SKA news

[PAH]

To me the biggest hurdle was things like company literature, manuals, website etc...it surprised me how long it took to get a professional looking image.. didn't want to give it to a third party as the budget to get through the pilot was incredibly tight..and I wanted to see the take-up from the pilot before I 'bet the house' and put it on a stronger financial footing.

Are you in any way at a stage where you need to present SKA to a 3rd party to sell it?

Yeah, I tried doing a B2B solution in the past, but found without a salesperson who was any good it was a hard slog. More about who you know than what you know.

So if I ever stoke the fire enough to have another go, it would most definately be aimed at joe public. They'll buy anything, just look at ebay!

Fortunately with the internet, even relatively small entities can sometimes be very successful. I'd settle for it making enough to not have to go contracting. So despite all the piss-taking I sincerely hope AtW (and any others having a go at something different) are successful, as it gives me hope I too may one day break free from the chains of the rat-race.

[AtW]

Are you in any way at a stage where you need to present SKA to a 3rd party to sell it?

Yes, starting tomorrow

At least by contracting we don't have the issues of intellectual property we would have as permies! I think as a permie, whoever you're working for could claim IP rights on stuff you did in your spare time, unless the contract of employment is worded right?

Same IP issues apply to contractors - if you do your own code in the office of employer or even in your own when you get paid to do the job for them, then they could lay a claim on IP.

I know some contracts say carp like if you something in spare time then it will be owned by employer - that's rubbish claim and it can't be enforced unless it is proven that the work was actually derivative or paid by employer. I remember having one of those clauses in my contract in 2000 but I raised a big issue of it and it was changed (the company was desperate to have us contracts signed though).

[VectraMan]

I was trying to start something when I was on the bench nearly 2 years ago (may as well try anyway), but I was running out of money and then as you say, once you're working it's pretty tough to get motivated to do more coding when you get home. I used to take my laptop when staying in a hotel or B&B room, and tell myself I'd spend the evening working, but I never did.

But I now have a plan B, which is on similar lines,but in partnership with somebody else, which means I won't have to worry about sales, or marketing, or distribution, or any of the additional things. It means my cut is much smaller, but not having to start from zero makes things a hell of a lot easier and there's already a trickle of money. My contract is up at the end of March, and I'm giving serious thought to not looking for another one and working full time on the plan B. And this time I have enough cash to last me for some time.

At the end of the day, I know I can develop something that people will pay money for (I do it for other people, why not myself?). It's just a question of whether enough people will pay enough money to justify the development time.

I don't think I'd tell the piss takers on here about it though.

[Ardesco]

I may take the piss but I have the utmost respect for AtW and his work on SKA and I wish him well. Just annoying that the search doesn't return relevant results for me when I use it. I suspect that this is something that can be tweaked fairly easily though, the main work will be indexing pages and keeping them contents up to date.

You really do need a work safe checkbox for the search results tho AtW

[AtW]

This release is something new and unexpected, shhhhhh, have some last bugs to fix...

[Troll]

This release is something new and unexpected, shhhhhh, have some last bugs to fix...

I thought today was the day....

[Churchill]

I thought today was the day....

Typical bad project management, late delivery...

[AtW]

I thought today was the day....

Yes, and there is good 8 more hours for extra testing.

[AtW]

Typical bad project management, late delivery...

Very true, I wish I could afford Denny...

[Troll]

Yes, and there is good 8 more hours for extra testing.

Ahh to the wire eh? - you are on your way to becoming a PM - release at 23:59 and still hit your milestone!