The Siboot team now comprises seven people (with two more on the way):
me
Alvaro Gonzalez
Gary Brint
Bill Maya
John Kirk
Luc Toupense
Chris Conley
We had our first video meeting a few days ago, and it went well. It was nice to see everybody in one place, and it’s great to have people helping me with the stuff I have no talent for.
However!
All those people need some leadership from me. That means providing them with directions for what they need to do. Those directions have to be specific; I can’t just wave my hands and tell them to go off and do something nice. That requires me to write down detailed specifications for everything. Of course, different tasks requires differing levels of specification. Gary Brint’s work on putting together a business plan requires no guidance from me other than the basic goals of the project. But Alvaro can’t build faces until he knows exactly what I need for the game. John Kirk signed on to work on 3D faces, but now it appears that we’ll be using 2D faces. Chris Conley will be leading up the entire effort for interstitial stories (which I am currently calling inecdotes.) But he can’t start until I get the code written so that he has a firm format to work with.
So I am swamped with work, trying to meet the needs of all these people. It’s not only difficult keeping ahead of everything — it is also taking up all my time. I have had no time whatsover to work on my true primary task: getting the skeletal Siboot running properly.
Kathy had warned me about this months ago. “Do you want to create or do you want to manage?” she asked. I want to create. But my hand is forced by my incompetence at a number of tasks that only these people can do. Hence I must learn how to blend creation with management.