usually remain toxic parents

My father was still in touch with me, but for some reason thought I had plenty of money. So when he got into financial trouble in South America, he started giving me hard luck stories about how dangerous things were, that he was going blind (or a bit long sighted as we call it now), and he needed £1.5k. Or £3.5k in today’s money. I was 19, skint, and instead he banged on about how I must have had money from my grandmother’s death and my good job. “Yeah, Dad, but you’re not here and you have no idea.”

However, guilt led me to do my best. I sent him all my spare cash for a couple of months, before finally arranging a loan. I used some of it to consolidate my credit card debts, and two thirds went to him. I sent him, if I remember correctly, about £800 in total. He wrote to say he was struggling and needed more and he was in a dangerous situation I didn’t understand.

So I did what I felt was the right thing – I spoke to the Foreign Office, and eventually secured a facility for him to be able to catch a flight home, where he’d at least get benefits.

I called him, told him the good news, he was furious. And that was the last time I spoke to him. Ultimately, narcissistic, self-centred and selfish people rarely understand that other people have struggles. They just don’t get it. And they stay that way.

Stability matters

One thing I did right was to stay at ICI for many years. I kept that job. My head wasn’t in the best place, so I wasn’t the best employee, but I was useful and smart enough to keep it as well, and had some reasonable progression. For a while I’d been renting rooms after financially over-extending when I lived in my flat, and that job gave me the much needed anchor to my life. Eventually I bought a house with my then girlfriend. That stability then allowed me to think about taking a risk again… But it also established a nice final salary pension plan that will still be useful even 40 years after leaving!

I went contracting

Sometimes, income really matters. I don’t think contracting is for everyone. I hated some aspects of it, and it ruined my relationship at the time because I was away from home so much. But it really helped bring in money, which then really helps you to just establish a buffer of more than a month or two of money. Suddenly I felt like I had an actual surplus and proper savings. I got rid of the rust wreck of a Peugeot and bought a three year old Rover. I started to dress more smartly. I had nearly ten years of this solid and high income and it probably made the biggest difference of all to me.

At the end of my ten years, inflation and low interest rates made my mortgage look tiny, I had asset wealth in the house, shares, and low outgoings. When you’re in that situation, as many middle classes get born into, you can start to take risks. I decided to set up a proper web development business, now called Interconnect.

I could have lost a lot with Interconnect, and we came close to giving up. It didn’t ever give me more income than contracting – not even close. But it does give me another source of stability. And that, dear readers, is worth more than you might think.

I learned about how money and how the stock market works

There’s one book I read early one which just opened my eyes to the world of money. I’ve bought it several times, lent it to people, forgot who I leant it to and lost it! Doesn’t matter, it’s worth it. Its called How The Stock Market Really Works and it goes way beyond stocks, shares, and bonds, but into planning, risks, retirement and so on. In reading it, several times, I established a baseline of understanding that stopped me falling for scams, stopped me making bad investments, and generally helped me ensure I could make best use of the spare money I had.

I no longer pushed my finances hard

Now I understood money better, I knew that, for example, if you have assets of £100k and a debt you can’t pay of £50k, you’re in a really really bad situation. If you have assets of £10k, a debt of £100k and some short term cash flow issues, then you’re in a strong position to start negotiating. Why? Because if you have no assets and a big debt, the bank can’t recoup anything much if they send in the bailiffs. Once their costs are accounted for, they lose everything. So they’re more willing to negotiate. If you have loads of assets, you’re stuffed. That was, in effect, what the bank did to take my grandmother’s home from me when I was younger. They had no motivation to negotiate with me.

So you either max out your finances, Donald Trump style, or you very carefully segregate them. Because I value stability and security above all else, I segregate them.

I learned to think like an accountant

After ICI, I spent a lot of time working in corporate finance departments on their software.

Here’s a thought experiment. You have £10,000. You go out and buy a car for £9,000. How much are you worth? The naïve answer is £1,000. You see yourself as £9,000 worse off. But if your car helps you earn more money by opening up a job you otherwise couldn’t reach where you’ll earn £5,000 a year more, then you have two things happening:

First, your balance remains at £10k, because you have a £9k car and £1k of cash.

Secondly, you have a future benefit over, say, the five years you expect to have the car, of £25k. So over the five year period, assuming the car becomes worthless, you’ll end with £26k on the balance sheet. Or you use that £26k to put into a mortgage which, again, is generally a good move because it’s a limit liability loan secured on property which, in most economies, is a pretty safe bet.

But all accountants will say that cashflow is of utmost importance. You may have a pile of assets, but if you can’t service your responsibilities then you become insolvent – you can’t always easily sell assets without a big loss. So always think about cashflow – it’s best to be gently increasing your cash position as your wealth grows.

I learned to let go of status plays

When I was young I caused myself trouble by buying that sports car. It wasn’t, in itself, a bad buy on the surface – sports cars depreciate more slowly, the insurance on this one was the same as a similar powered Ford Escort, and it didn’t use any more fuel. And it’s not like a 19 year old needs to carry a family. Two seats was fine. Reliability wasn’t great either. But where it went wrong is that my boss therefore believed he paid me too much! My older superiors didn’t like that I had, on the surface of it, a fancier car than they did.

Of course, I was financed to the hilt, and they weren’t. They didn’t know that. They just assumed I had more money than I let on to.

Had I been in a humbler car, they’d have had no idea of my financial status.

It’s better to let people assume you’re a bit skint, and focus on reliability plays in order to establish your career. Took me into my thirties to work that one out.

Same with clothes. Stick to cheap clothes until buying them is easy. If you do what young me did and buy everything on credit at Top Man and Burton’s (yeah I know) then you’re setting yourself up for bad decisions and bad outcomes.

Adaptable accent and open attitudes

I’m actually quite Scouse yet a lot of people I meet and work with down South just think generic, educated Northerner with a light accent. The reality is I just adapt my accent to suit the situation. This means I don’t terrify upper middle class people, whilst I can still sit and have a chippy lunch with garage mechanics. Non-threatening to everyone, basically. I accept that most people know stuff I don’t, that they believe they’re trying their hardest (they may not be trying optimally, or coping badly, but I accept their belief), and generally try to learn from the people I meet.

Meet lots of people from different backgrounds

The more people you meet, the more lives you get to understand, the more mistakes you can avoid and the more opportunities can come up. Local politics can teach you how councils and Westminster works. Bankers can tell you how finance works. Medics can give you really good reasons why you shouldn’t smoke, drink, or eat too much sugar! Bin men can teach you that you can make a good living even if you’re not well educated (or are – there are some very well educated bin men and women out there). Truckers can tell you how their industry works.

Just avoid the cynical and the put upon – there’s little useful information there.

One good thing with the internet today is that there’s so much sharing online that you can virtually meet almost anybody, from African villagers to corporate board members. Just be kind and open and remember that they’re all humans, every one of them.

What about you?

None of the above is unique to me, or in any way makes me special. I just think they’re what helped me. Feel free to comment on what you’ve experienced. Everyone lives different lives and found different ways out of poverty traps. And of course, some people find themselves ground down by a system that can be unfriendly and downright hostile at times which means they can never escape, no matter how hard they work.

Images by Dall-e 2

Bye Bye Skoda

It’s always sad when you decide to get rid of a car that you’ve enjoyed owning.  Not because it’s no good, but because your needs have changed.  And the biggest problem was that we’re now parents to one growing toddler and another relatively new baby.

Which nearly did my back in.  Both the Skoda and the Audi are relatively low cars, and as I have a weak back as it is, this proved too much and I recently found myself barely able to move for a weekend.  Not good.  I decided it was time to find a taller car.

So, with a heavy heart, I’m selling my 77,000 mile late 2004 Skoda Octavia vRS.  As you might expect from me, it’s been well looked after, has a full service history and no expense has been spared in its maintenance.  It’s a cracking car with great performance, handling and pretty good refinement.

I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.  If you’re interested, drop me a line in the comments below.  I’ll be adding a contact number on here shortly once the Telesafe number’s come through.

Price? Just £3100 – a lot of car for little money.  I’ll be sad to see it go.

Chris Coveney…the Introduction

I’ve started writing this post in Amsterdam airport…I’m on my way to Arica in Chile where I’ll be (hopefully) burying my father, Chris, who died on the 19th of July. I say hopefully not because this is something I’m looking forward to but because I face a number of legal and monetary issues with the hospital where he died.

So, the backstory….

Chris Coveney in 1986

My father was born in 1944 in Liverpool. He had a childhood disrupted by his father’s death while he and his mother were travelling to join him in post-war Frankfurt.  At the age of 4 (I believe – this needs checking) it seems that this had a somewhat traumatic effect on his life. Whether it would have worked out any differently if his father hadn’t died so young is hard to know.  It seems he never really bonded with his rather quiet and gentle stepfather, John.

John was one of those people that sadly get little praise in life…he didn’t have a rapier wit, good looks or intense charm. His predecessor, it seems, did.  But he did do his best to provide a stable and comfortable environment for my father and grandmother (I later lived with them at different times of my life.)

Yet it seems that my father inherited his father’s flaws (a taste for women, good times and risk taking) without some key strengths (a disciplined and intellectually rigorous upgringing in particular) that would have helped my father excel. He was certainly charming, good looking and intelligent.

Family Life

My father, to the best of my knowledge, had three children… myself first, David, in 1969, Miguel two years later, to his first wife Ruth, and Maria in 1981 to his second wife Ann.

It’s fair to say that neither marriage went well. To paraphrase my mother:

He was a drinker with a vicious temper and a long arm. He couldn’t understand the word no.

There are other things I’ve learned recently which I won’t share…but the picture was of a man who couldn’t take his responsibilities seriously and, when confronted, would lash out at anyone around.

The Consequences

I’m going to skip forward now to 1985… by this point my father had been divorced twice and no longer had custody of any of his children. He’d kept me close for years, but even I tired of his temper, his constantly failing relationships and the occassional humiliation of a beating. It’s a curious thing about being smacked around by your father…the physical pain is nothing. It’s the betrayal of trust that hurts and damages you.  No parent should resort to violence when faced with the annoyances of raising a child. Nor, of course, should a child ever survey a trashed kitchen following violence between their parents. Ever. I could go into the reasons why violence breaks out in domestic settings, but that subject deserves better than I can give right here.

Since 1971 my father had been working his summers as a tour guide in Oostende, Belgium. This suited him fine…a steady stream of giddy girls on holiday, few responsibilities, and plenty of nights out left him, it seems, relatively contented.

South America

By this point my father, always a keen lover of all things Spanish, had started to spend his winters in South America where he could travel around enjoying himself whilst maximising the money he earned in his Belgian summers.

This was actually a fairly calm period… I lived with my grandmother and rarely saw him. Generally I did enjoy his company, but there was always a nervousness over when he might kick off but, in general, he seemed to have mellowed.

Unfortunately, in 1987, everything changed again. I was living with my grandmother and had done reasonably well in my A levels. I’d gained a job at ICI on a trainee developer program. For me, at least the future looked good. However, like all good things in my life there always seemed to be trouble waiting for me.

Loss

Just a couple of weeks into my new job, my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her decline hadn’t been pleasant to experience and before she was diagnosed she’d been struggling with shoulder pain that left her crying until the doctor could come and give her a shot of painkillers. Eventually it became too much for both of us. She was booked into hospital in a few weeks time… but that was too far away. I learned then a painful but valuable lesson.

The doctor could do nothing to have her admitted more quickly. I visited the hospital. No, they could do nothing either…it was a non urgent case of painful arthritis.  Yet it was all too much to bear…I was in tears when a male nurse took me to one side and explained something…

They’re letting you look after her. She’s dependent on you. You want to know how to get her into hospital quickly? Refuse. Just tell the doctor you’ve had too much and you’re moving out.

Basically, I was going to have to play poker with my granny. But I went straight from the hospital to the doctor’s surgery and insisted I saw him. Three hours later, an ambulance arrived.

The next day they discovered the pain was caused by secondary metastasis (I think that’s the correct term, I’m writing this on a plane). She had advanced lung cancer that had spread through her body. She had less than a week left.

There was a dull, hollow ache inside me. I wasn’t close to my mother since I’d not lived with her for 14 years and besides, her and her new family had moved to Spain two years earlier – something that at the time had left me less than impressed.

I had my friends, Linda and Peter especially who were wonderfully understanding. And that weekend, my father’s summer job finished and he was able to arrive.

So he signed over everything. It was down to me to deal with the estate. There wasn’t much there, to be honest, and a lot of debt.

My father had his tickets for South America booked a long time earlier…in this time air travel was still relatively expensive and inflexible. I later learned that airlines usually aren’t so bad in cases of bereavement. I think he could have changed flights.

But he didn’t and just a few days later he was gone.  Two days after that I buried my grandmother.

What’s crazy is that in all this I even managed to redecorate the lounge in time for the funeral, thanks to my friend Linda. It was important that in death everyone saw the best in my grandmother…

Losing Trust in Everyone

Soon after the vultures were circling…I couldn’t take over the mortgage or I’d have to pay off all debts, and I couldn’t get a new mortgage at such a young age and such little credit history…especially on a shared ownership house like this.

You see, what happens with a debt secured on property is that you hand over all rights to the lender. If you fail to keep up repayments the lender can take possession.  The lender will then sell it.  If a profit happens to be made then that’s great for the lender. They keep the money.

In fact, some even have a policy of quick repossessions during a buoyant market.

In retrospect I believe I was badly advised.  But lacking support just trying to hold down a job and simply live right was enough to occupy me.  When I was evicted from the house I lost my faith in society, my parents (sorry Mum…but you later won it back, so that’s ok, trust me) and everyone except my friends.

The council couldn’t help – I was told a single male would be at the bottom of the waiting list for social housing.

I didn’t want my fathers’s help and, by the dubious measure of taking out a loan to pay the deposit on a tiny studio flat, I had a place to live.  While this was happening my father was made redundant from his summer job and announced he was going to stay in South America.

Having discovered financial wizardry I even managed to buy myself a niceish car I couldn’t afford on credit.  Life had been hard, but now, I felt, it was improving.

Two months later I received a letter from my father asking for help – he said he’d been robbed of all his money and needed the money I owed him (I think he believed there was money in his mother’s estate) and could I send £1500 as soon as possible.

I had about £30 in the bank.

The next six months were hell as I sent over dribs and drabs in response to his increasingly strident letters, but I remember one triumphant moment. I’d been caught at work calling the Chilean embassy. I was in trouble until the reasons were explained to a senior manager.  He put me in touch with the right people and before I knew it the Foreign Office offered a loan to help repatriate my father.

I’d done it.  He was going to be ok.  I’d sent as much as possible to him, borrowing money, trying to sell what I could legitimately sell… but it amounted to no more than around £600 over the months.

I went out and bought a £15 phone card to give the good news.

Son… I thought you had a good job? I need the money why don’t you have any?!

I told him it was no problem… I could get him home!  I explained the loan.

What use is that? I’d be in the same situation, but in England…it’s much cheaper to live here

He was angry.  And I remembered all those times he’d been angry before.  The card ran out cutting him off mid-sentence.  It was over. I was never going to speak to him again.  I realised he hadn’t been asking me for help…he’d been asking me for money, that’s all.

Since then I stopped responding to his letters. I’d been struggling with the flat so I sold up and moved into a room.  We lost contact.

Update 29-08-2010: I was reading through his letters yesterday and realised that I’d found the solution of a loan for repatriation earlier than I thought I had.  I’d simply brought it up again during that last phone call and he essentially repeated what I’d said.  I also think I’d continued to send him money for a while, but remained mute.

In 2001 I managed to find out that he’d renewed his passport in Quito in 1997, but that was all I had. In 2006 I was invited to a wedding in Lima, Peru, and took that as an opportunity to try and find him.  I got close…searching the town of Arica in the far north of Chile.  But if he saw the notices he didn’t respond. If he’d even searched Google he’d have found me for years and years.  I even put a page up about him which was good enough for my estranged sister to find me with this year.  In the end I reached the conclusion that he no longer wanted to find me.

And then the knock on the door in the early morning. I don’t know why the police do it that way.  The officer was perfect…knew exactly how to break the news. Quickly, succintly, followed by the detail. He’d died on the 19th of July in a hospital in Arica, Chile.

I’m going to wrap this up now…it’s an awfully long piece to type entirely by phone and my fingers are aching. Hopefully I’ll be able to post it up on arrival to Lima.  More soon… my plan is to document this trip, my feelings and my need to find reconciliation wherever possible.  Sharing helps.

WordCamp UK – Great Stuff + a Little Controversy

I went to WordCamp UK 2010 in Manchester… this is my write-up of the event, and its controversies along with my presentations…

I’m just settling in at the office having spent the weekend at WordCamp UK 2010 which was staged in Manchester and is a community event for WordPress users and developers.  I gave two presentations, one about WordPress in Big Media, and another about WordPress in the Enterprise.  These followed on from presentations given at last year’s WordCamp.

The Craic

The second WordCamp UK Logo
Yes, this isn’t the logo actually used, but I prefer this one :o)

I’m going to say now that one of the key elements of a good conference or unconference is the socialising – this is where you meet people, bond with them over beers/food/dancing and form alliances that in the future could prove to be very powerful.  You certainly get to make friends and feel like you’re a part of an actual community, and this happens in a way that you’ll never be able to reproduce with online technology.  As a consequence it’s no surprise that the awesome Thinking Digital conference has been nicknamed Drinking Digital by some wags.

As ever,Tony Scott excelled himself by getting us access to the famous Factory Manchester (FAC251) which also happens to be across the road from a magnificently geeky pub that sells good beers, has various classic 8 bit and 16 bit computers adorning the walls, and classic arcade games on free play.  Awesome.

The Presentations

There was a typically varied range of presentations running across three rooms, along with other folk busy coding up for the WordHack (the fruits of their labours are online).  One particular stream that particularly caught my attention was that of a sequence of involvement from John Adams of the Department for International Development.  He ran a free-form discussion group on testing strategies which was followed by an interesting talk on PHP unit-testing Nikolay Bachiyski of GlotPress fame.  This session showed up some of the lack of structure in general testing of WordPress core code, plugins and themes.  Although the approaches used were probably fine for a publishing platform, they would struggle to gain ISO approval.  In other words, you wouldn’t want to fly on a WordPress powered plane!

Other presentations that I particularly enjoyed were Michael Kimb Jones’s WOW plugins, and Toni Sant’s very underattended Sunday morning slot where he discused the way WP has helped with a range of Maltese websites.

The Controversy

What’s a WordCamp without at least a little controversy?  However, for the attendees of this one, this was a biggie… Jane Wells is Automattic’s Master of Suggestion (seriously, that company has some weird job titles) and she made a suggestion that we shouldn’t have a WordCamp UK, but instead locally organised WordCamps for cities.

There’s a number of issues I have with this:

  1. Everyone in the UK knows that quite quickly WordCamp London would be the big one with all the attention in both media and attendance.  It would quickly dominate – in large helped by the enormous population density of the capital.  A WordCamp UK in London would be fine and popular (also considerably more expensive) but that’s all that’s needed.
  2. Many British cities have intense rivalries whilst we all still stand together as a nation – there are folk in Glasgow who would never attend a WordCamp Edinburgh, but would definitely be more interested in a WordCamp Scotland.  End result?  Cities would have small attendances by and large, and our impressive capacity for indifference for minor events would mean that they’d end up as little more than tiny, cliquey gatherings.  Anyone who’s tried to run GeekUps will understand this problem.
  3. A lot of work, energy and our own money has been spent on building up WordCamp UK.  Is Jane seriously suggesting we should dump that?
  4. What is Jane’s authority on this?  She’s simply an Automattic employee.  We chose WordCamp UK and its structure – it’s ours.  If someone else wants to run a WordCamp UK in the country they’re perfectly entitled and there’s no real reason why we couldn’t have three or four running each year – that would be a huge success.  A highly capitalistic organisation that is just one of thousands of contributors to the project and which plays no part in actually running most WordCamps shouldn’t get so involved.
  5. The UK is also very small – 90% of the population can reach all past WordCamp UKs in less than 3hrs – there is no real problem about accessibility.
  6. None of the UK’s key WordPress community members want to give up WordCamp UK.
  7. Jane admitted only six or seven people had complained to her about the situation, two of which turned out to be in Ireland – which except for a small part isn’t in the UK at all.  She couldn’t confirm whether they were Northern Irish or not, which was actually something of a poor mistake to make in front of 150 or so Brits.
  8. Us Brits are a pretty apathetic bunch at the best of times – actually running a WordCamp in each major city would be surprisingly unlikely to happen – there were only two bids submitted for this year’s event – one in Portsmouth and one in Manchester.
  9. The whole point of the *camp suffix is that it’s all free and easy with no big organisations sticking their oar in.  They are inconsistent and joyful.  They’re fun.  Automattic should keep out.
  10. The WordCamp name is not trademarked, and we’ve been using it in the UK for some time now.  It’s ours!

Of course, there are two sides to each argument.  Here’s some reasons and benefits to splitting up WordCamps in the UK:

  1. If somebody wished to run a WordCamp for their city they may feel that the UK badge is dominating and there’d be little interest as a consequence if it was called WordCamp Bristol, or WordCamp Salford.
  2. A national event called something like WordConf could happen.
  3. Erm…

Thing is – we can’t necessarily win this battle here in Britain.  We don’t control the WordCamp.org website – Matt Mullenweg does (he has the domain registration in his name) so if we fight to keep calling it WordCamp UK there’ll be no ongoing support for the event from Matt and his team if they wish to stop the use of the UK moniker.

Which would mean standing up to them.  Do we want to?  Are we prepared for a fight on this?  What do the likes of Mike Little (co-founder of the WordPress project) and Peter Westwood (a UK based core developer) feel about this?

Interestingly we were told the same thing applies to the likes of WordCamp Ireland which will now face this problem – but I wonder if Matt understands Ireland particularly well (we know Jane doesn’t) and that in that country the dominant WordCamp would quickly become an expensive Dublin event.  You may get one doing well in Cork, but Kilkenny, with a population of just 22,000 and which staged this year’s event, probably wouldn’t be able to sustain an annual WordCamp.

So, Jane has to really allow each country to understand its own social constructs and history and let their own communities choose how they do things.  One or two may complain, but it’s not possible to please everyone.

And we showed off too…

My company Interconnect IT have released, through our Spectacu.la brand, the following plugins which you may find useful:

I couldn’t help using the Discussion plugin to run some live discussion sessions.

And The Thanks

I can’t say thank you enough to the people who make WordCamp UK a success for no personal reward.  Tony Scott leads it up, with Mike Little, Nick Garner, Chi-chi Ekweozor, Simon Dickson and many many more working hard behind the scenes.  Also to Nikolay to letting me play with the fastest 85mm lens I ever saw!  Thank you, you’re wonderful people.

WordPress in the Enterprise Presentation

WordPress in Big Media Presentation

What it’s Like to Present and Attend at WordCamp UK

Over the weekend just gone I made two planned presentations at WordCamp UK 2009 down in Cardiff. I also threw in a quick 45 minutes of show and tell on the Caribou Theme that runs this site and is available for download from Spectacula.

Over the weekend just gone I made two planned presentations at WordCamp UK 2009 down in Cardiff.  I also threw in a quick 45 minutes of show and tell on the Caribou Theme that runs this site and is available for download from Spectacula.

I also got to mix with some very interesting, talented and cool people that know a heck of a lot of stuff about what we’re working with.  In this conference were, potentially, the next generation of web creators.  People who will make things happen.  And this year, more than last, there was a real buzz at the potential of WordPress, its markets, and its uses.

Presenting at WordCamps

Presentation
Presentation

I’ve never actually done a formal presentation in front of more than about ten people before in my life, and even then only perhaps four five in my life.  I’m a techie – I would do technical discussions and demos, but never with Powerpoint and a laser pointer.  I did do an unconference show and tell at Barcamp Liverpool last year where about twenty to thirty people turned up, but that wasn’t planned… it just kind of happened.

But I could also appreciate the benefits of putting myself out there in front of a room full of my peers.  So in a fit of enthusiasm I volunteered for two presentations – WordPress in the Enterprise, and WordPress for News and Media.  I expect one or even both might be dropped by the organisers.  I have no history or background in public speaking.

Both got accepted.

Damn!

But it had some great potential too.  I could play with approaches and actually ‘test’ the results.  So what did I learn?  Read on:

1. L-Shaped Rooms are Tricky

The main room for the event turned out to be L-shaped… or, a better description, V-shaped, with the presented at the bottom of the V.  At this event three rooms were in operation, a large L-shaped room with up to 150 people, a medium sized rectangular room for up to 70 people, and a small boardroom type for about 15 people.

I had expected my first presentation on the Enterprise to be the tricky one – it’s not a fascinating subject.  But it was in the medium sized room, and it proved very easy to get engagement with the audience.  In the L-shaped room you’re trying to look in two different directions.  It’s almost impossible.

2. Consider an Assistant for Demos

One can work the computer, the other can talk.  Saves awkward silences, and it’s something I’m going to try in a future talk.

3. Get in Early

I did one of the first, and the very last, formal presentations of the event.  I noticed that in the first everyone was wide awake and very enthusiastic.  By the end of the conference people were flagging.  Getting and keeping attention becomes trickier at this stage.  You also have the advantage that nobody ever wonders off from the conference at the very beginning – it’ll never be fuller!

4. Start Funny

In the Enterprise talk I started with a humorous quote and in the News & Media I started with a pithy quote.  The funny one got the mood lifted and people in a cheerful mood.  It gave me a chance to relax and settle into the presentation.

5. It’s a Great Audience

I was dealing with fellow geeks.  People in the same situation as me.  It was, frankly, the best audience I can imagine.  The few presentations I’ve done before have been up in front of a board of hardened and cynical directors, or senior management, or people who have tough deadlines to meet.  This was a whole lot more relaxed.  Nobody’s going to consider firing you because of a minor mistake.

6. Get Engagement

I noticed that speakers who asked for shows of hands, asked questions of the audience and so on generally had a better applause at the end than those who didn’t.  It doesn’t take much to engage your audience, but I’ll admit that it’s trickier when you can only look directly at half of them at any one point.

7. Be Prepared

At conferences opportunities come up.  Have business cards, listen to people, smile a lot.

8. Freebies

You can’t believe how the mood of a room lifts when you hand out gifts.  Good gifts though.  I remember the really rubbish calculators we got given in my ICI Systems days.  What geek in the world needs a calculator?  So I handed out the penknives we had made for Spectacu.la and they went down a treat.

9. Matt

I finally met Matt Mullenweg at the weekend.  I’d promised him a beer months ago in reconciliation following our (now seemingly minor) argument over WordPress’s take on the GPL.  So I bought him a pear cider and had a good chat.  He’s an affable chap, easy going, says ‘awesome’ a lot (but he’s American, so that’s normal) and has clearly listened to the concerns of WP developers about how they’ll make any money.

Funny hat tho’ ;-)

Summary

An ace time, basically.  I’d like to say hi to everyone I met, but I’m scared of missing someone – so instead, let’s just say I look forward to chatting and, hopefully, working with some of you in the not so distant future.

Here’s to WordCamp UK 2010!

Saab 9-5 Aero (HOT) Estate For Sale – SOLD!

Given that I’m selling my motorbike at the moment as well, you may well wonder if I’ve had some kind of financial crisis of my own.

But thankfully, no.  I just don’t need such a large and fast car any more.  When I was doing a lot of sprinting I needed something capable of towing a car trailer comfortably and reliably.  But I also wanted something I could enjoy driving as my daily transport.

City Commuting Doesn’t Suit Big Cars

And that’s what happened, basically – for the past 18mths or so I’ve driven 12 miles to Liverpool city centre, and 12 miles back – congested roads, with a lot of stop-start action.  In the end I bought a Golf TDI which makes much more sense for that kind of driving.  Although I’m tempted to keep the Saab, which I will if I can’t get the right price, I know that in reality it’ll get far too little use in the coming year or two.  The sensible decision, then, is to sell it.

So, here goes…

Specification

This is a 2004  (04 plate) 9-5 Aero HOT Estate with 250bhp.  The full specification items worth listing are as follows:

Bi-Xenon headlights, headlight washers, factory alloy wheels, factory CD/Radio, Nokia Bluetooth Hands-Free (works with most phones), electric windows all round, electric mirrors, heated mirrors, split climate control, dual-colour leather seats, leather steering wheel, lots of airbags (5* NCAP Rating), ABS, Electronic Stability Program, new Vredestein Giugiaro front tyres and lots of life on the identical rears, detachable tow bar, FSH (main dealer or specialist only), two owners (first owner the dealership as it’s an ex-demo car), 58,000 miles, 10 months MOT, Tax until 10/09.

The car is in a gorgeous Capuccino Black.  In other words, most of the time the car looks black or very dark grey, but when the sun shines on it you realise that there’s a pearlescent bronze finish.  The photos below really capture this, which took some effort as it’s not easy to show in pictures – normally it just looks black.

Damage Worth Noting

I’m nothing if not thorough and feel it’s worth noting everything even if it’s minor so that you’re not disappointed if you travel – the car has a couple of tiny dings from the careless door opening of others.  It has a small ding that’s almost but not quite invisible under the nearside rearmost window with a matching scrape on the bumper – that was a van in Paris that did it, and no, he didn’t leave details.  But I’d say very few people can spot these marks – I’ve taken close-ups, however, to try and show marks.  Also, one of the alloys has a barely visible kerb scrape on it.  Picture shown.  There’s a few minor and normal stone chips that could do with being dealt with by chipsaway or similar, but one left a tiny ding on the bonnet.  Another tiny ding was caused by the biggest hailstorm I’ve ever seen, over in Italy.  I expected worse….

Get in Touch – Price to be around £6200

If you’re interested, you can contact me through the contact form on this site, or simply call me, during office hours or in the evening on 0151 709 7977.

If you’re wondering whether someone with the word ‘mental’ in his website address and a history of motorsport will have taken care of his car… well, in racing if you don’t take care of your car you often end up with an accident at some point.  Or losing.  I apply the same philosophy to my road cars – look after them and they look after you.

Enjoy the gallery – simply click on a thumbnail to get the big version, and you can then move between images by clicking on the arrows that come up.

 

And a Deep Zoom Seadragon view of the under-bonnet area

 

 

And now, PhotoSynth

Yes, I may have been playing – I’d be interested to know what you think of this use of technology…

1999 ZZR600 (ZX600-E7) For Sale

Sadly, after ten years, I’ve decided that I’ve really failed to make good use of the ZZR600 I treated myself to back in 1999.  It’s the only new motorbike I’ve ever bought… and I’ll hate getting rid of it.

But practically speaking, I don’t have much use for it, most of my friends stopped riding years ago, and I’ve put criminally few miles on the back since around 2003.

So, it’s time to go, get my garage re-organised, and space made for my car based toy.

It will have a 12 month MOT on it within a few days, though I’ll only tax the bike again if it runs out before sale.  I’m also not going to give the bike away just because it’s old.

The bike is in near perfect condition – as you’d expect for something with just over 4500 miles on it. It’s still very shiny and, frankly, when I polished it up I decided that there was no way I was going to give the bike away for a silly price. In other words, I expect a fair value that reflects its ultra low mileage, the care its received, the way its been stored, and the condition it’s in. I’m open to offers, however, because I know that valuing a bike like this can be quite tricky. For the right person it’ll be a bargain. For someone who just wants something to go to work on it’ll be too expensive. Simple as that.

Mileage appx. 4700
Year Registered 1999
Tax July 2009
MoT July 2010
Service History Some, but not annually due to lay-ups.  DIY checks too.  Will service it before sale.
Condition Almost as new.
Scratches A couple of minor chips on the left (pictured), and small dinks on the left-hand engine cover (pictured) caused by a very slow speed incident involving my disk lock, a gravel car park, and inadvertently doing the splits.

Data Visualisation – and Me

I’ve always loved charts.

Yes. I know.

But well drawn charts are always fascinating. Now, combine a chart with what is sometimes my favourite subject, me, and maybe I could do something?

I’ve always loved charts.

Yes.  I know.

But well drawn charts are always fascinating.  Now, combine a chart with what is sometimes my favourite subject, me, and maybe I could do something?

I’m often asked what I did, when.  And to be quite frank, I struggle.  Stuff’s based on various hazy memories such as “well I was wearing those pixie boots back then, so must have been 1985.”

I wondered if there was a really really simple way of visualising the key things I did in each year.  I reckon recent years are more important than those long ago.  And to signify my general decline a spiral is probably the best metaphor for my life.  SO…!  Here it is, what I did in my career, in it’s most primary elements.

I’d be really interested to know if this works for you, or if you think I’m just nobbing about.  Comments, please!

PS. I know that the resizing’s gorn and made it a bit soft, but life’s too short to fix that – it’s just an experiment.  Sorry.