Category: JFDI

I misinterpreted a message earlier today and it led to an exchange on Twitter, the core message being:

Don’t give me fucking JFDI
A smart Web Developer
Saying JFDI is the answer
They made a Web Service
No Use to An Ideas Man
Who Writes No Code
Doesn’t Make Pictures
And Can’t Get Easy Money

I did apologise for being a grumpy sod but I’m a little sensitive about this predicament.

There’s a lot to be said for product validation and building something iteratively that people will buy. Getting sales from big customers and using that to finance your first build (either directly or using bank money) is a completely valid way to start out. For certain types of business.

It’s no use for games.

With a game, even if you don’t succumb to hubris and insist on writing your own engine, you’re going to be in the shed for months with development tasks, getting code written, getting art and sound assets made and getting it all put together.

And my personal experience of hiring developers and artists has, almost without exception, been disappointing. It’s too hard to find people who have vision. Another Tweeter asked me if I was looking for a co-founder? Of course I am but I’m uncompromising in my vision and I would expect them to be the same. Co-founder? Maybe. But I’d rather just pay them. So, in the absence of big sales to make your balances, how do you pay for code to be written?

Government grants are a way of getting some risk cash to make games. Finding a private investor is another way. But both require considerable (and onerous) conditions. And (speaking for myself here), I’m pretty much excluded from government grants due to my day job and I doubt I’d find any succour from our local VC due to the general abrasiveness I have applied to their latest term sheet.

This is why Kickstarter matters so much to the average game developer. They can figure out how to provide value to customers who choose to buy the higher levels of product. With exclusive graphics, promo codes, special attributes and physical items like T-Shirts and Posters make all the difference. And this is why I often contribute to Kickstarter projects – even projects that I don’t personally want for myself – if they show a little spirit, a little vision.

So, I’m down but not out. There are others to be helped, dreams to help bring to fruition and I can live vicariously through the assistance I provide to others in their aims to create their own games studio, inadvertently helping me create a local industry.

So we soldier on and in our spare time, we chase only the things we dream about.

Ages ago I wrote some fluff about how Northern Ireland was well-positioned for a Technology and Innovation Centre investment from the Technology Strategy Board. We have certain areas of expertise combined with a desire to excel and, in this area, we are not restricted by geography or telecommunications infrastructure.

We are, however, restricted by a sociopolitical landscape. This is from the Closing the Gap document published by the TSB.

The first confirmed technology and innovation centre is in high value manufacturing. … The partners are the Advanced Forming Research Centre (based in University of Strathclyde), the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (based in the University of Sheffield), the Centre for Process Innovation (located in Wilton and Sedgefield), the Manufacturing Technology Centre (sponsored by the universities of Birmingham, Loughborough and Nottingham, and TWI Ltd), the National Composites Centre (based in
the University of Bristol), the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (sponsored by the universities of Manchester and Sheffield) and the Warwick Manufacturing Group (based in the University of Warwick).

With six of the seven partners in the High Value Manufacturing TIC being university-based, you can begin to see the politics of a TIC. In order to create a viable proposition, we need to work very closely together.

The second technology and innovation centre to be established will focus on cell therapies and advanced therapeutics.
The third centre will be in the area of offshore renewable energy.
The further priority areas that we are exploring as potential candidates for a centre, are:

• complex systems
• digital media/creative industries
• future cities
• future internet systems
• photonics
• resource efficiency
• sensor systems
• smart grids and distribution
• space
• transport systems and integration

There’s so much cross-over here that, I believe, an opportunity exists for Northern Ireland to create a TIC based around:

• digital media / creative industries – because we have a heritage here and also a young and ambitious population. We may not be entirely competitive with the SE of England here (just due to population) but I’m seeing more exciting ideas coming out of Northern Ireland.
• future cities – apart from the vision work being done on Future Belfast and City of Tomorrow, we have some very ambitious councils who have expressed interest here. Our own open data work has been focused on informing people (and machines) and digesting machine-generated content for consumer use.
• future internet systems – this is about the disruptive effects that advanced technology could have on information flows through connected objects. Again, the core here is about machine-generated content. That’s the stuff we use every day when we check our weather apps or look at what trends on Twitter.
• sensor systems – we already have some pioneering work being done at our local universities and extending / partnering these efforts would reap rewards. These technologies easily fit with future cities, future internet systems, smart grids, transport systems.
• smart grids and distribution – we already have a collaborative network based on Smart Grid and two clusters around wind and ocean power. The smart grid concept is really about software – the ability to monitor and control the information and flow of power.
• space – while we may not have anyone building rockets (legally), we do have a lot of businesses which are relevant to this sector. Any time anyone fires up Maps on their phone, they’re using GPS-assisted data, collected from satellites (more machine generated content). I’d like to see companies like Wrightbus and Bombardier get their teeth in here with local digital companies.
• transport systems and integration – correct modelling of transport and the handling of the data flow can easily replace the need for expensive (and often redundant and environmentally damaging) road extensions. We don’t have traffic issues – we have timing and information issues.

The interesting thing is that we’re already doing stuff in these regions and the crossovers between them are already happening here – though it’s on a much smaller scale than a multi-million £ investment. This is why I think it needs a TIC approach. We need to centralise these efforts – invite in the various brothers and sisters in the networks, mix up our clusters and have a centralised place for them to network, post progress and plan for the future.

A friend of mine has posted some lyrics and this is my response.

Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted – one moment
Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?
Yo

A hundred years ago, when the Titanic sank, I think we lost a lot more. I think our current track of celebrating the memory of the ship has changed us. Our heroes are drunk footballers and snooker players and not literary academics or physicist philosophers. We talk about the Titanic in terms of what it could have been – like our national heroes – if they had stayed off the bottle, they could have conquered the world. We glorify the almost and the could have been.

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti
He’s nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready
To drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting
What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won’t come out
He’s chokin, how? Everybody’s jokin now
The clock’s run out, time’s up over, blow!
Snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity

Whether we’re talking about freestyle rap or an angel network pitches, the idea is the same. We want the pitches to drop a bomb, we have hundreds of “could be greats”. Everyone is hoping that someday someone will notice them for their brilliance and pluck them from the nightmare.

The soul’s escaping, through this hole that is gaping
This world is mine for the taking
Make me king, as we move toward a, new world order
A normal life is borin, but super stardom’s close to post mortem
It only grows harder, homie grows hotter
He blows us all over these hoes is all on him
Coast to coast shows, he’s know as the globetrotter
Lonely roads, God only knows

The people I meet every day have passions to succeed. But most of them won’t get the chance. The combination of environment and bias, the restraint of being a poor person in a poor region and, perhaps most damning, maybe the killer idea isn’t all that killer. Passion alone is not enough, it’s all about the delivery.

No more games, I’ma change what you call rage
Tear this mothafuckin roof off like two dogs caged
I was playin’ in the beginning, the mood all changed
I been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage

Taking a stand is always unpopular when people are comfortable with the status quo. But that’s what we have done. We have found our feet, we have stamped our feet. And sometimes we were booed off stage. Sometimes things that were inspired had to be removed. But these things do not go away, nothing ever disappears from the Internet.

But I kept rhymin’ and stepwritin’ the next cypher
Best believe somebody’s payin’ the pied piper
All the pain inside amplified by the fact
That I can’t get by with my 9 to 5
And I can’t provide the right type of life for my family
Cuz man, these goddamn food stamps don’t buy diapers
And it’s no movie, there’s no Mekhi Phifer, this is my life
And these times are so hard, and it’s getting even harder

While we might campaign for corporation tax, it’s not the only story. I’m actually more concerned about skills gaps in the workforce and how to plug them considering that there isn’t the ability (nor the will) to quickly respond to industry. Too much focus on credit and qualifications means the real work doesn’t get done. The Northern Ireland Block Grant is going away; the question being, when it goes, what will we have in it’s place?

This is why we started NISINE two years ago. This is why we started NISW eighteen months ago. This is why we started StartVI a year ago. We have to change culture among industry and make them speak out for what they want. We have a status quo which rewards poor behaviour. We have a too-heavy public sector and no-one seems willing to address the inevitable: There will be job losses, they will be severe. So what are we going to do about it?

Too much for me to wanna
Stay in one spot, another day of monotony’s
Gotten me to the point, I’m like a snail
I’ve got to formulate a plot or I end up in jail or shot
Success is my only mothafuckin option, failure’s not

Success is the only motherfucking option, failure is not.

Yesterday on the train, we were talking about the gender bias in ICT and software. One of the options for resolving this was positive discrimination. My solution was promotion of computer programming to the status of reading, writing and mathematics. My school had five compulsory subjects: maths, english language, english literature, french and religious education. Bollocks to that. Mathematics, English and Software Engineering are the three core disciplines of 21st Century Northern Ireland schools. We need to make it compulsory so we not only manage to catch every opportunity to educate potential software engineers but also we train them in spite of the gender bias; a bias that might be genetic, but again it also just might be cultural.

We need to take bold steps to establish what they call a “knowledge economy”. Bold steps – not gentle gradients which lead into ineffectiveness. And if the will is not there, then we need to take matters into our own hands.

So here I go, it’s my shot.
Feet fail me not, this maybe the only opportunity that I got

Tomorrow is a new day. It would be lovely to think that I wasn’t alone in doing this. But, in the end, everyone has to stand alone.

You can do anything you set your mind to, man

I know.