Summer in the Netherlands rocks. Employee salaries include 13 months of pay, with the extra month cashing out at the same time as your vacation. Basically the Amsterdammers surrender the city to the tourists and go have adventures, coming back thinner, tanner, and more relaxed.
Just in time for festival season! September features a number of music, arts, technology, and general interest festivals all over the Netherlands—including the world’s greatest Pride. Appsterdam got into the action with our enormous App Dome at the Picnic festival.
The upshot is the entire country travels in August and parties in September. The Appsterdam work year starts in October, and what a year we have planned! Appsterdam 1: Summer of Appsterdam is drawing to a close. The coming weeks are going to be an amazing time as we gear up for the launch of Appsterdam 2: Appsterdam Overwinter.
We’re starting strong with the Appsterdam Legal Summit on October 3-4, as well you know. This is the chance for App Makers to talk to an international corps of friendly attorneys. We’ll solidify our understanding of the patent situation, devise strategies, and answer questions in person, and via a daily two-hour broadcast.
We’ll also be running our regularly scheduled events, which includes weekly Meeten en Drinken in Amsterdam, Delft, and Warsaw; our Weekly Wednesday Lunchtime Lecture series; and our twice-monthly Appsterdam Family Weekend get-togethers. We’ll also have our next Appsterdam Guru Session hands-on workshop, Android from Scratch, on October 15. We’ll have the next public app meeting, focusing on design, with Meet the Makers in Appsterdam Delft on October 26.
As always, there are plenty of other great events going on in the city, like the Node.js training session on October 4. I’ll be doing a speaking tour with the GOTO Conference, which lands in Appsterdam on October 13-14. Your next chance to start a company in a weekend comes with Startup Weekend Groningen November 4-6. If you’re working on Android in Appsterdam you don’t want to miss DroidconNL on November 22-23.
Finally, there are two events that are near and dear to my heart, not just because I’m speaking at both of them, but because together they form what I call the “Fishers of Men” stratagem. This is for the rare class of people who are ready to take the plunge, divest of their material possessions, and jump with both feet into a new career and a new life. These are the people who look at the dramatic moves I’ve made in my own career and say, “I want to be an App Maker, and I’m willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to make that happen. What do I do?”
Here’s what you do: sell, donate, or trash everything you own; buy a plane ticket to Amsterdam and a seat at the Big Nerd Ranch iOS Bootcamp on Oct 22-28, then be prepared to spend 7 intense days in your cocoon before emerging a beautifully trained butterfly, just in time to celebrate your metamorphosis at the Appsterdam 2 Launch Party Weekend featuring Museumnacht on November 4-6. You’ll meet people, find work, and start your new life.
On the less dramatic side of the pond, if you’re a European CS grad looking to be where the action is, a number of Dutch companies have teamed up to assemble an opportunity package that picks up half the tab for going in to the Big Nerd Ranch, and a job offer when you get out. If you’re in the select group eligible for this offer, it’s frankly hard to beat!
What would you ask a room full of patent attorneys?
Since announcing the Appsterdam Legal Defense Initiative, the response has been tremendous. From ideas to volunteers, from criticisms to donations, we’ve appreciated all of it. Now it’s time to make something of all this. To that end we’re getting App Makers together with a roomful of attorneys from around the world at the landmark Waag building on October 3-4. We’ll be discussing strategies, turning our vague notions into legal opinions, and answering questions.
We understand that if you’re not in the city you’re probably not going to fly out for this, especially since you’re already coming out here November 4-6 for the Appsterdam 2 Launch Party Weekend. Still, you’d like to get your questions answered, and you’d like them to be answered when you’re awake. Have no fear. We’ve considered the best way for everyone to get their questions answered, while preserving anonymity.
Just send us your questions. We’ll coalesce the things people want to know into one big anonymous blob. Then we’ll use that blob to produce content during the summit that will be available online at 10 a.m. California time, two hours per day, both days. We will make sure your questions are addressed.
At the Appsterdam Foundation, we ask ourselves, what do App Makers need? In the same way, your delegates at the legal summit are going to be asking themselves, what do App Makers need to defend themselves against patent extortion? If you have some thoughts on that, by all means, send them along.
You can use the signup form to get your question across. If you’ve already signed up, that’s OK. Or, you can email us. You can also tweet @optanthill or use the hashtag #anthill.
For ultimate win, come on over and join us in person.
It’s past 5 a.m., and I should really be asleep, but something somebody told me today has gotten stuck in my brain and it isn’t going to let me sleep until I get it out. It has come to my attention that the Jailbreak community really does not like me.
That’s fine. Haters gonna hate. But, in this instance, I feel like this whole thing is based on some cosmic misunderstandings, so in the interest of unity and tolerance, I’d like to clear a few things up.
First, there was the Denny’s incident. This happened two WWDCs ago during the usual post-drinking visit to Denny’s. My crew was sitting, coincidentally, next to Jay Freeman’s crew. Jay and I engaged in some lively, but amicable debate on whether Apple viewed Jailbreak with animosity or apathy.
From where I was sitting, the younger guys with Jay were being hostile and rude. We really just wanted to eat our food and get some sleep, but they were scrapping for a fight. I tried to be good humored, but when one kid called me a fanboy, I felt the need to drop the kibosh.
Getting right up in his face, fully aware of the fact that I can be terrifying, I informed him that I was a Microsoft fanboy who hated Apple, but that Apple had earned my respect, and that going around calling people fanboys because they disagree with him is intellectual laziness.
Then I sat down, ate my food, and left. I wasn’t offended or anything. We all get full of piss and vinegar sometimes. We’re passionate people. That’s what enables us to do the work that we do. Of course, by the time the story got around and back to me you’d think the Sharks and Jets had accidentally gone to the same Denny’s.
I got a laugh out of it at the time, but seeing as Judy and I had our second and third dates that week, it really wasn’t the biggest thing on my mind. Apparently I really freaked those kids out. I had no idea. I’m really sorry guys. Seriously nothing personal.
Since then Jay and I at least have had many friendly conversations. I had no idea this story was still going around, nor that it had since picked up some friends. Again the old telephone game strikes. As I understand it, I’m said to be going around calling Jailbreak an abomination to humanity or some such.
That’s just silly. I’m a dyed in the wool hacker. One of my favorite things about Appsterdam is the government uses the word hacker correctly. I was around when Jailbreak started. We built it because we wanted to make iPhone apps and there was no SDK.
By “we” I mean the community. I didn’t personally contribute to Jailbreak, because Wil Shipley forbade it, since it was already sucking up a third of the company’s engineering resources, but I was passionate about the iPhone since 9:42, and watched the whole thing very closely. I then went on to co-found a company originally dedicated to lovingly bringing the best of Jailbreak to the new SDK.
Had I chosen money instead of wisdom, what I would be doing in my retirement is building robots with iPhones for brains. That’s my big secret dream, and pretty much requires Jailbreak. The last thing I want is for it to go away.
That being said, I do personally disagree with both the anti-Apple tone and some of the decisions of that crew. The latter, I believe, hurts App Makers and consumers alike, and the former is a disrespectful waste of energy.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I have the utmost respect for that team. They’re incredibly smart guys, and valuable members of our community. I welcome them, and all App Makers, to come see us in Appsterdam. Honestly guys, you’d dig it the most.
In all seriousness, I don’t hate anyone—certainly not those guys—so enough with the schoolyard antics, backbiting, and rumormongering. We, and our entire community, have bigger fish to fry.
We’ve been mum since announcing the Appsterdam Legal Defense Initiative, busy organizing things behind the scenes. We’re now ready to start signing people up and accepting donations, which you can help us with by visiting the official Operation Anthill web site. You can connect to Operation Anthill on Facebook and Twitter, hashtag #anthill.
We’re organizing a legal summit in Appsterdam somewhere between October 3-15. We’re thinking 2 days, with a day of presentations and a day of workshops. I’m letting you know now so you can start clearing your schedule. I’ll give you the exact dates as soon as possible, so you can book travel.
Whether you’re being extorted with patents now, or are afraid for the future, this will be your chance to get the legal advice you need to protect your business.
For press or other inquiries, email contact@appsterdamlegalfoundation.org.
