Friday, March 17, 2006 - Fri, 17 Mar 2006

Last weekend, I got another strange idea in my head and thought I’d try to generalize that data structure one more level. Bad move. Just too many exceptions for the new structure to handle. So this weekend I’ll go back and simply try to eliminate the problems in my current (i.e. new) structure. As soon as I’m finished getting rid of the glitches that the current version has, I’ll issue a new version.

Yesterday, I received the newly published book I ordered from Amazon called: “Micro-ISV From Vision to Reality”, by Bob Walsh. ISV stands for “Independent Software Vendor”, although the “I” can also be “Internet”. This is the first book ever written for people like me who have a great idea for some software that the world needs. It goes through all the steps, from the idea to how to handle “success” if and when it comes.

I’ll post interesting thoughts related to Behold that the book suggests. Regarding the “idea”: you’ve got to know “what pain that product eliminates.” In Behold’s case, Version 1’s Everything Report eliminates the pain of being unable to see and make use of all your genealogy data in a single standardized report. Version 2 will eliminate the pain of entering your data into a limiting and labourous forms-based interface, by allowing direct data entry onto the formless Everything Report. I think there I’ve got my goals clearly defined, and I believe they are both innovations that are desperately needed by the genealogical community.

The 2nd idea from Chapter 1 is what it will cost me personally to develop my product. The biggest cost is time. They say “be prepared to work more and longer hours than you ever thought possible.” That is so true. I have already put thousands, if not tens of thousands of hours into Behold in the last decade. And I know I still have a lot of time and hard work left ahead to get it to Version 2. I’ve not taken the time thank my wife and kids in this blog yet, as they are truly supportive of me and let me work on it when I need to (even if they sometimes joke that I’ll finish it in 2035). But Rule #8 at the end of Chapter 1 says: “Rock on. Go for it”, and that’s what I intend to continue to do.