Cherry 

Best of the past week

Hi , A few Sundaes ago after I got back from holidays in Mexico I mentioned a few changes brewing and I'm ready to announce what's going on. Exciting new adventures shaping up in 2017!I am completing my current contract as head of strategy for creative technology company +rehabstudio in London towards the end of this month. After much consideration, I realised what I really want to do is focus on Ice Cream for Everyone and keep building it as a my consultancy business, rather than work full time for a single employer.Working for +rehabstudio has been a great opportunity, particularly to work on the agency's own brand strategy, and on a variety of fascinating technology and innovation projects U.S. and international markets for large tech brands such as Google and Facebook. That said, in doing so I've also been spending less time on this newsletter, my podcast is nowhere to be seen for the past month, and I haven't progressed at all with plans from a year ago to write and develop original strategic planning services and methodologies. I'm not even going to mention the lack of any kind of progress with my novel, that's just embarrassing at this point.In parallel, those following throughout last year may have noticed I spent a bunch of time in the United States. I've been vaguely thinking about moving there and meeting plenty of great people during the holidays in Mexico who invited me to come and stay at their place tipped the balance in that direction.I have a U.S. passport and haven't lived in the country since I was 6 years old, why not take advantage now and check out the country I was born in but still barely know. Lastly, while on holidays in Mexico I found out about a course Landmark offers that got me very interested; a training programme in their consulting practices that takes place in California and is over a year long. As I understand it, it also means being close to and part of the creation and thinking of new material for future courses, something I'm very interested in.After looking into it some more, I'm doing it and among other things intend to use it as a structure to build Ice Cream for Everyone into a successful brand & marketing strategy consulting business first, and maybe grow it into something else in the future. I've been writing some vision documents about the possibility of it becoming some kind of collaborative creative community - we'll see, that's for later on.For the immediate next few months, I've budgeted enough finance and time to redesign my website and spend time writing material for a strategic planning methodology and a few other things that I'll make available on the website as well as sell, market studies, reports, etc.I've been invited to spend time with friends in Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Reno, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Atlanta, North Carolina, Toronto, Edmonton, San Diego, Puerto Vallarta, Seattle - I'm sure I forget a few. At this point I don't even know how many of these places I'll visit this year. To start with, given how much I enjoyed skiing in the Alps I'm definitely going to the mountains and planning to ski again before the end of the season, likely around Salt Lake City, Utah and Denver, Colorado.Denver is sounding pretty likely a a place to base myself, at least I'm interested in spending time there to check it out. I'm also curious about Salt Lake City, a friend moved there recently and I found out there's such a thing as the Silicon Slopes, a burgeoning hub of tech startups and apparently quirky creative types. If you've come across the video advert hits from last year Squatty Potty or Chatbooks, those are from the Harmon Brothers, based in Salt Lake City (I have a vague doubt that I might've mentioned this in a previous Sundae - apologies if I'm being redundant).Of course Utah is also attractive for some of the best powder snow and access to ski slopes, National Parks, and it's a lot cheaper to live than, say in the Silicon Valley. We'll see, those are some of the current ideas.Tentative leaving do to say my good byes to friends in London: Saturday 18th February 2017.

 Sprinkles What's the GIF? 

Whipped Cream

In the news

I haven't been following the news much. In fact it's likely I'll change this section soon. On the way to skiing I was in a cab and the driver told me a previous passenger told him she'd stopped following the news years ago and that it improved her general health and wellbeing significantly.Instead, in the same style of depressing as the news I thought I'd share a poem I recently wrote while upset about something. After reading it, a friend asked me when the last time I wrote poetry was. I replied it was as a teenager. He said he could read that. Lots of teenage style angst around there according to him. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I'd be glad to hear what you think. I'll keep writing and hopefully improving the quality of my writing over time.

Caramel Fudge

What's sticky in the communications industry?

Chocolate

What's going on in gaming?

Vanilla

What else is interesting this week?

This Sundae edition is already long enough to read as it is and I'm slightly late sending it!As the French mathematician Blaise Pascal said:"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Please forward this to a friend if you enjoyed reading it, and feel free to reply with feedback about what you enjoy or not about the newsletter as I'm going to be reconsidering a few things over the coming weeks.Cheers,Willem