Tag Archives: Work

4 day week — I can live with that.

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According to this article on NewScientist

The four-day week could boost employment, save energy and make us happier.


If one really think about this, it makes a lot of sense.  In the state of Utah, they actually experimented with it and energy fell by 13% and employees were much happier, even though they worked the same amount of hours in the week. 

Now I just wonder if my company, IBM will allow me to do this.  Then again we can in any case work from home if and when it suits us.  It is a known fact that around the world, IBM only has office space and desks for about 50% of their staff.  The rest, either work on customer sites or at home.

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That ideal work/play/relaxing place.

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Now this is what I want.  I do not own my own house at the moment but the one thing that it will have when I buy a house, is a attic/loft.  I just love the feel and privacy what a attic/loft gives.  This one is not bad at all.

I am not a drummer so will replace the drums in the corner with something like a little bar.   I did say the attic/loft is also for relaxing and not just work.  Mine does not need to be as big as this one since I would not put a bed in it. 

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27Dinner & The Future of Work

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Wednesday evening I attended the 27Dinner and it was great to see some old faces and meet some new people Face to Face.  All in all it was a great evening of just socializing with old and new friends.  And oh the talks was great too 🙂

One of the questions I was asked over and over again when people hear I work for IBM, is what is a big corporate like IBM doing at a social event like 27Dinner.  Few people know that IBM with 400000 permanent employees is dependent in its daily work on social software, networks and communities. Each of the social tools like Twitter, Blogging, Wikis, Forums etc has an IBM equivalent inside.  Also we have social tools inside that I have not seen outside yet, but cannot say much about that.

One of my colleagues, Luis Suarez, has recorded a video on The Future of Work and the use of social networks and tools.  To give you an idea how he works – he works for IBM Netherlands, stay in the Canary Islands and report to 2 bosses in the United States.


The Future of Work by Luis Suarez from Luis Suarez on Vimeo.

The video is fairly long but gives a good idea what he thinks. In the video he also discusses the use of email – here is a blog posting from him on that subject.

The week that was.

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A while back I posted about Kimi that won the F1 championship or NOT.  McLaren appealed against the result of the Brazilian GP and the hearing was yesterday and McLaren’s appeal was rejected.  Kimi was then confirmed as F1 World Champion.  Congrats to Kimi and Ferrari for winning both the drivers and constructors titles.

On a personal front .. what a hectic week.  As mentioned earlier, I started a new job and what a hectic week.  I still had some stuff to handover from my previous engagement to  the person that is taking over from me so had to commute between Cape Town and Bellville a couple of times. Coming week will be more of the same and then things should start to get back to normal.  Good luck Margie with all the new stuff.  The new job is going as well as can be expected.  Attending lots of meetings and get to know a lot of new faces, names and roles.  A big plus is that it takes me now only about 10 minutes from my house to the office.

This all did not leave much time for social life.  I will try to get some relaxing time in over this weekend by going to brunch this morning to catch up with a friend.

My son is off to Stellenbosch varsity next year and he did not make it into residence so we are now frantically looking for accommodation in Stellenbosch.  If anybody know of something decent and not to expensive then please either leave a comment or contact me via my contact page.

Here is a photo I took earlier this morning from my balcony.  What an amazing place I live in.
Sunrise 2
Image:  Marius Bock taken with Nokia N80

Start of a new experience.

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Those that are following this blog and also follow me on Facebook will have seen my status messages that says:: “moving on”.  What is this all about?

For the past 30 months or so, last 11 at IBM, I was responsible for delivery of Application Development for Safmarine as a customer.  Friday was my last day doing that and today I am starting a new experience.  I am still with IBM but will be moving onto a new customer which is Sanlam.

Also I will be moving out of Application Development into managing a team that support one of the production runtime environments at Sanlam.  This is much more an infrastructure/product support environment with new challenges.

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