David Doane's Portfolio

A week ago I visited the TechCity in East London to have a tour and meeting with people from the UK Trade and Investment department. My guides were incredibly nice showing me around and I had a great time. They answered all of my questions, even the not so bright ones. After seeing the incubator where DJ Hero was developed (I was actually in their old office) and a good walk about Shortditch, we parted ways. The next day I was signed up for a mentoring program about access to finance  and being put in touch with adviser and contacts all over the UK who can help me move things along. 

The biggest piece of information I received is that to qualify for an entrepreneurial visa for me to stay in the UK, I need to raise £50,000 of investment. Of course I knew that I would need money but having been given a minimum goal to reach has compelled me further to structure my work and take this all the more seriously. Its scary and exciting all at the same time. We'll keep the project rolling as January and the mentoring session fast approaches. In the mean time I'll be looking into options in Cambridge and Silicon Valley and see where we go.

My teams new website is now live and slowly filling with content that we are creating for the game. I'll be writing the blog there too, it will be about challenges the team is facing and how things are coming along 

check it out at startselecteject.com

My team mate Murray is writing a dissertation about players reactions to AI characters vs human players. How players treat AI's differently from other human players and what the implications are.

This got me thinking about my own idea that could test some of his theories. I've been calling it a jail beak game. I envision the game as the player travelling down a large corridor or great hall, jumping from platform to platform avoiding falling in water or lava or some similar hazard. Players will have to leave the main path to travel down side corridors in order to free other players. 

The twist being the main player will not know if who they are freeing is a human or AI. The main player will only be able to free so many along the way. The team they accumulate will have to work together to reach the end of the hall successfully. 

So do you try and guess for human players or AI, do you find working with one better than the other? Are their stats or abilities more important who is at the controls? Do you feel emotionally obligated to try and save human players and not AI's? 

Found a very interesting article about the 10 things most people didn't learn in college. Find it here

I'd have to say of all the things on the list there are four that I really could have used during my year in the industry.

How to be betrayed - I was all to naive going out into the world. Hand shake deals are meaningless, get it in writing, really really clear and specific writing! Always remember the value of the work you're doing. It's a bad sign if someone values you a lot, but doesn't want to put any money on the the table. 

Failure - I never expected to fail like I did, and the number of times I did (depending on who you ask). I was totally unprepared for such a possibility. It was soul crushing and painful. I pulled myself up though, and managed to fail in whole new ways! What I have to be proud of about my failures though, is that I didn't make the same mistake twice. I learned quickly and kept my head above water and made it through, and I'm certainly not letting that happen again.

Negotiation - I could swear there are people in this world with Jedi mind powers. I could negotiate in meetings fine, pushing my agenda, compromising when required, shooting for better win win options. But what I could not seem to hack was negotiating with my own bosses, when it came to issues that concerned me. I always seemed to let myself get talked out of how I really felt. In other cases we compromised about an issue but then the follow through never came and by the time I realized, it was too late. 

Happiness - I got so caught up in my work and job I forgot to do simple things for myself, to enjoy myself. In the end this stifled my creativity and made it difficult to interact with others because I was frustrated and without a release. When times get tough is when it's most important that you have some fun and make yourself happy, but that's what will allow you to cope with your bad situations.

Have been thinking a lot about where I might live after I finish university. I could go back to the US but I still want to move around the world a bit longer. On a random whim I went looking for possibilities in South America and found that Chile is looking to spark up entrepreneurship in Santiago. Food for thought.


check it out here

Took way longer than expected because of some customer service issues with a certain company... but I'm here