So what were the positives this year?

Podcasting

One of my long standing goals this past year has been to help more people. But with the pandemic, being out and about in soup kitchens and back to teaching would have exposed me to the virus a bit more. So with the help of technology, I started a podcast with 2 of most experienced and life rich people I know. The podcast is all about helping others through our life stories and experiences and a host of different topics to talk on. To date there have been listeners from Texas to India (so thankful for you all). Listeners have responded well, and this has been an incredible journey. Hosting the show, I must say has been fun, and I have worked with great tools to help me along the way. Audio editing using Audacity and Zencastr as our primary hosting and recording tool. 

Moving forward, we will be investing into this Podcast, we have more media channels coming (TikTok, Instagram here's looking at you kid). Video casts will also feature and audience interactions, so an amazing year ahead for this Podcast. Links to the streams below:

 - Apple

 - Spotify

 App store releases 

One of my strengths has been for a long time, technology. Creating, managing , producing projects that are of significance and high impact for clients. This particular application was for a client that wanted a more efficient way to manage client appointments as the old way really was via phone and written note. As one could imagine, that is a nightmare to manage. The app underlying technology was cross platform which made development and deployment workflows efficient and easier to manage. 

I must say, app store releases are a lot more involved than one would think, strict rules and a plethora of steps and procedures to make sure only the highest quality apps make it through. Certainly a learning curve here. Definitely looking forward to the next release, which is more tuned toward physio therapy. 

Learning never stops

The world moves so fast into the future and we all need to keep up with what is new. With that said, this year I identified that data analytics and digital transformation into the cloud are key areas for the future. I have completed some certifications from AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Stanford University. As more and more clients request innovations, the use of the skills that I have acquired will be put into practice. As it stands there are a few clients that wish to engage on these topics and we will see where these will go.   

Things that didn't work 🙁

There have been some work along the way which we encountered this year that unfortunately did not lead to anything. The key was to understand why this was the case in each of them. It seemed in each, there were never any fixed client criteria and buy ins, which meant there was never any targets and always meetings to "discuss" possibilities. Yes this was during a hard time of lockdown and most companies were rather cautious not to engage fully as a means to limit risk and exposure. The takeaways from these failures (3 of them), is that key buy ins and stakeholder management needs to be handled a bit better. We could have many discussions, but if clients are not willing to commit on the value that can be created, then we should not engage until they are. 

Along that which didn't work were biometrics applications, loyalty applications, customer analysis and analytics. With everyone of them though, exposure to different technologies and methodologies were always key takeaways.