For those who know me quite well, it will come as no surprise that most of the topics which are top of mind are work-related. Conventional wisdom has always held that moving out of the corporate world entails blurring the lines between work and play, duty and passion. This has certainly been the case for me in 2009 (since joining Clyral in 2006 in fact) and I have absolutely no regrets about that.

The year began in somewhat of a frenzy, with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put together a video segment on Mobile Researcher to be delivered to Bill Gates as part of presentation to the Gates Foundation leadership. In a short space of time the team was able to put together a two minute clip which outlines the Mobile Researcher concept, with a focus on its applicability in agricultural development. Although the main presentation itself was delayed indefinitely (I’ll post an update on a new date if I receive any feedback on it), the video can be viewed on the Mobile Researcher Community Portal.

I had the opportunity to travel to the UK in February to attend the Mobile Research Conference as well as receive my first ever skiing lesson (which could be the start of an expensive love affair) thanks to a wonderful birthday gift from my sister and brother-in-law.

2009 saw us shift significant resources to the further development of Mobile Researcher including numerous feature releases and the launch of our Community Portal which will receive more attention in 2010.

In June, we moved a whole 20 metres to our new offices in Hillcrest. We now occupy a whole floor which gives us some breathing room and the capacity to take on new staff. We already have two new recruits joining the Clyral team in January and February 2010 respectively.

A much needed midyear break took me and some friends to France and Italy for a memorable holiday of touring, tanning, supersized cocktails and beach American football.

We relaunched our company website which has been (and probably always will be) an ongoing project. We decided to redesign the site to align with our core focus on high end web application development, mobile integration and product development which hadn’t been effectively communicated by the old website. Along with the new website, we also embraced social media more than in previous years with launches of personal blogs and the emergence of personal, corporate and product Twitter accounts.

We spent several months working on a proposal to secure funding from the Shared Growth Challenge Fund to use Mobile Researcher as a job creation platform through business process outsourcing to low income mobile phone users. The proposal was successful and in late November, we ran a highly encouraging pilot which went better than we could ever have hoped. A second pilot will run in 2010 as well as what will hopefully be a full scale commercialisation of the Mobenzi platform.

Although probably not quite as newsworthy as some of the other events in 2009, I felt that finally coming over to the “good” side with the procurement of my first iPhone should not go completely unmentioned.

2009 was a tremendous year for us. Considering the international turmoil experienced by many during the year, I am grateful that we were still able to expand and grow, moving closer to our objectives. Should 2010 follow a similar trend, it certainly is a year I will enjoy.