Personal projects have always been important in my life. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial side of me and I am constantly thinking of “solutions” to problems, sometimes to problems that don’t exist.
Why I love personal projects and why I need them
I’ve been a web developer for over 20 years and I love the power it gives me to create “stuff”. I’m a big advocate of the Get Shit Done (GSD) and Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) methodologies. Putting this all together I’m constantly spinning up new projects with the knowledge that it might result in nothing but the learning is worth it. I’ve lost count of the number of side projects I’ve worked on but each time I get faster at deploying some kind of Minimal Viable Product (MVP) or Proof of Concept (POC). The best thing is the faster you get something working the faster it will fail or succeed, I hate wasting time. I’m sure you’ve come across the “Fail Fast” concept where iterating fast failures achieves a desired result faster than perfecting the solution. Sometimes done is better than perfect. Things move fast in the development and technology world so another advantage of working this way is that you’re constantly starting from the beginning and uncovering new technologies keeping your knowledge up-to-date and fresh.
Finding the time and the idea!
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been focused on starting and running my own business so I’ve not had much time for side-projects. It’s bothered me that I’ve not had a project to work on. It wasn’t that I was struggling to find the time, but also coming up with a new idea has been a challenge. One thing I think is very important when working on side projects is that you’re “Scratching your own itch”. What this means is that you’ve found something which you struggle with in your personal or professional life which you can build a “solution”. The idea is that if you’re struggling with something the likelihood is others are too! Another rule I run my professional life by is that if I’m asked to do something more than three times I’ll automate it so I don’t have to do it again.
How did we get here?
A few years ago I worked for a large click monetisation company. We had over 200 websites across a range of sectors attracting 15 million users and tens of millions of hits per month. I was asked to head our Lead Generation arm of the business where we processed leads in the form of clicks, form-fills and calls. Each time we launched a new campaign I felt a huge buzz waiting for the first conversion to happen. We built several real-time notification and monitoring platforms but my favourite was when we had a wifi enabled light on my desk and whenever we had a paid conversion happen it would flash green.
I don’t know what it is but there is something about the connection between something happening online to a physical object giving you real-time feedback which is addictive.
What’s the idea this time?
I usually stick to what I know best and write code and have never got involved with hardware before. However, I love a challenge and quite frankly this is just too exciting not to play around with!
Introducing Noti Box, the small, internet-connected box which will deliver real-time physical feedback when you get an online sale on Shopify, that paid conversion from your lead generation business or a paid click from your online marketing efforts.
What’s next?
I’m working on the first POC and I’m planning on blogging about everything as and when it happens. Watch this space, let’s go!