Back in March, after 9 long and wonderful years, I worked my last day at Squint/Opera.
A few years before I had read David Allen’s Getting Things Done and started evaluating all areas of my life, especially my goals over the next 5, 10, 15 years. I had several ideas but I felt I could only pursue some of them effectively if I went out on my own. Squint was a growing company though, and I had many responsibilities on my shoulders. I was also excited about the challenges yet to come, so at the time I decided to stay, but not without a plan.
Squint transformed over the years that followed. A new division for installations and museums was growing, bringing more interactive work, and Messy Goes to Okido went into full production. I built a support team including IT, pipeline, UX and several production team leads. I mentored these new leaders and handed over responsibilities, helping to grow the company and ensure I was no longer a bottleneck. Once things had stabilised I gave myself room to step back and re-evaluate both my role at Squint and my future plans. Squint had many intriguing challenges on the horizon, but I knew that some of my goals would never quite fit their business model, so I had to say goodbye.
Merlin Mann (the inbox zero guy) once said “try to be scared of more interesting problems“. This is exactly what I’m planning to do. I’m scared of tackling problems in neurotech and healthtech, but I also find those areas immensely interesting. I’m scared of building a company from scratch and going all in on a new app or game, but the challenge also excites me. I’m of course scared of what the future of AI means for humanity, but a problem of that scale is fascinating.
So I’m giving it a shot.
Already in the last few months I’ve had the opportunity to work on a neurotech project, designing and building a keyboard app for the ici·bici (formerly Smartphone BCI). I’ve also gone back to school! I’m in week 5 of a Machine Learning course from Coursera, and I’m beginning to program basic neural nets. (I had forgotten how much I love math.) If you can’t tell from the references to GTD and Merlin Mann, I’m really into productivity and efficient systems. I have developed many workflows for myself, friends and co-workers, and I’m working on better ways to share these to benefit others.
In between these projects I’m also available for part-time consulting work. I’m eager to meet teams who are facing new challenges and see if I can help them out. If you have a studio that needs to grow or you just want to make things run more efficiently then please get in touch.
To help explain a bit more about my work both old and current, I’ve built this website. My portfolio currently has a selection of work from my time at Squint and I hope to post more about my new projects soon.
The first step was finding interesting problems that scared me but now I’m on a faster path to solving them.
Good luck! Sounds like you have some decisions to make but it also sounds like you can face those challenges and excel at what ever you decide to do. I always admired what Squint Opera produced.