This evening marks the putting of my toes into the climbing kool-aid.  The water's a bit cold (I think I may have frostbite, in fact), but I think I may find I like it.

But first - the pain.

The skin on my fingers is shredded to pieces (or so it feels), and they're convinced that some of those grips were covered with sandpaper.  I've manged to drop cans (oh, the cool balm to my torn fingers...), shopping packets, and numerous other objects - my hands just want to be left alone to recover, and they will decide if that's by being open or closed at a particular moment.  I don't know if I'd ever used these muscles in my forearms before.  I know I can't use them at the moment.  And my toes are saying "I told you so!" after I tried to convince them that I could put my entire weight on them...

My more commonly used muscles are surprisingly happy - like that nice warm fluid feeling after a long hike around the mountain through the forest.

For two years now, I've been working just around the corner from City Rock, which seems to be the place to do indoor climbing in Cape Town.  I mostly hung around the bouldering cave, since that didn't require me to learn complicated things about ropes before making me cry like a little girl.

There's both a lot of technical/physical skill and mental/logical skill involved in climbing, is what I learned.  I found myself all too often clinging precariously to a wall (thankfully only a metre or two up) with no idea what to do next.  The toe hold being a few centimetres too far away, or the hand hold in a place that wouldn't sustain me for long.  When you're actually on the wall, your body obstructs a lot of your view - so planning a number of steps ahead is vital.

Even when you do have it figured out, you're not through it yet.  Even with an exact set of steps, holds, and moves, your mind and body often just offer an "You want us to do what?!".  It's not only about having the strength in your muscles (I was quite surprised by how much is available when you convince your body that holding on is preferable to falling down), but having the will to command yourself to execute the next step on the programme - knowing that chances are you'll fail the first few times to make each and every one of those steps.  And fail every once in a while to do a step you've done flawlessly the previous twenty times...

Then, I'd watch Bryn steamroll his way through a complicated set of hold changes, elevation changes, and scary pirouetting his entire body weight on a single toe to swing across an area of wall that matched my furthest unbroken trip on the wall...

So far, climbing strikes me as a combination of the mind game of chess and the sheer exhaustive madness of a game of squash played against someone just a little better than you - by force of will, you can throw your body that one step further to reach that ball to keep you in the game.  I get the feeling that once you have achieved a certain level of proficiency in climbing, the rhythmic fluidity of swimming would make up a large portion of a climb.

So, I'll be back at City Rock - probably to buy a month pass, and go on one of their basics training courses.  I hate to get all hindsight-is-all-20-20, but I wish I'd done this sooner.  I've spent two years practically next-door to this place, and I've spent much of my time sitting within three metres of climbers at Jam (I'll leave other almost-missed-opportunities and the bodily pain from the Christmas party for another post).  Thankfully, CareerJunction is just a few hundred metres away as well, and hopefully Bryn and I will seek to cause the other pain by keeping a regular schedule in the new year.

Management and organisational psychology guru Bob Sutton had a pretty well timed post on not only getting talented individuals, but getting groups of people who work together - Fight the War for Talent Right: Bring Aboard Intact Teams and Networks.

As I mentioned before, I'm going to be joining CareerJunction at the same time as my current team-mate Bryn is joining them.

Leaving Jam Warehouse was the hardest work-related decision I've had to make before, and the continuing wins of the KnowledgeTree team and the solidifying of the team after some group facilitation (and some only recently-begun friendships) has certainly made me question whether I made the right decision (that's a behaviour I'll allow only for as long as I'm doing my notice, and then I'll revert to my never-look-back attitude).

But, as I've watched the team start getting into gear, I've also had this growing sense of excitement about the future.  And much of that is the comfort and stability of having Bryn being along for the ride.  We've already sorted out many of the problems two people of our personality types have when they meet, and I already trust his abilities.  And I know I'll have a friend when I start in the new environment - and I know that it takes me quite some time to make friends.

But, taking this idea further, I've always been astounded by how brilliant some of the people I've worked with are.  I've managed to keep in touch with many of them, and others I just bump into every few years.  I've been keeping a list of them - my "Dream Team".  With only one exception, each job I've been at has introduced me to at least one more member of my Dream Team.  At perhaps the least enjoyable job, I met four of them.

I've been warned about putting together a brilliant team without infrastructure (and, you know, a reason for them to be together), but the idea of getting together some (or all!) of the Dream Team for a project has me very excited.  So, I'm starting to plan my life around starting a company in 2009 to do something with my Dream Team.

The next step is just figuring out what that something is...

The esteemed leader of our esteemed "official opposition" has finally realised that he's outlived his effectiveness (in my opinion at least four years after that was obvious to me), and that the DA (in the mind of many voters, if not in reality structure-wise) was falling into a cult of personality:

"There is a danger, over time, that no matter how healthy or vigorous the internal workings of an organisation ... the identity and branding of the party will be almost completely absorbed into the identity and personality of its leader," Leon said.

As much as I consider Tony and some of the DA (Douglas Gibson comes to mind) as media attention grabbers, this almost has me thinking Tony sees the forest from the trees.  Has Tony been the Beast Rabban, setting the stage for a Feyd-Rautha to come with a subtler and more acceptible approach?

Apparently, there's a leaked party document that matches many of my views of the DA (and that in itself probably invalidates it): 

This is the crux of a leaked party document that criticises the party for neglecting black issues and promoting white interests, a strategy that - under Leon's leadership - saw membership growing to two million and improving its performance in elections.

... the leaked document - penned in part by chief executive and strategist Ryan Coetzee - painted a bleak future if the DA continued on its current tactical path.

Is Ryan Coetzee then making a power play?  Which could be quite ironic, since apparently he was behind the "Fight back" campaign...

Also mentioned as a contender by DA insiders yesterday was party CEO and MP Ryan Coetzee. While Coetzee is young and has been an MP only since 2004, he has worked closely with Leon for many years.

He was at the heart of the infamous “fight back” election strategy and has been an official spokesman for the leader and DA election campaign strategist.

Joe Seremane seems the only hope for a black leader of the party, opposed by a bunch of white faces (to mimic the DA's leadership page with Joe surrounded by 16 white guys) -  other mentioned include Coetzee and Helen Zille (although parting her with Cape Town might not be the best move).  Joe may have an advantage here - those within the party who aren't keen on a black leader might split their votes over the others...

Helen Suzman thinks a black leader for the DA is a good idea, although I was surprised she explicitly said man:

"I will like to see a strong liberal black man in charge. Not a guy who play games with the government, that will be good for South Africa,” said Suzman.

Interesting times, then.  So far, someamongus has some coverage.

Another Esther Derby article - Incorporating part-time team members, discusses the pressures of being on multiple teams and how hard it is to truly become part of any of them without help from the team itself.

When someone works on a team part time, he is by definition missing part of the context of the team. While the part-timer is off doing something else, the full-time team makes decisions, solves problems, and exchanges information. While the full-time team may document and transmit major events, there are numerous small decisions and communication events that may not seem important enough to pass along but still affect the way the work is done. The adage "You never step in the same river twice" fits this situation. Each time the part-timer re-enters the team, the team has inevitably moved on from the last time the part-timer participatedaaa.

For the first time, I think I've recently felt empathy for people in this situation, and from there realised just how often this has been a problem in my work experience, and how I hadn't realised that this had been a problem with a particular period of time a few years back for me.  The past two months or so have been full of these sorts of realisations for me - and hopefully I can use the opportunity well.

I've been reading Esther Derby's web log for a long time, but recent events have led me to apprectiate her focus on building successful environments and enhancing team collaboration skills.  A recent post covers something I've identified I've had a problem with - "helping" people in ways that don't actually help the person I'm supposedly helping.  In particular:

And face your own motives:

Did you really want to help that person, or did you want them to do it your way?

I've always had a hard time delegating - trusting that people can achieve something within parameters I set myself - when I think something is important.  Whether that's doing the work or having them come up with the way to do the work.  I've heard the first step to fixing the problem is accepting that you have the problem...

When you've fallen for the patents are good argument, you start to say silly things:

Just under 20% of all research and development spend by companies in 2001/2 – with a similar figure the following year – was spent on ICT. However, there is no indication of what value is added to the country through this expenditure. 

Oh?  No indication?  What do you mean?

Paterson says there is no doubt that R&D is happening in the sector, but seems to be happening at company level and there is no resultant flow through into patents.

...

Looking at the European Patent Office, Paterson notes in the paper that ICT-related patents are growing more rapidly than overall applications, with the notable exception of ICT patents locally...

Really?  No flow into patents in ICT?  Low growth of patents in ICT locally?  Well, maybe it's because South Africa (thankfully) doesn't (yet) recognise software patents?  So, any patents in ICT in the country would have to be for things like hardware?

“We should look at whether SA wants to encourage R&D that leads to income generation through patents.” 

I hope not.  I hope we have higher standards than to fall into the software patent trap.  We have a lot more to lose than to win if we start to recognise software patents - the rest of the world will be able to prevent South African companies from doing obvious things that they already do, leading to a large outflow of money overseas for no real benefit.

In late-mid-December, I'll be leaving Jam Warehouse and my position as lead developer of KnowledgeTree.  Mostly (and especially earlier) it's been a fun ride - great people (Brad being the only one of whom I know with an active personal web log), interesting challenges, and gaining ever more perspective on how to and not to do software development, open source community management, marketing, and management, especially around the start-up stage of a product and group of people.

In January, I'll be starting at CareerJunction (you may recall me posting about them looking for developers).  I'm incredibly excited at the idea of writing Python full-time, and working in a larger team, and not being the sole "the buck stops here" person.

And it seems it should be an easier-than-usual move, since my current KT colleague Bryn also applied for a job there, and we'll be starting there at the same day. 

"This is a foreign action imposed on Africa," Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed told Reuters in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, where powerful Islamists control the south of the country. "This is not something that is indigenous to Africa, it is something that has come from abroad."

Sharif, I agree with you entirely.  Will I be seeing you converting from Islam soon, since it too is a foreign action imposed on Africa?  (Not that Christianity or the other major world religions are an option, since they suffer the same problem.)

(Quote from an M&G article on African reactions to the South African parliament passing a same-sex marriage^Wunion bill.)