my name is mwd

Three years ago Quentin and I started Camvine, with the aim of making it easier for people to take all their digital content and put it on display where they wanted without the hassle of managing computers. Over the intervening time Camvine has grown, we’ve built the platform that does what we wanted, and, despite the sad state of the economy of late, Camvine’s managed to attract some loyal customers. It’s still got a way to go, but I’m proud of what the team at Camvine (now 8+ people) have achieved to date, and of what I’ve specifically achieved as its CTO. We’ve done good stuff so far, and there’s lots of good stuff to come.

But that’s not a journey I’ll be taking with Camvine, as I’ve decided to move on.

Earlier in the year I started working on PlaceWhisper, a system that lets you create virtual treasure trails in the real world. This was a side project in my spare time, an app that I created because no one else had created it for me. After a lot of effort in the first half of the year, PlaceWhisper debuted in July at the Hide & Seek Weekender festival on London’s Southbank, where we ran the Time*Trails game, which was a huge success. We had lots of people play, and the technology worked, and it was a huge amount of fun. PlaceWhisper got lots of good feedback, even in the limited state of its first release, and it got a mention on the BBC’s Digital Planet during a discussion about location based services. It was clear that PlaceWhisper had a future, and just needed some more work to take it on.

Unfortunately, though, to really take PlaceWhisper to the next level I could no longer just do it in odd spare hours; it needed proper commitment.

In my tenure as Camvine’s CTO I’ve lead our development of the CODA platform to where it is today: we’ve built a stable, reliable system that makes it really easy for people to get started with their own Digital Signage. The product has been tested in the field, and delivers what customers need. In that process I’ve learned a lot about a lot of things. There are still many improvements which could be made, but the product is on a solid basis, it works, it’s scalable, people are using it.

It is, in fact, in a good position to be handed over to someone else.

I realised earlier in the year (and this is partly why I started PlaceWhisper) that I’d ticked all the boxes for what I wanted to get out of Camvine (other than perhaps fabulous wealth :) – CODA is user focused and easier to use than its competition (tick), the architecture is built to a high standard so that when we have a influx of customers we know how to scale (tick), I’d brought together and focused the talents of the amazing people in the Camvine tech team to deliver all this (tick), and managed the conflicting requirements of customers, management, and technology (tick). The list goes on. Although there are still challenges at Camvine, they haven’t been at the same level of “I have no idea how to do that” – I was no longer stretching myself to learn new things.

So, in late summer, in what was not at all an easy decision, I decided to leave Camvine to give PlaceWhisper (and a bunch of other project ideas that have yet to find a place in the world beyond my moleskine) a go. As of November I’ll be working (almost) full time on Digital Flapjack projects, which certainly involves a lot of PlaceWhisper, plus some consulting to help pay the bills.

I’ll miss Camvine, although in the short term I’m going to be around roughly a day a week to help sustain the product vision and transfer knowledge to others. Mostly I’ll miss the team, as the Camvine crew are a great bunch (and if you want to join that great bunch, Camvine is hiring), and it’s been a huge honour to work with them all.

But at the same time I’m very excited to be setting out on my own. There’s lots more for me to learn; it won’t be easy, and I’m sure I’ll rue the decision on occasion, but I think it’ll be fun. I’m excited about what’s to come.