Innovation in Software

In my post on GeekUp Revisited I closed my points with the following:

P.S. there was something else brought up last night: some of you have been pulling my accounts from Companies House. Save yourself some money, and next time just ask me, I won’t be offended and I won’t even ask you why you want them – as a member of the public you’re legally entitled to them on demand.

What does irk me slightly though, is the conversation I had suggested some of you had been discussing said accounts between yourselves and picking holes at my 2-year old accounts (2008 hasn’t been filed yet), behind my back. That just seems a bit rude. I’m sorry if I’ve offended or upset you in some way to the point of you wishing to find chinks in my armour in any way possible, but if you have something to say to me please just say it to me. I know my style can come across as arrogant and patronising to some, but I genuinely would prefer to have an open discussion with people rather than you spend time questioning an ancient business model of mine behind my back.

It was at the end of a long post, I just wanted to say “hey, come on, let’s find chinks in my armour together”, but some people got a little upset I was accusing them of something in private correspondence with me.

I’ve now had an apology from somebody who had pulled my accounts and discussed them with others. I’m not sure they were the only ones, but I don’t care. I didn’t want a witch-hunt, I wasn’t looking for somebody to blame. They apologised for any hurt felt on my part, and in future I hope we’ll have a much more open dialogue.

I’m committed to running as open a business as I can. All future recruits will see a full set of accounts (and be trained on how to read them if necessary), before being offered a job. Accounts and cashflow projections will be viewable internally, live. I’ll publish submitted accounts here at the same time they’re submitted to Companies House. I will happily discuss with anybody who wants to discuss them what they mean.

My business isn’t perfect. I’m not perfect. But we’re both getting better at what we do. It was the fact people were referring to 2007 accounts as current – and therefore potentially confusing recruits who thought the business was pulling in less cash than it is – that concerned me most. I’m 70% convinced I lost one programmer as a recruit because of the confusion circulating in the game of Chinese whispers that circulated. It’s easy to see how it happens:

Potential recruit: I’m thinking of working for Vagueware
Person A: Yeah? I pulled the accounts. Doing sod all money.
Potential recruit: What the latest accounts?
Person A: Latest ones, yeah, from Companies House. Think he’s only doing a bit of revenue really. Can’t see how he can hire!
Potential recruit: He told me he was doing £x a year!
Person A: Well, he must be lying then…

It’s not hard to see how Person A’s mistake in thinking the latest accounts from Companies House are the latest trading accounts (despite being nearly 18 months old), and how that might make the potential recruit feel Vagueware is not the company for them. That is what upset me: losing talent – precious, rare, irreplaceable talent – because of miscommunication. If everybody concerned had just asked me to explain those accounts I could have cleared it up in 30 seconds. Alas, Chinese whispers seems to have taken precedence…

As I’ve had an apology though, the subject is closed. What’s done is done, so, we’re done, let’s move on. Next time, talk to me – I really don’t mind talking about money, assets and how (not?) to run a business. In 2006 and 2007 I excelled at running a business badly. There are lessons in there I want to share, and one day will.

Last night was GeekUp Manchester night, and as a one-off the geeks combined forces with Manchester Digital and Northern Digitals to have a “Bastille Day BBQ” at Atlas on Deansgate.

I haven’t been to GeekUp in a while, and I’d heard that attendance was dwindling down to almost Manchester BSD UG levels (which is now half a dozen mates having a few drinks in the Briton’s Protection).

Last night – with 250+ members of the local industry looking to let their hair down – was quite a different affair.

In fact, it had the air of something much bigger and interesting than anything I’d seen in the city since the days of my department at MMU running Wired City (recently resurrected, but I can’t find an authoritative URL for it), and was kind of like all the social events across the city combined, run by some of the people behind Big Chips, all with more beer and food. It was also surprisingly upbeat, with everybody busy and nobody complaining about the economic slow-down – in fact, some of the discussion was about how to get hours down to a manageable level so as to take weekends off.

I ended discussing something last night with Dan Hardiker of Adaptavist that I realised I hadn’t really stated publicly yet: I don’t need to lead or direct something in order to participate in it

I am a man who likes to be in charge of my future. I do not react well to being directed into anything, and resist attempts at management if I consider it futile or inefficient (I was a pain in the backside for some of my teachers at school).

My community involvement in the last few years has as a result been mostly trying to lead things. BarCamp Manchester, helping where I could with GeekUp, pushing along co-working and other collaboration opportunities, cheering on NWDC and all of its participants… and more.

I’ve enjoyed my part in all of that, and I’ve met some incredible people in the process. However, a couple of months ago I informed the other directors of Fly The Coop that I intend to stand down as chairman at the next AGM. I do not intend to run another BarCamp. If somebody wants to run a co-working day or HackSpace I’ll show my face and take part if workload permits, but for now I have no plans to lead or direct anything other than my own businesses (I’m currently director of four, soon to be three, then back to four again probably), and to focus on helping my customers.

It took me six months in the wilderness to understand it, but now I have, I think I can be of more value to the community as somebody in the cheap seats, participating. I hope you’ll agree.

I also discussed the fact that word-of-mouth is the very best sales channel available.

I’ve been doing some serious sales work in the last couple of months. I have mined the Official Journal of the European Union for public sector opportunities, I’ve done cold-calls, I’ve done networking events, I’ve really pushed the boat out in order to secure the cashflow to hire the three full-time staff I want to in the next couple of months (more about those guys soon, I hope!). I got the odd tickle, but nothing solid so far.

Virtually every single sale I’ve landed on the order books in the last couple of months has come from somebody, somewhere, being in discussion with a client and saying something along the lines of “I think we need Paul Robinson for this one…”, and bringing me into the project. Six months from now, I hope to have a team who everybody who knows it wants involved in more projects.

Reputation is everything. I have no idea where I got mine from as 95% of my work is behind the scenes and under NDA involving back-end processes and intranet functionality, but I’m grateful for it anyway.

As such, I need to be more public about the work I’m doing, provide a better public profile of my clients and what I do for them, and go to a lot more events where I try and find partners for future projects. The Internet might be making geography irrelevant for a lot of work, but it doesn’t make relationships any less important – in fact, in a World where there are thousands of development teams a click away, a team you can trust is becoming more valuable than ever.

And lastly, I discussed for a while Vagueware’s plans for the future and if I’m going mad.

I concede that from the outside, my behaviour must look quite odd. A couple of years of scrabbling away, a year of landing a whole bunch of contracts in one go (one of which became very intensive for a while and so the sales cycle seized completely), all punctuated by random bursts of community activity, and then a half-year of what seems to be freelancer-grind, culminating in… a recruitment drive and an announcement that suddenly this company is about to get medium-sized quite quickly.

Some people think I’ve struck gold, others seem to be confused still as to what it is Vagueware does, and others don’t get the idea that managing true R&D innovation is difficult and can’t just be done the same way you build a regular e-commerce platform. Some ask about Kagtum, others want to know about the idea bank. It all seems a bit of a mess, and many people seem confused. If I’m honest, I’m still clarifying some of the details myself.

This is all entirely my fault. It’s not that the direction isn’t clear, it’s that is not clearly communicated. Over the next month the website will get an overhaul to make it clear:

• What Vagueware does, and who it does it for
• What Vagueware intends to do in future
• Why you should give a damn given I’m just that bald guy at the social stuff that talks a lot

I actually feel as if I’m letting some of you down at times, but last night it became clear why until recently growth was so hard to come by: it’s difficult to get leads if people don’t know what you do.

So, my bad. Sorry.

Last night overall was pretty great and I definitely think we should do larger events like that more often. The diversity and depth of the sector in this city is one of its strengths and last night left me considering long and hard whether I really want to move away next year (more on that some other time).

We tend to silo ourselves far too much – designers only hang out with designers, developers with developers, and so on. It is only by mixing it up we can find the best opportunities for collaboration and go forward together.

We should be abandoning titles we assign ourselves and start to think about how to help each other more. And that means more events like last night.

Well done to the organisers, and here’s to the next one.

P.S. there was something else brought up last night: some of you have been pulling my accounts from Companies House. Save yourself some money, and next time just ask me, I won’t be offended and I won’t even ask you why you want them – as a member of the public you’re legally entitled to them on demand.

What does irk me slightly though, is the conversation I had suggested some of you had been discussing said accounts between yourselves and picking holes at my 2-year old accounts (2008 hasn’t been filed yet), behind my back. That just seems a bit rude. I’m sorry if I’ve offended or upset you in some way to the point of you wishing to find chinks in my armour in any way possible, but if you have something to say to me please just say it to me. I know my style can come across as arrogant and patronising to some, but I genuinely would prefer to have an open discussion with people rather than you spend time questioning an ancient business model of mine behind my back.

See you all again soon at the next GeekUp or other similar event.

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.

On the train back from BarCamp Leeds today, Manoj Ranaweera and I were talking about various things. One of the points he made was that he found it very confusing what the difference between “Vagueware Ltd” and “vagueware.com” was.

In his head, Vagueware Ltd is a development consultancy, but vagueware.com was the idea bank, a place for people to share and collaborate ideas. He was convinced I should move the idea bank somewhere else and give its own separate identity. Give it a new name, a new purpose and have Vagueware as a consultancy and holding company for that site (and the others like Kagtum and Fluxish I’m hoping to launch soon).

At the start of the conversation I was adamant he was talking rubbish, but I reflected on it and within 10 minutes had changed my mind completely.

This then crossed over into another thought that Guy Dickinson led me to a while ago. Guy said the site as it was lacked focus, and it wasn’t immediately clear what type of ideas were suitable. He suggested narrowing it down.

So now the two ideas merge, and I’m thinking of something completely different.

What if you could have your own idea bank like Vagueware? What if for your company you were able to get customers to add ideas and let other customers vote on them? What if you could set up idea banks for open source projects, or private space for developing new product ideas with colleagues inside your company? What if you could have access to a clean idea bank in a few seconds? What if you’re running a BarCamp and you wanted to vote on talks as we did today (but ultimately abandoned as somebody was gaming the system)?

My vagueware ideas would have their own place, and that would be open. I might have a closed version for products I work on with clients in private, and I might have more public idea banks around specific products. You could get access to one if you wanted, and you could choose who has access and moderate it yourself.

This would all be under a new name (yet to be decided), and at the start it would be free.

Is this worth going on with? I’m now almost completely convinced a new name needs to be found, but what about a new kind of product?

Thoughts welcome in the comments. I’ll make a decision mid-week and by Friday “Decisions Will Be Made”, so speak up now or forever hold your peace.

I’m at BarCamp Leeds right now. I just gave my talk on futurology (quite well received), and a build of vagueware.com is being used to vote on talks to determine best talk of the day (the speaker of the best talk wins an iPhone).

A nice moment was when somebody stopped me when they noticed my name badge and spoke to me about Vagueware. It’s great meeting people who are enthusiastic. Alas, he wasn’t wearing his name badge so I can’t name check him, but it was a great moment for me to meet somebody who had seen vagueware, seen the potential and really liked it.

I’m now enthused to spend more time on the code in the next week.

After a brief spurt of articles, I’ve slowed right down posting. It’s not accidental – it’s very considered in fact – and I thought it might be worth sharing a few plans.

I had a queue of about 90+ articles in draft ready to be finished and posted. At a rate of three per day, plus adding at least two more in draft form onto the queue I would have had the momentum to keep me going through to the end of the year.

I stepped back though and thought about why I wanted to publish here, what this blog was for, and whether that was a sensible strategy. I started asking whether I should care if this tool does this or that tool does that.

There are much bigger ideas we’re heading towards that need something more thoughtful than twenty blog articles a week.

I have yet decide my approach, but what readers enjoy matters. I get virtually no feedback about what people like beyond Google Analytics tells me, and it tells me little. I get few people quoting me and linking back to articles. I get few comments. In other words, it’s a little hard to know what is working and what isn’t beyond “being angry about Leopard” gets me traffic.

Questions for you then: what articles do you enjoy or hate? What do you want to see more of or less of?

There are two kinds of innovation I want to talk about on vagueware:

• Ideas for whole new products and services that can be delivered with software
• Incremental changes to existing software products and services

I spend most of my time thinking about new products and services, the kind of thing that you can start a business off. Those ideas are generally jealously guarded by the people who think they thought of them first, but the simple truth is they have little value without execution: vagueware.com is about trying to get people executing on those ideas.

I have hundreds of ideas on my desk, on my wall, in my head, on my laptop, in notebooks, everywhere. They’re not going anywhere where they are. I do not have the time or the capital to make every single one of them happen. By placing them in the public domain over the coming months, I hope to do a couple of things:

• Somebody, somewhere will do something with them
• I will get the satisfaction that whilst not benefiting monetarily, I helped an entrepreneur and his customers

I hope that if you have an idea that you realise you’re never going to make happen, you’re going to have the courage to place it in the public domain and allow open source developers, start-ups and hobbyists in need of a way to spend their evening get started with it. They might even give you money, you never know.

Then there’s the second kind of idea – the incremental idea. The idea where you see a product or service out on the web or on your machine and you think “that’s great, but if it did…”

I’ve started cataloguing ideas I’ve had for vagueware and tagging them ‘vagueware’ – you can add ideas for vagueware too, and tag them so I see them – and as votes move up and down I’ll see what’s popular and what isn’t. I’ll use the tool itself to decide what to work on next within the tool. Yay for recursion!

I hope other developers use the site to do the same. By putting up ideas on the site for your own product and asking customers to go along and vote, you can get an assessment of what is going to fly and what isn’t.

Every page is editable, wiki-style, so your customers can improve your idea. Every idea has comments so you can have a little conversation around an individual idea.

By looking at a list of ideas in vote order, you can decide what is going to make customers happiest. By putting it on a 3rd-party site like vagueware, you get exposure to a whole bunch of people interested in people like you – innovative developers – who might not have heard of you anywhere else.

Or maybe you can just put an idea up and tag it with a publisher or product name in the hope that somebody at HQ will see it one day and act on it.

Whilst pretty rough around the edges – and I’ve not got many ideas in the system yet – vagueware.com is now up and open for business. Depending on when you measure it from, it’s either a few weeks or a few years over-schedule. At least nobody can argue it’s over-budget.

Right now you can:

• Add new ideas – the whole point is to get ideas for innovative software solutions into the system. What counts? If it’s software and it doesn’t currently exist, it counts
• Edit existing ideas – It’s a wiki. I’ve still got to sort out proper version control, but any registered user can edit ideas so that collaboration can start with developing the idea itself. At the moment you can only add tags, not delete them, but that’ll get fixed in the next update
• Vote on ideas – voting up or down allows for a weak interaction. People who don’t want to comment but have an opinion can provide it, and hopefully better/more popular ideas bubble to the top
• Comment on ideas – It’s a conversation after all

There is a long, long way to go to get to where I want to be, but at least it’s now up and people can start getting involved in what I’ve been talking about.

Over coming weeks and months I’ll be adding features (you can of course suggest features by adding them and tagging them ‘vagueware’), but for now the basic framework is in place and ready to start taking ideas.

[UPDATE]: within 12 hours of fixing it, I’m getting the spam bots floating by. Yay. It might be time for a move to something that support Akismet…

When I turned comments back on I noticed that leaving more than one comment wouldn’t work. Apparently this is a known issue in Mephisto under certain conditions (I was at the time using Apache22 + fcgi), but nobody is completely sure how to fix it. It was time to move over to Mongrel anyway, so now that move has happened, everything is fine.

The last week, incidentally, has been hellish. I’ve found it hard to get the time needed to do all sorts of things, including the 1st October launch of the main site, but I now have a relatively quiet weekend, in that I’m only going to be working 10-15 hours over the course of it. That means I can make some progress on other areas. Yes, that includes deploying this code. Stay tuned, but with all this expectation you might by now be expecting something polished – it really is alpha.

To a weekend of success then…

After a conversation with Manoj at OpenCoffee this morning, I fell asleep at the laptop, only to wake up a few hours later with my code editor open on screen, a half-finished cup of coffee next to my keyboard and a weird cryptic message on the website.

What can it all mean?