Hi, I'm Nick - the Owner, Director, Software Engineer, Developer, Support, Marketing "Team", etc... (you get the idea) at Inklen. If you're reading this, you're either lost (perhaps you were looking for MixEmergency), or perhaps you're actually ever-so-slightly interested in the Who, What, When, Where, Why behind this company. Either way, you've started reading, so why stop now?
Inklen is a tiny company from a small country (New Zealand - you probably know it from "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit"). The company was officially registered in 2008, but Inklen's main product, MixEmergency, predates this by quite some time.
Previously I've had experience in both the DJ and graphics industries, and MixEmergency brings both of these together nicely. I spent 3 years as one of the main software developers at Serato, developing Scratch Live (from verson zero until just before version 1.5), and also spent time working for a company specialising in 3D CAD/OpenGL. It was towards the end of my time at Serato that I began to start exploring my interest in graphics and VJing again, which led me to the idea for MixEmergency.
I'm passionate about Video DJing - in particular, about pushing the boundaries of the art form. It also motivates me a lot to know that the features that I'm able to implement can be truly useful to working Video DJs. I have a lot of very good DJ friends who have made suggestions and helped me to figure out exactly what is and isn't useful over the years (a great example: Random Transitions). I also love optimising code... I can spend days profiling, rewriting code, running tests, etc.
Being such a small company can be a challenge at times - especially when you consider the resources of Inklen's (much larger) competitors. A challenge can be good though, and being small can have a lot of advantages too (or maybe I just like to fool myself into thinking that it can). It means that I get to interact directly with you, the customer - you can get help and support directly from the person who knows MixEmergency the best, and I can get ideas and inspiration directly from you.
Being small also allows for fairly rapid development - though obviously this has limits, as there are a lot of other tasks that take time away from development (such as writing this About page). Occasionally I've had a user suggest a really great feature for MixEmergency and then been able to send them a test version within a few hours with the new feature implemented. It can mean that sometimes development plans don't get followed exactly, but it can be really satisfying to be able to implement smaller features quickly like this (and there's no management hierarchy to navigate - bonus).
Inklen also has an awesome volunteer beta testing team. These testers are the users who use and test beta versions of MixEmergency and report any problems, or suggest improvements, directly to me. They do so in live settings, most nights of the week, so that MixEmergency can be the best it can be, and so that when it gets released to you, the end-user, we can be confident that it will perform well and be stable.
I've got to stop here, or I'll write a novel. If you have any questions about Inklen, or any of Inklen's products, feel free to contact me.
