I just finally dug myself out from under the snowdrift of email that accumulated while I was on vacation. It's like an emotional weight off the shoulders.

While I was away I did actually do a bit of work (2 days really) because of some important conference calls that came up. But mostly I actually took a break. It's hard to take a break when you're starting a company. Every of time there is something that you could be doing. But still, I was starting to feel a bit frazzled around the edges, and I hadn't been on vacation for a year, so I decided to take two full weeks off. I think I feel better now.

The business seems to be doing well. This week I'll be doing more network, network, network. It's actually quite a simple thing to do, mechanically speaking -- business people seem to expect that I'll be quite blunt about looking for money, employees, partners, etc. I actually get into more of a hassle from not being forward enough and walking away from a conversation without knowing what I wanted to know - because I didn't ask.

For the business, we've done some really good sales process development over the last few months, and are building I think some strong relationships with interesting people in interesting companies. It's interesting how every prospective client, there's the company with corporate needs, and then there's the individuals inside it with their own needs. They don't always agree on how to meet the company's needs. Sales -- an important part of it -- seems to be about discerning or untangling those connections. Ultimately your goal is to help the company solve its problems, but at the same time you have to help the individuals solve their problems too, like if they think they know the right way to solve it, but often they aren't the final decision maker or have to find a way to demonstrate to others that it's a good idea or going to work.

This has nothing to do with semacode, but on my vacation I wrote a two-level tag browser for my personal weblog. I don't think anyone's ever done that before. I like it, it makes the content a lot more accessible. That was my sort of vacation hobby project. XSLT.

In a few weeks in Waterloo is Entrepreneur Week . If you're in the area, you must go to some of the events. Apparently I will personally be speaking at UW Expo ("Why I Started my Company in Waterloo") so skip that of course. But these ones should be good: Failure breeds success (should be fun if they're really honest); Chapter 4 (don't ask about the name) everyone who matters will be there; and if Guy Kawasaki shows up, check out his talk on Friday.

Oh yeah, and a bonus: a nifty google maps tool to geolocate your semapedia tags .