1,000 Days

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

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:

• Telstra opens Gurrowa innovation lab in Melbourne
• Telstra opens Gurrowa Innovation Lab
• Telstra partners with Pivotal, launches innovation lab in Melbourne
• Telstra launches Gurrowa Innovation Lab

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!