github enables open source developers to collaborate effectively

Here’s a little something to chew over – what would happen if we removed the structure and constraints imposed on the working developer? Would everything descend into chaos and be wholly unproductive… or would great things emerge with natural order from the lack of burocracy and politics? There has always been much discussion of Google’s ’20% time’, allocated to developers to work on whatever they want. It is difficult to analyse how or whether this works in practice, but there are some great examples of work done purely because it is the developer’s choice in the open source and philanthropic spheres.

Some of this unstructured work glues together the many systems we take for granted every day, and often those responsible deliver quality unrivalled in the corporate world without receiving a penny in return. With an increasing buzz around tech startups, social media and ‘cloud’ technologies, some organisations are beginning to implement different approaches towards their software development practices, and a few are making good money from it. There is a definite likelihood that developers who have been working for large firms for some time inherit quite a blinkered view of the problem domain on which they are working.

While I don’t necessarily agree that the product centric world of venture capital seeking startups is the way forward for entrepreneurial developers, I do think exploring new avenues for building innovative and useful software is important. When one begins to analyse the reasons for highly structured development approaches, it is obvious that it is for the most part a direct result of the way in which business is commissioned and carried out, so it is very likely a different approach to both business as well development is necessary for the change to be successful.

With increasing regularity I find myself turning to open source software to solve problems I’ve encountered. The pool of resources publicly available at sites like GitHub is growing rapidly, as are businesses founded on open source technology. Not all open source development is disorganised or lacking in structure but the work is certainly distributed and grows very differently to traditional closed source software.

The real boundary I’m trying to draw here is between work a developer has to do, and work a developer wants to do. I believe that in the latter case the results speak for themselves.

…You can find me on GitHub here.

That said the uptake of new users has still been slow, and we are working to spread the word about meetingShed further. Refining the application is still an important aim but the response to feedback obviously has to be scaled depending upon the interest received.

A sustainable and long term approach is being taken to this project and we hope to create something lasting that becomes important enough to users so that they keep coming back. We hope to please users of calendar and scheduling software with the simplicity of meetingShed and its integration with Google Calendar. Do not hesitate to shoot any questions or criticism to:

support[at]meetingshed.com

Some of the features include:

The app is now live and can be tried out at www.meetingshed.com

The scheduling functionality uses the KMS-dev development platform for logic programming.

I urge anyone reading to please give it a go and any feedback you can provide would be gratefully received!

There were several important things I learned while at the Expo:

• While I’m not qualified to talk at length about it myself, it is abundantly clear that cloud computing confuses people. All of these people seemed plenty well equipped with the knowledge to understand technical concepts. The problem has to do with the blurred definition of what the cloud really is. I suppose in that sense it’s very fitting that much like the physical entities in the atmosphere that the word cloud represents, the meaning of cloud computing is similarly amorphous.
• Software development in the UK needs to grow as an industry. Plenty of people talking to me were bemoaning the lack of quality developers and development companies that are based in the UK. Outsourcing happens a lot in the current economic climate, and while some developers abroad are genuinely offering value for money, many offer a false economy. There are many capable software developers young and old in the UK that have all the expertise and experience to deliver the absolute highest quality software. I think our industry needs investment and I also think the manner in which software is typically commissioned, developed and sold may need to change in order for the industry to grow.
• The project needs a few things:

Knowledge Management Services becomes KMS-dev and KMS-apps

The experience of the Expo has made me realise that just offering consultancy or marketing a particular product to the target market is not necessarily the best way to get noticed.

To demonstrate the project further I now aim to have some more material online by the time the major development is finished. Its clear that some people are interested in the development platform itself, and some are interested in the applications possible to develop using the platform. Unfortunately the two sets of interested parties seem to be in most cases mutually exclusive. Therefore I’m going to split the online information into two distinct sections: KMS-dev where one can learn a bit more about the development platform itself and KMS-apps which will showcase the sample applications and as well as generating interest I hope to launch at least one of the applications as a subscription service.

Another problem I’m hoping to tackle by setting the target of making demo material available online is that articulating the project is not easy, as it doesn’t lend itself to a quick hard-sell. This links in with the second point I made above: Some people really don’t seem comfortable discussing the development of bespoke software to solve particular business problems. In my experience though, discussion of business problems is the only way to make progress and provide someone with something they really need. I could speculate endlessly on the reasons for this reluctance, but there is one important possible reason I can do something about:

People want to digest something in their own time that will provide a concise way of assessing whether a product or service can offer them some value. With this in mind over the next few months I hope to have to have the KMS website live. It will represent a new approach to marketing the development platform and the software derived from it, which I hope may resonate with interested individuals and businesses.

Intelligent Architectures' stand at the expo

The Expo itself was a good experience and it was interesting to see the range of vendors and organisations that attend such an event. It has to be said that this event was the only affordable option for a small organisation to attend in comparison to astronomical charges made by most other computing event organisers, and there wasn’t any real compromise on the quality of the event either.

Presence at the Expo represents another step towards taking what started out as a simple idea and turning it into a desirable product to bring to market.

I hope in the near future to bring exciting news about further developments in my project work

Well next week (2-3rd February) I’ll be exhibiting my software project  as Intelligent Architectures’ founder and chief developer. Find out more information about the expo here. This will provide a much needed opportunity for my project to get some exposure and hopefully develop links with interested businesses.

It was a rather last minute decision so I’m currently in the throes of organising things for the expo, but I am looking forward to the opportunity it provides.

The event is free if you pre-register so please do come along and say hello!

My life

I’ve had a somewhat varied lifestyle this year, as is the way of student life. Last Christmas seems not so long ago when the weather was crazy, and I was working back in my home town with a continuing and productive work arrangement at a software development company.

In the past year there have been house moves, weddings and graduations of friends and family, making for a hectic but enjoyable social time.

In addition to this I’ve had exams, worked over the summer and am well and truly stuck into my final year of university. I’m also starting out new ventures developing Android apps for mobile devices and promoting a major project I’m working on which I hope will have a successful commercial future.

It goes without saying that at times this year has been stressful. Its also been paradoxically both profitable and costly (in terms of money and time). Still on balance, its all good, as they say.

Politics

Looking at the wider view on the world this year: In the UK there’s been big political changes, namely in the form of a new government, a tighter budget and spending cuts. This has already and will continue to impact everyone in this country. The long term effects remain to be seen, and as I’m not an expert I can’t really talk in depth about it. As 2012 draws closer the London Olympics loom like a very lavish party someone agreed to throw when they had one too many. In the cold light of day one is left wondering whether an ostentatious display (which may or may not stimulate the economy) is more worthy of funding than the NHS or the education of future generations…

Technology

Smarter mobile devices have exploded onto the market in a big way recently, and there are more offerings in the form of tablet devices to come. This has opened up new possibilities for users and developers alike.

End-user centric apps are the name of the game on both mobile devices and the web in terms of buzz generated. While it brings many new opportunities, the increasing popularity of homebrew software start-ups tends to dilute the market due the average quality of such end-user software becoming diminished (such as on the Android Market). People are also still looking out for the next big thing in terms of social networking.

What worries me about rapid breeding of start-ups and focus on end-user software is whether it really boosts the economy or not. Advertising based revenue can be very profitable, but largely only for the real big shot hosts – Google and Facebook being prime examples. The middle men in terms of content providers and those placing their adverts with schemes like Adwords / Adsense, don’t necessarily get much of the benefit passed on to them. All this hype in areas such as these leaves me wondering whether there will in the near future be a lack of software developers who build software that actually does stuff. I’m talking about applications such as those that make business-to-business transactions possible and automate business processes.

And beyond

Well there’s a slice of stuff that’s been rattling around in my brain for a little while.

Next year for me is crunch time in terms of longer term employment in whatever form I may find it. With any luck soon life will be a bit more settled. All that remains to be said is that this time next year rodders… we’ll be millionaires!

There is a real danger here, that people actually believe that such a thing becomes so successful due to an amazing technical ability or foresight into the psyche of a huge target audience. The reality is that chance has a huge part to play in such a venture becoming the next big thing.

The antidote to this kind of misplaced ambition (note I call it misplaced but the ambition itself is an admirable thing), I believe is to ground oneself in the basic principles of business if one hopes to make any money. And that means having a strong business model to follow. This means thinking about finding a reliable way to make money from your ‘product’ or service, before you begin to provide it.

This kind of back-to-basics business thinking is something the world economy could do with more of right now. I personally believe in the simple idea that money works when it is exchanged for a party providing another with a product or service which is as effective as possible proportional to the money spent on it. Unfortunately this only relates to a subset of all the business carried out in the world today: I’m going to shoot myself in the foot here and say – people invest too far in advance with uncertainty as to whether, as they love to say in the business world, the end result will add real value or not.

Put simply: an app needs a good business model to succeed monetarily, as does everything else.

However there are some short-comings of the Market noted on many a blog. Lets analyse Android Market as an app – it provides basic functionality, but that’s not all mobile apps are about; there needs to be a compelling user experience and that seems to be lacking from the Market. Considering the amount of time some developers spend developing high quality apps, it is a shame Google are not treating the Android Market in the same manner.

Some of the issues I have noted with the Android Market:

• Lack of curation of clearly non-functional and very poor quality apps – while I wouldn’t like to see censorship on grounds of opinion, it is obvious when an app clearly doesn’t work and they should be removed.
• Categorisation only one level deep – there is so much diversity in the apps, why should they only have one tier of categorisation? I’d much prefer a system which has sub-categories as it would enable users to be in more control of the type of apps they are looking for.
• No quirky features to promote apps, such as a button to select a random app
• No tagging of apps with keywords
• App search facility provides poor results – Google are the masters of the search experience, so why does the search largely order results by app name, rather than keyword and description text? Perhaps there could be different search ordering modes available – by price, by keyword, by description etc…
• Very basic information available about apps – how about some rating / reviewing facility which would give users more information about the quality of the apps and the features they provide, and more of a community feel with forums or something similar.

Clearly there could be a lot more to the Android Market, though I understand apps intended for a mobile device turn users off if they are too complicated. An improved Android Market means improved downloads of apps which is better for users, device manufacturers, developers, and Android as a platform in general.

It is important to note that poor paid app sales are probably not solely due to the quality of the Android Market, there are also cultural issues such as the recession and the general marketing strategy used. But developers are now calling for Google to do more with the Android Market as any improvements will inevitably be a boost to the Android based economy.

My new task management / to do list android app, Organisa Lite, has a few features I think some people will like:

• Organise all your notes in a unique tree-like hierarchy
• An innovative user interface where everything is managed from one screen – no clumsy flicking between multiple menus to get things done
• Put notes under different headings called projects which can be maximised or minimised as required
• Export the workspace to backup and use on other android devices – email your workspace and share with others
• Update your Android calendar(s) with the dates that you put into Organisa Lite at the touch of a button

Organisa Lite is available from the Android Market and has now been reduced to £1.65, due to a slow start with downloads. I didn’t necessarily expect a high volume but want to get some feedback and start the ball rolling. I hope people enjoy the app and if they have any problems I’ll be happy to assist.