3 years on, break out the leather, crystal or glass

Posted: January 13, 2017 | Author: frankarr | Filed under: Personal, Telstra, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Each year I do a little retrospective post marking my work anniversary, and today I it’s time to continue the tradition.

First up here’s some of those previous posts covering my time at Telstra

During the last 12 months, I’ve gone from working on the Telstra API Strategy to moving to the Innovation team, in the Chief Technology Office.

Along the way, I picked up new duties and am responsible for people again. I really like being a “people leader”, helping develop, coach, mentor, inspire. I even had a ‘grad’ to tend to and Serina (aka gilly) has been absolute delight. Maybe you have read some of her stories — GovHack 2016, My week with … A bot, Techfugees for Young people: #hack4refugees, A world of code. Her time with me is coming to an end, so I wish Serina all the best with the next step of her career.

I really like working with grads, and since Telstra has a well structured graduate program I look forward to contributing to that.

Something else I like, is being involved with Muru-D, and last year #SYD3 was full of amazing young companies. I got to work closely with Simpla and Cuberider – seriously, how amazing was it to see Cuberider send Australia’s first payload to the ISS!! I was involved in the recent SYD4 bootcamp and look forward to seeing the next batch come through! And what a legacy Annie Parker is leaving behind, but can’t wait to see what Lighthouse becomes!

There’s a bit of theme – one of nurturing, mentoring, curating, advising & inspiring and these are all the things that get me going and inspire me. So, can’t complain about that!

Oh and the leather, crystal, glass reference – it’s the suggested three year anniversary gifts

We Want You! Hustler, Hacker, Hipster

Posted: December 5, 2016 | Author: frankarr | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

wwu2

I just passed my 90 days in Telstra’s Chief Technology Office (CTO) based out of the Gurrowa Innovation Lab in Melbourne.

It’s been a full-on period which included revisiting our WHY (thank you Simon Sinek)

So now that we have a better idea of our WHY, we’re looking for a few special folks to come join us.

We are on the hunt for a community manager, who will be “our face” to the community. From running tours, to hosting events and making the connections between all the diverse communities that Telstra is part of; and they need a bit of hustle.

We also need an innovation hacker, a cross between a “hacker” and a “hipster”, who can use digital marketing tools and techniques to drive rapid experimentation, which will help test & validate ideas.

These folks will be joining a growing team of entrepreneurial minded people, including Facilitation and Design specialists who believe that by working together, we can discover the insights and technologies that will pay dividends back to Australian businesses, and reaffirm our nation’s position on the world stage as a bold and vital innovator.

So if you think you’re part of this dream team, based in Melbourne, reach out and tell us why.

1,000 Days

Posted: October 9, 2016 | Author: frankarr | Filed under: Personal, Telstra | 1 Comment

I’ve just clocked over 1000 days at Telstra. It’s gonna get hard to play the “I’m new here” card now I guess.

It’s been a journey so far – kinda like the hero journey

heroesjourney

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

And to be honest, it pretty much sums up what happened in relation to the API Strategy work — A call to adventure, guardians, mentors, temptations, threats, challenges, revelations, transformations, atonement, a gift of the goddess and eventual return! Yup, pretty much a text book experience.

The journey was featured in a recent article at the end of July, entitled Telstra’s API revolution. It gives a great wrap up of the work to date, and acts as a solid record of what has been done.

There have been losses along the way, and I won’t dwell on them all but I do want to mention one of my fellow travellers – Bruce Carney. We both started on the same day – brothers in arms, facing the challenges together. Bruce is no longer with us – he’s part of a new journey with Aussie software darling, Atlassian, and I do wish him well on his next journey.

So I now find myself at a transition point, a time for a new story, with some familiar folks, and some new ones as well.

I am now a member of the Innovation team at Telstra, in the Chief Technology Office, located in the world-class Gurrowa Innovation Lab in Melbourne.

The lab opened in August 2015, with lots of great coverage:

The lab is the centerpiece of Telstra’s innovation and technology research capabilities. Gurrowa, which means Interchange in the Wurung language, signifies the interchanging of ideas that will take place in this unique co-creation space that will drive the new wave of innovation at Telstra.

It has been the location for projects, events, hackathons over the past year, and with the experience gained over that time, we now have an opportunity to fine tune the way it works and make it AWESOME!

So that’s the new call to adventure. What lies ahead? I don’t fully know, but I do know WHY we’re doing this, and that makes for a fun journey.

Huzzah!

730 Days & 23 trips to Sydney!

Posted: January 13, 2016 | Author: frankarr | Filed under: Personal, Telstra, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Today marks 2 years into my time at Telstra , and it’s really zipped along.

I even got inspired to get a “simpsons-style” cartoon of me – the orange hat is a nice touch I think.

Frank A

The last couple of these types of posts I’ve done have included a bit of a recap – 12 Months In & 546 Days so I will spare the look back, suffice to say a fair bit of stuff got done – some visible such as T.DEV , speaker at I ♥ APIS in San Jose, sponsor at Web Directions 2015, judge at Hackfood, author on Telstra Exchange; and some not so, but just as important!!

I also made a a video to be used for internal training – here’s sneak peak

sharing

Oh, and I’ve had 23 trips to Sydney over these past 2 years. Yes, I did the maths.

OK then, so there are a few things coming up that I am looking forward to…

Above All Human – I missed it last year, so I am keen to attend this year.
Muru-D Sydney Class 3 – I was at the recent boot camp helping some of these startups get ready and I cant wait to see what they produce!!
API Days Australia in Melbourne, March 1 & 2, with a host of great speakers

What else? There’s a few other things, but I’ll keep’em under my hat for the time being. It revolves around how developers took over the world and how we can respond to that.

And did i mentioned I’ve had 23 trips to Sydney !!

546 Days

Posted: July 13, 2015 | Author: frankarr | Filed under: Telstra | Tags: API, T.DEV, Telstra | 2 Comments

Embedded image permalink

Today marks 18 months I’ve been at Telstra. Feels just like the other day I posted about 12 Months In

The last 18 months is best summed up like this – the first 6 months was spent working on the API strategy, the next 6 months was to sell the strategy, and the last 6 months to implement. So we now find ourselves at the start of the next phase.

We’ve also been a bit public over the last few months, first at APIDays in Sydney, and then I ♥ APIS, which means we got some coverage:

I’ve also been involved in a bunch of hackathons – from participating in them, running them and being a judge

So, as I had said earlier, we’re now at the start of the next phase. The developer portal is open. We have a few public APIs, and we’ve have had great community support, with blog posts, articles, and code samples.

Great to see developers being open to using these APIs and giving feedback

Onto the next 546 days…..

12 Months In

Posted: January 13, 2015 | Author: frankarr | Filed under: Personal, Telstra | 3 Comments

It’s been 12 months since I started with Telstra. My pass still worked after a few weeks off, so that’s a good sign.

Telstra loves APIS

Anyways…. looking back on the past 12 months, lots happened …..

the group I joined changed names from GAP to TSG
got to meet some wonderful folks at muru-d
helped out with the pilot for codeclub australia
met a bunch of passionate API folks
went to SF for the I ♥ APIs 2014 conference
created the #stickercolumn
was a guest on the 100th edition of the franklyspeaking podcast
spent time with lots of API platform vendors – which has been strange for me, as I spent such a long time with a technology vendor
got to work with a bunch of really smart people
plus a bunch of other stuff that has made the past 12 months zoom by!

Enough looking back – time to look forward. Onward to the next 12.

So far the job has been pretty much inward looking, as we worked to get a API platform in place & get some APIs on-boarded to the platform.

But that’s all about about to change!

I have an upcoming talk at APIDays Sydney, titled “Telstra’s Path to API Enlightenment” and I’ll use that to describe the journey we’ve been on. (oh, and speaking of journey, I saw a great tweet recently by Aussienick which describes a similar journey)

Technology Project Management explained in one picture

So here’s to the next twelve months and beyond.

2014 in review

Posted: December 30, 2014 | Author: frankarr | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 22 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.