Gommit

I'll be at this event tomorrow talking about Vefþing.is and the potential government use of social media technology.

This blog has kind of taken the back seat as I'm reporting on the move, new job and related things on Twitter and Facebook. So do take notice of the right hand column as it's updated much more frequently than this main area. Time for a redesign me thinks

All of this stuff is up for grabs for half price. Less than a year of use and in good condition. I might be able to do home delivery in the London area for £15 extra.

Call Finnur on 0447766782176 if you are interested

A lot has happened in my life during the last couple of months.

If we go back 6 months to date, Gulla and I finally started living together here in London after 3 years of long distance relationship. I left my job and worked as a freelancer for a while and we moved to a very nice flat. I thought that was a big jump.

I signed on as a permanent employee at Pluck which was exactly the type of job I was after and a couple of weeks later we found out that Gulla was pregnant, Iceland went bankrupt and she had to move home cause of work.

Curveball!!!

Right, time to make a plan.

We looked at all angles and a decision was made a couple of weeks ago. We are going to build a family in Iceland and help rebuild the country. I have also always liked swimming against the current and no I'm not crazy.

I'm actually really looking forward to it.

It was a difficult decision and I'll be leaving a great workplace with awesome people who supported my decision and have shown great understanding. I'll also be that guy; the one that says "I was the drummer in that band before they where famous" and I'll be leaving behind some great friends I have met during the last 3 years.

On the flip side I managed to find a great job in Iceland (through Gulla's knitting club). I'll be joining a small startup development cell from the Finnish company Sauma Technologies (Sauma means sowing in Icelandic) based in Iceland and work on building a massively multiplayer browser based came called Hours of War.

I'm also finally going to have a place where I see myself living for more than a year at a time. Extremely excited about becoming a father, catch up with my friends in Iceland and spend more time with the family.

Big jumps indeed.

... so if you need furniture (sofabed, bed, shelves, table, chairs etc) give me a buzz. I need to get rid of that stuff in the next couple of weeks.

I have been watching closely how Obama is embracing the Government 2.0 ideas and effectively engaging with people through the medium of the web.
So with nothing better to do, I decided to do a quick survey on how the Icelandic political parties are using Facebook.

Framsókn

174 members, 2 discussion topics and 11 wall posts

Frjálslyndi flokkurinn

I could not find an official group but the youngsters have 12 fans and a couple of photos from last October

Vinstri Grænir

128 members and 7 wall posts

Samfylkingin

Again, no official group but the local branch in Akureyri launched a group yesterday and have 21 members, 2 discussion topics and 15 photos.

Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn

217 members, 2 wall posts, 1 photo and 2 videos.

To contrast this, Appelsínugulir (orange) a group of peaceful protesters created a group last week and at the point of writing this, have 16915 members, 7 discussion threas, 165 wall posts, 24 photos and 11 posted items.

Not much action on this blog. The party is mainly on Twitter and a range of other social web apps. I hope you watch the column on the right because It´s actually updated more frequently than this main section. For the last 2 months I have been posting on average 4 tweets a day (stats). I´m measuring the spread of social media by checking when my Mom starts following me. She's already on Facebook and IM.

This month I had the most amazing experience when I saw my baby move, yawn and stretch on screen. I felt dizzy. It's been said so many times but It's just dawning on me how this amazing wonder of the world, the female body, can develop and deploy these massively complex projects.

On the flip side I have been plane and train hopping all over in my new job (which is a cool job by the way) and have only spent 4 days at home since 18th of December. My country is ruined and the rest of the world seems to by going down the drain with it.

But hey, I'm optimistic.

Like before, I'm going to finish the year off with a short summary of 2008 highlights

Travel

My friend Hjortur invited me to join him on a trip that he had been planning with his in-laws to be in Zimbabwe. I have been dreaming about visiting the dark continent for years so I accepted his generous offer. I was a bit hesitant when I got to know the finer details of the safari. We where to be the first to sail 1/3 of the Zambezi river in some kind of comfort and we only knew of 2 other men on kayaks that have successfully completed the same journey. I spent quite some time reading up on the political situation but still we managed to book a flight landing in Harare on election day (no wonder it was cheap). To cut a long story short, we managed to complete this epic journey, limping back on a broken boat with some of the most amazing memories of great times and some quite nerve wrecking as well. We are still in the process of writing up the story, editing videos etc. There are some photos and videos online.

This summer, the family traveled around Iceland; Kaldbaksvik and Hraun.

I finally added Finland to my map of places I've been to, and ticked off the CeBit exhibition in Germany on my list of things to do.

Work

If you flick through my LinkedIn profile you might notice the 3 year cycle trend. As a man of habit, it was time to move on. After 3 fine years at VYRE where I have had the opportunity to work with some of the worlds leading brands on some great projects, I handed in my notice and started looking around for new ventures. I decided to go freelance and for the last 3 months I have been working on a super cool project for Nokia and just finished my consultancy there. At the same time I was doing some work for Pluck and am starting there as a full time employee in January.

Family

After 3 years in a remote relationship with to many KEF/LHR tickets to count, Gulla moved to London and we went from meeting on average every 3 weeks to spending whole days working together in our new flat in Shoreditch, close to Tower Bridge. We had only spent some weeks together when she started to feel a bit under the weather and a quick check confirmed the biggest news flash of 2008. We are expecting an addition to the family sometime in June. An extension pack code named Kreppukrilid 2.0, based on some of the best features of Gulla and Finnur version 1.0

I heard my baby's heart beat like a jungle drum. Dungu dungu dungu dundun. Come June we will release a small patch to the family. Finnsson or Finnsdottir 2.0.