Having said that, let’s do a lightning round of what I’ve been up to in 2010:

• We’ve launched Marie Workshops, which have been really helpful in getting people up to speed with social media
• I’ve written a couple of articles for Idealog and Marketing Mag which need to go up here, as well as my social media column in marketing mag every issue.
• I MC’ed and presented a workshop at Connect Now in April. That was a mind-blowing experience, especially meeting some of the world’s top thinkers on the future of business. Read some of the feedback from the conference here.
• We delivered workshops and seminars with Conferenz and University of Auckland Short Courses. More to come in 2011!
• We’re off to China! Next week Marie and I will be presenting a social media workshop in Shanghai. It will be the first of many trips to China, and I’m learning mandarin. As part of the learning experience, I’ve signed up on a whole bunch of Chinese social media sites. So if you speak (or read) Chinese, I’d love to connect with you. Find all my links here.

There are some other really, really exciting pieces of news to announce soon. In the meantime, I’m glad to have a “latest post” on this site that’s actually “latest”!

So thanks Bryan for sharing, and for tagging me. I appreciate it.

Okay, here goes: 8 things you (probably) didn’t know about me.

1. I speak fluent (ish) Samoan
   My wife Marie is Samoan, and I’m a bit of a language freak. I did my wedding speech in Samoan (it was very short and I had a lot of help) but mostly it’s useful to figure out what Marie and her parents are talking about – most of the time.
2. I’m descended from royalty
   Legitimately on my dad’s side from wonderful folks like King Edward Longshanks (the bad guy in Braveheart) and King John (the bad guy in Robin Hood) and on my mum’s side illegitimately (and possibly not at all) from Kaiser Wilhelm I (not to be mistaken for his grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the bad guy in World War I)
3. I have never ridden a bike (with wheels anyway)
   The only bike I have ever actually ridden is at the gym. This used to be a great source of shame but now it’s just a bit of an anomaly. One of these days I’ll learn.
4. I play keyboard
   Self-taught, but I took music theory at school from age 15-18.
5. I wanted to be Popeye when I grew up
   I had several heroes growing up, but Popeye was just the best. Around the age of 6 or 7 I was absolutely going to be a sailor when I grew up. With big forearms.
6. I served on the leadership team of a small and deeply dysfunctional church for about a year
   It’s a very long, fairly sad story.
7. Until yesterday, I didn’t know that a long black looks suspiciously short. (I am very coffee ignorant)
   This despite living in one of the most coffee-aware countries in the world.
8. My last year of high school was all arts: History, Art History, Classical Studies, Music, English.
   How I became a business journalist I’ll never know.

Now to pass it on… I’d like to nominate Julie Starr, Jake Pearce, LordALF, John Lewis, Anna Farmery, Nigel Parker, Paul Reynolds and David McGregor to reveal all.