Today I slung my first four business cards as a "shred-and-business" consultant. Two went to Deep Fried, one to Disney’s Propaganda, and one to… "A" something… Crayon? Sorry guys, I don’t remember.

I took the SR&ED worksheet we give to clients home today to edit for a game development audience. "What projects have you engaged in that can be claimed on form TWXYZ" became something like "what code have you written to improve the game, the toolchain, the file management system, or for any other reason?" "Enumerate the personnel who were attached to the project during the prior fiscal year" became something like "Who did you work with, including artists, producers, or anyone else, on this project? When?"

I made a lot of changes like those, the idea being to instance the form for software (particularly game) development and ask leading, efficient questions of the developers (who don’t care what form TWXYZ wants of them). I entirely eliminated a page of questions about the nature of the research and development project and got right to the point: what have you whipped up and how much did it cost? This way we can get in and out of the studio quickly with a lot of data.

If we cast a wide net I can dig through the responses later and filter them for innovation. Better a surplus of possible credits than a dearth. “Implemented AI for Batsmen”, maybe not so new. “Made batsmen load instantly with modification to PS2 toolchain”, money (literally).

I need to do another form for 2D and 3D artists and game designers. Maybe production staff too.