The dust has settled on the Charter class of the Saltire Foundation Fellowship, and all 14 of us are now back to real life.  Plans to recruit the next cohort of Fellows are already coming together, so I thought it was about time I posted an update to say a little about what real life means for me now...

18 months ago I was the CTO of a small software startup in Dunfermline, and although I was involved in lots of aspects of the business, I always knew I was often making it up as I went along...   I found making business decisions far harder than technical ones.  I spent all my time in one office with one small group of people.

Now I find myself in a completely different place.  Let me share with you a few of the things I've done in the last week:

• Did some business development work around launching a new product into the market.  Set up a meeting between my client and another Saltire Fellow to help with that (the network at work)

• My weekly 2 days consultancy for ATEEDA, one of the companies I did a placement with on the fellowship.  My time is split between developing marketing materials, planning a sales campaign, and doing some technical analysis on their product.

• Had lunch with a startup that's currently doing a funding round, with the strong possibility of getting more involved once they have closed their funding.

• Had a great meeting with the guys behind a Scottish startup company - I'm hoping to do some work with them in the near future, and they have invited me to join their advisory group.

• Helped a charity (which I am now a director of) with plans to spin out a trading arm.

• Was invited to participate on the assessment panel for a significant entrepreneurship programme.

• Arranged a meetings with a couple of very well known faces in the Scottish technology scene.

• Booked tickets for TechCrunch Edinburgh and Innovate for Your Future.

• Arranged a meeting to see a very interesting technology company that is looking for management talent (again, set up through another Fellow).

Would any of this stuff happened without the Saltire Fellowship?  Probably not.

Am I having fun?  Yes, yes, yes.

Was it worth it, doing the Fellowship?  It was worth every penny and every second!

I'm doing exactly what I love - now all I need to do is turn enough of these things into paying contracts to pay the mortgage and recoup some of what I spent last year...