So, with just a couple of days of throwing ideas around, some interesting strands are coming together.

Firstly, those who are developers tend to agree with me: we’re a broken industry in need of a fix. Secondly, those who aren’t developers think I personally am broken and in need of a fix. Some think both are true.

With the private e-mail I was getting and IM chatter, I figured it would be better to produce a sandpit where anybody could get stuck in and post things up, link to articles, etc.

http://visionthing.vagueware.com is the current sandpit. We need to give this a better name and identity, but as you can see there is now a little momentum building.

You can also see that a few of us are playing with the idea of a Manifesto. It’s not enough to say what we’re angry about: we should be talking about what we want this industry to be, what we believe it is capable of, to lay a framework down to make sure we look after ourselves, our users and potentially our investors without breaking a fundamental philosophical barrier.

I think it might be worth just touching on a couple of the responses though, specifically those who suggest the problem is me.

OK, I’ll admit it, I’m tired. I need a break. I might not know what I really want out of life (who the heck does?), however those aren’t the problems we’re talking about.

The real problem is the abundance of froth in this industry right now, with no real substance and meaning to it. I am not condemning the entire industry - I just question the meaning of parts of it, and whether we can’t use our collective skills to do something better. This is ultimately a philosophical and political position to take, and it’s one many seem to share with me. We don’t know the details yet, but we know we want to try and hammer them out and at the end say “this is what we believe in”. I don’t expect everybody to agree with that position: a philosophy that has 100% belief isn’t a philosophy, it’s a law of nature.

We know we’re jaded and tired, but we’re jaded and tired for a reason.

As a group of geeks we hate spin, bullshit, lies, marketing speak and so on. We are an industry moving to a foundation built on those principles rather than the ones we admire: hard problems being solved with skill, and adding value to society. We want to help those with a financial interest satisfy their curiosity, but we want to encourage them to do it with the same sense of purpose that drives us to all-night hacking sessions.

I just had a niggle in my head the other day. Now we have the beginnings of a community prepared to work out how to make this industry better. We’re going to have detractors labeling one or all of as burned out as they look at that angry stare in our eyes when they explain their “social networking for lampshades” idea to us, but I feel all the better for knowing there are people who are thinking about this the way I am, and I hope they feel better too.