I am delighted to share with you folks that my wife Erica and I are expecting our first child. Erica is coming up to 20 weeks and we will be due in November. We don’t know the gender of the baby, but we will find out in the next few weeks. Naturally we are both hugely excited; I can’t wait to be a dad.

With today being Father’s Day, I was thinking about my own father, and what kind of father I want to be.

Fortunately, this is pretty simple: I want to be the kind of father that my father was to me.

I feel hugely fortunate that I was raised with such supportive, encouraging, and fun parents. Both of my parents instilled in me a set of values from an early age that have followed me into adulthood; values of being fair, working and playing hard, treating people with respect, putting family first, and being strong as an individual and loyal in a team. While I am by no means perfect, I do feel confident in my values system, and I credit both my parents for this.

I have always had a special relationship with my dad. Throughout my childhood he always managed to find ways to motivate and inspire me. He taught me to play the drums when I was 9 years old (he used to play in a band when he was younger), when I was getting into computers at the age of 14 he let me come to his then workplace (a multimedia project) for work experience and get them connected to the Internet with an old US Robotics modem (this cemented much of my interest in technology), he helped me run my own tech support business when I was 16, and he motivated and inspired me to go to University not just for the education, but the life experience of meeting different people, cultures, and backgrounds.

As my career transitioned from journalism to community management and consultancy, my dad has always had wisdom to share and offer. Just when I think I am getting a handle on the world, my dad has this incredible ability to make me think about things differently. He is not just a father, but a mentor, and a friend.

As I face my impending fatherhood, if I can be 5% of the father that my dad has been to me, I will be a hugely proud father. I love you, dad.