Tom, a life well lived, and many diversified skills learnt. Mine commenced with a paper route in the UK where I faced the tribulations of meeting the demands of a customer base who had a need for a newspaper with their morning coffee, and then the evening paper to read in the evening in front of the fire. These demands had to be met regardless of weather conditions, and the experience taught me that each day would not always be the same and I needed to have a plan B for the unexpected, which remains valid until today. When I left school we emigrated to South Africa where I was employed as a computer operator with the responsibility of ensuring updates were completed prior to the commencement of business the following day, this required an ability to multi-task to ensure completion of a multitude of tasks within an 8 Hour window.
The baseline of meeting customer demand, ensuring a plan B, and multi-tasking laid the platform for a career in Business Architecture which broadened my horizons to look at the same character traits from a much larger perspective. This timespan of over a quarter of a century will remain as one of my fondest memories as we built repositories, gave insights, worked with multiple domain specialists, strategists and technical experts.
What skills do I miss? riding my bike and ensuring that the local neighbourhood were kept informed of local and international developments morning and evening. Oh well.
What is quite scary is the fact that we are living the next generations "good old days" as we speak.
Will they talk of resilience & sustainability as skills learnt during these times, or will we be doomed to witness IT skills as the only identified skills from this moment in time.
Tom, a life well lived, and many diversified skills learnt. Mine commenced with a paper route in the UK where I faced the tribulations of meeting the demands of a customer base who had a need for a newspaper with their morning coffee, and then the evening paper to read in the evening in front of the fire. These demands had to be met regardless of weather conditions, and the experience taught me that each day would not always be the same and I needed to have a plan B for the unexpected, which remains valid until today. When I left school we emigrated to South Africa where I was employed as a computer operator with the responsibility of ensuring updates were completed prior to the commencement of business the following day, this required an ability to multi-task to ensure completion of a multitude of tasks within an 8 Hour window.
The baseline of meeting customer demand, ensuring a plan B, and multi-tasking laid the platform for a career in Business Architecture which broadened my horizons to look at the same character traits from a much larger perspective. This timespan of over a quarter of a century will remain as one of my fondest memories as we built repositories, gave insights, worked with multiple domain specialists, strategists and technical experts.
What skills do I miss? riding my bike and ensuring that the local neighbourhood were kept informed of local and international developments morning and evening. Oh well.
Really nicely put, Robert - a great example of what I was hoping people would start to see in their own lives as they read the post. Many thanks! :-)
What is quite scary is the fact that we are living the next generations "good old days" as we speak.
Will they talk of resilience & sustainability as skills learnt during these times, or will we be doomed to witness IT skills as the only identified skills from this moment in time.
Interesting post as always.