My Clore Fellowship starts in just over a week, and I’ve got lots of thoughts rolling around about what this means, and what I’ll be doing. So I’m thinking them through here… any ideas, let me know.

The Fellowship starts with a two week residential ‘course’ which consists of a very exciting programme of high profile speakers, training, and personal development thinking. I’ve been told that the content is non-blog-safe for the most part but I’ll be posting some personal reactions and thoughts I expect.

However that’s not what’s worrying me. Even with trying to cut down on commitments I’m still incredibily busy and I’m not sure how I’m going to manage to take two weeks out with little or no internet/phone access.

So my approach these last few months is just to get used to not having those things around and not relying on them. It’s quite difficult, but it’s certainly made me put failsafes in place for anything serious that might need attention. And I’m feeling quite confident that it might just be possible for me to not be around for that time and for nobody to actually notice.

However - the thing I am busy on is my new web startup. The work on Odadeo is absolutely on a roll at the moment. I suddenly realised this week that we were ‘polishing’ rather than doing solid development. Tasks have now come down to the ‘can be completed in under a day’ level, which is fantastic. In fact I’d probably be confident in opening the site up as a public beta today. But I’ve decided that that would be unwise without me being around, so it will have to wait a short while.

Meanwhile, Tom, our new community manager, who takes over from Jason now that he’s finished as Graduate Apprentice, will be taking care of the site. He’s been a member of the site since early on, and is the most active user on the site so far. He’s also something of an expert on fatherhood (if all dads aren’t of course) so it’s fantastic to have him to bounce ideas off. We had a great ‘mashup’ meeting this week where we pretty much thought about any API we knew of and whether we could apply it to dads. “Oh hang on. Is that featureland?” was our catchphrase for turning down non-immediate ideas.

So with suddenly being away for two weeks as of next week I’m making sure that anything that I am involved in is going to be handled. As always I have a backlog of correspondence to go through (nothing changes, even with Dubber’s help), but in the main I’m confident that the sky won’t fall in on anything I’m responsible for.

However, what about my little girl? I’m going to miss her, especially seeing her pick up new words and behaviours. And I’m guessing it’ll be strange for her too.

So, I’m going to spend a few evenings before I go, with a video camera, recording me reading some of my favourite kids’ stories so she can watch them for bedtime. I’m actually considering just putting them on Youtube and seeing what reaction I get. I think it’s a nice idea for any dad to do for their kids when they are away for long periods, and with iMovie you can burn simple videos to DVD very easily.

I’ve also suddenly rediscovered an interest in PlayDoh, which is great fun to mess around with before the day starts. I can now make a pretty realistic looking cow in about thirty seconds, and Imogen seems to love planes, cats, pigs and today’s chicken that I created. Good fun - another potential YouTube hit?!

Pete Ashton always says ‘a blog is not a diary’ but it seems to me that that’s what my blog is becoming, and is potentially going to become even more with starting Clore. I guess a blog needs to move and change over time, and now that I have Twitter my posting rate has reduced it’s nice for me to put together more prosaic ramblings once in a while. So continued apologies if you were expecting useful insights into Clore in this post.

In short - I’m worried about the time commitment, worried about how to support my family and lifestyle whilst taking a chunk of time out for personal development, I’m even worried about huge opportunities passing me by, but I’m also very excited about what Clore is going to be.

Tonight I met up with the West Midlands group of Clore alumni, and they set my mind at rest of a few issues, but also pointed out that Clore is going to be a total shock to the system. In one year 20 of 23 people taking part just quit their jobs to concentrate solely on Clore.

I’m not in the position where I want to or could do that, especially with a little baby coming in January. But what does that mean? Is this going to be as big a time commitment as they make out?

I’ve already decided to stretch my time on the programme over a slightly longer period. Maybe it needs to be longer…

Basically it all comes down to what happens in a week’s time. What will I learn? What will I decide? What will I decide I want to do? And with who? And for what?

Some big questions.

But my focus right now is on Odadeo and making it a success - growing the team to build on the beta we’ve been working so hard on, completing this phase of the project to timescale (we’re about a month ahead), and most importantly securing further investment to make the thing fly. I feel a pitch coming on…

Exciting times.

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