London

So right now I am sitting at a hotel in London. Been here since yesterday morning and it's been 2 really hectic days. Yesterday I had meetings with first a client (yeah a "real world paying money for developing and all" actual client!!!)

And after that I got to go visit Mark D. and the Adobe guys. Let me put it this way - if Mark complains about the office you should feel sorry for him - they live in a dungeon atm... :-D

But it'll get really cool when they are done redecorating the place. Mark filled me in on a lot of cool stuff - and let me just say that Adobe certainly are not being lazy in regards to Flash Lite and its offspring. They have a lot of interesting projects going on - which will all see the light of day soon.

So I have said it before and I'll keep saying it till they throw me out of the bar: The future looks bright for Flash Lite. And it even rhymes. Maybe I should take up writing... Hang on. That's what I am doing... anyways - back to business.



Today have been an amazing day - apart from having the benefit of the really hot Thai food i had with Mark last night - was really tasty though :-)



Today I have been at a cool private club called "the Hospital" here in London. Apparently it's where all the cool TV and Film people hang out. I have been there today for an "Inspirational Day".

The meeting was called by Joost and hosted by a danish company called "We love people". Also attending was a lot of other cool people from cool companies such as Frukt, MTV, Dopplr.com and Design Go and of course Little Big Ideas.

The reason for the meeting was for everyone to inspire one another. And for everyone to bring one problem to the table. We got a lot of fun out of that. From our issue on how to convince people to believe in Flash Lite apps to how to relaunch pop stars and how to keep innovating when you are a market leader and are being pushed for new products constantly.


So we talked about everything - from the worlds impending doom to social networking and how you counter all the people quoting stats by creating counterstats that you invent on the spot :-)


The main inputs I am taking with me are:

• We got a really cool new take on our business model - and maybe we are moving some of the stuff we do in a wrong direction - definately worth spending more time on.
  
• Got some cool thoughts about how we scale production to be able to be small - we have to think about the ultimate in personalization - producing just one of something has immense user value as compared to producing 1.000.000. And with new production tools and better factories this sort of thing will start making more and more sense to manufacturers as they can produce unique products much cheaper.
  
• It is also funny how all of this social networking activity that we are seeing with facebook, myspace and youtube and what have you is in reality the ultimate conclusion of the "me" generation - it is very egocentric by nature but creating value for networks. Something to ponder in that I think...
  
• Another cool concept that was thrown into the mix was the thought that to solve problems you don't have to create solutions. You have to gain complete understanding of the problem and then you will be able to create unusual solutions or even unique solutions.
  
• The last thing i'll mention here is the notion of not always letting the users come to you - sometimes you'll benefit from going to the users.

Hmmm and of course we got the advice of always giving our clients the option between fear and greed as the motivating factor for dealing with us...Fear being the best option :-)


Tomorrow it's back to the grind - but its been great with a full day to focus on all the theory and the reasons why we do what we do. I hope this forum will be an ongoing thing and will look forward to meeting this crowd again