Tom Hume

Over the last year I've noticed a little pattern popping up around my work-life: that examining problems and failures in a safe environment can be very helpful. In particular I've seen this in the retrospective meeting which we run fortnightly at FP to examine the last 2 weeks of work, warts and all; in the Hub 100 (now MDHub) gatherings which get a few local business owners together to talk frankly about the issues of running a small business; and in a few quiet (and private) lunches with folks from local software and design companies, talking about the gritty realities of software development and project management.

In every case I've had the impression that in private, folks are prepared to engage in much more honest, open and useful discussions about this stuff. So I'm wondering if there's room for a regular (monthly?) event in Brighton where we can do just this: have a manageably small (6-10?) number of people engaged in software/digital projects get together, in private, and talk about the really nasty stuff that gives us sleepless nights. I'd suggest running it under the Chatham House rule to preserve anonymity and ensure there's no fear of the humiliation that necessarily arises from admitting you don't know everything about everything.

What do you think? Drop me an email if you're interested and I'll either set up or appropriate a mailing list. And if there's enough takers I'll set something up...

Alistair Cockburn on walking skeletons: "A Walking Skeleton is a tiny implementation of the system that performs a small end-to-end function. It need not use the final architecture, but it should link together the main architectural components. The architecture and the functionality can then evolve in parallel... [It is] permanent code, built with production coding habits, regression tests, and is intended to grow with the system. Once the system is up and running, it will stay up and running for the rest of the project, despite the Incremental Rearchitecture that is quite likely to occur."

Last year we did exactly this for LocoMatrix. We started out by ignoring geolocation, MIDlets, or any of that stuff, and Mr Moxley delivered the simplest client/server game that we could think of, using a subset of our architecture: it was paper, scissors, stone. This involved a small slice of the communications protocol being in place; something server-side to handle basic units of storage (what's a player? what's a game?) and expressing a very simple game logic. I think we managed to get this going in around a week (Jack, correct me if I'm mistaken there).

I was quite pleased with what this approach gave us: working end-to-end code fairly quickly and aspects of the design validated. We didn't have anything running on a phone (which cut the code/test/fix cycle and sped up development of the protocol side of things no end), we didn't have any ability to push graphics or location data around, but we had a skeleton which we knew worked, and which we could build on top of.

Definitely an approach which I'm keen for us to adopt on new projects...

2008 looks like being a busy year for Future Platforms; so, once again, we're looking for development talent to join our engineering team. We're after solid Java skills (with J2ME a very welcome bonus), an ability to communicate effectively and an enthusiasm for all things mobile; in the immediate future we'd consider contract or permanent applications.

You'll be working on mobile-related software projects for a broad range of startups (Trutap, LocoMatrix, and a couple of others I can't name right now), established content owners (like the BBC, EMI, Puzzler Media, or Heinemann publishing), and a host of marcomms agencies. We're a small business (there's 15 of us last time I counted), but have been running for nearly 8 years now and have a good reputation in the world of mobile. You'd be working closely with our absolutely cracking design team, in a friendly environment with some smart people (and me).

On top of our service work, we also have some internal products which we actively develop, and we actively budget time for our staff for personal development and R&D. And as we're a small company, you'll get a chance to contribute to all aspects of the business: strategy, development tactics,
business development and so on. If you're reading this site I've already bored you with endless posts about how we approach the problems of developing software :)

If you're interested, send a CV to recruitment@futureplatforms.com. We shan't be using recruitment agencies to fill this vacancy, and will actively avoid using any agencies who I even suspect have contacted us after reading this post.

Another new face at Future Platforms: Rebecca Cottrell is joining our design team, headed up by Bryan Rieger. I could write some pith about how our paths crossed, but she's beaten me to it and blogged it more eloquently than I would've.

I didn't make it to the last Mobile Monday London, but two things really struck me about the presentation from David Wood of Symbian:

1. The fragmentation slide: "it's always quicker to release a device-specific solution than put that functionality into the (re-usable) platform and then to a device", "suppliers dislike helping their competitors", "suppliers don't like source code changes made by their competitors". Anyone know of a Googly response to this, I'm sure this slide was aimed at them?
2. The Lean/Agile emphasis at the end of the slide, explicitly calling out Toyota as an example to be learned from. I'm quite surprised, even for a relatively developer-focused event like Mobile Monday, to see a large business like Symbian make this approach part of its offer.

Not that I've actually tried it yet, but JoikuSpot looks gorgeous - head-slappingly obvious in retrospect (and only in retrospect) like many fantastic ideas and I suspect, genuinely disruptive. Leaving aside the irony that this positions 3G as the bearer of the "wi-fi-everywhere dream" peddled for nearly a decade now... I wonder what this'll lead to, particularly once JoikuSpot or a competing product offers not just HTTP but full internet access, and flat-rate data is more prevalent? What would the mobile equivalent of FON be like? How would it differ to accommodate speed, pricing and availability fluctuations?

Imagine an MVNO which piggybacked not just onto one large operator with whom it has a Big Commercial Agreement in place, but all of them, quietly and unobtrusively...

...so I'm listening to the excellent Long Now Foundation podcasts whenever I travel from A to B without something specific to think about or do (i.e. walking to work, to class, etc.) - and they're absolutely excellent, thoroughly recommended.

This evening, Brian Eno talking about how the Long Now Foundation were approached and asked to think about storage of nuclear waste. He relates the tale of the Yucca mountain storage facility, designed to last for 10,000 years - and how they reckoned this was the wrong approach. 10,000 years is far too long a timescale to think sensibly about doing something so risky and it would be better to work out how to store waste reliably for 100 years - with the aim of coming back then to rethink the problem with new technology.

And my brain's thinking "hmm... don't plan the whole thing out in advance, but do a chunk, then come back to it and replan... what does that remind me of".

Either I'm an incurable saddo, or there's a theme here. (erm, or both).

Whatever, hopefully I'll be the top result on google for "Agile Nuclear Waste Storage".

One piece of happy news which came through whilst I was at LIFT... New Media Age did a nice little piece on mobile social networking, and I was chuffed to see that two of the top 10 to watch are clients of Future Platforms.

Flirtomatic are now the largest off-portal WAP destination in the UK; way back in 2004/05 we worked on the first version of their product. Trutap are a more recent client; we've worked with them since the end of 2006 to design and build their front-end application, and we're still working with them on some stuff I can't talk about just yet... but is looking really nice. If you're going to Mobile World Congress next week and bump into Carl or Dave, hassle them nicely and they might show you :)

OK, consider my trumpet blown, that's enough :)

Blurgh. Brain dead, but notable themes from LIFT today:

• Activity streams (from lunchtime with Charlie and the Kevin Marks talk)
• Mobile mobile mobile
• Impact of reward models and play on software design
• Social is more interesting (grids, games)

Scott Smith, Changeist

Reference models for technology adoption (e.g. The Chasm) are stale.

Need more human and social stuff to understand adoption. Wants/needs/fears/goals vs trends/driving forces/events/black swans.

Every 20-30 years generations go through major shifts.

New trend: modal fluency: users go through seamless movement between different modes of interaction. (Is this really a trend... I don't see DS owners taking their DS play to the Wii, or online. And it's one of those things that's been mooted for yonks now.)

Apologies for poor notes, I'm flagging not blogging...