1,000 Days
Posted: October 9, 2016 Filed under: Personal, Telstra 3 Comments
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!
730 Days & 23 trips to Sydney!
Posted: January 13, 2016 Filed under: Personal, Telstra, Uncategorized 1 CommentToday 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.
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
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 Filed under: Telstra | Tags: API, T.DEV, Telstra 2 CommentsToday 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:
- Telstra opens first public API to developers
- #I ♥ APIS
- The rise of API-ification within the Australian and New Zealand startup ecosystem
- Inside Telstra’s shift to an ‘API first’ culture
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.
- Sending SMS Through PowerShell with Telstra’s New API
- Telstra SMS API, python and git
- Using Telstra API to send SMS in ASP.NET
- Pun-a-day service
- SDKS.IO Telstra SMS (AUS)
- TelstraSMS-PHP
- Using The Telstra SMS API With Zabbix
- angular-telstra-sms
12 Months In
Posted: January 13, 2015 Filed under: Personal, Telstra 4 Comments
Telstra loves APIS
- 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.

2014 in review
Posted: December 30, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThe 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.
Daily Fitbit stats
Posted: December 30, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentMy fitbit #Fitstats_AU for 12/29/2014: 6,592 steps and 4.8 km traveled. http://www.fitbit.com/user/229VLQ
Daily Fitbit stats
Posted: December 29, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentMy fitbit #Fitstats_AU for 12/28/2014: 5,224 steps and 3.7 km traveled. http://www.fitbit.com/user/229VLQ
Daily Fitbit stats
Posted: December 28, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentMy fitbit #Fitstats_AU for 12/27/2014: 21,632 steps and 15.4 km traveled. http://www.fitbit.com/user/229VLQ
Daily Fitbit stats
Posted: December 27, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentMy fitbit #Fitstats_AU for 12/26/2014: 12,895 steps and 9.2 km traveled. http://www.fitbit.com/user/229VLQ
Daily Fitbit stats
Posted: December 25, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentMy fitbit #Fitstats_AU for 12/24/2014: 24,845 steps and 17.8 km traveled. http://www.fitbit.com/user/229VLQ