THIS POSTING IS INCOMPLETE - I hit publish instead of save. You can read on, if you like. Why not? Blogging at the speed of thought I guess. Read it as I write it. Should be finished soon. (Now 95% done.)

A posting on Business of Software blog caught my attention. It likens the process of producing software to the process of producing a film. As someone with a keen interest in both, I was keen to explore the analogy. Moreover, the posting didn’t use any old film as an example. It used the legendary indie-flick El Mariachi. It’s a great film, mostly because it only cost $7000 to make. It was made by my film-producing hero Robert Rodriguez (RR). What I wouldn’t give to have his ‘garage’ (more like mansion) of film-making goodies. Actually, the kids on my street think the same about our cornucopia of film and music making goodies.

RR is remarkable to watch. On one of his DVDs he goes through his entire process, which is entirely digital, including photography, effects, music, editing - all done by RR himself. In one lecture he talked about ‘creativity at the speed of thought.’ I’m a huge advocate of going direct to digital as much as possible, which is why I’m a fan of digital note taking - or more likely jotting, as it’s those little ideas and thought nuggets that pop into the head that need jotting down ‘at the speed of thought.’ I use my iPhone to text messages to my Thumbjot.com account where I can then organise them later or add to them via the web interface.

I can proudly say that I really do have an almost paperless existence. There are no pens and scraps of paper on my desk. I never write things down and only print when absolutely necessary. In fact, I think that my 6-year old son writes better than me, now that I have lost my ability to write legibly.

Getting back to the plot. The posting talks about the ability of a film producer to use as much money and resources as are available. It makes a reference to the account of a Microsoft feature taking one year to be developed instead of one week.

This brings me to the subject in hand, which is the world of mobile operators. As recently as two weeks ago I held a workshop for a major operator, as in tier 1, mejor en el negocio operator. The theme was Mobile Internet 2.0 and, as per my last posting, we bashed out an example of a mobile social network application in real-time in about half a day. OK, so we had to cut and paste here and there to speed it up, but that was mostly to avoid boredom. In prep time, our prolific and talented coder - Jason Cale - spent a few days putting the idea together, but a lot of that was thinking and preparing for how to present the demo. Coding live has its challenges.

It was our attempt to show ‘coding at the speed of thought’ in order to demonstrate some of the workings and possibilities of Mobile Web 2.0. We only optimised for iPhone, but that might be enough to launch something and start getting users and getting their feedback before we turn on the mega-marketing launch.

However, this wouldn’t happen in the MNO world. Typically, there would be a huge preamble that we could call ‘project authorization stuff’ into which I am lumping all of the preamble activities that go on inside an MNO - the list is actually quite long, although the reality in terms of hard data and decision making is actually quite short and, I have to say, mostly arbitrary. Then there is the ‘implementation stuff,’ which is also usually drawn out for a number of reasons, most of them made worse by off-shoring (at least that’s my experience). An finally there’s the ‘plumbing and launching stuff,’ often the longest phase, which is all the ticking of boxes to get it up and running with some, usually legacy, network with all its quirks and knots.

The problem is the belief that all of this ’stuff’ is actually necessary and is what it is, which is to say inevitable and how the world really works. Yes, that is true to an extent, but the RR can make a film on a meagre budget and still find a way to get it made. In the world of Web 2.0 and Micro ISVs, developers can do the same. Or, they can join mejor en el negocio companies and spend months doing it on a huge budget.

It is a problem because it is just a belief - a framework of thought - that says that the only way to launch a mobile service is to do something ‘this big’ (hold hands out wide) and spend 9-12 months doing it. It is the world of big budget movies. Will that always be so and does it have to be so? I think not. The world of micro MNOs is entirely possible, but it requires a different mindset from the outset.

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