Umlchina - I'm inadvertent "entrepreneurial" story
Pan Jiayu / article
I have seen a lot of "programmers", the master is mostly full of fullness, grinding the knife, after a fight, some of the feasibility, some helplessness. Umlchina and my story are not so "strong", it seems that it is nothing to come step by step. Five years in this industry is a short time, Umlchina has gone through the first five years. I also want to dedicate the story of Umlchina for more than five years to everyone, for your reference.
Start from Umlchina
In June 1999, I was also a programmer of a software company, making e-commerce development, from Asiaalien's "window software engineering" first knew UML. All day and the encoding environment, I am dealing with the SQL statement, I have an open eye, start learning and try to use it in the project. Because I found a lot of information at the time, I felt that these materials were valuable, I was born to build a website and everyone shared information.
"China UML Some Plant" was born. At that time, the Chinese UML website was very small, so soon, it will attract everyone's attention. At first, Umlchina just provides some documentation download links. I have to spend some time every day to find a document. After reading, I will put it up, and some friends will come to their original articles. Umlchina is a "software engineering document base", but by 2002, the relevant books began to grow in explosive growth, and there are more and more channels that the team get help. This part of the service disappeared. Later, the four words "Software Engineering" also disappeared from the home page of Umlchina, not because we didn't need software engineering, but because of the broad concept of "software engineering", it has been widely accepted by everyone. The name of "UML Some Machine" is no longer used because it has been seeded. The current UMLCHINA is focused on "method" that has been focused.
My first entrepreneur should not be UMLCHINA, but when I spend a few months, I spent a few months, imitating Thirdvoice (the third voice, was developed by "Wealth" to develop the coolest company in 1999 Software "Instant Stick", this is a software that can comment on the web page. If you leave your comment on a web page, you will find it when you have a user's user browsing it. Your comments, in fact, these comments are concentrated on the server. However, it is ultimately not a success because the profit model is not clear. The nasal ancestors THIRDVOICE also stopped the service in April 2001.
Although the "first trial entrepreneur" failed, the mood of entrepreneurship is not suppressed. I didn't take UmlChina as a profession, but just a kind of hobby. I started to re-examine Umlchina, add new features to it.
In June 2000, I started to add a forum function for Umlchina. At the beginning, it was a simple message board. In August 2000, I moved to SMILING, and became a discussion group. The first year exceeded 10,000 people. The UMLCHINA discussion group is characterized by not deleting, and the privilege is prevented. Since you can't delete posts, team leader ABUG, MOURI, VCC_CN, Sealw et al. Can only answer questions for everyone. This kind of no shelf, the rate is really style, some people like it, and some people are not used to leave. In 2004, I decided to migrate the discussion group to Yahoo Groups, the number of people has reached 43,000.
In 2001, "Programmer" magazine is aware of it. At that time, I would like to turn some UML, object-oriented, software engineering articles into a technical information in the form of electronic magazine, free to download, named "Non-programmer". "Programmer" The slogan at that time was "software as a programmer", as "the non-programmer" has made a "software" software to use it "and reserved. "Non-programmer" consumes me a lot of workload, including contact the author to authorize non-commercial use, need to translate, review, typography, and release. Many people have paid labor for "non-programmers", and there is no compensation. There is only one point to participate in internal training activities ... At the same time, Umlchina does not regularly invite some foreign domestic experts to communicate with you. There are more than 40 experts such as Martin Fowler, Scott W. Ambler, Wang Xiaoyu, Gerald Weinberg, etc. To UMLCHINA for lectures or communication. Moreover, the world will take advantage of the UML-related events, and UMLChina has tried to report to timely.
Later, Umlchina also cooperated with the publisher to translate the "Moon Myth" and set a sales record, and it is still in power. "Moon Myth" also enabled Umlchina's trust in the publishing house, and then cooperates with many books such as "person", "enterprise application architecture model". However, the translated book, the publishing house has only a relatively small one-time translation fee to the translator, and the review is basically not worthless, so there is no profitability and income in addition to the name and huge satisfaction.
Maybe someone wants? All the above UMLCHINA services are free, neither sell advertising, nor agent tools, how do you support it?
Focus on the last kilometer
The first two years found in Umlchina, it was used in my income, which took not much cost, and about 10,000 in 1 year (now not enough now). Now it is also used to maintain, but my work has changed, "Software Development Consultant" is my love for work, and it is also my choice.
At the beginning of 2002, I resigned began to take UmlChina and announced the training services. The first choice of we serve Alibaba, then it is not available. At the beginning, the charge was cheap, coupled with the name of the name of the UMLChina, did not do advertising, everyone has found it. In the most intensive, I did 8 days of training in 4 places in Beijing in 10 days. Open lessons have also been made in many people.
But I feel that this direction is wrong, this is not a "training center"? I became a lecture teacher. This is not my original intention and interest. And the benefits of training have brought more benefits to the team, just understand knowledge, saying that truly can go to the road, and not much grasp. I feel that I have to find a way to myself, and I have found it, this is "Focus on the last km".
This is a picture I carefully choose to express the "last km" thought. Emperiku is ran back from the marathon to the Athens report victory news, although it is full of blood, exhausted, but he knows: There is no in front of the Athens people, and the front approach is white. UML knowledge learned If you can't finally "use" in the team's project, it is also very wasteful. And in fact, this last paragraph is the most difficult.
Therefore, I decided to put energy on the "Application of UML-related technology" to focus on providing "last kilometer" service. If you say knowledge, from Booch to Fowler, from Jacobson to Cockburn, it has laid a deep foundation for us. The key is that we can make these technologies into real team skills, so that the team gets real benefits. "The last kilometer" is also wonderful: even if Martin Fowler personally drives, I am not worried by him. Even if everyone bought his book, on this level of "last kilometers", each team's characteristics are different, Martin can do it, and help so many people. In addition, Martin Fowler is not a MCSE trainer. Just training can be copied in batches, but a hard cultivation. The next step is to continuously improve the training price, and reduce the number of home training per month to a certain degree, so as to have more time to study the problem. For each training, there are many efforts to study the situation of the team and the current project to provide them with top services. In fact, there are too many problems in software development. Experts need to study solutions. Every time I get the project documentation for my project, I have a strong feeling: I can help them! As long as you can bring the truthful value to them at a point, you can play a lot. As long as the horizontal is enough, you can understand the benefits to the team, no one is looking for you.
At the same time, I also stopped "open lessons" and concentrate on the door to the development team. With more than two years, the software organization of the on-site service has reached 70, and it is indeed worth it. As a technical officer in Guangzhou said, "the biggest harvest is the idea of technicians, and this transformation is far-reaching." Turning the service record and is a very proud list, but we never publish the name of these partners on the page, nor does it promote, all rely on trust and mouth. I am also very grateful to these partners, they gave us another chance to practice, improve and hammered skills.
Umlchina's thing is obviously not my one can do, my energy is concentrated in research skills, and other things can be separated. Magazine, books have translators, news is responsible, page layout design to find more beautiful artworks ... There are many people contribute to it, and many of these people have never seen that --umlchina is just a loose network collaboration. platform. How do you contact everyone? Partner Sealw once said: Contact is Think every place, please eat, although it is a joke, it does also reflect the facts, I hope this inadvertent contact can continue, this is also a "team building". Umlchina's future is how to keep your own style, it should become smaller and smaller, more and more focused, while trying to stay non-commercial.
And my biggest bottleneck is a skill. I sometimes think: I have to have the breadth and depth knowledge and experience like Martin Fowler. I have been using and programmed to keep "body". Part is to provide support for the development team; if you sometimes need special learning and research, I will try to use this technology to write some tools used inside UMLCHINA. The skill is only in practice to truly hammers. Maybe in this knowledge explosion and Google's age, you should not learn to learn.
