Much like a legal document, let’s define something at the start to ensure we’re on the same page. When I use the word System (note the capital “S”) in this article, I’m referring to mass media and big business. I’ll leave the topics of Wall Street and our government for some other (far distant) day.

The only way to bring down the System is by depriving it of life. Yes, this could be achieved by violent actions, but I’m not a violent kind of guy. Instead, I’m thinking of something that will bring about the same effect, but will use positivity and humanity to starve the system of the money it needs to survive. Because more than anything, the System craves one thing and one thing alone: money.

And who is going to bring about this change? Why you and I, of course. For if not us, then who?

Problem: Mass Media

Solution: Local News, Real News with Highlights or Uncut Editions

I think the internet and society is finally getting to the point where this can become reality. Mass media is just that, news for the masses. Sadly, every major news organization will cover Kim Kardashian’s 72 day marriage because the masses do care about that crap. Kim has over 11.5M followers on twitter. I’m sure Kim is a nice person (I’ve never met her, so I honestly cannot judge her), but you can’t blame mass media for providing what the majority wants.

With Netflix though, we’re seeing something that will help bring down the establishment. Many people are canceling their cable TV (my family included) and are finding themselves happy without it. Think about it, they don’t have the Basic 150 or the Complete 500 channels and life is just as fulfilling. What Netflix requires though is an internet connection, and what can ride in with that connection is the opportunity to provide real, intellectual news and local area news.

The cost of high quality digital cameras are coming down dramatically. There’s no reason high schools, community colleges and local universities can’t start broadcasting as part of their journalism curriculum. Why study about journalism when you can actually go out and do journalism?

Sure, the first few outings will suck but they will get better over time. Like when I started recording my Flex training sessions and putting them on the web, I knew they’d suck. I purposely made them suck by not preparing at all for the first series. The reason I did that was so that others could see my output and think, “Oh I can do better than that” and go do better. It worked as many other User Groups followed suit and started providing their own training. The same will happen with this new journalism movement.

YouTube and Vimeo are still in their infancies, the same goes for uStream and other streaming video sources. As these tools evolve, so will the ability of the new journalists to replace a lot of the current trashy content with high quality content. Tosh.0 (whether you like him or hate him) is a great example of what is possible with today’s tool set. What he does it a macro level for laughs, new journalists can do at a micro level for impact. Imagine the day when a local event (high school football game or a dignitary’s visit) is captured by over 100 angles from as many cameras and cell phones. This new wave of journalists will be able to edit all that footage into an easily consumable format that show the highlights of the event as well as a link to the full coverage.

Eventually, the mass media will either have to give in and cut the crap to gain back viewers. Or dig themselves a deeper hole by covering even more crap since all they have left are the clueless masses. Regardless of which, their power will stem and dry, leaving the System with nowhere to broadcast their message.

I had dreams of creating the website to help bring about this change. I even bought the domains RewatchTheMoment.com and MyCamerasView.com to help bring about this change. However, I realize that while I can help, I’m not a journalist. We need a journalist to bring about this change. I’m more than happy to help from a technical side, but we need a voice of the new journalism to step forward to show us the way. If you’re that voice, feel free to contact me and I’ll do what I can to help you start this revolution.

Problem: Massive, Faceless Corporations

Solution: Local Markets and Tiny Businesses

I buy local fresh eggs from a neighbor and pork from the local butcher. My wife has been part of various local farm shares. I prefer to eat at local dives vs fast food chains. My wife mainly shops online bazaars for things like cloth diapers for our baby. We support local craft boutiques.

Ideally, we’d do all those things above, all the time. We don’t, however. We shop at supermarkets and Walmart. We use Amazon quite a bit. We drive an automobile and live in a home, both made by huge corporations. We have our money in a huge, mega banking institution and we are indebted to similar institutions via credit cards.

While the internet and society has helped us drift away from knowing our neighbors, I think it will come full circle. I see a time soon where an online map of your city/town/suburb/borough will list places to shop local owned businesses: bakers, chefs, butchers, craftsmen, tailors, etc. Technically, online maps do now but they’re not curated or easily digestible. You’ve got to pick the locals out from the megacorps on generic search maps or you need to seek them out via review sites.

Sadly, we can’t depend on the government, even at the local level to create these maps for us. By this, I’m not saying government is evil. I’m simply stating a fact that their hands are tied. They need taxes and jobs from Walmart and other big-box stores to sustain local economies. The traditional Main Streets of yore have died out long ago, but I think they’re on their way back only modified. Main street is no longer going to be an actual street but more of a map of your own local shops that you have to “visit”. My guess is that a lot of these virtual stores will only be open once a week (i.e. sorta like a garage sale), have only pickup or only do deliveries.

Let’s put to rest one notion, right here, right now: Walmart will beat the local shops on prices. If you are literally counting pennies, then it’s going to be tough to switch. You’ll likely have a “What’s in it for me?” attitude. Which is selfish, but honest and a real question as we have families to feed and bills to pay. I bet there are some things you can do without, but budgeting aside, I think there’s more compelling reasons.

We humans are meant to be happy. One way we are happy is to do what we love. I’ve watched a lot of businesses over the years. A lot of people shouldn’t be in business, but they are. Not only are they in business, but they have a life-sustaining business for many, many years. If you looked at their books and saw how borderline they were to folding every week, you’d really think they shouldn’t be in business. However, these people love what their businesses do/produce and that love/passion helps keep the business afloat.

Think about it for a moment. A lot of our purchases (alcohol, movies, books, food, cigarettes, clothes, etc.) are comfort purchases. We live miserable lives so we attempt to spend our way to happiness. Imagine if we loved our jobs because our jobs were our businesses. Imagine if we had the entire family involved in our business until they branched out in their own businesses. That’s why people who are passionate make for good business people even if the business isn’t making them rich. Let’s face it, if we’re all shopping locally none of us are going to be rich, we’ll likely just have enough to get by BUT we’ll be happier every day.

Most people would start a business if they knew how. We need to dispel the notion that businesses are meant for the “smart guys”, because they’re not. We need to reconsider our notion of “business school”. We don’t need to pay $168K for a 2 year MBA from Harvard to start, run or own a business. We need a $200 (or less) workshop that shows people the basics of how to run a business.

Isn’t running a business expensive though? Yes, there are costs associated with a business, but we can help each other disperse those costs. Here are some random ideas to change things up:

• Shared space: Whether it’s a restaurant, office space or salon space, chances are you don’t need it all the time. However, rent for space requires you use it all the time because you pay for it whether you’re using it or not. Therefore, have a restaurant space that is actually 7 different restaurants (a different one each day of the week). People don’t eat out every day anyways, so why not only open your restaurant once a week? Let six other restaurants use it the other nights of the week.
• Shared staff: Do we all need a bookkeeper, receptionist, janitor, etc? No, hire a local small biz to do this stuff. I don’t mean hire you local Molly Maids or AccountTemp personnel, but I mean look for a neighbor who’s passion/business is that task you need.
• Shared Supplies: Everyone needs a printer, fax, paper. Every restaurant needs napkins, plates, flour, sugar, etc. The more you can buy, the bigger the savings. That goes even at the local level. Of course, not all supplies will be locally made nor will the ever be. It’s pretty tough to make a printer or laptop locally, but when you can buy things together, you can share the savings and maybe start to compete with Walmart’s prices.

The other thing that I’ve found is that your business doesn’t have to be your full-time job. You can try out your business, especially if you’re sharing space. Most of us need the income of a job to keep us afloat while we lockdown our business. Once the business takes off, then we can take a bit more risk. Why quit before you know if the business will do well or before you are even sure you really want to do it?

As more and more of our purchasing power goes to local shops, we’ll starve the big box shops of their needed revenue streams. It’ll be okay though. As they shrink, the local businesses will grow and thrive. Some will hire those laid off workers. Some of those laid off workers will start their own businesses as well.

I’d like to point out what my wife does quite often. She shops from small businesses via bazaars on the internet, only they’re now called forums. She buys fabric, diapers and headbands from people running businesses from their home. Heck, she even bought out one of the businesses she shopped from. She hopes to continue to provide that service she loved enough to buy the store of.

The internet will be the friend to this new way of shopping. We’ve luckily seen the downfall of the WebVan and Pets.com businesses. But little shops that were around on the internet back then are still online now. When you have low overhead costs and love what you do, you’re a pretty unstoppable force to be reckoned with.

It’s like that scene in “A Bug’s Life”, where the ants realize they outnumber and thus overpower the bullying grasshoppers. We may be small, but in time, we’ll wake up, unite and take down the big guys.

Again, I’ve thought about trying to bring about this change. Today I finally registered the domain MyOwnShops.com to be the placeholder for the business to bring about the change. However, I’m not meant to be the guy to bring about the change. I’ve got tech skills, but I don’t have the rallying power to bring about this change on my own. If you’re interested in being the one though, let me know and I’ll help you out as best I can.

In Closing

Just to reiterate, I’m in the same boat as you. I think there’s a lot of good in what I’ve said here, but I’m still a few years out from being able to fully stand behind all those things I talk about.

I’m also not saying this is a black and white type thing. I happen to love Pixar movies and they’re owned by Disney which owns ABC and ESPN. I also love the Apple Mac Pro I’m typing this on with the Intel chip it has inside sending data bits across Cox’s wires to get this on the internet. “Oh so those big businesses are okay?” I can here you ask. I’m not perfect. I’m human and thus am hypocritical by default. I know all this and that’s okay.

The future will not be without mass media or massive corporations. However, it is up to us to make sure that the power of the System doesn’t continue to grow larger and larger. We must take responsibility for our actions. We have to put our necks on the line. We have to be those early journalists that will be laughed at. We have to start those tiny businesses that will fail. We have to do those things so others can stand upon our slumped over shoulders to achieve greater things. And when they do, we’ll find the strength within ourselves to rise up and push them that much higher.

I talk about business with a lot of people. The concepts behind a business: the whys, the hows, the wheres and the whats. One thing that has always boggled my mind is exit strategies. Some companies are clearly built to be flipped (i.e. sold early on), while others are intended to be around for a long time.

In an interview with Dropbox CEO, it was brought to light that Steve Jobs wanted to buy the online storage company. Steve told them, “You don’t have a product, you have a feature.” Clearly, the team at Dropbox disagrees, but that got me thinking.

Build to Sell or Build to Grow?

Up until fairly recently, I didn’t understand people who built to flip. Yet, at 360Conferences, I really did want a bigger media company to buy us. I wasn’t building a company to flip, I just thought that while we were good at doing conferences, we’d be better applying our mentality inside a bigger media company with the resources to fund wild ideas we dreamt up. John was definitely more of the “I want to do 360 for life,” which is why I sold out my half to him.

Looking back at a restaurant software idea I had, my exit strategy was to sell out to a Point of Sale company, merge with one or buy one. I saw my product offerings as being good on their own, but realized they would be better as part of a bigger suite of software/hardware offerings.

I think the decision on your exit strategy stems from how you see your offerings. If you see them as a feature of a larger collection of things, then you should expect to be bought or sell out someday. In particular if you never intend to build those other things. However, if you see it as more of a standalone product, then you’re better off building up a company to sustain it for years to come.

Feature or Product? Or both?

Now, here’s where it gets tricky and you have to watch out. Sometimes, you can be seduced into thinking your product is a feature. Look at say Turbo Tax with Intuit, Hotmail with Microsoft or PayPal with eBay. I’m sure both we’re not seen as features but as products by their founders. However, a suitor came along and sang sweet nothings of perfect pairings and enriching customer lives (and founders’ pockets). Heck, even Intuit itself was for a briefly a feature of Microsoft, until the Department of Justice said, “Yeah, no.” (Rumor has it that the lead ruler in the matter owned both Office and Quicken. “The people who made that <pointing at Office with disdain/> want to buy this? <looking lovingly at Quicken/> Yeah, I don’t think so.” Again, that’s just a rumor…that I just made up, but sounded too good to pass up. LOL)

If you think about it though, this natural progression makes sense. I mean, even Compaq, a huge company making lots of products, got convinced that they were really a feature of Hewlett Packard. (The irony is that HP recently announced that they’re likely gonna ditch their PC division aka Compaq.) There must be similar logic behind every multi-million/billion dollar merger, or they wouldn’t happen. Right? Some CEO convinces another CEO, “Look. You guys may or may not be doing alright, but look at how much better y’all could be!”

“My business is my baby!”

There’s a common comparison of business to children. You give birth to it, you nurture it, you watch it grow. Sometimes it dies, but other times it grows up to stand on its own. It takes on a personality similar to its founders/parents. It has good days and bad days. Much like life, business is full of good things and bad things: vendettas, people using others for gain and the rare long-lived friendships. Here’s some examples of those things in the business world:

• Someone will take on a new lover to scorn a past one – Apple wanted to buy AdMob, but lost out to a rival bid from Google. They bought Quattro instead, to pretty much show AdMob how much they screwed up.
• Some people use others to get ahead in life – Microsoft had Windows NT which they really wanted workstation manufacturers to start using, but the manufactures ignored it because nothing powerful ran on Windows NT. Therefore, Microsoft fixed this by buying Softimage, a powerful 3-D animation software package. They ported Softimage over to Windows NT, which got manufactures on board. This move helped contribute to the demise of the once mighty Silicon Graphics Inc. SGI had a very expensive vertical stack of processors, OS, machines and even graphics software, which toppled to low-cost solution provided by Microsoft and it’s partners.
• Lifelong friendships do exist out there – Think of McDonald’s and its supplier, Golden State Foods. When Ray Croc and the McDonald’s brothers decided to go the franchise route, they specifically did not want to sell all the food products, just the restaurant concept. Hence Golden State Foods was given the opportunity to become a huge company supplying the actual food in the McDonald’s restaurants. (Sidenote: Golden State Foods actually “created” the Big Mac sauce, which I have to admit is one of the few things I like in McDs.)

If you take this analogy one step further, you come to this realization. Generally speaking (I’m not here to argue philosophy of life), a child is raised to get married and repeat the process. So by that logic, mergers and buyouts are simply a way of life while some “greats” go at it alone. Much like life, these are the companies so focused on their goal that they have no time to even ponder mergers, because all they think about is their offerings.

“Hey old man, get with the times!”

Now again, one point of marriage (philosophy aside) is to make babies. So, it should come as no surprise that after a merger, many a startup are born. Whether by people who meet because of the merger, get let go as “cost savings” or because the new company gets to be so slow that employees have no choice but to leave and start their own to get something done.

The irony to me though is in the cycle of startup to corporation to startup:

Step 1: Idea Phase – “Hey, I bet we could do that better.”

Step 2: Startup Phase - ”Let’s start something. We’re faster and better than those giant corporations.”

Step 3: Discovery – “What exactly are we building? Who’s going to pay for it?”

Step 4: Growth – “Awesome, we’re getting customers by the boatloads! Let’s hire folks.”

Step 5: Management – “Hmmm…we have a lot of people, someone should manage them.”

Step 6: MegaCorp – “We can’t do that! We have legacy products to support and committees to go through.”

Step 7: Stagnation – “We know our customers and employees. They want this and nothing else.”

Step 8: Rinse/Repeat- Select customers and employees head back to Step 1 to repeat the cycle.

For awhile there, I thought all businesses were doomed to repeat that cycle. To which, I thought, “I don’t want that to happen to my business.” However, what are we to do? Businesses grow and as they grow you have to do things. Well, yes and no. If you gamble, err, I mean, play by Wall Street’s rules and go public. Yes, you have to do this. Which got me thinking. What if you don’t ever want to go public? What if you just want to stay a privately held company forever? Could you do it? Would it work? What would that look like?

I would start to get depressed about this stuff. Then, things started to change and hope brightened the horizon.

“I’m a feature and I’m proud of it.”

The best thing to come out of the recent generation of startups are not the WebVans, Pets.com, GroupOns or Zyngas of the worlds. Rather it’s the “Start small, stay small” mentality of owner/businesses like Marco Arment of Instapaper, Patrick McKenzie of BingoCardCreator, John Wilker of 360|Flex/360|iDev, etc. These are people who understood from the get go what I just discovered, and fly in the face of it. They know they’re a feature, but since it’s only them, it doesn’t need to be a suite of products. As long as they have enough to get them by, they’re happy.

You have to admire people like that. They may seem crazy, but they are the ones slowly changing the (business) world to make it better. They give hope to the masses who sit in a cube farm frustrated with the inadequacies of the companies they work for. And when they finally reach the tipping point, they’ll venture out on their own. Only now, with alternative models to look up to, they may finally break that vicious cycle.

So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. Of course friendship is the opposite of solitude; it means being with other people. But I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person. Not Skyping with three people and texting with two others at the same time while you hang out in a friend’s room listening to music and studying. That’s what Emerson meant when he said that “the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.”

Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.

This describes my deepest held philosophy. It explains why I have far more fun now at 360Conferences events then I did when I ran them. It explains why the thing I miss most about 360Conferences is spending nights chatting with John about business, life, dreams, goals, etc. It explains why I can spend almost all my time with Nathan Eror at one 360|iDev, then spend just a few minutes in passing at the next one.

This will help explain me to a lot of you that know me, but whom I probably perplex at times. I like to focus on one or two people at a time. I like to get to know them deeply, talk about dreams, failures, life lessons, etc. I get to the meat quickly and often forge a friendship quicker than most others do. There is a certain intimacy (not the sexual kind) that comes with my relationships. I don’t want to talk about the weather or the latest gizmo or SDK, though I often will because they are common bonds. What I really want to know is the things deep down within you that make you the wonderful person you are. These are the things that are so unique to you that I can’t help but remember them, even though I may forget your name (because those tend not to be unique).

There are so many people and I don’t have unlimited time. Therefore, I have to focus on one or two people to the detriment of the many. I think this probably hurts many of your feelings, and that’s not my intent. This hurt stems from how I spend 4 days practically at your side then the next time we see each other, we barely hang out for more than a grand total of 30 minutes over 4 days. It’s not that I don’t like you anymore, but rather that I’m getting to know someone else just as intimately. I think my family suffers most here. I’ll hang with one aunt or cousin and thus others will not get any face time at all.

It may seem unfair, not because I’m so great and I think everyone should be blessed with my presence. Quite the opposite, all of your are so great that I shouldn’t be allowed to hog up all your time every time we meet. Plus, there’s only so much time in the day and many people we have to meet.

When I get to know you, rest assured that everything we discuss in neatly packed away into a mental box and stored safely. I’ll come visit that box during my times of true solitude. I will revisit conversations we had, ideals we discussed when I ponder something early in the morning while sitting in my office chair. The next time we do have another conversation, don’t be surprised if I bring up points from our last conversation. It doesn’t matter to my mind if we left off a year ago, when i open that box when we meet again, those discussions vividly come back into memory like they happened just yesterday.

One quote that demonstrates this clearly is one that a dear friend from high school said at our 10 year reunion. “I feel like I’m 16 again.” is what she said after we danced to an old favorite tune and had a conversation where I brought up discussion points that we left off on in high school.

I think it also explains my youthful demeanor. My wife says I’m more like one of the kids than I am her hubbie. I’m sure (or hope) that she’s jesting, but there is some truth to that. To me, to my mind, I’m no different today then I was when I was 16 or heck, even younger. Sure, things have changed but the core of who I am and what I stand for are the same.

How do I know this? Through hearing myself talk during these intimate conversations with dear friends. The things I say now are echoes of the things I’ve said back in my teenage years and during all the time in between. Yes, my life has changed from single to married, from kidless to 3 kids, from drunk to sober, from Catholic to LDS, but the core tenants are the same: I love life and the people who fill it. I still have the same dream of being a great businessman that I hatched back in 6th grade. I still want to be the best dad that I can possibly be, like I did when I read the “How to be a great parent” book when I was 8 or so. I still want to be the best husband/brother/son/friend that I’ve always strived to be.

This is the thing we need solitude for: to (re)discover ourselves. This is the reason we exist on this planet: to help each other grow but still stay true to our inner selves. Therefore, take the time to have that special one on one time; Not just with me, but with others in your life. Let your dear friends help you grow into the person you know deep down inside you want to be. Become that leader in whatever space you want to succeed in. We only have one life, so let’s make it the best we can for ourselves and those around us. While one person may change the world, it takes the world to create that person.

What We Are

As we’re trying to get our first game out the door, I came to a realization. It was something that Smiley already knew and understood. I sorta understood it also, but semantically I was just a little bit off base. You see, this is how I saw ourselves:

An iOS game company pushing the boundaries of device interaction.

Which is cool and fine sounding. It pretty much explains what we’re thinking about the company – right now. It also covers what the company will be doing for the next few years. Then it hit me though, that really doesn’t explain us quite right. I thought about it and really, this is what we are:

A game company that leverages new ways of device interaction, which currently designs exclusively for iOS.

Note the subtle difference. They both say the same thing, but the latter is more closer to reality.

What We’re Not

This helps explain our lack of understanding for game devs who leverage their IP across many moblie platforms. It doesn’t make sense to us, because we ARE NOT a mobile game company. Our short-term goal is not to get our games on as many different mobile devices as we can. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s to make the best possible experience on one and only one platform: Apple’s iOS platform.

The long term goal, and the whole point of our company, is to create unique device interactions via games that should be fun to play. Hopefully though, we make you pause for just a second with a smile and say, “That’s pretty neat how they do that.” We hope to make something that will start off as foreign (because it’s new) feel completely natural (because it’s what we as humans expect).

From Apple’s Dictionary app, we get the following definition of “device”:

1 a thing made or adapted for a particular purpose, esp. a mechanical or electronic contrivance

2 a plan, scheme, or trick with a particular aim

3 a drawing or design

Definition 1 Explained

We have dreams, huge dreams, of how to push device and human interaction. These dreams include devices that fit in your hand to devices that you can ride in, all the way to devices that you can walk through that will change your perception of reality. We can’t afford to create all those things. Luckily, for us, Apple made the first ones which we adapted for our particular purpose. Apple does a great job at creating devices and the software stack that runs on them. They’re not quite where we want them to be just yet, but they’re getting there. They are also more aligned with our vision of the future than any other platform. That’s why we’re exclusively Apple, not because of market share, not because they’re the coolest kid on the block, but rather because they’re the only company we see out there that gets what we’re trying to do. Even if they weren’t the most popular mobile platform, we’d still choose them because it’s what they’re doing that’s important to us, not the fact that they merely exist and have the most customers.

Definition 2 Explained

Someday, we plan to make our own devices. It’s inevitable that we will have to. We figure that we can probably use Apple’s platform for about 5 to 10 years, to create the foundation of our company. After which time, we’ll have to create our own devices to execute our visions. Not the portable kind of devices, that’s not a space we want to get into since we can leverage Apple’s. But those other kinds we mentioned: the kind your ride on or walk through. We have a scheme to trick you with a particular aim: to suspend reality.

Definition 3 Explained

In high school, either right before I met Smiley or shortly thereafter, I made a drawing. It was a design for a cool device that would allow for all these amazing things to be experienced by the person in it. I sketched it out pretty quickly, then I thew the drawing away. It was in my head. I knew it would stay there for the rest of my life. Even if I had wanted to make it at the time, I couldn’t. Technology just wasn’t there yet. Coincidentally though, due to cutting edge prototypes and current trends, technology should be there about 5 to 10 years from now. What a coincidence because that’s about the time we figure we’ll be ready to implement that design from over 20 years ago.

What’s Wrong with Being a Mobile Game Company?

Nothing. Look at NGMOCO. They’re whole point was just mobile gaming and they made out like bandits! There are plenty of others to list as well. You can make a lot of money too, if you do mobile games well. I think it’s still up for debate on whether the cost of cross-platform adds to the bottom line or not. But for the sake of argument, let’s say it does make sense from a cost/profit perspective.

If all you want to do is make games and get those games into AS MANY hands as you possibly can: Good, great, go ahead and port your game from iOS to Droid, WinMo and Blackberry.

If all you want is to make some fat cash making games without a care as to which platform it runs on: Go make wads of cash by building for the most popular mobile platform there is.

If all you want is to make games that are stuck in your head for mobile devices because it’s the smallest barrier for distribution: Make and deploy like no one else can.

The point is this: Don’t just exist for the sake of existing. Find out what your goal is and base every single decision you make in your business support that goal. Otherwise, you’ll wind up several years down the road, wondering why you’re doing this or why you don’t feel like a success.

Dream Big or Go Home

Lastly, dream big. Don’t pay attention to the press. Don’t pay attention to market trends. Don’t pay attention to what’s hot in the App Store. Spend what little time you have between game making and enjoying life with friends/family doing one thing: Dreaming big. Life’s already full enough with other worries, you don’t need to add more things to worry about. Spend that time living in the future where your dreams are reality. Even if you only make it halfway to your dream, as long as it’s a big one, that will be a lot further and closer to happiness than you are today.

Don't get stuck on Planning and never hit Implementation

Don’t believe me? Alright, well, let’s take a walk down memory lane and let’s survey the land to see what happened.  NOTE: I’ve had way more ideas than this, but these are the ones that I put more than a few days or weeks into.

Idea #1 – Restaurant Paging/Seating Software

I wrote a fat business plan. I did market analysis. I had a team in place and a product being built. Then I had a personal incident happen that left a bad taste in my mouth on the idea. Regardless though, I spent a few years on the idea and nothing happened. I had a great plan, but never had a product, not even a beta product. I almost became the software arm of one of my would-be competitors, though that fell through at the last-minute because they didn’t understand software.

Takeaway: You can have a great product idea, business plan and market analysis yet still not go to market with a product. In which case, what was the point of all the planning?

Idea #2 – Conference Company

http://360conferences.com was hatched and given birth to with John Wilker. This idea was executed exactly the opposite of idea #1. We had no business plan, no market analysis and had a product launch 4 months after the idea hatched. The business is still around and growing. I sold out my half to John in May of last year. We didn’t know where we’d find our customers (attendees), partners (sponsors) or the team to actually run the show (us). In other words, we didn’t have a business, we had an idea. It wasn’t until after a few product iterations (i.e. a few 360|Flex conferences) that we had a plan of attack (vs a biz plan) and had figured out how to actually put on a profitable conference.

We showed up to do the business and the community (our customers) showed up to help us. One community member in particular was Ted Patrick. He singlehandedly was our marketing and PR firm for our product launch. Granted, he was an evangelist for the technology we were highlighting, so he had his own motives. Regardless though, without him, we might’ve had a party in which very few people showed up. Instead, thanks to his help, we sold out 400 seats.

Takeaway: An idea executed on delivers more than a whole lotta planning. Once the process of building something is in motion, it attracts like-minded people who will also try to help it succeed.

Idea #3: Gaming Company

http://area-161.com is my latest big idea. Though honestly, it’s probably my oldest idea. I’ve known that I would make this company since the 6th grade, i.e. 1986. Roughly, 3 years before I met the co-founder in 1989, our freshman year in high school. Now mind you, neither of us realized he was the cofounder until the spring of 2010. Life is funny that way.

I spent about 24 years planning for what would become Area-161. I learned programming. I learned art. I learned writing. I read tons of business books. I analyzed every business I ever worked with or for. I even ran another business though that was a fluke (see the Idea #2 above).

One reason I couldn’t start the business was because my wife didn’t like video games, so much so that they were banned for a good part of our marriage. It would be hard to start a company building a product that wouldn’t be allowed into your home. Finally, she came to her senses and that got the wheels rolling again.

It wasn’t until I “showed up” that things starting falling into place. Once I decided I wanted to make a game company, I found myself literally next to Smiley. I don’t mean I moved into a house next to him, I mean I was sleeping in a room next to his in his home! My family lived in Arizona, while Smiley lived in Washington, down the street from a contract gig I had landed. We got to talking while I was staying at his place and the company was formed.

Once we came up with an idea, “Darts”, other things fell into place.  We realized we needed an art department. Luckily, my dad retired from being a graphic artist for most of his life. Whammo, we signed him up. My dad made it clear though, “I don’t want to do the animations.”  Then his best friend got in contact with him by chance. Lo and behold, he tells my dad, “I’ve been thinking about getting back into animation.” Bam, we have an animator now. The art department is done!

Now we need the sound and music department. I don’t have any doubt, they’ll come out of the woodwork ONLY IF we “show up” though.

You can read Smiley’s take on “showing up” over at the Area-161 blog.

Takeaway: You can plan for 24 years and have nothing to show for it, except you and your plan for a great company. Or you can “just show up” and within 1 year, have a team and a playable beta product in the works.

Idea #4: software to help remote teams

http://remotejams.com is an idea I came up with about a month ago. It’s something we’re going to need eventually at Area 161. I thought, “Well, we need startup capital to build the company we really want, so let’s build this and use any profits to fund the business.” Again, I was falling back on what I had done for 24 years: planning.

Rather than “show up and build a product”, let me instead “plan and prepare to really start the business in the future while working on this other business idea right now.” I know, it sounds pretty stupid in hindsight. However, I really believed it and had others believing it with me.

I’m not going to give up on Remote Jams, but like Apple TV, it’s gonna be a hobby vs a focus. I had plans of making it an open source thing and getting all these people involved, but that would actually take time and effort that would be better focused on Area 161. Therefore, I’ll likely take a more private and slow development approach to this. As we get more programmers at Area 161 (after delivering products and generating profits), maybe I’ll be able to start the project up more formally.

Takeaway: If you’re planning to start a new company with a new product, so you can plan some more on an old company idea, it’s probably not a smart thing to do. If you’re delaying products on your old company, so you can launch a new company’s product to generate money so you can go back and finish creating that product you put on hold so you could do this other….yeah, you get the idea.

Show up as fast as you can

Do Now, Plan Later

I’m not saying you can’t put thought into your business, whether it be the products or the company DNA. I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is that you need to start building a product and acting like a company as soon as possible. If there’s a spark of an idea and it’s workable, then work with it. Don’t say, “I have this idea, but before I launch it, I need to spend x many months (or years) prepping to make sure I do it right.” If you do it wrong, you can recover and try again. If you never get started, then you really had nothing to begin with.

I think I figured out why some people, like me, are serial entrepreneurs: We miss not having customers to serve.

Technically, I’ve only begun one real business (360Conferences) with paying customers. However, I also built up a technical user group that served hundreds of (non-paying) customers. In addition, I’ve done some independent consulting where the customer was another business. The point is this: I’ve done a lot of things where the endpoint is providing service for someone.

I like to cook elaborate meals to achieve an unspoken give and take:

1. I provide them sustenance, which fills a basic need to help keep them alive
2. They provide the time to eat the meal, which fills a basic need of helping our relationship grow

This is true of my wife, kids, family and friends. It’s an unspoken contract where everyone benefits, unless I give them food poisoning and they yap on their cell the whole time. Neither have occurred yet though and hopefully never will.

Business is a Special Give and Take

In business, there’s also an unspoken give and take, but it looks like this:

1. I provide a product/service, which fills a basic need that the customer wants/needs
2. They provide the time/money, which fills a basic need of helping our relationship grow

Note that money isn’t a necessary aspect of business. I ran my user group which affected the lives of many individuals and not one cent, much less dollar, exchanged hands. What I gave was time in creating something for others to come spend their time participating in. With 360Conferences, John and I created conferences which changed people’s lives completely (as was demonstrated by three different people on stage during a keynote). Sure some of them gave us money, but the act of them giving us several hundred dollars really had very little impact on the grand scheme of things.

Customers Really Need to be Perceived as Old Friends, Not Dollar Signs

It’s a fact that I’m horrible with names. I’m working on it, but I just have issues with names. I think it’s because most names have nothing to do with who you are. I’m Tom, but the word “Tom” doesn’t describe me. In programming terms, it’s just a pointer and a badly named one at that. During my tenure at places, I was bad at remembering names, but great at remembering people’s stories and their faces.

I could see one customer’s face and remember he had a sick mom that almost prevented him from coming. I’d see another face and know he was from another country where there wasn’t another programmer in sight for miles. Another face would bring to mind stories of their kids. One face would be that of a new manager looking for ways to better his team, out of genuine concern. All these faces spoke (and still speak) to me, but what they never represented was a dollar amount.

Now, don’t think I’m some free-loving, “Down with the system, we don’t need money” kinda hippy. I realize that money is necessary. It’s necessary to live. It’s necessary to deliver the kind of business you want to deliver. Customers provide that money, but that doesn’t mean they equal money.

I’m Starting Up Again

I have a few things in the works.

• (Fairly) New Job: I work with a small, but dedicated team over at Locus Technologies. I’m finding ways to help and serve not only Locus’ customers, but also my peers inside of Locus. I’ve been told that’s rare: desiring to serve your peers. If that’s true, it’s a sad statement on the workforce.
• New Diet Plan: I was fat, but decided I really shouldn’t be. I looked at why I was fat, found out what the cause was, and started One Minute Bite to see if I can solve that. If I lose weight on it, then others can read about it and hopefully also lose weight.
• New Business Ideas: I’ve started Area 161 with a friend of mine to conquer the world of video games. We need startup capital though. We need to hire people to bring the games we want to fruition. Therefore, I’m tossing around some other ideas that will hopefully help provide that much-needed startup cash. Not ready to share those ideas yet, but come back in a couple of weeks.

We Humans are Meant to Serve

The thing I’m noticing in common with all of these is the people I hopefully get to serve. To me, we have one purpose for being on this planet: to serve our fellow-man. If we don’t take the time to do that, we will never find true happiness. Monetary success will find its way to us because of our desire to serve, not because we desire the money. I think that’s where most of us go wrong. Hopefully, I will never forget that.

(Re)Learning to Cook

In a recent post, I talked about being a Jack of All trades. I love to learn and do new things. One thing that I’ve forgotten I loved to do was cook. Last year, I travelled a lot. I rarely had time to cook other than some occasional grilling on the weekends. However, now that I work from home, I have time again to cook.

In addition to having time, I also want to start cooking more of the food that I eat. See, I created my own diet called One Minute Bite.(Yes, I really did create my own diet!) The diet requires fewer bites so I need to make sure each bite tastes good! Plus, if I’m eating fewer bites, I want to make sure I’m eating more real foods vs preservatives. I know, it’s a crazy notion, but I’m a crazy guy. LOL

The Books

When I want to learn a new tech, I go buy a book. I figure the same should apply to cooking. To jump-start my skills, I bought this two-volume set from Julia Child: “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.

Julia's Books

Now, I’ll be the first to admit. I’ve always loved the French for their food. Sadly though, good French restaurants are hard to come by; particularly in the sticks of Arizona, where I happen to live. Therefore, I decided it was time I learned how to cook like the Frenchies.

The Menu So Far

A few weeks in, I have to admit, I’m loving it. Below is a list of all the things I’ve cooked so far and the results of said meals:

1. Cream of Mushroom soup – I was ill prepared for this lil adventure. I hadn’t adequately built up my ingredients pantry. The missing item was one of the most important: a good stock. I tried to use bullion instead and that wound up being too salty.
2. Roast of Pork with Au Gratin Potatoes – This time I was prepared: I had all the ingredients plus new Cutco knives we got for Christmas. I had to debone the Loin End roast myself, which was definitely new. I lost about a pound of the roast because of that, so I learned next time to buy a bigger roast. In regards to the potatoes, I also was scared of using too much Gruyère cheese because I had never eaten it before. It stunk to high heck and I didn’t want to ruin the potatoes by putting too much. After the potatoes were gratined and I tasted them, I realized Gruyère may smell gross when it’s cold, but it’s delicious when melted. My pork roast wound up being dry and my potatoes under cheesed. The only thing I was lacking this time around was time. I was doing too much at the same time.
3. French Onion Soup – I followed the recipe pretty good, but the soup was just okay. I thought, “Hmm…that’s weird.” I even thought about maybe throwing it out and starting fresh. But then I remembered, I like my onion soup like they serve it at restaurants, with soggy croutons and cheese. Julia has a variation for that, so I did that. It was delicious. Finally, this French cooking thing was starting to work out.
4. Roasted chicken with Onions, Bacon and Potatoes served with a fresh Béchamel Creme sauce & Asparagus with an Orange Bernaise – Everything in this meal was simply DIVINE. I had found my groove and I was in it.
5. Fettucine Alfredo – While not French, it was made from scratch: I made the fettucine myself as well as the Alfredo sauce. With no recipes in hand, I sorta hunted and found things to help point me in the right direction. The meal was a hit with me and the kids.

Where’s the “Better Coder” Bits?

For those who’ve made it this far, now’s the part you’ve all been waiting for. How does this all tie-in with being a good coder? Well, let me take each recipe above and show you the lessons learned.

1. Know your tools/ingredients/frameworks – Don’t go grab some code snippet not fully understanding what it does. A “This will work just fine” mentality may wind up biting you in the butt. Make sure the framework you’re using in your app isn’t going to leave a bad taste in your mouth when your done.
2. Don’t be afraid to experiment and leave plenty of time to focus – If there is a particular class or tool you’d like to use, don’t be afraid to step away from the project and spend a few hours to learn it. Just like my fears of Gruyère would have been eliminated if I had just melted a bit and tasted it, so to can that new framework or class become a great tool in your arsenal if you learn it outside your project. Also, leave yourself time to focus. If you’re rushing you’re going to screw up. For me, it means I left my roast in the oven too long. What should have been a tender piece of pork wound up being a little dry. Good things need time to do and a clear mind to make sure you do them correctly, whether that’s coding or cooking.
3. You have to remember your code is part of a whole, not stand alone – One thing I think we coders forget is that our code is part of a bigger picture. At the app level, there’s backend and there’s design. There are users and product managers. Heck at the highest level, there’s even a company. Much like the soup was alright until the croutons and cheese were added, sometimes our code is just alright (we know code can always be better), but that’s okay. Once our code mixes in with those other items, it’s turns into something beautiful. Yeah, the code may not be 100% Object Oriented, there could be a bit of spaghetti code, but hey, at least it’s shipped and out there doing great and wonderful things. Don’t keep tossing code just because it isn’t perfect and amazing, give it the opportunity to shine with the various items mentioned above. You may find it that it’s a lot better than you thought.
4. Things are tough to learn, so don’t give up until you got it - After 3 meals of not really working out, I could’ve easily given up on the whole French cooking thing. 3 strikes and you’re out, right? I knew this was important to me though and I *really* enjoy French Cooking when done right, so I kept at it. The fourth meal was AMAZING. I felt like a true French chef after it. The Bechamel Creme sauce was something that I used in many meals afterwards. Heck, I could just eat the sauce all by itself. LOL The same goes with learning new technologies. It took me a long time to understand the iOS dev system after spending so much time with Flex and ActionScript. However, things have finally clicked there as well. Things are easier and I’m even starting to reuse my own code across different projects. Don’t ever give up on learning something new, just keep at it. One day it’ll all click and you’ll feel amazing.
5. Someday, you won’t need help to do what you want – The nice thing about Julia’s book is she stresses that she’s teaching you foundational concepts that you must build upon. Someday, she expects you to create your own meals without her books. Coding is much the same way. At first, we learn new ideas and concepts by copying sample code, one character at a time. Eventually we move on to understanding how whole classes work, then frameworks. Eventually, we’re coding 100% on our own, doing things our “teachers” never dreamt about. That’s the beauty about learning from the masters. It is our responsibility to step up and become masters ourselves.

Here’s the thing though. I’ve lived what…35 years of my life in misery, literally, misery and agony trying to find that *one* thing I’m supposed to be master of.

Self doubt sucks

“Is it art?” I wondered until my portfolio quite literally blew away in the wind one day in high school. “Is it writing?” Fiction or non didn’t really matter to me. I wrote a novel, poems, short stories, news articles, technical articles, etc. “Is it programming?” I was good at it in the eighth grade and it’s paid the bills quite steadily since December of 1997. “Is it conferences?” A short stint proved that while fun, that certainly was *not* it. LOL

“Why can’t I figure this out? What’s wrong me?” Every other day, I find myself alone somewhere (my bed, the shower, in the car, heck, even the toilet) and I ponder that. I wonder why I’m broken. “35 years and you still don’t know what you want to be when you grow up.”

See, that’s the thing. I figured you had to be *something*. You had to be a Master of *something*, else you’d be a useless Jack of All Trades. I wanted a sign, from God, from my parents, from my peers, anywhere. “Let me know what it is and I’ll be there. I’ll dedicate my life to it.”

It’s all a Lie

You know what I just figured out though? I think this has all been one big misunderstanding. See, there are few masters. We had Mozart in classical music, Michelangelo in sculpting, Frank Lloyd Wright in architecture, Shakespeare in writing, etc. You know what though? I don’t want to be like any of them. From what I can tell, the masters tend to be more slaves to their medium. They are dictated and controlled by the unquenchable desire to do more, do better, push further, etc. It’s what drives them above all else. I don’t want that.

“Well, you’re not going to be famous.” “There’s no way you can be mediocre at many things and be successful.” “If you never master, then you’re a follower.” I think these are things said by people to justify why they’re not a *master* yet. “I just need to find that one thing” they mutter to themselves as they go to bed each night.

Today Ends the Lie

It’s funny how the little things in life bring about such grand revelations. For me, it was starting up the habit of a To-Do List again (Thanks to Cultured Code for Things, the app I started using again this morning.) I absolutely LOVE To-Do lists. I constantly tell my wife, “If you want me to get certain things done, give me a list. Whether it’s chores or grocery shopping, if I don’t have a list, I’ll get distracted.” Today I wrote about 7 or 8 items. Half dealt with work, half with personal stuff. I did so because last week, I felt like I accomplished nothing. Not a feeling I wish to become a habit.

After reviewing my list and feeling good for checking off items, I realized something. “I wonder if I can put all my passions into a To-Do list and work on them that way.” My friend, Daniel Brunk, pointed out something to me today as well. He said, “You always pick yourself up even though you know you’re gonna fall again.” He’s right, but more than he may have realized. For 35 years, I’ve always focused on one thing. Or at least, that’s what I lied to my self about. I was always trying to master what was my focus at the time. You know what though? I stopped the whole focusing thing probably in college.

Alone == True Focus; Love Ends All That

The second you find love, the second you’re no longer alone in this world, is the second your ability to have a single focus dies. I think that’s why many “greats” and “masters” have horrible personal lives. If you have one focus, one overriding passion, everything else fades. It’s like a drug: All you care about is the next high. People and their feelings don’t matter one iota.

Somewhere in college I discovered love. After college, love finally discovered me. It’s only with hindsight, can I see that I didn’t want or need to be a master. I had a great time dating my wife and I was writing like a champ. I wrote a novella and a novel during our courtship and possibly during our earliest days of marriage. This means I was doing at least 3 things at a level I was happy with: being a writer, a fiance/husband and a good employee.

Fast forward to 2004 and my oldest son was born. While learning how to be a dad, I learned the basics of application building in Flash that would lead to my success as a Flex programmer. My kid didn’t suffer and my wife didn’t lose her husband. I was doing 4 things by then: work, husband, daddy and programming at night.

Fast forward to 2006: By this time, I was a hubby, dad of my oldest, dad to my newest, employee and starting my active role in the Flex community (starting a user group, doing trainings, writing articles, starting conferences, etc.). And again, I was happy with my output and I think everyone else was too.

I Don’t Need You to Make Me Happy

I do things for me sometimes and that’s just fine. I’ve written almost 600 poems for my wife. You’ll never read them all and that’s just fine. I’ve written over 25 pieces of prose: one novel, one novella, several short stories, dialog pieces, a play, etc. You’ll never read them all and that’s just fine. I’ve written the lyrics and have recorded the vocal tracks to 5 songs and 3 were never heard by anything except my tape recorder and the walls of my bedroom. Again, that’s just fine.

The thing I think society forgets, the thing that our capitalist society doesn’t want you to figure out, it’s okay not to make a buck off of everything you do. Sometimes, you just want to do something just for the sake of doing it. That’s okay. I want to learn to play the guitar, not to play in front of a stadium full of people but rather to get out those few or single piece of music that’s buried deep inside of me. (Alright, and maybe to play our wedding song for my wife at one of our anniversaries.)

Happiness is Not a Goal, It’s the Balanced State of Living

Thinking back on my life, I can’t help but think about something my dad once said about me. “You’re amazing in one respect. You can take any situation, no matter how crappy, and make it sound like it was the time of your life.” He said that awhile back and I think I’ve lost that ability the past few years.

I somehow joined society’s chorus of complaints. “I don’t have enough time to do all I want to do.” “Of course, if I didn’t have a wife or kids, I’d have all the time in the world.” Lies, all lies. There’s plenty of time in a day to do every thing you want to do. If you want to do more than one thing, like me, you just setup a schedule to fit it all in. You schedule not because you *have* to, but rather because you *want* to.

I want to do the following (in no particular order or rank):

• make games with my new company in the off hours
• run for exercise in 6+ mile intervals
• learn to play the guitar
• play with my boys
• make my wife happy (this means trash taking out, dishes, etc)
• be active in the tech community
• be a good employee
• be a good son
• write more often (fiction and non)

The thing I realize as of today is that being happy in all those things is what keeps me in harmony. If I start to fall short in one of those things, it’ll start to drag down others. I don’t have to be the best in each of those categories, I just need to have fun and, to be honest, that doesn’t necessarily take any talent to do that. LOL

Apple won the RIA War without ever joining the battle

Just about a year ago, I was chatting on the phone with Steve Weiss of O’Reilly Media.  I made a statement to him then and, sadly, never made any noise about it.  I think I held back the noise because I have a long relationship of working with Adobe and their products. I didn’t want to admit that I was probably right, so I said the statement, felt the pain of its truthfulness and tried to forget it.  The statement was simple:

“Adobe and Microsoft are trying to push this RIA term.  They’re trying to convince the world that this is a technology they want and need. They’re each trying to instill their own vision of that world: Adobe with Flash/AIR and Microsoft with Silverlight. The one thing that everyone’s missing is this: Apple has already won. iPhone apps are THE most widely used Rich Internet Apps.  Apple has silently won the war and no one’s even noticed. All they have to do is enable iPhone apps to run via Safari (for cross-platform support) and they’ll have crushed both Adobe and Microsoft’s dreams.” That last bit I was off.  Rather than upgrading the iPhone apps to the Mac, they upgraded the size of iPhone OS device and created the iPad.

When I say “Won the war”, I’m not talking numbers here. I think iPhone OS devices are at 70ish Million? Desktops are in the billions? So yes, Flash outnumbers by a longshot. Instead, I’m talking about the mind share of the average user. If you look at the marketing angles, Microsoft and Adobe tried to create (and own) a new space called RIA. Apple, while actually creating a truly new paradigm via software and hardware, did not claim to create anything new. Did you catch the clever difference? An iPhone runs “Apps”. You know, the same thing computers have always ran. There’s nothing scary or new in that term.  You don’t have to convince a business to create an “App”, they run apps all day, everyday. There was no huge marketing effort to define a new term and own that term. Heck, Microsoft and Adobe even bickered about what the three letters R-I-A stood for, while Apple stole the average American’s heart with “There’s an app for that.”.

Everyone is riding Steve’s case because he doesn’t like Flash. Steve has even given his “Thoughts on Flash”. People still don’t believe his own words. They claim the real reason is his plan for global domination via the app store and collecting a fee for access to that “closed” store. I’ll tackle both of these arguments.

Global Domination: Who’s guilty?

According to the media and internet at large, Facebook has global domination plans. Google has global domination plans. Microsoft has global domination plans. Now, Apple does!? Say it ain’t so. We can bear the others, but not that sweet innocent, perpetual underdog Apple.  The company with a mere 14% smartphone and 6% desktop market share. Mind you, this is the same company that had to endure being treated as second best for the majority of its life.  Major software vendors would code for Windows first THEN port to Mac…maybe. It reminds me of the kid in high school who was shy and barely noticed the first few years, only to finally come out from the shadows Senior year to become the hot item.

The funny thing is that Adobe is no different in its plan for domination.  In fact, Adobe itself tried to kill Flash.  Let’s look back at this interview from 2000 with the product manager of Adobe’s LiveMotion product (you know, the product that was gonna kill Flash):

What about future plans for LiveMotion?

I don’t know if I can tell you that, but to be a valid player throughout the future, we need to have some kind of scripting model. Our customers are telling us this, Macromedia is pointing [out] the fact that we don’t have ActionScripting. It’s not like we’re sitting here saying “we don’t care about actionscripting.” Of course we do. Ultimately, I don’t think a proprietary scripting language is the way to go. I don’t think we should have to force people to learn a proprietary, ActionScript-based language. I think it would be cooler if you could use JavaScript, C or Java as a scripting language to access the objects in your Flash-file and control them that way. I would even like it if Macromedia was doing that. Because then the developers could choose the language they want. That’s where I’d like to see it go.

(What’s funny, in hindsight, is the “C” part of that statement.) Make no joke, Adobe wanted Flash dead.  When they realized they couldn’t kill it, they did the next best thing: They bought it for $3.4B. After that, Adobe marketing had some rough times finding their market position, but eventually settled upon: “The Flash Platform”. Despite the cries by it’s RIA followers to NOT use such a term because “Flash” is not synonymous with business, but more with preloaders and banner ads. Now, their goal is to achieve what Java couldn’t: write once, run anywhere.  Java failed though because vendors made their own JVMs and fragmented the market.  Adobe was smart because there was only one player: theirs. Anyone could create a swf file, but only Adobe was able to create a fully operational Flash Player.

Now, however, with the Open Screen Project, Adobe has decided that desktops and even mobiles weren’t enough. They wanted their RIA runtimes on every device in the world. Again, look at the browser title for the Open Screen Project site, they are pushing the RIA term as the thing YOU (the internet world at large) wants. A bajillion partners have signed up and that’s great for Adobe and it’s great for Flash developers (of which I am one, by the way). However, one company has not signed up to be a partner: Yeah, that fruit one that doesn’t really like Flash. Apple didn’t sign up to be a part of Open Screen, so instead Adobe made a run to get Flash content on Apple devices.

Honestly people, how does this make sense? Adobe invites everyone to a party (Open Screen Project) and then wastes time and effort building in a specific iPhone exporter into Flash!  ”Don’t worry, partners. You bought the kool-aid, you’ll get your dues when we finally deliver 10.1 (you know, Steve was right on our missing promised deadlines). However, the one company, who has a tiny market share, will warrant focus and efforts by our engineering team that (let’s be honest here) could’ve been focused on delivering you those 10.1 bits faster.” I’m sorry, Adobe. I love ya, I really do. Flex dev pays my bills and the Flex community helped make my first company a reality. However, I have to call you out on this. Your lack of focus to a project you initiated has led to a delay in your plans of world domination.  I applaud your recent efforts to finally stop development of iPhone exporter features. Bravo, but I hope and pray that it’s not too little, too late.

I mentioned above that I’m a Flex (read: Flash Platform) developer. It pays my bills and rather well. I love the work. It’s challenging and exhilarating. I love that I write it once and it runs on mac/windows browsers with no problems (for the most part). The one thing I can’t stand behind though is the Open Screen Project. Here’s an earlier post from this blog that shows my initial excitement of the promised land when I ran my first Flash bits on my Playstation3. That excitement quickly faded though as I realized something. There’s a lot of buttons on the PS3 controller and you know what? I can’t access them.  There are 8-cores (SPEs) on the Cell chip inside the PS3 and you know what? I can’t access them. Cross-Platform will never be able to fully utilize all of a device’s native features; Features that are the sole purpose for the device to begin with.

Closed Platforms: They’re not bad…sorry.

Steve says:

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open.

Note he never says a lick about an open platform. In fact, he blatantly says he has proprietary products.  His point is, that when it comes to the web, it should be open: Not his devices, not his app store, not his device OSes. Wake up, people. Why was it that you loved Apple before they announced apps needed to be native? You loved them because they were closed in their devices, OS and app store. You loved the User Experience that could only come from a marriage of hardware and software. You loved the fact that you could download a song or app in seconds on your phone. You loved that for almost any request you had, the answer was: There’s an app for that.

I could understand the hate (not appreciate it, but at least understand it) if Steve said you have to use this one tool by Apple and nothing else.  He doesn’t though.  He says you have to use Objective-C, C++ or C. There’s three choices right there. I know of many successful iPhone OS game makers who never use Objective-C at all. They code and create on Linux. However, beyond that, there’s the web app toolkit.  That’s right. If you want to write an app on the iPhone, you do NOT need a mac, Xcode, Objective-C or anything related to Apple. You can build a website just like this: http://imusicmash.com In the iPhone OS Safari browser, there’s a “+” sign at the bottom.  Click it and your second option is “Add to Home Screen”. Viola! You now have an “app” on the iPhone without paying Apple a dime or going through they’re silly little App store.

Funny thing is that most people (developers and end-users) don’t go that route. Why not? It’s fairly simple, because those apps aren’t as cool as native apps. (No offence meant to Al of imusicmash.) As a developer, you miss out on utilizing a lot of cool features the iPhone OS and device provides. As an end-user, you get a fairly bland application compared to the cooler native apps. Guess what…that’s Steve’s biggest point in his “Thoughts on Flash” and it’s not a lie.

Flash is great for desktops, because whether you’re running Linux, Mac OS X or Windows, you have basically the same parts: mouse, keyboard and monitor. Those are standard across the board. Even there though (and this is gonna sting Flex/Flash devs and Adobe, sorry) there’s one great native feature of the desktop OS that has ALWAYS been sub-par on any Flash app.  Say it with me everyone: Right-click support. We’ve had right-click in OSes for how long? Let’s check wikipedia:

“As of 2007 (and roughly since the late 1990s), users most commonly employ the second button to invoke a contextual menu in the computer’s software user interface, which contains options specifically tailored to the interface element over which the mouse cursor currently sits.”

If it’s been 3 (or roughly 10) years and there’s still no solid right-click solution. What makes you think all the cool new features, i.e. all the distinguishing features of any device will be fully and greatly implemented in a “write once, run anywhere” Flash app?

Game consoles and handhelds are perfect examples of successful and great closed systems. Apple has finally gone on record and stated that the iPod is a great gaming system. However, unlike its competitors, I can buy into the closed Apple system for the price of a machine (of which I already have a few) and $99 developer fee.  Yes, Apple has the right to refuse my game, but so does the other game platforms and they cost a lot more money to get into.

Final Thoughts

Is Apple perfect? No. Is Adobe perfect? No. Are you perfect? No. Am I perfect? No. There’s 34,300 employees at Apple. There’s 8,600 employees at Adobe. People at each place are gonna screw up. Both companies have shareholders and those shareholders want each company to win the world domination battle. Sorry folks, each company is really in it for the almighty dollar…really. That’s why they are “businesses” and not a foundation like the W3C. (A fact that Adobe credits for Flash’s success, I might add.)

I’ve made a good living developing on Adobe technologies. I’ll continue to make a good living developing with those technologies. However, my two boys (3 and 5 years old) plus most adults who comes into my house are fascinated and enraptured by either one of my iPods or their iPhone. There’s magic there that can’t be beat. I know, because I get sucked into said magic. In fact, I’ve started a new company, Area 161, to specifically leverage devices with native apps. I’m frustrated that Final Fantasy XIII could’ve been a lot better for the Playstation3 if SquareEnix hadn’t made it for both the XBox360 and Playstation3 simultaneously.

I’m sorry, but we don’t need to dumb down our apps to run across multiple devices. I want crazy killer native apps that help steer were I should spend my device money. As I’ve written here before, I love my Kindle because it DOESN’T run apps or have color or a back-lit screen. Instead, it lets me get lost in my books. It’s the truth and if Amazon goes crazy and screws that up, I’m gonna be pissed.

Leverage devices to their fullest. Create amazing stuff. Choose your tools wisely. When the going gets tough, just say the following:

I’m a developer.  I’m an entrepreneur. No company is responsible for my success or my downfall.  I am responsible for seeing the industry and (re)acting accordingly.

The youth of today are important.  It’s important to provide them the tools they need to express themselves, or else they’ll find other ways.  To kick off the show with some of today’s creative youth was awesome.

Content is no longer one sided.  One point hinted out early on is that content is no longer the domain of one group.  Today’s web users are just as excited to create content as they are to consume it.  You need to plan for that fact.

It’s important to not just build great websites or ads, but to also know how your customers think and behave.  I know that I would like sites to be smarter about me.  I’m tired having to re-explain myself to each website/company.

The next point is that full version Flash is coming everywhere: desktops, netbooks, smartphones and TVs.  The biggest problem was RAM usage.  It’s a true dilemma for Adobe and device manufactures.  I, as a techie, realize that devices and computers aren’t equal in power and ram.  However, my mom doesn’t understand that.  Most of the public just assume that a machine is a machine.

Touch, gestures, accelerometer, etc. are important to the future of User Interfaces.  This was obvious before the keynote.  Apple’s iPhone has proved that people love this new way to interact with devices. As an owner of an iPod touch, I have to admit that the first time I tried gestures, I fell in love.  My 3 year-old understands gestures with no training or explaining.  Using a mouse is not intuitive at all, so the sooner we can get rid of it, the better.

Enterprise applications are tired of being second rate apps.  Up until recently, enterprise applications have been boring as all heck.  The important thing was the numbers, more so than the experience.  As Web 2.0 interactivity has become part of people’s everyday lives, so has the need to duplicate this richness in the enterprise.  Employees in an enterprise are just people who cruise the web at home.  This is a long-overdue trend that I’m glad to see transpiring.  Rich is good and it’s about time we begin to leverage concepts from the real world into the enterprise.