The 19th century education system in the 21st century

Sometimes it takes me a long time to figure out something and when I do I feel like an idiot because the answer is so simple.

I realized the other day that the 19th century education system was set up before major time saving devices such as the dishwasher, washing machine and dryer were built. These devices basically saved people time and people used this time to progress. There is a wonderful ted talk about this. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html

This is where the "a ha" moment came in: this is why the education system is "stuck in it's ways", resistent to change and out of phase with concepts of progress.

If we were to compare the way most schools work to how people wash clothes, then most of us would still be washing clothes by hand just because of a philosophical ideology. This is the major problem, education is more about a teaching manifesto than results because it was set up in a time where philosophical manifiestos were the best way to achieve anything. 

If the school system was about learning they would ditch the manifesto and start to do things differently. I always pose a simple question: what if I could teach people better and faster but the only catch is that it is completely different than your current system? The answer is always a no because it breaks the manifesto. Most schoolboards won't even try something new. Why not take a portion of the population and try something new?

Im sure if schoolboards offered this there would not only be volunteers but there will be progress. 

The sad reality of the situation is that if I had a child today by the time they enter elementary school the school system will be exactly the same. There will be nothing new and no progress. It's time for schools to devote a portion of their time to research and development. 

The easiest way for a tech company to be tripple bottom line is...

We have all heard of tripple bottom line companies. These company put people, planet and profit all on the same page. To some people it is a refreshing to see companies really make a difference with what they do.

Traditionally you hear of tripple bottom line companies in the retail space. A coffee shop get's all of it's ingredients from locally grown farmers it pays its baristas 15 dollars an hour and the baristas get an awesome health plan. The shop advertises how progressive and awesome it is and people buy from the shop knowing that they are apart of the solution to a better world.

Tripple bottom line companies sprout up everywhere and the philosophy drives business. But what about tech companies how can they be tripple bottom line?

Well the company could be in an eco friendly building that only uses solar and wind power to power it's devices. The company can also give to charities and donate expertise and equipment to the community. But there is one thing that can easily be the number 1 item to make a tech company tripple bottom line. 

Pay your employees and treat them like people.

Most people would never shop at Wal-Mart for political reasons. These reasons include harsh work conditions and low wages. However, they will turn around and buy some software with hard working conditions and low wages. Personally, there needs to be some sort of qualifier stamp to make sure that the software you buy is "fair trade".

I have talked about unpaid internships before but I haven't talked about working conditions. Lot's of times software companies will get gullible people to work on their project for free and for nothing. As if the experience of working on this project outweighs the money and the time. Of course this is only if the project gets released. Lot's of projects fail, lose funding or have a multitude of other problems that cause it to fail. So if you project that you are working for free and for nothing fails then you have nothing, you have wasted your time.

I personally get really annoyed when I hear that people are taking up unpaid internships. It's so risky. In some ways you are better off getting a part time job and starting your own business. At least that way you can make more money.

Perhaps, I am too driven by money. I have bills I have to pay just like everybody else at the end of the month. Going into debt is the worst thing you can do. Im not about to go into debt to work on a project. Personally you can release your own project with your own company. It may not be as glamorous but at least you won't go into debt.

Getting back to the tripple bottom line, I see unpaid internships all over resumes submitted to MI. I really do feel bad for them. If I was a bigger company I would hire more people. 

People should be more aware of the fact that some software companies just abuse their employees as bad as Wal Mart does. We need a workplace standard to make sure this doesn't happen.

Asymmetrical business plans.

In 2006 everybody was saying that free is the future. If you can still find them, lots of articles said that free would be the new price point. I said that was bull and I often became unpopular and labeled an idiot in talks about the matter. 

Well, it's still bull for one simple reason: in order to make money you need to charge something. I understand the allure. Companies need a way to differentiate themselves and if somebody gives something away for free when others are charging they can find a unique business model that works for them. They get a lot of traction and other people hop on the bandwagon. Then for some reason this new business model is "the future" and it will always be like that.

What ever happened to just charging somebody money for a product. Let's look at the oil industry or the fashion industry.

Get the oil out of the ground -> sell it -> profit -> repeat

Design and produce the clothes -> sell it -> profit -> repeat

Let's look at an app model

Produce the app -> give it away for free -> hope to make money on ads -> get users to sign up and build a list -> sell another product on your website -> ??? -> profit? -> sell your company and retire to cancun.

Perhaps I have embellished the plan a little and yes there are ways to make money with ads, and selling lists and raising notoriety. However, as a business it's nice to have a steady cash flow at the end of the month and all of this other motion is unnecessary and frankly a waste of time.

On top of this is kickstarter. Why do you need money upfront. A lot of people on kickstarter just have an idea. Wouldn't it be better to produce a product on your own and make money from that? It makes sense that if you have a game idea then you should just make it and profit from it. But the problem with that is that everybody is giving games away for free and when you charge one measly dollar you are suddenly the worst person to exist on the face of the earth. 

I think there needs to be some awareness when it comes to software and symmetrical business models. How about something like this

Make the software -> sell it -> profit -> repeat

This way more small business can exist. With asymmetrical business models the money tends to concentrate. There are other factors such as saturation and piracy but in the end what you need to do is make money and the best way to do that is to charge it upfront.

The value of a game

There is always so much chatter about how much a game is worth. Gamers seem to like to debate to the dollar how much a game is worth. If it is overpriced or underpriced. This is one thing that I would like to see go away. You have a range from free to about 60 dollars as a developer setting a price. Frankly the price of the game is really up to the developer.

Really for most indie developers you need a price point of about 10 - 20 dollars. Now instantly people are going to hate that but from a business standpoint, you really need to charge more rather than less. I know that people will say well if you sell 1 million units....

First of all as a small business you need to be profitable with less customers. Even getting 50k people to buy your product is challenging. For whatever reason if you market and advertise your product geting a person to pay 1 dollar, 10 dollars or 30 dollars isn't that hard to do. It's getting the person's wallet out which is the most important part. So if somebody is going to pay 1 dollar they might as well pay.

In other industries it is common place for boutique businesses to charge more money for their niche product. Why can't this work in games. Let's say I am a developer who produces a very unique platformer game. As a consumer, sure you can find a free platformer to play. There are tons out there but my platformer is unique. It is not like the free ones. It's different. There is a reason why you pay money for mario games versus just going to find a free platformer.

This isn't my idea. I stole it from the fashion industry. By the way the fashion industry is worth 1.25 trillion while the game industry is only worth 74 billion. The game industry could take a page from this. Boutique studios could make better games and be more profitable if we did this.

The hard part is changing people's attitudes on the subject. Next time you see an indie studio charging more money for their game. Perhaps it is not because they are evil and money hungry. Perhaps they are just wanting to pay the bills because they know they are only going to get 30k sales from the game. If anything the indie studio people are less money hungry than the big studios. The few extra dollars goes a long way to support somebody with passion. Think of the few extra dollars as a tip. Next time you go out for dinner look what you spend on your meal and tip. Perhaps you could tip the indie studio as well. After all in order to make a game you have to be intelligent and productive. Don't you want to support this kind of behavior?

Why 4 years is really enough education

It seems like everybody in their 20s has 2, 3 even 4 degrees. That's a lot of education. While I love learning I'm such a stereotypical entrepreneur and hate school. And as a full disclaimer school is awesome and everybody should go if you haven't gone then what the hell are you doing?

But now you can learn more efficiently. So you can get a 4 year degree in less time. Especially since most college institutions only have 13-16 week semesters. That gives the student a lot of down time. In the past I suppose you could have got a low end job in your industry or internship. But now students fight to be slaves at un paid internships instead of paying jobs. 

Unpaid internships are the worst. I have never done this and I will never do this at my company. 

So there are several possibilities. Perhaps you can get two degrees at once. That is a 2 year college degree and a 4 year university degree. That way at the end of your 4 years you have your two degrees. Or you could even get 2 college degrees and a 4 year university degree. Then you have 3 degrees huzzah! But some institutions won't let you study with another institution. Im sure there is an academically bad reason for this but whatever. 

Anyway, education methods evolve and improve just like everything else. Maybe not as fast as computers but education can be done faster and cheaper so why aren't we doing this? 

Not having a good job for some people is really devastating. It used tob e that universities guaranteed you a better life, now it just generally gives you a better life. When will educational institutions learn that just because you spend more time in their walls doesn't mean you will actually be a better person. So let's just focus on people learning instead of all the other hot air associated with universities. 

Why are schools against self publishing?

When I was growing up publishing anything was an ordeal. You had to go to a publisher and wait. It was really long process and you got screwed in the end. The publisher took too much and it took 6 months to close a deal.

Now you can self publish pretty much anything. So why don't schools promote this? What if it was mandatory that you release a book on amazon in order to graduate highschool. If you don't want to publish a book, what about an app or a game. The bottom line is that you have to self publish something before you leave highschool. Some people think highschool might be a little young. But what about college or university? What if in order to graduate you had to publish a book. It could be a fictional book.

Whenever I talk to educators on the subject they always look at me and say it's a horrible idea. Perhaps it is  a horrible idea. We wouldn't want the students to outshine the teachers now would we.

When I was 17, I felt this too, some students were amazing and they progressed quickly. To be honest I felt a little defensive. How could this student who was with me for 6 months be this good? That was when I was 17, when I was 22, I just said screw it. I want you to become the best person possible.

So why is self publishing such a bad thing? If anything it gets the students motivated. What would be wrong about saying to a bunch of grade 10s that by the end of high school you should have published a book. What would be even better is if they published an educational book such as how to teach math. 

We should teach kids at an early age to produce and release. It should be a habit for them. It wasn't always a habit for me. I had to unlearn so many years of school and not listen to people in order to get to where I am today. Ask any successful person who has released a project that the most important thing about releasing a project is releasing it. You don't fully learn from the project until you push the release button.

Perhaps one day schools will be a beacon for productivity. That day is certainly not today. 

Looking on the bright side

The last blog article was a little bit negative. I don't like to be negative so let's talk about something positive. Your career is completely in your control. If you want to work at something you have the power to change something. If you want to change something in your life you can just go out and do it. The only ingredient you need is time. It can be hard especially if you have a full time job and possibly other people to support.

This article sums up how you can change your life. It is a little outdated and for musicians but the theme is still true.

http://sivers.org/was-10-now-90

So what do you need to do in order to change your life. First of all asses what needs changing. Then assess and action plan. Stick to that action plan. Eventually your new life will slowly come to be.

The keyword is slowly. There is a saying in business: "Over night successes take 10 years to happen". If you quit your job on Friday don't expect money on Monday. For me part time work was always the answer you could work two jobs. One is your dream job and the other is your day job. Always make sure that your commute time is as short as possible. Walking distance is best but you want your commute to be no more than 30 minutes. Preferably 15 minutes is the best. Even if you have to pay more it's worth it. When you want to change your life you need time more than anything. Remember when you start a business you want to spend a little money as possible. For me it was roughly 3k a year and most of that was going to computer equipment and licenses.

If you want to change you life start today. It's as simple as that.