Useful Little Things

I’m in the process of making a detailed review of microISV sites listed on the microISV Research Alliance’s resources page. I’m then creating a interstitial page between the listed resource and the resource list, which gives the reader more information about the site and its content. This should help visitors decide if the listed resource is interesting before having to click through.

My goal is to do at least two of these a day. That number should be manageable, until I reach the books section. I’ll probably skip the books and review the other sites first. Then, I can go back and read each of the recommended books and offer up my opinion on the content.

I see three real benefits of this exercise. One, the visitor gets more information up-front on the Alliance website, saving time and clicks. Two, I learn more about the listed resource and its contents. Three, I create more fodder for search engines and long-tailed queries related to microISVs, hopefully driving more traffic my way.

Halfway through day two of the Software Industry Conference and it’s obvious that social media rules. Most of the sessions I’ve attended have touched on social media in some way or another.  In fact, the sessions strictly focusing on social media have clearly had a larger audience than the session on the other track.

The real question is… Is this an indication of the vital importance of social media? Or it a false positive?

We’ve nearly reached the end of day one here at the Software Industry Conference.  I’ve managed to speak at length to a handful of people about the microISV Pain Point survey and I’ve handed out about a dozen business cards.  Boy, am I tired!  And I haven’t even made it to the Thursday evening social gathering.

I’ve had mixed reactions to the survey.  Some microISVers have had plenty to say on the topic; time will tell if they have anything to say on the survey.  Others have been harder to read and I’m not sure if they’re interested or not.  I really appreciated the first microISVer I spoke with over breakfast.  He bluntly asked “What’s in it fo me?”

I told him about the prizes.  I described how the responses would be turned back around and given to the community, perhaps opening new market opportunities.  And, I explained how what I’m doing is not oriented toward a commercial venture; everything we produce will eventually find its way back into the hands of microISVers (for free).

Every person I speak with helps me polish my “sales pitch” for the survey.  Perhaps, by the time the conference is over, I’ll have it down to a science.  Of course, by then, I’ll be too exhausted to speak.

Check out my article titled Failure to Launch in the July edition of ASPects, from the Association of Software Professionals.  In the article, I lay out a few reasons why I’ve never successfully launched a microISV.  Maybe some of the reasons apply to you, too.

Yesterday, Dr. Umphress and I met with Susan of Auburn University’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). The meeting produced excellent results. I’ve learned that the OTT does its best work when you meet with them early, like we did. Susan pointed out several important considerations that we’ll keep in mind as we go forward.

First, the Alliance does not need to be an independent legal entity; It can simply exist as a “persona” of one of the member universities. Since, at the moment, Auburn is the only member, then Auburn will in essence be the Alliance. Once I move on to another university, I’ll move Alliance operations there. In fact, having the Alliance as an operation under a university gives us several benefits, including having many administration functions at our disposal.

Second, we don’t have to worry about intellectual property rights being restricted. Since Dr. Umphress is acting on behalf of Auburn University, they are co-owners of any intellectual property we generate. On the other hand, since I am not being paid by the university or using significant university resources, I fall outside the intellectual property restrictions and am, therefore, a co-owner. In other words, from a legal standpoint, Dr. Umphress, Auburn University, and I all have right to do whatever we like with the generated intellectual property. Of course, from an ethical and professional standpoint, we will act as collaborators and agree on the uses of the intellectual property, so as to eliminate surprises.

Lastly, we talked a great deal about money. The discussion brought into focus several vague ideas I’d had about research funding. Let me break them down.

Option 1 – Corporate Grants – A private business may choose to “invest” money in our research in exchange for things like licensing rights, steering committee membership, early looks at data or report, etc. This is very common throughout the university system and is the easiest to formalize. The difficult part is negotiating with the business on what they’ll get for their money. The other challenge is deciding exactly how to divide up the money among member labs.

Option 2 - Membership Dues – Individuals in the microISV community might be encourage to “join the Alliance” for a small membership fee. This would be something akin to a micro-corporate grant. They would get access to certain benefits like data access, free publications, conferences, etc. I both like and dislike this idea, since I’d like the Alliance to be as inclusive as possible. Besides, microISVers have precious little money to start with.

Options 3 – Angel Investors – This would be the simplest, since we would be getting a grant with few or no strings attached.

Option 4 – Venture Capitalist Grants – When I spoke with Bob Walsh, he indicated there are more than a few VCs looking for the next Twitter or Facebook. I believe the biggest challenge VCs face is locating a high potential microISV before it had that explosive growth, because, once it explodes everyone wants in. If we build a strong community of microISVers, VCs may want access to that community and may be willing to provide grants for that access. Of course, this is all speculation at this point, since I haven’t actually spoken to any venture capitalists about it.

So that’s a quick summary of our meeting. As it stands, the only remaining hurdle to a full launch of the Alliance is getting IRB approval of the Pain Point survey. Once that’s done, we’re full steam ahead!

I have a meeting with the Office of Technology Transfer this afternoon. That will be the last milestone in deciding the intellectual property issues. Yes!

The Auburn Univerity Institutional Review Board has asked for a protocol form on the survey. They’ve also indicated we’ve be reviewed under the “Exempt” category, since all our information will remain anonymous. This is good news, since this type of review is typically much faster than the other categories.

With things as moving along in this manner, I’ve decided to make the survey landing page public. Maybe Google will pick it up quickly and we’ll start seeing it under the query: http://www.google.com/search?q=microisv+survey. That would be nice! As it is, the search result mostly link back to this blog and a few other surveys done by microISVers.

If you visit the survey landing page, you’ll see a yellow box in the middle of the page. It currently says the survey has not started yet. Once the survey period opens on July 10th, it will contain a link to get you going. You may also notice that I’ve added to the prizes. I’m now giving away three items: an iPod touch, an iPod shuffle, and a flash drive.

(7/25/2010) Update: The last of the paperwork is in to the IRB. Hopefully they’ll approve it quickly and the survey will go out on time.

I met with Dr Umphress yesterday to discuss our upcoming meeting with Auburn’s Office of Technology Transfer. We discussed the following:

• Naming of the local branches of the research center.
• Naming of the umbrella organization.
• Use of the Auburn University name.
• Intellectual property rights.
• Building an identity for the research center.

First off, it is common practice for departments to set up “research labs.” Therefore, we’ll be calling the local branches of the research center “labs.” For example, Dr. Umphress will be heading up Auburn Universities’ Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering microISV Research Lab.

As for the umbrella organization, it turns out that the term “center” has special meaning regarding budgeting. So, henceforth, we’ll be calling the umbrella organization an “alliance.” I had hoped to use the word “empire,” but unfortunately microISV Research Empire was taken… (just kidding).

Now that we’ve settled on a widely accepted naming convention for the labs, we can safely refer to them while using the universities name, like the in the example above.  Once I graduate and move to a tenure-track position with Some University, I’ll be able to refer to my research center as “Some Universities’ College of Computing microISV Research Lab.” Cool, huh?

As for the intellectual property rights, I want to see an agreement reached whereby all research labs have access to each others’ work and data. The bottom line is that we will generate a better product for the microISV community if we all play nice and share. If the members of the alliance do not build a tightly-integrated network of information and ideas, we will lose a great deal of potential.  Of course, all this must go through Auburn’s OTT for approval.  Right now, the intellectual property policies are being updated, so we’ll need to make sure we have our agreements formalized.

Lastly, we discussed building the research alliance’s identity. Neither of us are certain if the alliance (umbrella organization) needs a legal identity yet. It will consist of nothing more than just a few web pages. Initially, all work will be done under the Auburn University Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering microISV Research Lab (gotta shorten that down somehow).  In fact, most of the actual operations will occur within one lab or another.  Only activities that involve all the labs, such as a collaborative book publishing, would fall under the alliance’s “identity.” Therefore, we’ll defer this for now.

In summary, the last roadblock to moving ahead with the microISV research has been reached and will soon be overcome.

Status update:

• The draft version of the survey questions has been submitted to the IRB for review.
• A beta version of the site has been created and is undergoing testing.
• We’ll be meeting with someone in the OTT, soon, to formalize the research center’s status as a part of Auburn University.

I expect to launch the survey in the next week or two. Whee!

The microISV Research Alliance is officially on-line. Here you’ll find news releases for upcoming events, such as the annual Pain Point Survey. You’ll also find information about who we are and what we’re working on. We even have a news feed, so you can keep up to date without having to visit the site directly.

I’ve just finished the first draft of the microISV Pain Point survey.  I’ll be kicking it around with Dr. Umphress and his research team of graduate students.

Right now, it looks like the survey will be short on the questions and long on the possible answers; there are dozens of topics that affect microISV operators on a daily and weekly basis, including software engineering, marketing, accounting, legal, sales, outsourcing, … the list goes on.  With that in mind, I will focus on getting the “big picture,” not necessarily the specifics.

My hope is that the survey results will show at least a handful of topics that are common pain points for the microISVers out there.  From that springboard, we can target one or two areas to focus on for the next year or so (i.e. – my research proposal and dissertation).  And, if the research is fruitful, we’ll be giving something back to the microISV community, in terms of raw data and distilled information.

On a related note, Dr. Umphress’ research team is now viewing their work on single-person process (“PCSE”) within the umbrella of the microISV community.  This is not to say that they are changing their focus or direction; the research itself is simply being viewed with a more focused — and potentially broader — audience.  I look forward to seeing how this shapes up for the community at large.