We just (as in, just finished this afternoon) had a whole 2 days of almost exactly this -- realestate.com.au (REA group) has quarterly "hack days", where we work, either independently or in spontaneous teams, on whatever we feel like doing. Mostly, it's related to and guided by technical or product ideas that would benefit the company. However, what always, always strikes me is that no matter the good idea, and no ma…
At ABC Innovation, where I am at the moment, every day is like this. There is a constant flurry of research, ideation, analysis - but the most important part of all that is figuring out which approach, of all these, to put our energy behind. Because the next part is a massive amount of hard work, with dev, ops, design, project management, editorial people; the deployment of serious resources. Which in the end is time spent away from our families, as well as the unstinting attention of a lot of skilled people.
So damn right, the effort of making something real is huge. All the more reason to be sure that you're working on a really good, important idea.
And yes, a lamp with a LAMP stack is a bloody great idea. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cloudlight/light-1
Backed.