Startup – Page 13

You Got Game? You need ‘skillz’

The BBC writes about the skills shortage in the Games Industry: The games industry says British universities are failing to equip graduates with the skills it needs. The warning comes from the industry campaign group “Games Up?”, which says games developers in Britain are facing a serious skills shortage. The lobby group says there are … Continue reading “You Got Game? You need ‘skillz’”

The BBC writes about the skills shortage in the Games Industry:

The games industry says British universities are failing to equip graduates with the skills it needs. The warning comes from the industry campaign group “Games Up?”, which says games developers in Britain are facing a serious skills shortage. The lobby group says there are now 81 video games degree courses at British universities. But only four are accredited by Skillset, the government body which monitors such courses.

The courses available would be a factor but do you need a degree to be an ace in anything?

I don’t think so. I think the Games Lobby could work to reduce the cost of entry to the gaming market. For instance, the cost of a development kit for the Sony Playstation Portable is Â£50,000 for hardware alone and an extra Â£5,000 per person for the tools. Additional software like Renderman might add thousands more to the tally and this is all before you figure in salaries.[1]

This barrier to entry is not insignificant. If hackers in the home cannot work on these things, if universities cannot afford these costs or if students can’t work on them part time, then they are not going to develop the skills to compete in this marketplace.

Microsoft has given some lip service to this criticism with the XNA Game Studio Express. For $99 a year, you can transport code onto your XBox 360. This isn’t going to be the same as a full developer kit (I mean, you’re not going to cloning Halo 3 with it) but I know of some people who have been hired based on the quality of their XNA Community contributions. Reading the specifications, it really provides an interesting alternative.

That said, the market can be extremely profitable. While an edge case, Halo 3 cost around $50 million to develop but took in $170 million in sales on the first day. Compare this to Pacman – Atari spent around $100,000 to develop for the Video Computer System but made $300 Million back. costs of development are undoubtedly spiralling.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Nintendo hopes to offer development kits for as little as Â£1732 per developer and Sony does offer development kits to some schools and colleges at a cut price.

I think that Android and the iPhone will start to pave the way here – they offer free development kits, the iPhone offers hardware in excess of the PSP or Nintendo DS Lite (and presumably shipping Android hardware will be comparable) and they’ll make it really easy to buy and download new software (as we’ve seen already with iPhone).

It will be up to educators, lobbyists, interested civil servants and enterpreneurs to bridge this gap.

[1] Source: The Northern Ireland Digital Content Strategy (InvestNI)

Developing for iPhone?

Staying Connected is Michael Connick’s blog. As Mike Cane puts it: For all iPhone users, I heartily recommend Michael Connickâ€™s Staying Connected blog. He has an uncanny knack of finding sites that have been optimized for the iPhone. I learn something new with each of his posts. I’ve held back on getting too much into … Continue reading “Developing for iPhone?”

Staying Connected is Michael Connick’s blog. As Mike Cane puts it:

For all iPhone users, I heartily recommend Michael Connickâ€™s Staying Connected blog. He has an uncanny knack of finding sites that have been optimized for the iPhone. I learn something new with each of his posts.

I’ve held back on getting too much into iPhone/iPod touch web apps since they were announced as the SDK at WWDC2007. Reason being: I knew it was a lie.

I knew we’d just have to wait for the proper SDK and I knew I’d have to wait for an app to arrive. What is for sure is that I don’t want to have to rely on spotty coverage with EDGE or 3G in order to use the apps I need every day (and there are certain parts of my workplace where there is no EDGE or 3G signal at all). In truth, it’s quite hard to ‘stay connected’ in Northern Ireland.

I think that’s why I’m so excited about this push update service which is being provided by Apple, apparently free of charge. But this also tells me why there seems to be a developer acceptance rate of just 16%. (based on 25 000 applications and 4000 acceptances).

One comment from Kirk:

I have been developing iPhone apps full time since the SDK was announced and applied for the developer program on day 1. However, it is now less than 1 month until the App Store opens and I wonder if I have wasted all this time developing apps that I won’t be able to market. I am beginning to think I should cut my losses and switch to the Android platform. Very frustrating.

And this worries me as well. I’m motivated enough to really give Cocoa a good try this time around but not being able to deploy my poorly thought-out apps is something that gives me pause. And this is going to be the case – Apple has a team of QA people deciding which apps will make it into the store and which won’t. In the interim, I can’t even test my apps on my own iPhone. So what’s worse – developing for a platform where you may never get to ship or developing for a platform that doesn’t exist and will take a long time to get the same penetration (and be inundated with hardware-variation-related support requests)?

However, allegedly Steve said:

Only a limited number of developers will get certificates now (we just can’t support all of the requests we’ve received). Almost every developer will get a certificate when we ship in June.

which does make me feel a lot better about the whole thing. I’m a true believer, me. I trust Steve Jobs to not lie to me.

Apple does need to address the ‘community’ aspect of Developer Relations. Having the iPhone SDK in closed beta and NDA’ed out the wazoo only hurt the good guys who silently struggled with bugs and couldn’t talk to anyone about them. It wouldn’t hard for them to put a discussion forum behind the ADC portal.

Apps are coming to the iPhone. Proper apps. You won’t have to put up with the crappy EDGE connection when trying to fit in a quick game of Bejeweled while in the lunch queue or being faced with 25 minutes of boredom because you have to wait somewhere and all of your media is longer than that and you don’t want to split it.

I think there’s a very real opportunity for some individuals and small businesses out there to really shine. The App Store provides a great leveller so that someone coming along with great ideas, great code and great marketing could just rise to the top of the lists. It’s a new platform, folks. How often do they come along?

Start Small.

DHH writes that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing with a startup: Startup mythology demands that to create something great, you need superhuman sacrifices. You need to work for no pay, you need to put in 120 hours/week, you need to preferably sleep under the desk and live off pizza as a sole … Continue reading “Start Small.”

DHH writes that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing with a startup:

Startup mythology demands that to create something great, you need superhuman sacrifices. You need to work for no pay, you need to put in 120 hours/week, you need to preferably sleep under the desk and live off pizza as a sole form of nutrient. As a result, you need to abandon your family and risk life without insurance.

So donâ€™t despair, just start small. Reserve a couple of nights per week, a Sunday morning here, and a day from vacation time there. Itâ€™s never been cheaper or faster to build a web startup, itâ€™s never been more possible to do it as a side-business.

Wil Shipley talk from WWDC 2005

I don’t believe I ever linked this before… Wil Shipley spoke to some students in 2005 and told them, in no uncertain terms, why it was better to be an independent Mac developer than it was to be virtually anything else (an independent Windows developer or any iteration of Working For The Man). Read on, … Continue reading “Wil Shipley talk from WWDC 2005”

I don’t believe I ever linked this before…

Wil Shipley spoke to some students in 2005 and told them, in no uncertain terms, why it was better to be an independent Mac developer than it was to be virtually anything else (an independent Windows developer or any iteration of Working For The Man).

Read on, download the slides and the MP3 at the end to go along with them

Co-Working

Andy recently posted that his efforts to build Co-Working Belfast have been bearing fruit as he gets QUB and Belfast City Council on board. For my part, I’ve pledged that Mac-Sys will buy a desk every month and put some loaner kit down there as well to foster mobile types into using it. Co-Working Ireland … Continue reading “Co-Working”

Co-Working Ireland started over a year ago and I was invited to blog about it. I wrote a few articles there

The Closed Door
Working anywhere you pitch a tent.
Coffee shops: spacial logistics

but not long after I changed jobs (long story) and being office based I’ve not really had the time or opportunity to blog more about it on coworking.ie though I have managed to put some stuff together here in my Bedouin and Co-Working categories.

I’ve got an article in the making for coworking.ie, a year after my last one. Woo-and-hoo!

Code for Pizza

Man, I have a bee in my bonnet about this. There is nothing I’d rather do than give up this day job with $BIG_COMPANY and survive on my writing while I whiled away the days trying to learn to code to maybe build an app that I want. Apparently (according to a thread on Twitter) … Continue reading “Code for Pizza”

Man, I have a bee in my bonnet about this.

There is nothing I’d rather do than give up this day job with $BIG_COMPANY and survive on my writing while I whiled away the days trying to learn to code to maybe build an app that I want. Apparently (according to a thread on Twitter) startup businesses require passion and if you’re not willing to code for pizza then you’re not showing passion. And not showing any balls.

That’s shite.

I can’t do this because I have responsibilities. I have a mortgage, kids to feed, a house to run. It’s just not an option. And the answer I get? Rent! WTF? Have you seen the prices of rental properties these days? You might as well pay a mortgage because at least then you have a long term gain in equity.

Five years ago this month I was in the unenviable position of finding out that the directors of the company I was working for were in cahoots and were embezzling. I’d been hired to run the technical department which, in the end, turned out to be the only pat of the business that actually made any money – everything else just made loss after loss which is how you burn through half a million pounds worth of debt in six months. They got off scot free (typically) and disappeared to their other business in England (where, for a annual fee you can get substandard techno-luddite telephone support for your Mac). I had a couple of weeks to act and there were livelihoods to take into account. I had a young child and one on the way so I had responsibilities but the choice was to go find another job or stick my neck out. I convinced Apple’s UK MD to take a chance with us, took my savings and started Mac-Sys. During the next year I would realise that business and friendship are not compatible – and as a result I lost some friends who wouldn’t work. I would discover that the only people who truly believe in you are your children – and god bless them for that (and they’ll grow out of it soon enough). And I would find that I’m not as hard nosed in business as I should be but I’m enough of a cvnt to make something work. These were not lessons that came easily.

For the last two years I’ve been trying to start a software company. Iteration 1 was when Aidan took on SyncBridge. He worked his ass off and produced some real miracles but a shaky API and Apple undercutting us with Calendar Server put paid to our dreams. As it would happen we were a year ahead of the competition, a market for syncing that is now over-run with competitors. For Iteration 2, we hired Steve into Mac-Sys and he wrote the first rendition of ‘macserv’, a web application designed to make the running of an AASP easier. To Steve’s credit, he had a job herding cats to get the processes defined but he managed it. And this only stopped because I recruited him into $BIG_COMPANY (which had been my way of escape). For Iteration 3, we tried again with Aidan, Steve, Philip and Jordan on board but everyone is pulled in different directions. It was always our ‘other job’ and frequently lost out to family, the fact that the day job killed my enthusiasm for things and everyone had priorities. I’m left wondering what to do next.

You see. The first and third Iterations were all done ‘for pizza’. There was a promise of rewards but there were a lot of steps to bypass between now and then. Both ended up falling over because, end of the day, if it’s not putting the bread on the table, it’s not a priority. The second Iteration worked because we had someone working on it and yeah, perhaps we need to look at that again.

I don’t want to ask anyone to code for pizza again.

Alumni

Steve (The Biscuit) provided this link to The Daily WTF: “If youâ€™ve worked at enough companies in the IT industry, youâ€™ve probably noticed that the most talented software developers tend to not stick around at one place for too long. The least talented folks, on the other hand, entrench themselves deep within the organization, often … Continue reading “Alumni”

Steve (The Biscuit) provided this link to The Daily WTF:

“If youâ€™ve worked at enough companies in the IT industry, youâ€™ve probably noticed that the most talented software developers tend to not stick around at one place for too long. The least talented folks, on the other hand, entrench themselves deep within the organization, often building beachheads of bad code that no sane developer would dare go near, all the while ensuring their own job security and screwing up just enough times not to get fired.

…Bruce F. Webster aptly named this phenomenon the Dead Sea Effect.”

There’s a lot of wisdom in this. I worked for Nortel for 6+ years and when I left, the relationship was over. I still had a few friends (those who were bothered to be on instant messenger networks other than MSN) but for the most part, I was the ex and not an alumnus by any means.

I have hoped, in my management of Mac-Sys that this is different. I still speak to many past employees (the exceptions generally being those who left under a cloud because they wanted something the company couldn’t provide during the first year or so when we were fighting just to stay alive.)

I think when my tenure with $BIG_COMPANY ends, it’ll be similar to Nortel which is a shame. Big companies should have more resources to hook up with past employees rather than treating them like the Ex with the onerous personal habits.

Aidan, as a Thoughtworks alumnus (never mind Inktomi, Blackstar etc) gets a lot of street cred for being a developer who gets things done. I find it heartening that Thoughtworks has an alumnus system – it’s such a positive aspect of company-employee relationships and certainly colours the way the employee will speak of the employer in years to come.

Would I rather have a good relationship with a past employer? Hell yeah. So what can you do as an employer?

Don’t be a dick. People are going to leave and while it could be because of personal issues with you, it’s more likely it’s personal issues which they cannot escape
Don’t be a dick. This bears repeating because sometimes the employee will make an effort to make life difficult unintentionally. They may be in all sorts of turmoil in their personal lives and dropping the job may be their response. Don’t make it more difficult
Don’t be a dick. Keep in contact with these folk. Why not even start a mini social network for them? Create the FaceBook group, keep their Jabber login active. For security remove their logins to core systems but don’t be doing a global find/replace on their uid in the systems – that’s stupid.

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