Creativity, good intent, and how much of it

As the weeks start rolling by the escaperoom project gets shape. With the 1th of June as the deadline for the product being ready for testing, and the 27th and 28th of June as the release date.
Well, things do not work out as planned. Literally. I think we are halfway were we should be. Releasing on the 27th of June still is possible but with much less testing done.

We all started with the idea that if everyone showed his best intent and worked in his own productive ‘zone’ everything would be OK.
But people need to work together, know what is expected of them, how much ‘quality’ the work has to have in the phase it currently is in… and if things get off track you want to have a way of knowing the impact and fix it as soon as possible.

That we needed some process definitely took the others by surprise. For me it was something that came ‘as expected’ because software development is very similar. So I helped out with structuring a few processes in ways that I know that work and I have experience with myself.

Networking animations

This week I did work on the networking part. On ‘syncing the state between clients’.

An example: See the image? Thats a puzzle part. The idea is that as you change the letter rotor, you get a sequence BAAAA and then the drawer opens. You see 2 screens next to each other, those are connected by the network. The networking part I have to make, is to make so that another persons on another computer/laptop can see you interacting with the letter rotor, and thus work together on the same puzzle. In the image you can see that interaction on the right screen makes the wheel move on the left screen.

On top of ‘getting the state to sync’, my job is also to ‘generalize’ this technology. So that we can use this on all types of puzzles.

As you can see it is still a bit laggy and unresponsive, so that is the next thing for me to work on.

Bookkeeping

I finally decided to get a bookkeeper to look at my books and keep them updated.

However, things were not always like this.

When I started my business on December 2019 I had the idea of trying to do things myself, but for safety get a bookkeeper to look at the numbers halfway 2020. This to know if I was on track and doing things according to best practices and laws.

Funny thing is that I’m good with numbers and forecasting, but just keep making mistakes when it comes to the details. I have had my share of f*ckups already, just by not paying enough attention.
For instance, I have to phone with the ‘belastingdienst’ on Tuesday because I received a letter stating something strange. Something did go wrong on my side and therefore also on their side and now things are lost in their administration…

Yeah I definitely want not to have headache on things like this. It is just not my specialty.

Job cultures

While working on my escaperoom project I’m already looking for the next project to take on. Last week I did some intakes for consultancy jobs. One stood out from the others in that I walked out at the end, baffled by what just happened. There was something very fishy going on there…

I want to stay classy with talking about what happened because I’m just a specific person with my own believes and my own working ethics, and it could be that someone else would be very delighted to work in a place like that.

I had an appointment with the owner and the head of the software department. The head of the software department was a nice guy and I had a nice time talking to him about all the good technical stuff they had, so technically I found a match.

But the owner was a special kind of person. I talked with him for 45 minutes just enjoying his view on working and be amazed by how he run the business. It was totally not how I would do things but I liked hearing a businessman talking passionately about everything he build up. 5 minutes into talking with him I discovered this wasn’t going to be a match at all. But hey why walk away if you enjoy the talk? I managed to avoid specific questions of him but I think my reactions gave away that I doubted some of his statements…

What I learned from this is that although I enjoy talking I have a business to run. I think I was a bit vague because I wanted the talk to go on, but if it is so clear there is no fit I should just state that.
I want to do work to my own liking, he wants to have people that work to his liking: no match, no hard feelings. That is where intakes are for.

In hindsight I got this reflection on myself and why ‘I continued to talk even when I knew there was no match’. I think I hoped he magically turned out to a good fit if I just understood him more. But in contrary, as the talk continued the strangeness of the questions increased and I just could not hide being amazed by the boldness of his statements.