I’m starting a new blog to talk about the exciting work I’m starting out on. The focus of the blog will be mostly technical, with a slant on solving real problems.

In essence, I’ve decided to ‘go it alone’  after 17 years or so in the software development business, and see how I get on. Most of my working life to date has been spent working as an independent consultant to a variety of different companies. Mostly large financial companies, but there have been some brief forays into telecoms and flight booking systems.

Most people who I’ve spoken to about this plan have the same first question, “Hmmm, so what’s the big idea you’re gonna implement?”. They know that I have family and a mortgage and they assume to risk all that I must have a killer idea.  Well, here’s my secret, there is no big idea. (pause for dramatic effect). I don’t think that big ideas are the key.

I have a view on what general areas are going to be important in the next 5-10 years and I intend to spend some time researching those areas.  My goal is to identify a growing market and leverage my technical expertise to develop a product that can fix someone’s problem in that market.

I’m a strong advocate of ‘getting on with it’ and finding out what works and what doesn’t. I don’t intend to spend months developing a master plan. Rather they’ll be experiments and evidence to prove what’s worked or otherwise.  This is very much in the spirit of the The Lean Startup approach advocated by Eric Ries. Looking forward to the book.

So…onward and upward.