2023. It's going to be MASSIVE.
New jobs and a return to DJing. 2023 is shaping up to be a hell of a year.
2023 is going to be a busy year if these first few weeks are any indication.
I resigned from my Product Manager role at Xero late last year. I’d been with Xero for 4 years and thought that it was time to move on, it just wasn’t the same Xero that it was, it’s a massive company now and has kinda lost that startup vibe it once had. It was definitely the best job I’ve ever had and I’m grateful for the experiences I had the wonderful teams I worked with.
For my next adventure I’ve joined Culture Amp as a Product Quality Coach. Culture Amp has been around since about 2011 and is an ‘Employee Experience Platform’ to help companies improve their retention, engagement and performance. A mission I can get behind!
The position leans heavily into my quality experience but rather than being in a single team, I’ll get the opportunity to be across a few. I love this approach and I’m really looking forward to contributing to teams delivering better product. I’m pretty sure my last year of experience in Product Management will definitely benefit, giving me a fresh perspective on what ‘good’ might look like.
I interviewed for the position way back in October last year, so it’s been a while coming, I’ve had a wonderful break and I’m pretty pumped to get started and meet all the people and learn their ways of working and understanding an entirely new product. Pumped.
Adding to that, keeping my toe in the Product Management space, I’ve taken on a part time role as Head of Product at Alfred, a health startup founded by the legend Ben Alexander.
Alfred has a mission of recharging humanity’s battery and helping to end all lifestyle related diseases. How might we do that? Well, Alfred is a system that makes being more self aware of your habits easy and building a community around that system to help inspire and support each other to make positive changes. That’s a lot of words and what does it all mean? Alfred is essentially a calorie tracking service to help you monitor your energy intake to make sure that you’re eating enough to be the best version of yourself.
Want to lose weight in a sustainable way without drastic dieting? Alfred can help. Want to make sure that you’re fueling your body properly after a workout? Alfred can help. Need to make sure that you eat enough to have the energy to keep up with your kids? Alfred can help.
Alfred does this by making tracking your energy intake as simple as taking a photo or sending a quick description through the app and our nutrition students can then estimate the calories in the meal and send the results back to you. It’s simple and effective and I’m really looking forward to contributing to helping everyone have more energy in their life!
I know that I’ve benefitted through being a customer of Alfred over the past year or so, getting a better understanding of what my body needs to be the best partner, dad, friend, human I can be. I’m super grateful to ben for giving me this opportunity.
If that’s not enough, on Sunday February 12th I’ll be dusting off the old records rocking the wheels of steel! It’s been roughly 9 years since I last did any form of DJing, that was for Academy’s 10th birthday in 2014 so it’s been a minute!
The gig is called Lot 34 at Hopscotch bar in Canberra. It’s a homage to the legendary Canberra club Lot 33. I can’t remember exactly when it opened but I think it was maybe 2001 or so and who knows when it finally closed it doors.
I was never a resident at Lot but I had my fair share of gigs and experiences there. I threw up on one of the owners at my 21st, I met my wife there, I supported some really great acts as well. it’s been so long (close to 20 years) since playing there that it’s all a bit hazy but I’m pretty sure anyone who was a regular also has pretty vague memories, but you just knew you were guaranteed a good time there, haha.
The big questions for me are -
Can I still even DJ? Surely it’s like riding a bike, right? How does all the new equipment even work?
What the heck do I play? I’ve only got one and half hours playing with Nash T, that will fly by and while going through hours and hours of old tunes, I am really struggling to choose the absolute highlights. There’s so much I could play. Do I do classic deep house vibes, Jackin’ house, latino house, big room house, French house, electro house, disco house, breaks… there’s SO much great music from that time, it’s pretty overwhelming!
It’s bound to be fun, though and hopefully I’l get to see some of the old crew and reminisce about those crazy times.
Will you be there? Do you have any great memories from those days? What are some your favourite tunes from back then.
It’s a massive start to the year, I can’t wait to tell you how it all goes :)
No mention of running or Fred Again! That's a first!
How fucking good!!! LETTSSS GOOOOO!!!!!