Seats at Wimbledon!

I took the day off on Monday to try and get a seat at Wimbledon. When I took the tour of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club (AELTC) a few months back, the tour guide said that you can usually get in if you arrive before 7am. I researched online and learned that 6000 lawn seats are available each day, and it's popular to camp out the night before. In fact, there's a "Guide to Queueing" officially published by the AELTC that even says they'll wake up campers at 6am!

I decided that I was willing to wake up at 4am (at home) and get there as quickly as I could. I researched the exact train times and found that it was easier to take the train as opposed to the tube. The guide specifically says not to drive, of course (no parking). 

There was a train connection that would have saved me 20 minutes, but I only had 5 minutes to switch trains and my first train left 7 minutes late. 

I started to feel the excitement as I was walking about 2 blocks before arriving at the club. It was strangely quiet and I was wondering, "Will I get in? How many people camped? Where is the camp? This is a Monday, and the Elite 8, is that a great day or a tough day to get in?" I did start seeing Wimbledon signs, I'm sure that was part of the building excitement. 

As I turned the corner and saw the club, I started to see people, but it was still relatively quiet. That's when I saw my first sign for "The Queue". That's the line for non-ticket holders. It looked empty, nice!

I followed two guys in front of me, they looked like they knew where they were going. It was another 5-10 walk to the field where everyone was camping. The red pin shows where I stood.

Then I saw the crowds, standing in a field. My heart sunk a little as it sure looked close to 6000 people and it was only about 6:20am. I kept the faith and followed the 2 guys and the guidance of many many volunteers. They had lined the field with letters a-z and each line held about 500 people. They told us that we'd receive a "queue card" with our number on it. I was 3916 and all of a sudden I had renewed hope of getting in!

Lots of volunteers walked the queue to sell things. It wasn't too annoying until it started being non-tennis related stuff, even then it wasn't bad. I bought a blanket to sit on, it came with a bag, a newspaper and a chocolate bar, all of which seemed like life critical items at the moment :) There were two very popular games in the queue, one was the iPhone game where you hold it on your forehead and other people try to get you to say the word on the screen, the other was handball or whatever you call the game where two people each wear a hard paddle on one hand and swat it back and forth.

Everyone was nice and patient in line, I think we all knew this was an all day journey. Approximately once per hour, we'd all stand up and slide forward about 100 yards.

On a side note, there were some parallels between the well oiled machine of Wimbledon and large organizations. They knew how to keep people happy and engaged in the crowd, and they knew how long it takes to move large crowds. It was a nice physical reminder that it takes time, planning and effort to pull off large scale change. It caused me to think about "open innovation tournaments" and if they might be effective at work.

Around 10am, the queue started moving towards the stadium. Sure enough, we were on our way in! They had built cool pathways with nice signs, as well as digital screens with games and trivia. They checked our queue card multiple times and the security checkpoint was almost as serious as an international airport. It was £20 to get in, which is a fraction of the face value for tickets, let alone the street value.

Once I got in, I went straight to the resell line. I had learned where it was during the tour. I expected it to be hundreds of people long, but I was number 50! I asked around and most people thought the weather, and the fact that Andy Murray was the second game, meant that we probably wouldn't get in until after 5pm.

The guys next to me were nice enough to let me walk around and watch some live tennis. I watched a women's matchup between Smitkova and Safarova. I'm sorry but I could tell during warm ups that Safarova wanted it more. She dominated the first set 6-0 and won the second set 6-2. Smitkova would shrug her shoulders after lost points and she did other visible things that seemed to prove she just wasn't on her game. Again I see parallels to work and life, I think it's critically important to prepare, bring your A game, be resilient and demonstrate your winning attitude. 

Then we had the standard Wimbledon rain delay. Took about 30, maybe 45 minutes. I checked the weather before I came and I chose not to bring a brolly since the chances of rain looked small. Good thing I bought a blanket, and even better that it's half blanket and half plastic-jacket. Play has resumed and I've made lots of friends in queue since were all half soaked and laughing now. Within the next hour or two I'll find out if I get into any of the big courts. 

One at a time tickets came out. They were mostly for court one and two. All of a sudden, even though there were 10 people in front of me, I was the only "single ticket" remaining. A ticket became available and I was in! I knew from the tv screens that the score at the time was 6-4, 3-0 for Andy. I was so excited, she had to remind me to give her £10 before I ran off.

I walked so fast over to Centre Court. It was something special to walk up the pristine concrete stairs with purple edges. The same ones I walked up during the tour, but this was the real deal now!

My seat was amazing! It was right in the corner, basically in line with the baseline. The roar of the crowd was fantastic. I was sitting there watching a game from a stadium that I've seen on tv from thousands of miles away for my entire life. What an experience.

I stayed for one more match between Djovokic and Tsonga. Djovokic was a pretty heavy favorite and the crowd was noticeably more quiet in comparison to the Murray match. 

I noticed a few open seats on the other side of the stadium. You know they only allow people to move in between every 3rd game and it's a very short timescale (maybe 2-3 minutes). After watching for a set or two, the crowd starting rooting for Tsonga and I decided to try the closer seats. 

The guard let me right in and I walked down to the second row! I say there in awe as I was eye level with two of the greatest players in the world. I could hear the hiss of the 130 mph serves. After 6 games, a guard came straight to me and asked for my ticket, so I apologised for moving down and he said no problem, just move :)

I went back to my original seat, which by the way, someone else was now sitting in. So I sat a few seats closer and enjoyed the last set where Tsonga gave a great effort thanks to a packed house giving him full support.

Then it was over. I knew instantly that I'd probably never have an opportunity like this again. I sat there for a few minutes to soak it in. It felt like being in little league when you win the championship, that emotionally flooding moment of "wow, I'm here, we did it, unbelievable, I wonder if it'll happen again, let me love every second of this"

To think, it all started because a garden tool broke and they asked the locals to attend a tournament to pitch in and pay to fix the tool. I love how inspiring that is. 

Family Dinners and Loseley House

On Saturday night, the family and I went to a colleague's house for dinner. We all had a great time, and the kids got along really well. It's heartwarming to spend good family time together with others.

On Sunday, we went to a mansion called Loseley House. There was a "food festival" in the gardens. The event ran all weekend, so I was a little worried that it would be shutting down on Sunday. It wasn't shutting down at all, there were about 100 tents and probably a thousand people. The food was great and they had good activities for kids too, in fact, it was quite a popular event for kids. 

I thought the food fest would be in the gardens connected to the house, but it was almost a mile away. They probably do own the land, but it's not like it was "right out front". We drove up to the house, which was beautiful, but decided not to pay more money to walk through the house and walled gardens. From the outside, the house and gardens reminded me a tiny bit of Highclere Castle (from the tv show Downton Abbey). 

We were home nice and early on Sunday and relaxed together as a family.

Trespasser on the Trains

There was a "trespasser" on the trains tonight as I headed into London to meet the family. At first, I just barely overheard a guard at a station as we briefly stopped. I pulled up a Twitter search and easily found up-to-the-second updates. Apparently a trespasser is anyone that jumps onto the tracks. A few minutes later, our guard came over the speaker to let us know what was going on. Twitter was a few minutes faster, and more continuous, than his updates. 

It was a nice use of social media that let me keep my family up to date so they weren't worried. Whilst culture and process are more important than tools, it sure will be nice to see organizations get information flowing this quickly, let alone knowledge.

BBC and the Royal Air Force

I was interviewed by BBC Radio yesterday, which was fun and exciting. The topic was Military Appreciation Week and they were interested in comparing UK activities to US activities. 

Let me quickly review how this came about... When I had my "UK new starter induction" at work, I went out of my way to meet all the other new people in the room. One person was joining the communications group. We talked about our jobs and it turns out that an Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) might really help her in her role. We kept in touch via email after our induction. Since then, I've seen her at lunch (aka canteen) a couple times and just said hi. Being in comms, she was responsible for Military Appreciation Week and when I walked over for lunch, she was the one that connected me to the BBC interviewer. I'm not even sure of all the KM examples in that story, but I know there are several. And I have a feeling the story isn't over yet, the BBC interview could open doors, or the ONA might lead to future work too.

Yesterday the Royal Air Force (RAF) "presentation team" was here. They travel around to tell the story of the RAF and inspire/motivate people to join. They bring 3 presenters and many short videos. I thought it was a nice presentation and I'm sure it's effective in raising awareness and membership.

I've been thinking about "inflection points" recently. Looking back, I think there have been certain time frames (aka time scales) where my level of comfort has noticeably shifted. I think it takes 3-5 days before you're comfortable living in a new time zone. I think it takes a week to memorise and be comfortable with a commute to work. I think it takes 21-28 days to "feel" like you're living in a new place (as opposed to some kind of vacation/holiday feel). I think it's right about that point, maybe a couple weeks later when you feel like you know what's normal and out-of-the-norm. I'm 10 weeks into the rotation and I think I'm just now getting to a point where people are comfortable to call on me for specific help. I'm looking forward to the upcoming inflection points, I honestly can't predict what they might be. Maybe understanding org dynamics, or neighborhood dynamics? I wonder if these points are just my experience or fairly common?

One last thought, I still haven't figured out phone numbers in Europe :) Some phone numbers are 8 digits, many are 11 digits, I've seen some strange ones with one less or extra digit. I'm sure I could google it, but it's more fun to try and decipher it through experience. I think it might have to do with leading zeros, and certainly proximity of physical areas, let alone country codes and extra digits for "dialing out" if at work. I'm pretty sure it's 7 digits all over the US, plus maybe a 3 digit zip code in big cities, so it seems a lot different here. Enjoy talking to people on thre phone when you make it happen! :)

London, Cronuts and the World Cup

My meetings were in downtown London today. I love riding the train and walking through downtown to get to the office. Hearing Big Ben is something special. 

Phrase of the day is "should do". You'll hear people say something like "good idea, we should do". I think it's only missing the word "it" at the end, but it's interesting to hear. Oh, another variation is "could do". I'm also noticing that a few words have a different syllable emphasized. We'd say "contribute" with an emphasis on trib, where here the emphasis is on con. Same with distribute. One more "in anger" means "in earnest" as opposed to "whilst angry and mad". 

The World Cup is over for England and it's interesting to hear their conversations and reactions. They're not angry, upset or pointing blame, they're more likely to say "typical", and go from there. That said, I do hear some blame pointed towards defence and coaching. 

On the train ride home, the group next to me were eating cronuts. I still haven't had one, so I had to ask about them. It was their first time having one. We had a good time chatting about them, they decided they were good but not as exciting as the hype leads you to believe. They were so kind to offer me one, but I declined. Builds more excitement for me :)

I've realised recently that "weather" isn't actually that common of a topic. And politics isn't as big of a topic as I remember from previous visits to Europe either. I'd say it's more about current events.

As a family we had a nice dinner at home, then walked to a playground that we hadn't tried before. My wife is always interested in signs (makes me think of Dan Pink), she found one that said "danger of death" right next to the playground in an overgrown, grassy area for power lines. I guess it was funny and scary. We stopped for some ice cream on the walk home, which I suppose is always a nice close to a good day.

Chips n Salsa

One of my colleagues from the states is in town for a few days, so I drove him around all of the local towns today. He's good at asking open-ended questions, so I probably did too much talking as we drove. I had drawn up a little map of the areas and I noticed he already had lots of notes too. He sent a nice thank-you note as soon as I dropped him off, so it seems we both had a good time.

For dinner we went to TGI Fridays. Quite an American restaurant of course. My wife asked if the had "chips and salsa" and the very friendly waiter gave her a funny look. He started to say there's a sauce with fajitas and he could probably...then we all realised at the same moment that we should have said crisps and salsa, because "chips" means French fries here. We all had a good laugh about that. The waiter really was great and we have him a great tip even though tipping is relatively rare here.

Remember how it feels to try something the first time?

When I was house hunting, I stumbled upon a lady on her way to the market. We started a conversation and ended up talking for at least half an hour, maybe more, it was great conversation. She taught me about the area and I pointed at the house we were hoping to rent. In good British fashion, we shared our names at the end of the conversation and she very kindly offered to have us over when we move in. 

We were outbid on that house and part of the reason it was unfortunate was that I wouldn't get to see those neighbors as much. Fast forward a few months, to Friday night, my family and I decided to walk over to her house just to say hi. 

She and her husband were grilling in the garden and when I said their names, she immediately jumped up, said my name, and opened their little gate for us. They welcomed us into their garden, whilst their grill was cooking, brought us wine and toys for the kids. Then they brought us into their house where we again engaged in great conversation. It turns out that the husband dabbles in photography like I do, and the wife works at a competitor in the defence industry. We chatted about everything from Calvin and Hobbes to collecting sand from global travel. It was such a warm feeling and our entire family had such a nice taste of kind, British family time.

On Saturday morning I woke up and realised that the sounds and smells of the UK are as beautiful as the manicured gardens. The birds were chirping, the garden tools were buzzing, and the smell of happy progress was in the air. 

Saturday afternoon was a special day for the area called Pirbright. They were celebrating their 800th "Scarecrow Festival". Or 800th anniversary of something anyway, sorry, I didn't read the signs very thoroughly :) It's a tiny little town with a fun field surrounding a circular duck pond. Hundreds, if not a thousand people, wondered around the fields which were filled with colorful tents. The tents had everything from fruits, to kids games to horse/pony rides, to smoked burgers and hot dogs. The playground and the quant city hall building were popular areas. I think I saw one scarecrow, so I guess I should have asked around to gain a deeper understanding of the history. We enjoyed ourselves for several hours and then jumped in the car to walk around a town called Woking.

Woking has a classic European outdoor shopping area. It also has an indoor mall connected to that area. We did some walking, shopping and exploring before heading back home. The girls are into buying books, toys and ice cream right now, so all three of those were easy to find.

For dinner we stopped at a Japanese chain called Wagamama. They're known for their Brutish curry. After dinner, we did my favorite thing which is the conversational walk home. There was a river walk right next to the restaurant, so we strolled that way and reflected upon our time here in London.

Spiders and a Smarter Workforce

I'm going out on a limb to say there's a spider problem in the UK. When you wake up in the morning, you can expect 1-2 new spiderwebs on your path. If you look around, there are spiderwebs in almost every possible corner. I'm not saying this is a problem we need to solve, just worth noting :) Oh, it might be worth noting that most people have a light cold in England right now. Lots of coughing and sneezing going on. Maybe it's the spiders fault? :)

Today I attended an event in London sponsored by IBM known as "Energising Life's Work". Nice event. There were over 800 people registered and I'd say about 5-600 showed up. It was a pretty standard approach (eg keynotes, breakouts), but of course the venue was London beautiful. 

The two main topics were analytics and collaboration. The twitter hashtag was #ibmswf if you want to see the back channel. The speakers and content were decent, they only fell into the IT trap a little bit. The final keynote was a national hero in rugby and British sports (Clive Woodward). He talked about knowledge management the whole time (without realizing it of course)!

Then we met visiting friends for dinner, had some great conversation and headed home. I was about 30 minutes early for dinner and I was holding a table for 9 people. The waitress and I chatted a bit while we waited. At one point I received a text that said they were 10 minutes away, so I mentioned that to the waitress. She came back 9 minutes later with a serious face and said "I'm sorry sir, it's been 10 minutes and you'll need to leave". I started to stand up, then when I saw her smile I realized she was kidding, so we had a good laugh. Continuing the joke, after dinner we asked for dessert and she said they don't have any. I was kidding and said "maybe there's some next door you could grab for us ", she didn't even smile and she walked away. I don't think I offended her, but it did make for a funny awkward moment :) We worked it all out as we left the restaurant, so all is well.

Great day, especially if I can now apply these new connections and learnings.

Close of play

Just a couple quick words of the day. It's not "close of business" here, it's "close of play", fascinating. It's not "tbd" for to be determined, it's "tbc" to be confirmed. 

Other than that, just good km today and some good family time at two different playgrounds.

Work Life Integration

I watched the USA Ghana World Cup match last night. I was texting with friends and family back in the states during the game. We talked about the broadcasters and their accents.  They sounded "northern" to me, so I guessed they were from the Liverpool area. Unbelievable that I guessed correctly, they were both from that area, guess I'm learning the local accents :)

KM is going really well at work, and even outside of work. Organizations and customers are truly starting to invest and see the value of knowledge flow.

I don't think I've mentioned how much "waving" people do while driving. There are many one lane roads where cars park in the road, so moving cars have to stop for each other and wave each other through. I think it might be 100% of the time that the other driver has politely waved to me to say "thank you", it's nice to see.

The car in front of me during rush hour had Ke$ha blasting over their radio. I'm a fan, so I thought that was cool. It caused to me turn on my radio a few minutes later. I think that's another sign of more and more comfort, if you can drive with music. Did you know the BBC has several channels here? I think it's at least 5 and it might be more. Each one has a different genre, eg talk, rock, classical, etc. 

It seems as though my daily deluge of learning is slightly slowing down. Don't get me wrong, I'm learning a lot every day, but 2 months in, I think I'm finding another level of comfort. I have to remember that my family is only a few weeks in, so they're definitely still in the daily deluge of learning.  We had such a nice family dinner tonight and it's all beginning to settle in.

Fathers Day Weekend

Friday night we went to the Guildford Spectrum as a family. We spent most of our time swimming in the wave pool and the water slides. It's a great spot for some family fun.

For dinner we had curry, which was a first for most of the family. Everyone loved it, so I think it might be something we have more and more!

Before I jot down Saturday and Sunday, here are the words of the day- a stone is 14 pounds (weight), I know I've mentioned that one before, but it keeps coming up. A fortnight is 14 days, which surprisingly comes up a lot and I'm seeing a trend (the number 14). They don't call it "take out" or "carry out" here, they call it "take away", and it's not a bowl of ice cream, it's a "tub" (ouch :) ).

Saturday morning, we took the pretty long drive to a town called Cheddar. I had been there before and really wanted to hike it with the girls. It was a great hike and we had a good time in the cute little town too. The cliffs are amazing and there's a bit of a stream running through the town, great stuff. 

We stayed in an apartment halfway between Cheddar and Lizard on Saturday night. I booked it at the last minute so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was great! It had a kitchen area, 2 bedrooms, and a view of the ocean. They had even stocked the fridge with some basics, amazing. 

Sunday morning we woke up and drove to a town called Lizard. I had also been here, and again, I wanted to hike it with the girls. It was about 65 degrees, we put on a little sunscreen (aka sun cream) and started the hike. The flowers and grass had grown a lot since last time! Lizard is a small Cornish town at the bottom tip of the UK, you can hike around the edge of the UK island to Kynance Cove, which is supposedly ranked as one if the most beautiful beaches in the world. The hike is absolutely stunning as you're walking along rock cliffs that fall hundreds of feet straight into the teal ocean. At one point my daughter said "this place looks like those beautiful computer screens when you first start up your computer" :)

We had a great time chatting on the hike and then picked up some lunch and Cornish ice cream when we got back to Lizard. Kynance Cove was even more beautiful this time by the way. The sand had come back after the storms and I think we were there at low tide to see even more sand. Such an amazing place.

We all ended up with some sunburn, but hopefully the memories of the walk prove to be priceless.

Mental models during delays

I was sitting in a bit of traffic yesterday and whilst it would have been easy to get fussy about the delay, instead I realized how lucky I am to be sitting in London traffic. "Surreal" probably isn't the right word, but I did have one if those moments where I felt like past, present and future were all coming together, and I was sitting there patiently, right where I was supposed to be at that moment in time.

The traffic gave me time to think about "good leadership". One of my favorite definitions of leadership is "getting the team to do what's best for the team, because they want to do it". Recently, I've been simplifying it to "someone I want to learn from". Seeing the great leadership here, I'm thinking about adding "humble confidence", "giving other people opportunities they dreamt of", "collectively defining the shared vision" and "making progress", just good ol' making progress. You've seen the book called The Progress Principle?

Few words of the day for you, envisage=envision, telly=tv, till=cash register, trolly=shopping cart.

Tonight we went to Holland Park and Kyoto Garden. Nice park of course and Kyoto Garden is absolutely beautiful. It's maybe an acre or two, so nice and compact, it has a circular path around it, the middle is a coy pond and a fantastic little waterfall. There's a tiny footbridge you can take across the pond, right in front of the waterfall. The story is something about a castle that was destroyed, the a Japanese man designed this garden in it's place, really really well done.

There were 2 hour delays on the train ride home due to "signal failures". That's relatively rare, so I thought back to how lucky we are to have this learning opportunity.

Flattered by Thoughtfulness

I forgot to mention something on the blog yesterday. We bought our tickets to Legoland online, several days ahead of time. The discounts are bigger and bigger the further in advance that you purchase. When we arrived at the park, we picked up our tickets from a young man that was giggling. I could tell he wasn't laughing AT us, so I got up the guts to say "share the funny story with us". He smiled and said "I don't get to hear the American accent in person very often and it just makes me happy, I'd love to switch accents with you". I thought that was fascinating, back to the "grass is greener" thing again. I felt flattered too, which was interesting.

The family went to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park yesterday. Their experience was similar to mine, it's a cool little (brand  new) town and the actual park is vast and relatively empty. Feels cool to stand there and think about the Olympics.

Last night we went to a place called Guildford Spectrum. It's a huge building with 4 floors (I think, or it might be 3). It has bowling, gymnastics, wave pool with slides, lane pool, professional ice rink, soft play area, many climbing walls, karate, coffee shops, outdoor track and field, and it's all surrounded by a huge UK park. Remember the show "robot wars", where they build huge robots from old car parks and then battle? That show will be filming there on Fathers Day and the robot was already there to look at, very cool.

We had time to go bowling and ice skating. The bowling was great and the ice skating was even better. After skating for about 90 minutes, they call a timeout, clear the ice, and professional ice dancers give a show, nice touch. We got back on the ice and sure we fell a few times, but ice skating always reminds me "it's not about how you fall, it's about how you get back up".

On the walk home my older daughter told me that she's been working hard to create a video game for me for Fathers Day. She's been a little stuck on some of the Artificial Intelligence, but didn't want to ruin the surprise of the game for me. Such an amazing feeling to have her think of me and work so hard. We coded together at home and enjoyed every second of it. We got closer to what she was imagining, but failed to get all the way there. We'll get back up tomorrow and make it happen.

Windsor: Castle and Legoland

We took the short drive up to the Windsor area this morning. We started at the castle. It had nice "state rooms", which are rooms like drawing room, bedrooms, etc. The tower and kitchen open in August, so maybe we'll head back to check those out.

We had some nice Spanish Tapas in Windsor for lunch, then we took the very short drive from the castle to Legoland. We had been warned about how over-priced Legoland can be, but we didn't think it was too bad. We had a good time, especially watching the young ones in the driving area, driving on the left side. The mini Europe area is nice too, lots of famous European buildings made out if Legos at a much smaller size of course.

It was absolutely beautiful outside today, we thoroughly enjoyed that and look forward to many great days ahead.

What sparks "grass is greener"?

The older girls are in London watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory right now, so the little girl and I are out enjoying playgrounds. 

Words of the day are "Nappies" and "brill". Nappies are diapers and brill is slang for brilliant.

It's funny, as I talk to more and more people in the UK, I think it might be human nature to think "the grass is greener" on the other side. I've been thinking Brits are more polite, but the locals here are convinced that Americans are much more likely to hold the door for each other and say please/thank-you. I wonder what's behind that perception, I'm sure there's research out there on it. I wonder if there's a way to spark that perception even when you're at "home".

Few more phrases for you since I hear them a lot..."Give it a go" - givt eh goh - which means "try". "get on" - git ohn - which means two people get along, friendly, not the dirty definition as far as I can tell. "really" -reh lay- what you say when you're listening to someone and really interested in what they're saying, you say it as a question.

Learning everyday

You know how you start to get comfortable with something, then after awhile you realize there's a lot more to learn? That's where I think I am now in the UK. I hit the initial level of comfort, now I'm realizing there's a lot more to learn and I probably should realize I'm not as comfortable as I think I am. 

For example, we're home owners now. We're experiencing all of the challenges of home ownership, learning about hot water heaters, dishwashers, etc.

Words of the day: oner, pronounced one-er. It's what the US would call a one- pager. "Not point 3", it's 0.3, we would say "zero point three"

I attended my first KM Cafe led by David Gurteen tonight. His model is slightly different from any I've experienced in the past and of course it's fantastic. I tweeted a lot of it at 

http://twitter.com/klowey22

The family toured around today and sadly I'll be home too late to hear about it. I heard it went well overall, so I'm excited to hear the details.

Internet at home!

It was strange not having an Internet connection at home for a few days, but we're all setup and running now! Now we just to figure out how to get these unlocked cell phones to actually accept SIM cards and then we'll really be connected again. 

Other than that, we took it easy today. Lots of good family time. 

Work is really picking up quickly for me and I'm turning in deliverables fast and furious. As I've mentioned, I truly feel an uptick in Knowledge Management and I do think more and more organizations are increasing their "readiness" to take it on. 

Mind Candy

The girls had a great time in London today. One of their favorite toys is called Moshi Monsters. Moshi Monsters are made by a company called Mind Candy and they're based in London. I wrote a note to them a month or two ago asking if they still offer tours (I saw on the Internet they used to give tours of their headquarters). They were so so nice to write back and say they don't offer tours anymore, but they can do one special walk through. 

The girls had a very special tour and loved every second of it. They even met the CEO for a brief moment to get his autograph. 

They walked all over the city. They talked about St Paul's Cathedral and lots of little sites along the way. 

First weekend together

We had a great family weekend. We walked all around Guildford and we spent a full day in London. The girls loved all the shops in Guildford, not to mention the easy trains to London and special places like the Guildford Spectrum (for bowling, hockey, gymnastics, wave pool, etc.)

I still use an app called "Time Out" to find special events in London. It recommended "Make.Hack.Do." this weekend, which was basically a mini STEMmerday. There were almost 20 hands on activities such as writing code, using 3d printers, playing music through fruit, etc. Great stuff. They were very excited about the 3d printers.

Then we walked through Hyde Park over to Buckingham Palace. We strolled past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with a quick glimpse of Westminster Abbey.

We made our way over to Hamleys so the girls could buy some Moshi Monsters. Then we walked to Trafalgar Square and had a proper British dinner there. 

Oh, from the negative perspective, we're struggling with our SIM cards on our phones, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. 

Good times had by all and here's to the amazing opportunities we have this summer!