We've just had some rather good news - and a fringe benefit of this is that I can share my favourite photos[1] of 2008 with you:

Mr Falletti and I took a top-secret 1-day trip to Seattle last December to present Future Platforms to Microsoft and put us forward for a very interesting piece of work. These things usually take time to bear fruit, but I can now reveal that we've won the job. It would be a chronic understatement to say we're all tremendously excited that the world's largest software company chose us over the competition.

My lips are tightly (and rightly) sealed when it comes to talking about what we're doing, and in fact you won't be hearing a great deal from me in the immediate future; we're collocating our team with MS for the start of the project, so we'll all be out of the country for a little while. I'll be able to talk a lot more about what we're up to in due course, though.

The one downside of this is that I get to miss Mobile World Congress (again), and LIFT (which I was really looking forward to). But hey - we're a service agency, and with the UK heading into recession it seems churlish in the extreme to complain about winning a large piece of interesting work from a high-profile new customer :)

Oh alright then, it's my *second* favourite photo, after this one:

Two of the most wonderful people walking the earth were married yesterday. Steve is one of my oldest friends, one of the crowd I fell in with during teenage years (mis)spent exploring the dingier indie/alternative nightclubs of Brighton. We've subsequently worked together (he joined Good Technology at it's first operations guy), lived together, and we train together at Airenjuku Brighton - where he and Yvonne met.
I was proud to stand at his side on the day and assist as his best man.

The wedding was appropriate and gorgeous, with the ceremony held in the Red Room of Brighton Pavilion, on Valentine's day. A tour of the pavilion followed, then a fantastic meal provided by Due South, and a knees-up at Circus Circus with a crowd of familiar faces, and some old friends I've not has a chance to catch up with in years.

At the end of the night, as the last few revellers prepared to stagger away, Yvonne did a reading - a riff on The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I liked it so much I stole her notes, so I could write it up here:

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what grade you are at aikido. I want to know if you feel a sense of pleasant exhilaration even though you're pouring with sweat and it's nearly the end of class.

I was to know if you can get up after a night of watching The Wire and still practice chi gong in the lounge before you go to work.

It doesn't interest me that you use Microsoft Windows. I want to know that you can use Linux, Debian and open source DSB (and other derivatives of UNIX). And that you can fix our home computer when all broadband connections fail. As well as the computer at my sisters, my mum, your grandfather, your dad and all our family and friends.

I want to know that you can eat half of the bar of chocolate that's in the kitchen, and leave the other half for me when I get home from work, even though I scoffed the whole lot last week.

It doesn't interest me if the joke that you are telling is funny. I want to know that you can laugh at your own jokes even when those around you look blank and confused.

I want to know that you can groove on the dance floor and that you truly like the shapes that you throw in the light of the disco ball.

Perfect. Joh (Steve's sister - oh Brighton, you are an incestuous little city) has posted the reading she gave at the service too.

W00t, as they say on the interwebs: I submitted my application for Certified Scrum Practitioner qualification a week or so back, and received news this week that I'd passed.

Whilst the only requirement for passing the first grade in Scrum certification ("Certified Scrum Master") is that you attend a 2-day training course, to get CSP you have to have been running Scrum projects for a year, and to submit a written application referencing a project you've been involved with, giving detail on all aspects of it: teamwork, success criteria, what you learned doing it, and so forth. My application was based around the development of Trutap 2.0 last year - 7-month project, the largest we've run from start to finish with Scrum, and one that pleased both us and our client.

My aim in doing the CSM training (which was majority-funded by TrainToGain - thoroughly recommended btw) was to immediately take CSP. I'm not a big fan of certification for these sorts of skills, but a test based on real-world project work would seem to indicate we have at least some familiarity with methods in both theory and practice. FP sits in an industry where most companies are emphatic about their "agility", often without being too clear on exactly what that means... so I was also keen to have some sort of independent evaluation of how we operate.

Not many people make the transition from CSM to CSP. There are roughly 30,000 CSM-qualified folks worldwide, but only around 500 CSPs; and of these only 30 resident in the UK. Hopefully this will help us stand out from the crowd a little, and reassure potential clients that we know our onions when it comes to this stuff.

Thanks to Ms Hunt for all her help and support along the journey - it's your turn now Joh! :)

It looks very likely that I'll have a ticket for LIFT, and a hotel booking (at the nearby Hotel Admiral) up for sale if anyone's interested... some upcoming business (of which more soon) looks likely to prevent my going this year. I'm gutted because LIFT is my favourite conference, but needs must...

If you're interested, drop me an email or leave a comment...

Once again, I'll be missing Mobile World Congress - and thus an opportunity to catch up with Dom, or to see a certain Google presentation and the attendant security- this year... and therefore missing the lovely Swedish Beers which Helen is organising on Wednesday 18th.

The last one I made it to (in 2006 I think) was up to the usual standards - i.e. an unhealthy percentage of the mobile content and apps world in a single room, loosening their inhibitions most pleasantly :) Gutted to be missing it again...