Pervasive Computing – Tightening Sidelab’s Focus

• sidelab

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m leaving the corporate world to start my own software development business. As I’m starting a professional services based business (with a hint of product development for flavour) I was going to try and keep the kinds of services I offer fairly broad to ensure I can capture different kinds of development work that comes my way. While I think this idea was fine in principle, I’ve been reading about the benefits of narrowing the focus of your business as a method of being effective and getting the “right kind” of work.

As a result, I’ve decided to scrap all of the fluff that was on the Sidelab site, and pull it right back to a single topic: Pervasive Computing.

Tighten Your Focus, Define your Roadmap
An an unexpected side-effect of tightening up the offerings of Sidelab has helped me feel more at ease with the direction of the company. From anyone who I’ve talked to over the last few months about what I’m doing I’ve been saying “Digital Innovation”. While that’s all good and fine, and leaves me open to do different things it has made me feel a little lost about the future direction of the business. I’m meant to be energized, excited and focused and unfortunately I haven’t been.

So I cut it all back. I drew a mental Venn Diagram of the areas I’m passionate about, the people I have contacts with and the kind of work that I will be doing in the short-term, but more importantly what I envisage myself doing in the long term. When the diagram had finished materialising, it was all very clear – over the next few years I will be building a business that focuses on Pervasive Computing; and looking to implement solutions in a Web of Things kind of way.

I Say Pervasive, You Say Ubiquitous
One thing that I’ve had to make a decision on is whether to use the term Pervasive or Ubiquitous in the copy I have been writing on the Sidelab site (still pulling that together BTW). Obviously if one term becomes more dominant (and ubiquitous is probably dominant now) and I’ve picked the wrong one, the website is going to be less effective.

Why then have I gone with pervasive over ubiquitous – well my reasoning is pretty simple. Pervasive is easier to spell and say. This stuff is going to be going mainstream over the next five years, and while the innovators and pioneers in this field have been most comfortable calling it Ubiquitous computing or Ubicomp (which does sound cool), I think for the masses the term pervasive, is going to be more, um, pervasive.

There’s no work or money in Pervasive Computing (right now)
It would probably be fairly accurate to say the demand for professional services and product in the pervasive computing space is fairly low at the moment. While that is true, I believe that amount of work that is out there for helping business build platforms where they could actually consider being in this space is quite high. Educating and guiding business on how to architect their web applications so they are ready to “plug in the grid” is valuable and needed right now.

Balancing Focus with Practicality
I have definitely meant all of the things above, but I do concede these are “on paper” statements. If work through my existing contact network was to come along that didn’t align 100% with my business roadmap, will I take it? Absolutely. I have a wife and kids to support so that’s a no brainer. Will I chase down or advertise for work that I’ve been known to be quite good at the past – no. My energy should be invested in two things: completing work that is going to keep the business afloat and food on the table, and pursuing opportunities that are aligned with the business roadmap.

If you are interested in reading up on the topic of Pervasive or Ubiquitous Computing, I can highly recommend Adam Greenfield’s book: Everyware

Update:
Originally I referred to Pervasive Mobile Computing as the core business, but feel that might give people the impression that Sidelab is about mobile application development (iPhone apps and the like). Not the case, and while we may well build the odd mobile client, the core business is being the “glue” in Pervasive Computing.