Long time, no write. It’s fair to say I’ve fallen out of the habit of week notes, but it’s time for an update. The last months are a bit of a blur, a mix of good and bad.

In good news, my daughter is about to turn eight months old, is thriving in all ways and is now at nursery. In bad news I have been more or less sick for the last 6 weeks as she brings home all sorts of germs. It sucks and I’m ready to be healthy again. Despite all the health issues I am debating getting back into running after a ten year hiatus due to knee problems. I’ve made the switch to a standing desk, and am enjoying it. It has only been a few weeks, but so far I don’t miss the chair.

In more good news in that in early May we had awesome vacation to in Südtirol. We stayed at in Schenna at this hotel targeting families with small children, and absolutely loved it. This place was great, and I can not recommend this concept enough. I do not understand why more business do not cater to this demographic. Besides the great place, we were lucky to have perfect weather. Bozen was great - Ötzi gets cooler the more you learn - but the highlight was the baths in Meran. Great facility. In terms of great European bathing, I’ve now taken the waters in Baden-Baden, Meran, Bath (the worst of the bunch by very long margin) and the Blue Lagoon and am working on adding Spa, Budapest, and Marienbad to the list. Good to still have tasks ahead.

We had another enjoyable #geomob. The best speaker award was deservedly won by Toursome, but the talk that generated the most discussion and thought since was about what3words. It’s a concept that is either brilliant or terrible depending on whether they’re able to achieve critical mass. Most of the #geomob crowd were quite dismissive, but having had the pleasure of trying to find meeting locations in India where addresses are not really used, I can definitely see the benefit - of course only if everyone uses it though. Next #geomob is on the 17th of July.

Unfortunately I didn’t make it on the speaker list for SotM-EU next week in Karlsruhe, but that leaves more time for having fun. Lokku’s geotechnologist in residence Gary will be speaking,  and we’re very hard at work on having something big to announce from our OpenCage brand. Hopefully we’ll get it across the finish line in time, let’s see. Regardless, KA should be fun.

We had a fun team dinner and drinks a few weeks back (which I write even though my performance on the ping pong table later in the evening can only be characterized as utterly poor), though the occasion was a sad one as long time team mate J2 is leaving us after seven years. Honestly I can not believe how long Lokku has been going, it’s amazing. My man Hrishi did an interview with me about some of our experiences for his new service Gini. Will hopefully be out soon and you all can have a peak behind the curtain.

In related team news I’ve spent too many man hours skype interviewing candidates for our India product role. Reading Indian CVs has been, well, interesting. Applications range from the highly qualified and competent, to the totally unqualified. No one can deny the ambition of the Indian job seeker, not their politeness, I have never had so many polite responses when rejecting people. After all of this, there is light at the end of the tunnel and we have been able, after much effort, to find several very good final candidate which leaves me very hopeful that we’ll soon be gaining the local knowledge we desperately need to take Nestoria India forward.

One final point on the work front - after many years of debate the team has gone live with a Nestoria dev blog where they lay out some of the many challenges we face (and hopefully some of the solutions as well). In general we’re making a big push to try to be more “open” than we have been in the past. Philosophically this is something we’ve always wanted to do, it’s always been easy to let it slide down the todo list. I’m glad we’re finally taking it forward, I blogged about our efforts over on the Lokku blog.

Outside of work, everything is coming together for the summer in Berlin, and I can not wait. The only remaining piece of the puzzle that’s needed is a childcare solution. I’m on it.

In bad news, more and more apps are refusing to work on my 4 year old iPhone 3S, but at this point it’s a point of pride and I will stick with it until it dies.