Step inside the studio space of Inlight Media, the second gracious bunch to feature in our new Q&A series.
I first thought this team was getting pretty serious when they upgraded digs to a Docklands office overlooking the water. Unfortunately I went to that office once – the wind from the harbour almost blew me into a tram, narrowly escaping death. Upon hearing they’d moved to a space with 50% less wind-speed, I popped into chat with Pat and Tony.
So Inlight, what are the consequences of leaving clients in the dark?
Haha, good question. I assume it would mean no more clients!
I don’t think this thought necessarily went through our heads when choosing the business name; however keeping our clients informed is pretty core to how we operate as a business. This doesn’t just mean keeping clients up to date during a project, but proactively educating them on changes in the industry and possible opportunities for their business to utilise new trends or technologies. Educated clients are the best clients!
Your founding members left comfy jobs at a large consultancy to start cutting PSDs in a garage. What were those early days like?
Pat: Two words…FULL ON! Highs, lows, stress, long hours and an incredibly steep learning curve. On top of taking the plunge on a startup business, I had also just married, moved out of home, and had a newborn to look after. We spent the first few months rocking singlets and shorts baking under the tin garage roof that we called our office. It was a whole new world we were operating in, and I don’t think anything could have prepared us for the challenges that lay before us.
Don’t get me wrong, we loved it and wouldn’t have had it any other way. Looking back on it now I realise how inexperienced and naive we were, but hey, there’s nothing like throwing yourself in the deep end to learn quickly! Luckily I had my wife to support me (financially and emotionally), which allowed us to spend the first year or so finding our feet before generating any serious income.
Tony: The early days were a good test of character; Pat and I worked many long days and nights. This happened for a few reasons: firstly, we were using technologies that we weren’t familiar with (having dropped our enterprise technology stack for open source equivalents), and secondly, we were responsible for every facet of project delivery, in addition to running the business and continuing to “win” ongoing work.
Tony Milne, Patrick Carne, and Ben Howden.
You’ve worked with some big creative agencies with their own digital teams. When do you get the call? When there’s an idea floating ‘round, or in the midst of an already committed project?
Partnering with big creative agencies was the key to our early growth and success. Coming from a top-end digital team like Eclipse (now Deloitte Digital), we were accustomed to dealing with blue chip clients who had huge budgets. Process and quality were engrained into everything we did; it was how we were trained to operate and how we wanted to run our own business.
But as a startup it’s almost impossible to attract blue chip clients. We needed an inroad to bigger clients and it wasn’t long before we realised that creative agencies needed partners like us to bring their ideas to life. We formed a strong relationship with a number of agencies and that allowed us to build up our reputation in the market.
When do we get the call? Believe it or not our first agency gig came from following up on a mate’s tweet about an urgent need for freelancers to work on project. We replied with a competitive offer and the relationship grew from there. Thanks Twitter! These days we get brought in at varying stages of a project. Sometimes at the start to help flesh out or generate ideas – and sometimes right at the end to help get a project over the line.
What’s your involvement with MelbJS?
Tony: Ben Pearson (our mobile guru) and I have been attending MelbJS from the beginning and have each given a handful of talks during that time. We built the initial release of the MelbJS website and we have operated the Twitter account on and off.
As a company we aren’t official sponsors, but we do love MelbJS, and try to get involved as much as we can. It’s such a strong community and it’s been great to see how much it’s grown over the last few years.
I’ll be presenting again next month on a technology called Docker, which should be a good one to attend!
Warehouse converted.
How important is it for developers to present at these meetups? For those for whom public speaking doesn’t come naturally, is a switched-on crowd more daunting?
Meet-ups like MelbJS provide a fantastic opportunity for developers to keep their knowledge fresh, as well as providing a comfortable environment to experience presenting to a crowd of like-minded people. Whilst you are typically presenting to a pretty switched-on group of people, they are always really supportive.
The standard of presentations varies significantly, however the MelbJS crowd always shows respect and appreciation for the effort put in. Not everyone’s a natural – but there is always something valuable to take away from each talk, which is what we value most as a community.
How can the industry step up their game professionally?
Being proactive. Exploring new technology and bringing new ideas to clients. We see far too many agencies churning out the same old thing over and over. There has never been more opportunity to use new technologies to solve challenges and deliver real business value.
We run a series of lunch and learn sessions that are aimed at providing clients with a simple overview of some of the changes in the industry and new technologies that might impact their business. No-one understands their business as well as they do, and putting this information in their hands allows them to see opportunities within their business that we couldn’t from the outside.
Apple and Microsoft co-existing.
The native vs. web app debate. Is it over?
Pat: I actually gave a short presentation on this recently at Mobile Monday. The key takeaways from this presentation were:
- Take a layered approach to software development. Decoupling your presentation layer means that regardless of the decision you make, you can always change course or build additional apps to meet your changing needs.
- Decide whether you should build an app or mobile/responsive website. These are two very different things and it really depends on your business objectives.
- Before building an app make sure you understand what the goals are, whether you need access to native device features, and what your budget is.
- Make a decision on your development method. There are many more options between building native or a web wrapper (for example using a universal code base that compiles to native). There is typically a trade off between development time/budget and the quality of the user experience and performance.
HTML5 has come a long way, and there are some other really impressive options on the market like Titanium and [PhoneGap]http://phonegap.com/), however we are yet to see a great commercial implementation of any of these and native will always produce the best results if you can afford it.
Lastly, I’ve got this idea where you tap a bird through Mario warp pipes. Can you build it for me for nothing? Profit share. $50k a day easy.
Hahaha, if only we had a crystal ball. If you came to us with that it wouldn’t likely be something that we would invest in. You have to remember that there are currently over a million apps on the iTunes store and it’s still a bit of a mystery what makes a flapping bird get to number one. There are rumours of gaming the app store and bots that inflate download numbers (effecting app store ranking), but a lot of it seems to come down to luck.
We often get “I’ve got this idea where [insert random concept here]. Can you build it for me for nothing? Profit share.” Unfortunately, it’s like playing the lotto, with the odds of cashing in being extremely low. So that’s a no.
A man can try.
Yeah Nice thanks: Studio: Inlight Media in Collingwood, Victoria. Photos: Sarah Anderson