Apple iOS Developer Program: If you want to publish your own apps to the App Store this is where it all starts.

Apple’s iOS Human Interface Guidelines: Read them. And then read them again. Even though they are geared a bit more toward productivity and utility apps for adults, there are lots of insights on how to design effective interfaces for mobile.

Overview of iOS Game Frameworks: A good introduction to the variety of frameworks available to take some of the pain out of creating your own apps.

Do I need to know how to program to do game design? An excellent response to a frequently asked question.

Inventing (Playful) Invention: Great overview of the process of creating digital play experiences for kids from the creators of Toontastic.

User testing at zinc Roe: Notes on how we approach user testing with kids. Some important considerations here to ensure you get useful feedback.

App Licensing: An excellent blog post from Night and Day studios on how they went about entering into licensing deals. Moms with apps is a loosely-organized group of (mostly) indie developers building apps for kids. Their forums are a great place for creators who are just starting out.

There are a lot of good kid app developers out there, here are a few of my favourites:
Toca Boca
Launchpad Toys
Kidoodle Apps
Duck Duck Moose
Night and Day Studios
Crab Hill Press
Nosy Crow
Gareth Lancaster
Matt Hammill

The topic was pretty broad ranging but I tried to put a younger version of myself in the audience and ask myself what wisdom I would want to pass along.

Countless interactive companies are born and die every day. The turnover is truly phenomenal. I founded zinc Roe shortly after the .com bust and I didn’t have to look far to pick out lessons from the carnage. There were three common ways that interactive companies shot themselves in the head: not enough cash on hand to last the years it takes to really get up and running, disputes between partners, and over-extending themselves by taking on projects that were simply too big.

So those were all things I was aware of. But there were many more lessons I learned the hard way.

• Don’t undervalue yourself. If you’re as good as you say you are then your rates should reflect this.
• Before you walk away from a potential project ask yourself under what circumstances you would do it and propose this back to the client. Sometimes they’ll go for it.
• Everyone’s idea of innovative is different. While many clients ask for it, few really want it.
• Don’t let yourself get talked into a project that you know is bound to fail.
• If a freelancer fails to live up to their promises fire them. And fast.
• Never let a client convince you to do a project based on the fact it will be good for your portfolio.
• If a client thinks they know a lot more than they do about interactive step away.
• Stay focused on delivering great work. As soon as it starts becoming about egos you’ve lost your way.
• Never underestimate the importance of personality and communication skills when hiring staff. There is more to the work than pure competency.
• Put a price on your own time and use this to help establish when to outsource or delegate.
• Avoid distractions. Too much advice, too much to learn. Focus on the important stuff because you’ll never be able to do it all.
• Working ridiculously long hours is a band-aid solution to a bad situation. Fix it.

I’m sure everyone who’s ever started a business could expand on this list. Running a business involves a certain amount of coping with failure. It’s going to happen so instead of beating yourself up over it learn to manage it and move on.

Tickle Tap Apps kicked off with a pitch written back in early 2009. At the time zinc Roe had produced only a couple of iPhone apps and had never designed preschool content based on a touch interface. We dug deep into our own pockets to finance the project and it was the first where we were selling content directly to parents.

Sound Shaker launched in November 2009 and in the year since then we’ve launched a total of ten individual apps along with the two bundle apps. This project embodies much of what I love about zinc roe. We dove into unchartered territory, learned as we went and discussed and debated everything from the merits of openGL to how four-year-olds held iPhones. Some apps ideas progressed smoothly. Others veered all over the place before we got them on track.

The apps have had an overwhelmingly positive response from parents and kids. And the story is much the same in the industry. We’re learned a great deal through our work on this project. The exciting news is that while Tickle Tap Apps is winding down we have some really fantastic new kids iPhone projects to apply all that we’ve learned.

We have a great team who made this project happen. All of us want to thank our colleagues for their advice and support and the parents and kids for their feedback and encouragement.

Skills required:

• experience with small business accounting practices
• bookkeeping experience using QuickBooks
• excellent knowledge of MS Word and Excel
• positive, mature and professional attitude
• solid written and verbal communication skills
• organized and detail-oriented

Also valuable:

• experience working in television or new media industries
• experience preparing tax credit applications

Responsibilities:

• track cheques, invoices, credit card and bank statements
• reconcile bank statements, monitor cash flow, and produce cost reports
• work with producers to establish budgets, financing plans and cost reports
• work with accountant on tax filings and audits
• liaise with our external payroll service and group benefits provider
• prepare tax credit applications and associated paperwork
• code project income and expenses
• research new funding opportunities
• address building, security or cleaning issues with the landlord
• maintain office filing system and order office supplies

This is a 20 hour per week position based in our office. Specific schedule is flexible within our normal business hours. We offer competitive compensation and a friendly work environment. Please send a résumé along with a cover letter outlining how you feel you can contribute to our company to jobs \at\ zincroe.com. No phone calls please.

I’ve had my share of experiences with the Ontario college system. I taught Flash programming at Centennial College and George Brown and I’ve given workshops at SUNY Buffalo, Red River College and Seneca@York.

As an employer I’ve also hired my share of Flash programmers. And I can assure you competent Flash coders are few and far between. The same could be said for people with a non-superficial understanding of CSS, JS, standards compliance and interface design.

Every year Ontario colleges turn out hundreds of grads. I’ve interviewed many and I’ve reviewed applications for internships from dozens of them. After ten years in this business I’ve hired exactly one graduate of a new media Ontario college system.

So what’s wrong? Let’s review a few of the many ways College’s in Ontario are failing.

Failing to teach students what they need to learn, not what they want to learn.

College programs seem eagre to provide students with programs sound fun and easy. Guess what? Programming is hard. It’s extremely hard.

I can safely say that the courses that made me were the ones that took my smart ass brain and put it through the wringer (that would be second year multi-variable calculus) or took my to a place well outside my comfort zone (that would have to be philosophy). Did I want to take those courses? No. But those were the courses that taught me to work hard and yes – how to deal with failure. I came through them a smarter, more confident and a more mature person.

Struggling through these courses also re-inforced something my dad instilled in me. “Just break it down to first principals” he would say. By which he meant take the problem and strip away the cruft until you get to the crux of it. What I discovered is that, although each discipline has it’s own terminology they are based on similar ideas and problems. Which leads me to…

Failing to teach first principals.

I taught one group of college students who were close to graduation. The lesson was supposed to be about manipulating media in Flash. After a few minutes I realized the students didn’t really understand the difference between vector and bitmap art, RAM vs hard drive storage, or lossless vs lossy compression. I was dumbfounded. I tossed my lesson plan out the window and gave a rapid-fire class in digital media first principals.

The great thing about these basic principals is that they don’t change over time. Learning Flash MX programming was only ever going to be useful to these students for a couple of years. Which leads me to…

Failing to adapt.

For better or for worse colleges don’t do change well. If nothing else, our industry is about keeping up with (and indeed pushing) change. Technologies and tools evolve rapidly. Many college instructors have been working inside that system for many years. I met my share of college instructors struggling to teach software that they had never used professionally and barely had a grasp of. The solution is to bring in more working professionals to teach the specialized skills like Action Script programming and for full-time instructors to focus on first principals and professional standards. Which leads me to…

Failing to teach professional practice.

Our industry is a wonderfully fractured, multi-faceted mess. People bounce from freelancing to small business to big business and back again. Graduates need to understand the fundamentals of doing business. Basic proposal writing, pitching, prototyping, interview skills, strategies for dealing with difficult clients and colleagues, contracting, pricing, getting paid and how not to f*** up your career before it starts.

The government is failing to support the folks who need it most – the interactive startup companies with between 1-10 staff. What these firms lack in size they make up for in numbers and I’d hazard to say there is more innovation happening among these hungry start-ups than in all the big shops combined.

There is support at the education level (much of it misdirected, but that’s another story) and there is support for the UbiSofts of the world. But what about all the folks small enough to develop original, interesting ideas but not big enough to have an accountant, lawyer or full time business manager? If we could find better ways to feed the ‘plankton’ of this ecosystem things would really and truly take off.

When I look at the companies I respect most in business virtually all of them have one thing in common – a founder with true hands-on experience in their field. They may have long since graduated to an executive office, but these folks started their careers in the trenches wether they were animators, computer programmers, illustrators, writers or artists. Not lawyers, not accountants, not tax credit consultants, not administrative assistants.

My point – in my idea of a happy universe, businesses should be built around people with good ideas. And then everything should work to serve those ideas. Not the other way around.

So what would I do if someone handed me a bag of money to promote this industry?

To find the solution we should steal from the micro-credit model. Instead of rating people on how well they prepare proposals rate them on the quality of their work. One over-used line that I continue to throw at people is that you are only as good as your last project. Full stop.

Offer up small grants (3-4k) to individuals who have a smallish idea and are willing to invest their own time in them. Make it a 1 page application. Have the applicant do a conference call to answer a few questions about their idea. These should not be earth-changing ideas. These should involve one, specific, measurable goal. Build a Flash-based game with a comic book artist, make a website for a local craftsman, make an interactive prototype of your casual game idea. Do something small, do it well. And put a timeline on it.

If the project is successfully completed then we raise the cap and allow them to apply for a larger pot of money. Make them eligible for $10k, then $20k. If several individuals want to pool their allotment, so be it. Let them apply jointly. If their project goes off the rails, they can start over at the introductory level.

Then give the gift of free professional advice. Hire one good lawyer, one good chartered accountant and one good professional writer. Offer all the participants in the program a day or so of their time every year. Offer a mentorship program where people with small business experience sit down and spend a few hours with participants to bounce ideas around.

The new media industry is young, nimble and full of ideas. I’d like to see the government tap into some of this new thinking when it comes to how it supports the industry. Motivating Ubisoft with hundreds of millions of dollars is easy. But the industry is not Ubisoft. The industry is a vibrant ecosystem of smart and hard-working programmers, designers and artists busting their asses. Feed these folks and new Ubisofts (or flickrs, or freshbooks) will emerge.