I just completed two full weeks of working with my new employer. I have a great deal of flexibility and responsibility, and I’m quite happy with my current position.

I’ve been deep into SharePoint, working on a project with a client, and despite it being a good platform for some basics that many businesses could really take advantage of, the automation system of Power Automate is a half-baked, Kafkaesque system. It doesn’t seem to follow any norms or programming standards and just makes things up for you to debug. Debugging is worse, as the documentation is shockingly bad and, frankly, an embarrassment to Microsoft. I have an issue, and while I’ll find a solution eventually, basic documentation would have helped me understand “why” things were working the way they were, or even, perhaps if that same documentation was accurate in the first place, I wouldn’t have lost so much time.

I had a very full week this week for a couple of reasons:

One, I was asked to take part in a jury to assist in the evaluation of a group of my students in an aural assessment to validate their degree with an organisation that affords a European-wide equivalence. It is such a rewarding thing to see your students grow and develop into adults ready to take the next stage of their lives and careers. I’ve taught this group for three years, and the change in some of the students is remarkable. They will graduate this week, and I will be at the ceremony with them as one of the first to congratulate them!

I’m a little late with this blog for a couple of reasons, one being a massive hurricane passing south of the island on Monday. Whilst not directly affected by the storm, we had a lot of rain, wind, and a few other disturbances. Around 10,000 people were without power on Monday on the island, but they steadily got back connected during the day and after.

The storm, a category 4 hurricane, passed directly over Carriacou Island near Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The videos and stories coming from it and the neighbouring islands are heartbreaking and difficult to accept.

The end of the school year is always a busy time, finishing off the last of the lessons, fielding questions from students about the end-of-year exams, setting the exam questions, and marking exams and papers that have already been completed.

Whilst teaching is only part of my job, the end of term takes up a lot of space on the calendar, leaving me with little time to do other tasks. But it is such a rewarding profession at times that I can’t see myself giving up teaching now that I have become experienced at it over the last four years. Out of the three schools I teach in, two have already requested more hours from me. This is the dilemma, as I need to build consulting hours as a priority. With a little luck that might be about to change over the coming weeks.

I’d mentioned previously that I had been travelling, specifically I was in Spain for 10 days or so. Sadly I haven’t been myself since coming back and probably caught a virus or something similar that has affected my health over the last few weeks. I won’t bore you with the details, but it did culminate in a bout of severe dizziness and nausea. I seem to have gotten over it now and hoping to get back up to full speed soon.

Another week done with a flurry of activity more towards the end of the week than in the middle.

I’ve been working with a client, helping one of their clients implement some basic first steps in digital transformation. Conversely to others, when I talk about Digital Transformation, I’m being very specific in my definition. I’ve talked much about the uses and abuses of the term, and it seems that I am still swimming against the current. Anyway, back to what Digital Transformation really means for MSMEs.

It has been quiet around here for a while as I was travelling for a few days in Europe. Then, as soon as I got home, I contracted a nasty cold. It knocked me out for a good 10 days or so, and I’m only just getting back to normal. Not fun.

One of the things I enjoy as an independent consultant is that I get to work on some new and interesting projects. Sometimes, those projects are a little outside of my core competencies, but that’s what makes them fun. I’ve recently finished a market research/opportunity study for a small client in the textile industry. The business is struggling a little and hasn’t embarked on any modernisation since it was founded a couple of generations ago. It has been ticking along successfully up until now. Times are changing and it is evident that businesses that don’t modernise are going to find the going more and more difficult.

As you know, I’ve been taking Internet Governance very seriously for a few years now and have accelerated that implication over the last couple of years. One of the highlights of that journey recently was attending ARIN 52 in San Diego and remotely attending ARIN 53 in Barbados.

As an organisation responsible for the management and distribution of Internet number resources in the North American region, including much of the Caribbean, ARIN is an important cog in the system of good governance and community-developed policies. It’s crucial to acknowledge that the success of ARIN’s initiatives and policies is largely attributed to you, the users of these resources. Active community involvement in promoting good governance drives progress. ARIN not only helps enforce policies but also gives back to the community in various ways. It is present at a large number of Internet governance conferences, provides support for organisations working in that area, and hosts its open-to-anyone conference twice a year (I’ve attended a couple virtually and one in person. See above).

As I noted last week, I’ll link to articles through footnotes rather than inline https links to make things more readable, especially if you’re reading this using Dark Mode. I should look into updating the theme, but I’m not that disturbed, and to be fair, I don’t really have the expertise to mess around with Hugo. Perhaps I’ll take a look in the future, but for now, footnotes it is.

I had a very busy week with a lot of things coming to a head art the same time. Teaching, training, a corporate speaking gig and a couple of ongoing consulting projects. It took a lot of effort and concentration to get all the ducks in line to produce the work that was required, but I managed to keep it together and I feel quite happy with the things I achieved during the week.