weeknotes 504 - sxsw, admin and balance

Last week was mostly spent in Texas, eating excellent food and in fine conversation with friends. I went to maybe seven or eight sessions in total. Some very good ones, Randy Farmer's session on reputation and the session on federating the social web were both good. The wikileaks session was fascinating too, partly down to Carne Ross' contributions. Mostly it was a huge mass of people and conflict. Great sessions were miles away or all on at the same time, at one point there were five sessions I wanted to attend, all at the same time. However the food and great conversation outside the sessions more than made up for the variability of the actual conference. I paid for an upgrade on BA to world traveller plus, thinking it would be as nice as Virgin Atlantic's premium economy. I was a bit disappointed, but my back appreciated the seat, so I guess it was worth it.

I'm still learning how much support a company provides that is hidden away. The IT department in any company has never been top of my list of useful things, but I can see the sense in Apple's Joint Venture programme. Managing my company bank account; paperwork from HMRC; and ensuring expenses and my accountant are kept up to date consumes plenty of time. I'm hoping to be able to carve out a week or so soon to build one of the app ideas I've had on a shelf for a while. Writing some more here would be good too.

That leads me nicely into talking about balance, that of doing the work vs finding new work. I've got enough work at the minute that I'm not taking on new clients until some way into April, maybe early May. However the meetings to get the work for later in the year take time to prepare for and turning those interesting conversations into something that I can invoice is harder with some prospective clients. I'm enjoying the variety and the larger client I have at the minute is certainly giving me something to get my teeth into. I suspect this balancing act will be a common state of affairs for a while.