As I write this update, I'm sitting at Mt. Everest Base Camp. Paul is now up at camp 2 and hoping to have a shot at the summit sometime soon. I think I’m more anxious about the climb this year than I was last year when I was actually climbing! At least then I knew exactly what was going on – now I’m just sitting around waiting for the next radio call and hoping everything’s ok.

Brad SMS’d me the other day with news that WOMOW had won 3 out of 4 categories of the MUEC business plan competition. I was really excited about this and tried to imagine what the awards ceremony was like. At Invizage, we won a number of awards and it was always really exhilarating to be called from a pool of successful businesses. As part of the MUEC award, we get some prize money which will be a great help to getting WOMOW off the ground. But even more importantly, I’m hoping this generates a bit of publicity to help get the word out. Isn’t it ironic that a website setup around word-of-mouth needs our own word-of-mouth to get going? I’m hoping some of our friends will be happy to start using it once we’ve got it live online and then if people like it, hopefully they’ll tell their friends about it.

Sitting here in my tent while Paul’s up high, I do feel that time is ticking by and I’m not doing anything to get WOMOW off the ground. It’s now been 8 months since I decided to pursue this idea and I still have nothing operational. Even though I know that the end-product will be much better than it would have been had I dived in to developing the site straight away, this is extremely frustrating. Before I know it a year will have passed! Also, I’m feeling pretty guilty about the work Brad’s putting in while I’m away. He did have a short holiday away with the kids, but he’s now been back and coding away for several weeks. Oh well, I guess there’s nothing I can do about it from here. Hopefully the weather will give Paul an opportunity to get to the top in the next few days and I’ll be home soon.