This is a catch-up blog, I started writing this in early 2008. I’ve now fixed it up and finished a few paragraphs so that it can be published.

enjoy.

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I now find myself with the time and the means to say a little something about what I’ve been working on for the last year and a bit. I can be a bit secretive when a project is in stealth mode, so a lot of the good people I know have been kind of cut out of this particular little corner of my life and have just know that I’ve been working on ‘something’ new.

Well that new ‘thing’ is called SocialGO, and it’s a platform dedicated to providing people with their own, private and fully customisable social networking website. in much the same way that WordPress allows someone to signup and create their own blog in a matter of minutes, SocialGO allows you do the same for a social network.

its something of a change from the usual games related project, buts its been a refreshing change of pace and a chance to learn a whole new industry along the way. in its own way, web application development is a very new industry, overall it’s probably less than 10 years old. It’s interesting to see contrasts with, and to apply some of the processes and knowledge that a more experienced industry like video games can bring to web application development.

I’m about as excited about SocialGO right now, as I was about the bubble project that first 3 months that I was in California, helping Bright Things find its feet with the Bubble project. The locations a little different ( funky Shoreditch, compared to sunny Silicon Valley ), but the buzz of designing server layouts, researching platform technologies and developing my little corners of SocialGO, feels very much like those days stuck in an office with Andrew Bennett and John Kavanagh in Palo Alto, prototyping the fun way, with dremmels, glue guns, soldering irons and handfuls of electronic parts amassed from our daily visits to Frys.

It’s no surprise that despite being totally happy here with this project, that the progress we are making takes me back to those days….. the teams all changed now, but damn, does it make a geek never want to stop working on startups.

its sad, in a way that SocialGO is going to grow and mature in to a larger entity, these first days always have the right break-neck balance of exhaustion and creativity. I love a good start up…

I remember the delight of the first time that we got the SocialGO server platform installed and running on its new home in the datacentre, spending many late nights in front of a terminal session manually installing programs and changing configuration files, slowly working our way towards that very first page render.

The tools and processes are a lot more advanced nowadays of course, with most of the manual processes refined over the months to a small set of automated tasks. But there are still times when it can really take a geeks breath away while sitting there, taking in the scale of the task that was undertaken to get where we are now.

SocialGO’s going to be a lot of fun, we’re still in the beta period at the moment, but we’ve got a lot of excitement ahead of us.

it’s going to be a fun ride.

So as you can probably tell, it’s been a while since I last updated this blog, over a year in fact. I will admit to having about 10 draft blogs that I’ve started over the year that I’ve still got to finish writing, so I’ve not been completely ignoring things.

A lot has changed in my years absence; for the most part, myself and the rest of the SocialGO team have been insanely busy, dealing with the amazing and rapid growth of the SocialGO platform.

SocialGO has gone from strength to strength, finding itself now running  2 platforms, in 3 datacenters, on 2 continents. Thanks to some rapid growth over the new year, inspired by several mass exodus from our key rivals, We’ve gone from being seen as a small startup, to a serious contender in the Niche Social Networking market.  whiles it’s still early days, it’s comforting to now see that as soon as SocialGO developes or announces a new feature, many of our rivals start working on their own versions.

One of the keys to SocialGOs success is that we’re a small, tightly knitted team of exceptionally talented individuals. I’m humbled to be amongst such a fantastic team. In all the companies that I’ve worked for, some of them much, much larger, I’ve never seen such a concentration of talent. this is part of the reason that we seem to be easily pulling ahead of the competition. While we’re exceptionally busy, things get done so fast at SocialGO, because everyone meshes in a way that larger and much heavily funded teams just can’t manage.

if i didn’t work at SocialGO , i would be trying to poach the whole team for whatever venture i was working on.

I’ve spent most of the last year running the network Operations department for SocialGO. Initially on my own, but soon, in true SocialGO style, building a small team of exceptionally talented people to handle our growing infrastructure. In recent months, I have moved back towards developer relations and have been building up SocialGOs 3rd party developer program, consisting of widget and themes development as well as bringing together the right people for the soon-to-be-launched Pro Services Directory.

Another big change is that i’ve also been asked to give a few guest lectures at a London university. I’ve been asked to talk to programming students in the web and games development courses about the respective industries, best practices and generally anything that i feel they will find of interest. I’m actually quite excited about this as its been a very long time since I’ve done any teaching of any kind, and i’d been looking forward to finding a reason to start up again. i’m hoping this will become a regular event for me, that will branch out elsewhere.

…And the most disturbing change of all, I found myself in the possession of an iPhone, and didn’t actually hate it as much as I was expecting. In fact, you could say I rather quite like it. I think I’m getting soft in my old age or something. still give me time and I’m sure I’ll find something to rant about here.

I find myself trying to make a new pledge to keep this blog alive a bit more this time around. only time will tell how that goes, but i’m hoping that the new audience that may arrive here from the success of SocialGO and some of my public speaking, will tempt me to address more topics, on a more regular basis. I’ll also aim to finish some of the draft blogs, because I always feel that you should finish what you start.

so once again kitlings, be cool out there, wherever you are.

Peace, Out.

Niall

Like most new trends, back when the internet was still trying to find its feet in society, a small set of rules began to appear to govern the ways in which internet users interacted. These rules, often called netiquette, were closely followed by the first users of the internet and hardly crossed, less the user be shunned by the small society that had made a home on the internet of the time. it was considered by many at the time to be a golden age of the internet.

Then things changed, the internet moved from being a small hidden thing, to a position of common knowledge among the people of the world. Its usage grew exponentially. Access, via portals such as CompuServe and AOL, became trivial, interfaces were simplified so that anyone could use the internet, and they surely did.

The original users of the internet lamented this time, likening it to the month of September, the time of year when that year’s new college and university students would stumble their way on to the fledgling internet for the first time. Like many visitors to new cultures, these new users, took a while to learn the rules of how to interact with the existing population, making September a particularly painful month for those who had already made the internet home.

The term Eternal September was coined, to signify the fact that, at this time, when the common man found the internet, the influx of new users would never end. Thus neither would September.

now that we are in the world of Web2.0, things have changed considerably, the web is filled with pokes, prods and vampires. While it’s true to say that the first generation of users created the internet and the second learned to use it as part of their lives; the latest generation has grown up with it, the internet is part of them now. And no matter how tall the previous generations stand, they can not fight the tides of change in a virtual landscape where mob rule and the lowest common denominator, has now taken over. Belittling their predecessors as mere dinosaurs, the new generation has now grown up to assume the mantle of ‘owning’ the internet.

The technological changes in the internet have improved greatly, but the social ones still need some work. You could liken the old internet to Victorian society, with the new representing modern society as it stands. It will be interesting to see how this evolves, but secretly I wish that things would steer back to the old ways slightly.

So much is taken for granted that we often forget that the layers of abstraction between us and our computer screens, our computers and the internet and the other users on there with us, don’t actually abstract us from being human beings. a moments unthinking, can still have the same impact as a callous remark made to someone’s face.

In the past, the internet gave people a sense of anonymity, whether implied, by the separation and seclusion of its users in their homes, or deliberately, by those that chose to hide or change their identities. With the new wave of socially targeted platforms on the internet, people are again given the opportunity to present themselves as individuals. This in a way reintroduces some of the accountability for peoples actions, as they are now visible to their peers.

As social software, platform partnerships and the free-information movements gather speed, people’s scattered and separated internet identities will slowly come together in to a singular cross-platform, far-reaching identity. In the same way, this will bring all aspects of their behavior together for their peers to view. So maybe we are again moving towards a time when the people on the internet are accountable for their actions and a new Netiquette will be born.

Wouldn’t that be something.

A few people have already asked me about the inspiration behind the name of this blog. it’s a bit of a story, but I’m happy to oblige.

As the name is inspired by a book, I’m not sure if this entry will turn in to my first book review, rather than just a little bit of history. but as I’m planning to write an entry in the future about a handful of books that I consider to have changed my perspective on the world, I’ll aim to avoid too much detail, for the moment.

Back in the early days of my career, while trying to cut my path with a combination of web design and Macromedia CD-ROM titles, I had the fortune to work alongside a media company called Curious Yellow. Curious, as most people referred to it, was run by two guys going by the names of Paul Penny and Tim Smith, who had just stated up their first company after University. At the time I was trying to do something very similar, but needless to say, at the age of 18, I didn’t have a clue.

Tim and Paul were about 4 or 5 years older than me, and we had very similar interests in life. So despite a few awkward initial weeks, owing to an employer of mine trying to get me to undercut some work promised to Curious, Paul and Tim quickly became very good friends of mine.

We quickly found a good middle-ground for our roles in what turned out to be 2 very small and not worth-while projects for my unscrupulous employer, who would go on to try to show me that the only way to do business, was to be as ruthless and cutthroat as possible. Unfortunately, it seemed to be working for this individual at the time, however I hope that by now, karma has caught up with him in some way.

Paul and Tim gave more love to their little start up than most people give to their kids, and showed me that enjoying your job was more important sometimes. strangely enough, this has stuck with me throughout my career and I’ve tried to make it a key part of any decisions on what jobs to take. I’ve also tried to make sure that when I’m working as part of a team, or even running one, that everybody has as good a time as possible. Despite popular belief, hard work can be enjoyable after all.

I always thought that Curious Yellow was an awesome name for a company and one day I remember asking the guys where they came up with the idea. I was told that Curious Yellow was a key object from a book called Vurt, by Jeff Noon.

Paul and Tim found it hard to explain what Vurt was about, saying that it was one of those books that a reader had to experience to understand. It took me a while, but I finally got around to reading Vurt, and I now rate it as one of the most influential books that I’ve had the opportunity to read. However, I too find it hard to explain to people what the book is actually about. Quite often, my only response has been to go out and buy a copy of the book as a gift for the individual that I was speaking with.

I think it took meeting Curious Yellow to make me understand the meaning of the Chinese proverb “if you do a job that you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”. So in respect to Tim and Paul, and the affect they had on the early days of my career, I decided to name my blog English Voodo. For in Vurt, English Voodoo leads to finding Curious Yellow, and I think that Paul and Tim’s example of how to behave working in any company, big or small, is not a bad one to live up to.

It is rather fitting that I’m writing this entry while sitting on a train, on my way to once again work alongside Curious Yellow.

Remeber Kitlings, businesses die, jobs end, but friendship last forever.

So I’ve finally done it. I’ve joined the blogging community.

Those of you that know me and in particular my personal views on most things ‘web2.0′, will know that starting up a blog was as likely a move as my saying ” damn, I really need to by an iPhone today*”; which is to say, those individuals that I am referring to will be some what surprised at this move.

Despite my outward dislike of all thing web2.0, this is not quite an impulsive move on my part, I’ve spent the last 18 months contemplating a blog of my own, secretly considering it more of a test bed for future writings, editorial content and perhaps the occasional bit of public speaking, rather than a blog. I may be fooling myself here, but time will tell.

It’s not that I dislike web2.0 in general, I actually love some bits a great deal, I’m just a little old school, and prefer the simplicity of some of the older technologies.

Little things about ‘web2.0′ annoy me; the way that peole use walls to have conversations, in a way that is half e-mail and half IM/chat room; The way that myspace has ( stylistically speaking ) become the new geocities, including all the annoying animate gif files and garish colour schemes; the way that some facebook pages take ages to load because people install every application that they see, like they’re playing some deranged game of hungry hippos.

Web1.0 never annoyed me, it was just slower. people were nicer there.

Web 1 was like living in a beautiful country village, where you knew everyone, and those occasional strangers that you would meet while walking the lanes would stop and say hello. Web2.0 has been like moving to the big city, lots of bright lights and wonderful things to see, but nobody smiles outside of their little groups, and strangers are often chased away. gangs inhabit forums, moderators and admins have become bullies, people take their gift of anonymity and use it to start fights.

So if you find me reminiscing from time-to-time, it’s just because I miss the old days, where the internet didn’t have communities, it was the community.

Be excellent to each other.

N

* to prevent my first flame-war, I don’t hate the iPhone, I just feel its not for me.

This is just a quick post to fill the space in between setting up this blog, and actually getting something on here for people to read. that’s if anybody actually decides to visit.

I’m Niall Giggins and this is my new little corner of the internet, where I’ll be blogging on things that interest me, or of which I think that others may find interesting. I have a range of personal and professional interests that will no doubt be featured here at some stage, but the main topics of content will most likely be linked in some way to the various industries that my job intersects.

I work for Bright Things PLC, as Technical and Development Manager, which is a fancy way of calling me ‘the tech guy’. it’s a small technology orientated company based in the UK. we’ve changed directions a few times in the past but our primary focus since te company was fouded was in the video games industry. Bright Things developed and produced the Bubble console; a video games system based on the DVD platform, aimed at the edutainment market for the 2-10year old market. 11 games were developed for bubble, along with 2 regular DVD titles based on the Tiger Woods and Tomb Raider franchises.

While still retaining an interest in the console market, Bright Things current focus is its latest product, SocialGO; a Social Networking platform, that aims to give people the capability to set up and manage their own Social Network.

The idea is simple. to take social networking away from a handful of larger sites where users have no control over their data, and move it in to hundreds and thousands of smaller networks. each of these smaller networks is totally partitioned off from the rest, allowing individuals to gather and communicate with others who share the same interests, or who work at the same company, are members of the same club, or even just watch the same TV shows.

SocialGO is coming, its been hell of a ride getting here, and now that its out in the public, I’d like to share the rest of the ride with those of you who may find it of interest.

Tread softley, Kitlings, the best is yet to come.

Niall