I bumped into somebody last night on the way home from the shop, and the conversation was an interesting one for me.

The person concerned - Ikem Nzeribe - did a presentation at BarCamp Leeds last year about mapping that blew me away. It was clear he’d thought through the problem he was trying to address and he’d come up with a social, interesting, useful solution. After the talk I handed him my business card, and suggested we sit down and talk at some point.

So we did. Between then and now we’ve regularly met up and discussed plans either directly or as part of a larger group Ikem pulled together from his networks.

I hadn’t spoken to Ikem since The Vision Thing got rolling, and he clearly hadn’t seen it. I basically summed it up like this:

“There’s a chance I’m going to quit the industry in the next six months”

Two things struck me about that sentence. First, that’s the first time I’ve been completely upfront about where I was heading when I wrote the original rant. His reaction was incredulous, he thought I was winding him up: “You? You are going to quit? YOU?”, etc.

Yeah, me. I’m now thinking the change might not be that dramatic because I can now see ideas forming that address my concerns about how screwed we are right now, but I’m leaving it that open until something more tangible forms.

The second thing that struck me was the word “industry” in there. Which industry did I mean? Web development? Consultancy? Internet business development? Open innovation? Kagtum? Writing blogs and the occasional article?

A very good first step to me trying to stay in the industry is to start saying “no” to proposals, invitations to events, opportunities to comment, and so on. I’m fortunate that so many people want to work with me right now, but it’s stopping me from servicing my current clients and working out how to build great applications that don’t ultimately get monetised through “raising brand awareness” for soulless multinationals who want 75% profit on every unit of sugarwater they sell.

Ikem understands. I hope other people do too. For the record if it’s not one of these or doesn’t directly help one of these, I’m not doing it any time in the next six months:

• Accounts software with Adaptavist (coming to a close soon)
• The “Florida project” (I’ll explain more later in the year).
• My local consultancy project around corporate social responsibility
• The “open innovation” thing with Guy Dickinson and Simon Wheatley
• Kagtum
• Blogging
• BarCamp Manchester
• The occasional co-working day

That’s more than enough for me right now. Please don’t feel offended if I say no to an invitation to get involved in your great idea.