The McClure

On Saturday Liz and I were out aimlessly walking through Columbia Park when we saw some pumpkins out the front of the hall. On a whim we stuck our heads in and found it was full of families carving pumpkins!

Turns out that a community group (Friends of Columbia Park) was putting on a fantastic event for the entire neighbourhood. Come in, pick your own pumpkin and carve it using the tools provided. And while you carve, you can drink hot chocolate and warm spiced cider and eat freshly baked cookies!

Naturally, they were delighted to host strangers from another land who had never carved pumpkins before. So we carved, we ate and we talked. The kids were very helpful and they gave us tips on cleaning and carving.

Since this was my first time at this, I thought I’d document the process.

Continue reading ‘My first American Halloween’ »

Welcome to my newly re-launched blog.

Due largely to Twitter fulfilling my small message and social update needs, I have found myself blogging less and my blog losing focus.

From what I can see, this is not an uncommon phenomenon. Who else finds themselves tweeting more and blogging less ?

I decided to remove all the old posts and completely re-launch and change the scope of my blog so that it will be my voice for long term projects only. For short messages and social updates, I will continue to use Twitter.

Currently I am working on the following:

• Moving to America: Liz and I are in the late stages of moving to America (Portland, Oregon to be specific). I will document the process and the lessons learned, as I found this sort of information hard to come by, especially regarding the E3 visa. I did find some support and information though, which I will link to.

• Project Governance: I will talk here about why it needs to be done and how to do it well. I will also discuss various tools to help improve the odds of project success and how to detect challenged projects early.

• Coffee Geekery: I will document my coffee roasting experiments, bean/blend mixes and tasting notes. Also my experiences navigating a new coffee market when I arrive in Portland.

• Creative Writing: Liz and I are writing together more this year, and as part of this I will post some snippets and short stories.

Of course, over time my active projects will change, and like a good project manager, I will initiate and close each of them.