CS3216 as a module has taught me some amazing lessons, most of which I've documented in my previous entries. It's fairly obvious that most of us have been able to derive some measure of improvement not just our in technical abilities, but in our communication capabilities and people skills as well. This entry is not to recount these lessons, but to share how this class has made a difference to me.
You, the students of this cohort, have been an amazing inspiration to me these last three months.
As you might know, most of what I do or say usually has something to do with sgBEAT. And that's the truth, really. I spend most of my time thinking about it, worrying about competitors, interacting with users and trying to find ways to make the service better. And for a period of time, this really wasn't fun at all.
When I dived into the commitment of working on this idea about fourteen months ago, sgBEAT was nothing but a few descriptive lines on a wiki. It didn't even have a name. I was a freshman back then and school was fast losing its appeal on me. It seemed like working on this idea part-time wouldn't hurt, and as a student there wasn't much to lose.
Over time, as the service slowly grew, I found myself having to spend a greater amount of time on sgBEAT. I would have to think of ways to try and improve the design, help users who couldn't figure out what to do (due to the crappy design) and more memorably, respond to the volume of complaints on Twitter every time one of the SMS gateways went down. When competitors started showing up, the innate Singaporean personality in me stood out, and I'd often waste time worrying about their presence and growth.
There were also moments of frustration when I had to fix the gateways at awkward hours like in the wee hours of the morning or in the middle of the school day, and it wasn't helped by users who didn't seem to appreciate the effort put in. It became stressful too when people started asking about the future of sgBEAT and its business model, because there wasn't any monetary objectives when we first started this service, and it didn't make sense to have to account for that.
But over these last thirteen weeks, I've seen something amazing from all of you. The Facebook and Google Wave assignments, not to mention the impressive line-up of Final Projects, has shown me one thing clearly about this class - the passion for creation. In these three months, we've created nearly thirty projects, most of which have different motivations behind them. And these projects are incredible, some of which will end up as businesses, and others that might even change the world.
Hearing all of you share the ideas you believe in, and then going on to build the damn thing, has helped me to rediscover my initial motivations for working on sgBEAT. No, it wasn't started to make a ton of cash, but because it was fun to do. I wanted to build something and learn stuff along the way, and the icing on the cake is just knowing that so many other people enjoy using this service as well. With this in mind, I think the tiring days of sgBEAT are well behind me. Sure, there'll definitely be a couple of bad days down the road, but I'll never forget that sgBEAT was, is, and will always be a fun endeavour.
I'm sure that most of you will continue to build out your ideas even after this module, and create value in numerous ways. And I believe that all of us have the passion for creation in us, so I'd like to share with you this quote that I really, really like:
"when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create." -_why