Having been in academia for a good while you get so comfy with the regular wage, but I never settled with the unsteady rhythm and intensity of it towards the end… so leaving it all was a tricky, but I could see no other choice or time to be doing it. So we just had to roll with it.

We only had a small financial cushion in the bank but we did it. and we relied on our resourcefulness, skills, connections and the company of friends to get stuff going. You have to try so much harder when you’re starting out and thats something larger agencies seem to forget.

I ended up going on holiday with my friends Sam, Alison and Alex, then going for one single interview at a lovely agency.. being considered for a position.. then realising maybe its not quite right! there was a communication glitch as well. but It all worked out pretty well, it gave me some time to think and some time to take note of my skills and receive useful feedback.

It was at that point, where I decided and proposed to my friends, that maybe the best option is to join forces and start a new business.

Its been such a ride, but its one of those rides thats turned out to be incredibly fulfilling and fantastic. I get up every morning… Smiling, and quite happy with the world. sure enough we DIDNT have heating during winter! I wish I was joking about that but its true.

Right now our business has grown so well, that its financially quite safe too. Our R&D product development is well underway. Clients are happy with things we’re making for them, and asking us for more… here are some things I’d like to share so I can laugh at myself in the future or reminisce nostalgically.

1. We spent less than £100 on Google Adwords. Shocking I know! We just couldnt afford to. We applied as many Free Google vouchers as we could get our hands on.

2. We’ve had about 5 or 6 people in total walk off the street and ask us for stuff. They didnt lead to anything.

3. We stopped calling ourselves Running in the Halls and called ourselves RITH instead. I still answer the phone to Running in the Halls.

4. Forming relationships with other agencies who respect us and know what theyre doing has been incredibly useful. Transatlantic collaborations work too.

5. Forming relationships with agencies outside the digital sector has been mindblowingly useful and insightful. Sometimes webby people need to get out more and find out how other people are operating businesses in the creative industries.

6.Mastering the art of negotiation is essential to business, people psychology is a must, they should be teaching this in design schools.

7. Clients take their own sweet time to decide stuff, try not to rush them.

8. Avoid people who cant communicate well like the plague, thats sign one that something is afoot or that you shouldnt do business with them.

9. Losing your first big pitch hurts like hell and is quite demoralising, but you get over it with the next few wins and you become so adept at writing proposals that it becomes second nature to you.

10. My frequency of writing and analysis has been on par, if not exceeded how much I did in academia

its nice to see it in Grafik.

okay so this was my second day bar the registration day, I’ll refrain from making any broad generalisations. But, if I were to say one thing about SXSW, it is truly unlike any other conference or event Ive ever been to and Its been really amazing so far. we’ll worth the 3 plane hops it took to get here. : )

Theres a light touch of curation but it seems the popularity of the speakers, or the panels, which people get to vote on prior to them being chosen and included in the programme tap into a zeitgeist of whats fresh and new and what is being discussed around the tech / creative / development circles, but sadly they fall short of digging that deep.

I’m officially and proudly part of the Arts Council delegation. I was nominated by someone who was on the trip last year, and I had to fill in an application explaining why I’d benefit from it, and what I’d bring to the trip, and how I’d represent myself and I was lucky enough to be chosen from a bunch of other applicants.

..and what an amazing and talented bunch of bright people they are. I I feel very privileged to be with them here. Although I didn’t know everyone here from before, I’m slowly getting to know them and stealing a few moments of conversation here and there. Its quite remarkable how strong the social connections and networks are in the UK which I’m part of. You know how it works, you know someone, who knows them that sort of thing, The years of being an academic certainly weren’t socially isolated.

Seems @thetweeture who is following us, is having fun too and getting a lot of press. http://twitter.com/thetweeture

Heres me ranting about two recent failures (or moves towards success depending how you look at it.)

1. I officially intercalated my PhD which is a fancy way of saying I suspended it until further notice, that further notice expires in Nov 2010, and unless someone convinces me of a reason to do something about it, ill just let it pass.

I was on it for one year which had given me enough time to outline the cool projects I would have liked to work on. Not to blow my own trumpet, but there were many many great exciting things I could have done in a ‘loosely’ academic context and lots of academic outputs.

Id like to think if I managed a book collaboration successfully before doing my PhD Im pretty sure I would have pulled off some nice projects actually doing a PhD.

This is a real shame in some respects and a great opportunity to move on. Why do I want a PhD anyway if Im not in academia?

Well for one, if I ‘ever did’ want to go back into academia, it seems the standard admission to teaching now is to have a PhD or be close to completing one. I don’t think they’d give two monkeys that you taught before. This academic degree inflation was always there and I guess the university I worked for was just immune to it for the brief time that I was there.

Lets also face it, a huge part of it being an academic and wanting a PhD was to say I had a PhD. Now it doesn’t seem so important to me, its not even related to the fact that I dont have any intention to go back to teaching. I just dont think its what I need at all and as an investment.. hmmm.

Although my co-directors in the company we’re all behind me, maybe doing a PhD would have taken away too much attention from doing other interesting things?

In the case of the University I worked for, the kicker was that I was on the Staff PhD doctoral programme which I might have mentioned here before. I did have my reservations at the time, going onto this programme, primarily because If I ever left my teaching role I wouldnt be able to carry on unless I paid for it. There were a few PhD places advertised which I naturally went for, they came with teaching, funding and a fee waiver. I was only interested in the latter and made that categorically clear, just the fee waiver, nothing else, and I can see why that wouldn’t appeal to them, but who knows maybe they didn’t actually like the sound of the proposal.

The final nail in the coffin for the Glitch PhD malarkey however, came from the AHRC. Fail Whale number 2, Earlier this year they voted half in favour and half not in favour on a very extensive and ambitious gaming / glitch related proposal, I submitted with Nullpointer and Mathew Adkins
before I left my teaching post. I wasn’t sure we’d get it and if we had, it might have affected what Im doing now, but then again it seems the reviewer at the AHRC who downvoted us didn’t get it either. The idea was that if we got the AHRC funding, Id suspend the PhD anyway and do a PhD by publication once the project period was over. This AHRC funded project would have been research based for me and far more compatible with my creative director role in the company and may have prompted more game related directions for my company too.

Anyways thats my two fail whales out in the open. I want to move on and with that, this blog will be moving on to documenting the trials and tribulations of a young Creative Director in the Creative Industries.

It was nice to be interviewed for Amusement Magazines’ glossy inaugural first issue, which I will cherish in my Glitch related bit of the bookshelf until the pages whither away. Its a whole jam packed magazine full of interesting articles, of interest to french speakers out there, sadly I dont speak french, but I liked the pretty pictures.

http://www.amusement.fr/

old test I wanted to do. The painting was being thrown away, close to where I work.

I like presentation, I like conceptualising things, I like making connections, and outlining things.
I occasionally really enjoy dabbling in making things, and giving direction. When I was teaching, I was doing several of those things. With that comes a disappointment that you don’t make some of the things yourself.

But also an opportunity or mode which is more about observation critiquing and learning or remaking things, or even curation!

as my PhD hangs precariously in the balance… heres something nice.