scales, robert scales

A question that has been growing in popularity since we started in early 2004. I recall Boris Mann and I debating this some time ago, before Raincity and Bryght even had offices...

Drupal product development vs product service provider. What is the best route to take for an entrepreneur?

For myself the answer was pretty easy: To create a reputable open source service provider firm! It is my calling. Why? Simple! I am a business developer, a marketeer and somewhat of a visionary (and arrogant apparently). I'm not a very talented coder or designer, I know my basics but I am passionate about the business development and enabling clients and talent to work together.

Plus it's easier to build other people's products than coming up with your own. At the end of the day, I am unsure how I would cope with having to report to an investor(s)?

If you ask me, creating a service company is easier as you don't have to go through months of development to create a product that will hopefully provide you a decent return on investment to justify the initial expenses and the hardship that the team had to face to get the product off the ground. Not counting the time you need to spend to maintain, support, upgrade and fund this new monster you've just created!

NewsForge: More On BarCamp

Bruce Byflield of NewsForge joined our group at BarCampVancouver last week-end. As it turns out, he had a pretty swell time: met some good people, was thoroughly impressed with the organization, learned a lot, was intellectually stimulated, and seemed to have had some fun along the way.

You can read his article in its' entirety online here. In it, Bruce highlights some of his positive experiences, while suggesting on how the Camp might improve as well.

Below is an small excerpt from his article after speaking with me after my session on Open Source Business.

"Open Source Business" by Robert Scales, the president and CEO of Raincity Studios. Scales explained his conviction that an open source business model was about more than working with technologies like Drupal and Ruby. Instead, Scales has tried to build his business as a cooperative, offering generous benefits and bonuses and encouraging employees to attend conferences. In addition, he has tried to build reciprocal relations with companies in the same line of business so that they can recommend each other when one is unavailable to work with a potential customer. Last year, he even went to the extent of making the company's financial position public , even though Raincity is not publicly traded. While he could not detail individual employees' salaries or the size of contracts due to Canada's privacy laws, he did give overall figures for both. "I'm really open," he says, sporting a Mohawk and all black clothes... However, it seemed obvious that, for all the humour, for Scales, his business model was not so much a buzz word as a way of life.