Part 1 : Early days - from games to the Web

Derrick, your background is in computer game development. When and how did the Internet come into the picture?
I've been involved in games development since 1987 with my first game being the official license to Star Wars. I became aware of the Internet when I was working on a Virtual Reality project for the home entertainment market. When I first heard of the internet back in 1994, I thought it was nonsense - far too slow and too early to strike any real popularity. What a missed opportunity that was with hindsight, but in reality it really didn't offer a career at that time.

Was there a "defining moment" when you knew your future lay on the Internet?
Yes, when I resigned from Sony Psygnosis in Leeds (UK) (after first taking a 2 week break in Florida) and realized that computer Game development required 250,000 pounds to produce a product over 18 months whereas Internet development only cost your phone bill and a bit of hardware and software! On weighing up the two options, it wasn't that difficult to conclude which option to take even though my monthly phone bill at the time hit 4 figures!

You worked for a long time in relatively large companies. How have you handled the switch to working for yourself?
Large companies have some major flaws such as bureaucracy, red tape, office politics and many daily distractions, enough to drive you crazy! Working for yourself ensures optimum commitment and performance over and above any "normal" job. Working for a large companies teaches you to do other people's jobs because they can't do them themselves. Large companies have a tendency for "dead wood" to remain undetected whilst small operations work very tightly controlled and efficiently.

What was the first website you developed, and why did you build it?
Can I tell you ? Should I tell you? I acquired a number of domains and played with www.EmmaNoble.com hoping to make it the official site - Emma hasn't been in contact directly and I've politely respected her privacy due to her recent marriage to James Major (Ex UK Prime Minister John Major's son) but I have had contact via one of her production teams and they loved the work. The site was a great opportunity to go up the learning curve and produce dynamic tools such as Voting Polls, a Guestbook, Ad Rotation software etc and return to my original skills of design and layout.

When Emma is ready to come online officially, she couldn't have a better guy working for her and if she wants the domain for herself, that's no problem either.

Have you found that you were able to reuse many of the skills learned while working for games companies? How did you go about picking up the additional technical skills you needed to build your sites?
Without blowing my own trumpet, the internet is the "perfect medium" for me to work in. Intensely orientated around functionality, design and content; I am able to satisfy all areas of producing a commercial site alone. Years spent designing innovative concepts, graphics, leading development teams has seen me work closely with some of the best producers, artists and programmers in the UK. In order to get my points across I've had to learn to stay up with them on an intellectual level and avoid the phrase "...you wouldn't understand!" Learning additional skills has simply been a question of scheduling and allocating time to learn set disciplines. It's the only way to do it, no-one can do it for you.

You have a fondness for developing free services that essentially maintain themselves. Does the development of these services follow a clearly defined plan, or do they grow "organically"?
Nothing is ever FREE, but yes FREE is something I strongly believe in and there is an ambitious and clear path to my objectives - which I'm not telling! My worst enemy is time.

Automation is something I strongly believe in to reduce administration time. In the early days of FreeURL I used to spend half the day chasing up member accounts with correspondence - what a waste of resources. Now, the whole system is fully automated down to monitoring users, responses, and using my own spiders to verify content. I regularly receive daily reports from my little spiders telling me who's been a "naughty boy" and other relevant information via email and SMS. (Editor's note: a "spider" is an automated software program that explores the Web looking for certain types of information)

Continued...