I'm not a technologist. I'm a generalist. In fact, while I knew most of what went into it, I created, hosted, and published my first web page just this month. From talking to so many people recently, I know I'm not alone. There's lots of us generalist out there with big ideas and limited resources.
What I've found surprising is that my limited technical skill set has played in my favor during concept formation and prototyping. This past year, I had gotten used to having nearly anything be technically possible. But what happens when you can build anything you want? For me, the product became more about the product and less about the user. Sure, the user was always central to my thought process and I tried to keep feedback loops tightly integrated with feature development, but ultimately, I'll admit, it became 49 percent "the user would do this with it" and 51 percent "that would be cool!"
So what's my point? The technology barrier is the opposite of what I was expecting. By being capable of managing and fully understanding basically one thing, I've been forced to think about the highest use for that one thing's implementation.
Could development of a prototype be going 100 times faster? Yes. Has gathering the technical resources to get something together quickly been painful? Definitely. But in the end, gathering the resources is a matter of using leverage and seeing connections. It's sales. Being forced to implement only one piece of technology doing one specific task for one specific audience has been the key to demystifying the development cycle. My mantra so far is 'less Segway, more...mechanical pencil.'
What do you think? Are you a generalist? A technologist? Are you thinking about technologies that defy gravity or the implementation of existing technologies to solve a problem?
