It would have been nice. In fact, it would have been very nice to have attended our first Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today. Particularly as we’re up for an award.

But shit happens and the rest of this post is a very personal explanation of why we’re not there.

In December 2008 the family upped sticks from our home for a year to move to a rented one for various reasons. Funnily enough, on the day we were moving we were on the phone with C4 negotiating the final part of the 4IP contract for Audioboo.

So we moved and Audioboo launched in March 2009 and took over all our lives.

We’d let our house on a 12 month contract to a family housed by Lambeth Council. In early November 2009, we informed them that we would be moving back to our home after the contract expired in December. Seemed kinda reasonable. The response we got was a 14 page letter from Lambeth’s legal department telling us exactly why we could not do this and that the tenants would be entitled to stay there an additional 2 months.

Now, legally, that’s correct. However, we had assumed a 12 month contract meant just that. It obviously doesn’t but we finally managed to negotiate with the owner of the house we were in to stay an extra 2 months, even though they had got a seller for it.

So February 2010 rolls on and we book a company to pack up our stuff and move on the 12th. A bit late, we feel, but at least everything is sorted.

Not. A random phone call to Lambeth Council by our estate agent on the 10th February (this is 2 days before our move) elicited the information that the tenants at our home were not going to move out and we would need a court order to evict them. Quite why Lambeth had not divulged this information sooner and whether they had given informal advice to the tenants to take this action, I don’t know. All I do know that if that telephone conversation hadn’t taken place, we would have turned up at our home with all our belongings in a van on the 12th February and immediately been homeless.

Homeless. We couldn’t have gone back to the house we were renting since it had been sold and we would have been liable for the £80k deposit the buyer had put down. 2 adults, 4 kids, a dog and 2 days to find somewhere to live. A difficult situation to be in. A very hectic few days. But we found somewhere. Not perfect but ready to be moved into.

On top of all of this, and the current investment discussions and rolling out new audioboo features, I was actually meant to be in Barcelona to present Audioboo today, Monday 15th Feb. You can imagine the domestic ‘discussion’ we had around this. Needless to say, I didn’t make it, letting down a lot of people who had put faith in us to be there; most notably the London branch of Mobile Monday, who had voted for audioboo to be their entry into the Mobile Premier Awards.

However, a shining knight came galloping in last night when I tweeted with the bad news. Ilicco Elia of Reuters Mobile, already in Barcelona, agreed to do our pitch for us. I nearly cried. If that doesn’t show both the power and emotive connection of social networks, I truly don’t know what does.

So we’re finally now housed, surrounded by boxes and working off a 3G dongle, waiting to see what Barcelona brings. Good luck Illy!