The good folks at Bootup Labs brought Brad Feld up to Vancouver last week to riff on entrepreneurship and business.  Brad wrote about his visit at his blog.

The video of the event should be up in the next few days.

I have been going to these types of events for about a year and a half now.  There have been a number of issues that always come at these talks.  I’ll summarize the talk from my point of view and what the major takeaways were.

Silicon Valley Envy

There is this prevailing attitude in Vancouver that we need to be more like Silicon Valley.  Brad seems to encounter this same issue in Colorado.  There is this underlying inferiority complex that there isn’t enough talent in Vancouver or there aren’t enough investment dollars.

This topic annoys the hell out of me.  I swear I will throw a shoe if I hear about this again.

Ideas & Napkins

“That’s not how background processing and push notifications will work in iPhone OS 3.0.”

“Applications lives in a sandbox and can not access external files for security reasons.”

“That market doesn’t have money to spend.  Look at so-and-so business.”

“Your attach rate is overly optimistic.  Here are the numbers for so-and-so product.”

“There is not enough bandwidth on the 3G network for that.  Wifi may work.”

“You could do that.  If the battery was connected to a nuclear reactor.”

Everyone has the best game design idea EVAR!  And everyone also has the best idea EVAR for iPhone Apps.  I have been living, eating, and breathing this platform for over a year.  I’ve been working in the game development industry longer than that.

I get pitched new ideas on a weekly basis.  Unfortunately, I have to spend a chunk of every single day shooting down ideas because there is some inherent technical or business flaw.

There were a number of questions from entrepreneurs that had an idea on the back of a napkin and an NDA and wanted to raise funding and build a team.

At this point, the best thing an entrepreneur can do is build a TODO list of all the features that needs to be built to get a prototype up and going.  If they are not technically inclined they should fire up Photoshop or buy a big stack of index cards from Staples.

Make mockups.  Build a paper prototype.  Execute on the idea in any which way that you can.

Next, build another TODO list of everything that needs to be done to make money.  Businesses are supposed to make money. Remember?

Fear & Failure

I have been running the business for 14 months now.  I still wake up every morning scared out of my mind.  I know exactly how long I have until the business runs out of cash.

I rub the sleep out my eyes and scream “YES! YES! YES! YES!” about 80 times before my feet land on the floor.  There was discussion about the amount of risk taking that happens in Vancouver.  This has actually improved a magnitude over the last year.  With the economy tanking, people have realized that there is no such thing as job security.  There was never such a thing as job security.  People are afraid and are thinking about taking more risk.

Fear is good.  It’s there to let you know that what you are working on is important.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.  Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can bethat that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.  That’s why we feel so much Resistance.  If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.

– Steven Pressfield.  The War of Art

Lead & Do

Brad was emphatic when he brought up this point.  This is what successful entrepreneurs do every single day.

You have to lead in some way.  It may be all about being first to market.  It may be figuring out what customers actually want.  It may be all about building a brand that people care about.

But it is also about building a team and having people follow you on your mission.  You are going to need help.  Wheelbarrows full of help.

Mentorship

There are  facets of the business that I’m still not good at.  This is the point where I bring in outside people to help out.

I am happy to answer technical or business questions that I have real world experience with.  Most people in the community here are happy to answer questions as well.  This was a big point that most of the experienced entrepreneurs raised.  Most are happy to answer question.

I send out emails and do background checks on every single client that I’m thinking about taking a contract.

Twitter

You can follow Brad Feld and myself on Twitter.  The hashtag for the event was #blesfeld.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

The article focuses on iPhone Development here in Vancouver and the opportunities for education and training.  A big part of the article is about the course that I taught at BCIT last year.  I want to take a step back and discuss the bigger picture with respect to mobile.

Bleeding Edge Mobile: Development & Lifestyle

Mobile development is very bleeding edge today.  There will be a ton of trial-and-error in this space.  We are all just figuring it out.  I bought my first pager when I arrived at Simon Fraser University in 1998.  These were the days of ICQ. Short-form text messages were just taking off. But, you had to be sitting at your computer at your desk. Wifi was not ubiquitous. Laptop computers were rare. The pager was really the first way for the masses to receive short form text messages anywhere in the world.

This was only 10 short years ago.  We have advanced by leaps and bounds since then.  Our mobile devices are always connected.  The mobile web experience rivals the desktop.  We can contact others by text, voice, picture, video, and location.  This can all be done from almost everywhere in the world.

Our mobile devices contain GPS units and out of that arises location-aware services.  I love my Garmin Forerunner as much as my iPhone.  The Forerunner is one obvious use of GPS technology.  It is a brilliant use of technology to enhance a person’s training experience.  Technology that was only available at elite events is now available to the masses.

This is as important as Google Maps on the iPhone.  Think about what happens when location information can be attached to every meeting in your calendar, every task in your TODO list, every article in your news reader, every text message that you receive, and every picture in your photo album.

Suddenly, we have context.

We live in a brave new world where we don’t have to be tied down to a particular location.  The days of working at a station in a factory are coming to an end.  This will soon be followed by the end of the cubicle in the office.

Homo sapiens are nomads.  We were never meant to be chained down and we were never meant to settle.  This has only been an aberration since the Industrial Revolution.  We are travelers and adventurers.  The Mobile Revolution is about returning to our roots as nomads.

Vancouver: MobileCity

There is an obscene amount of mobile development done here in Vancouver.  There are two big players in the space.  Nokia has an office in Vancouver where a big chunk of their N-Gage platform is developed.  Sierra Wireless is headquartered in Vancouver, too.

The large number of game developers working on the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS can not be discounted either.

A number of young and hungry entrepreneurs are being fostered in this ecosystem.  These young entrepreneurs are hustling and killing it every single day.  Igor from Handi Mobility was interviewed for the article, too.  His company has built a brilliant service called Mobify that takes your content that was authored for the desktop and can push that out to your mobile web browser.

Many Platforms

The iPhone is the new hotness and has received a ton of buzz.  However, this space is full of dozens of 800 lbs gorillas.

RIM still owns the enterprise with their Blackberry.  Nokia’s N-Series is brilliant and every second phone I saw in India was made by them.  Palm is hungry and desperate.  They know that the Pre is their last big chance and it looks like they have built something awesome.  Google is pushing very aggressively with their Android platform.

Sony can not be ignored.  Their Sony PSP is very successful and they have great cameras in their Ericsson phones.  Sony has the unique advantage of having a huge library of music, film, and games.

Nintendo will not sit idle with the DS either.

One of these days Microsoft will come to their senses, fire Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie, scrap Windows Mobile, and let the J Allard wing of the company build brilliant products.

I also look forward to the day we can build software for the Amazon Kindle.

Apple, RIM, Nokia, Palm, Google, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Amazon are all 800 lbs gorillas and they all want to own a big chunk of mobile.

Twitter

Big thanks to everyone at The Georgia Straight.  For even more information, you can follow The Straight, Jeffery Simpson, Stephen Hui, Igor, and myself on Twitter.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Me on a couch with a beer in hand.  Watch it!  I guarantee I will say something controversial.

Make sure you follow Strutta, Jordan Behan, Dustin Sacks, and myself on Twitter for more information.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

April iPhone Developers Meetup

Workspace - http://www.abetterplacetowork.com/

400 - 21 Water Street

Vancouver, B.C.

Thursday April 16, 2009

6:30PM - 8:30PM

I’m not scheduled to speak this time around.  There is two hours scheduled so I may jump in with some information if there is time left over.  I’ve been doing a ton of work with Quartz and CoreAnimation recently.  In my experience, not too many people write low-level iPhone code, so hopefully there is something new I can bring to the table.

Please make sure you join the Vancouver iPhone Developers Google Group if you are not already a member.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

February iPhone Developers Meetup

The Network Hub

3rd floor - 422 Richards Street

Vancouver, B.C.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

7PM - 8:30PM

I will be doing a demo presentation on Optimizing Performance on the iPhone.  Memory optimization is key on the iPhone since it is an embedded device.  I’ll go over best practices for allocating and deallocating memory.  I will start by covering the Leak Detector.  The easiest path to poor performance is not correctly managing memory.

Then I will cover how to use ObjectAlloc in Instruments.  This will give you a view of where your App is actually allocating memory and how to optimize for that.

I’ll finish by going over the CPU Sampler and the OpenGL ES performance tool.

There is an event posted over at Upcoming.  Make sure you signup if you have a Yahoo Upcoming account.

Please make sure you join the Vancouver iPhone Developers Google Group if you are not already a member.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting?  It’s easy.  Just make yourself perfect and then paint naturally.  That’s the way all the experts do it.  The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence.  If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh?  It all goes together.

…

The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself.  The machine that appears to be ‘out there’ and the person that appears to be ‘in here’ are not two seperate things.  They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality togehter.”

– Robert Pirsig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Yesterday was my 29th birthday.  I can finally say I am proud of the man that I have become.

Having a birthday so early in the year is kind of peculiar.  There are two points back-to-back that get one in a contemplative mood.

Most resolutions have already been broken 15 days into a new year.  The easiest way to tell this is by timing how long it takes to get a treadmill at the gym.  On the first Monday of the year you better be at the gym before the doors open.  Two weeks into the year, half the treadmills are free.

Most people, including myself, overestimate what can be accomplished in a year and underestimate what can be accomplished in 40 years.

This is what I learned in India.

I am of the mind that there are two types of changes.  Change that happens instantaneously.  This is usually internal change–a decision.

Then there is the hard change.  The change that takes a lifetime.  The change that requires you to wake up at 6AM every single morning ready to kick ass.

In 1968, my grandfather decided to move my family away from the small village that my dad was born and raised.  This must have been quite a difficult decision for him.  He had been the mayor of the village for 25 years.

40 years later, it just made perfect sense for the family to get back together in that same tiny village and spend New Year’s Day together.

The village is constructed around a modest village square.  My grandfather led the construction of the square many decades ago.  In the early 1980s, my father sent money to the village to construct the first domed building in the square.

The village square is where couples are married.  It is where people go to pray.  It is where village meetings happen.  It is where all of the communal tools are stored.  It is where the bulk grain is stored.  It is where all the kids go to play.

This New Years, my father, my uncles, and myself donated a big sum of cash to have the village square completed.  We donated it under my grandfather’s name.

The money is going to continue tiling the building in the centre.  If there is money left over it will go towards covering the current dirt surface with marble.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Setting resolutions is a tempting task.  Everybody is doing it!  Why shouldn’t I?

Other than the fact that setting resolutions is not effective, it can also turn into a big source of procrastination, pain, anguish, stress, and suffering.  In classic Buddhism, this suffering is called Dukkha.  We believe that we will be truly happy in the future when some goal is achieved.

The future never comes.

On one hand, the goal may not be achieved and we feel shitty about ourselves.  On the other hand, we achieve our goal and the happiness associated with it is fleeting.

I am more comfortable following a lifestyle based in Kaizen.  I wake up every morning at 6AM and try to be better.  On some days I suck.  I suck hard.  Most days I do end up doing better.

I leave for India in a couple days and I have been getting my affairs in order.  I thought I would take the time to refocus on being better.

Better Friend

People that are too kind for their own good call me driven, ambitious, and passionate.  Most call me arrogant, loud, and abrasive.  It’s tough being my friend.  At times, I am a bad friend and a bad boyfriend.

I am getting better though.

Better Developer

I have been writing code for more than a decade now.  I was completely sick of it a year ago.

Over the last year I have been focusing much more on user experience.  I’ve studied design, classic architecture, literature, typography, and a variety of other disciplines.  I stepped away from the computer so that I would be better when I sat back down.

Better CEO

This is the new role that I took on this year.  It has been a challenge.  I am a newbie again and I am making mistakes every single day.

There have also been great successes.  The business is making much more money than I ever have as a salaried employee.  I am also taking on projects that I can actually believe in.

Better Athlete

I had fallen off of the wagon at the start of 2008.  I was in the worst shape of my life.  I am almost 25 lbs lighter than my heaviest weight.

I played high school basketball and I used to view myself as an athlete.  This momentum remained through 1st year university when I was still in the gym six days each week.  But, slowly that commitment petered away.

I am back now and my commitment and resolve can only increase.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

I am a prolific note taker.  You can read my notes from GDC 2008.  I’m not sure what will be covered under NDA.  I’ll do my best to post as much information as I can.

It should also be a great opportunity to meet.  If you are in Seattle that day, please contact me if you would like to meet.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Here are the details:

BCIT
ROOM 353 - 555 Seymour Street

Vancouver BC
Thursday November 20 : 6:30PM - 8:00PM

Topics
- iPhone OS
- iPhone game programming experience and demos
- Introduction to Interface Builder

Admin
- how we can help can newcomers more easily find this group
- where and when we should meet next

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Translink iPhone App

The App uses PhoneGap to bridge the data that Translink has on the web onto the iPhone.  I had a very, very, very small hand in fixing some bugs in the project.

I’m part way through rewriting the PhoneGap iPhone client.  I plan on release this rewrite to the community once I am done.  I can’t promise a timeline at the moment as this is a side project for myself.

Powered by Bookmarkify™