I knew the day would come when Steve Jobs would retire, and I could have predicted that I would blog about it, but I didn’t expect to cry. The feeling of tears welling up in my eyes took me by surprise. It wasn’t the shock of the announcement, or the soonness of it, but the implication of it.
It would be one thing if Steve got up on stage, said, “We’re richer than Europe. I think I’ve proved my point,” dropped the mic, and walked into the sunset. Instead Steve said, “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
I’m crying because I never got to meet Steve Jobs, never got to shake his hand, never got to suffer his direct criticism. I’m crying because I’m afraid I never will.
My personal relationship with Steve Jobs, like most people’s personal relationships with Steve Jobs, means all the world to me, and nothing at all to Steve Jobs. When I needed a ticket to the first WWDC to ever sell out, I was told to appeal to the man himself. I didn’t even know you could email Steve. It just didn’t even occur to me that was something one could do.
My first email to Steve was lengthy, giving a full accounting of myself, my career, my history with Apple, and the value of having me, my company, and our little music game, at the conference. It took most of the day for me to write it. The response: “Sorry, we are truly sold out.” Terse poetry, worth not getting the ticket just to own that little piece of classic Steve.
That wasn’t the only time I wrote to Steve Jobs. Years ago I had a premonition that he was sick again, and wrote him a letter about it. I never sent that letter. I thought he would find it intrusive and creepy, especially if it was true. And it was true, sadly.
When I outgrew Wil Shipley as my mentor, I made Steve my mentor. I didn’t actually propose this to him. That would be absurd. I just started studying him, reverse engineering his techniques, learning to perform his tricks, on stage and off.
When I went to work for Apple, I went to work for Steve. To be inside Infinite Loop is to have the rare privilege of hearing Steve Jobs speak off the cuff. I would see him around, but I never approached him. He is always extremely busy. And extremely skinny.
Legend has it that when Apple sends retail employees to Infinite Loop for training, they warn them not to look at Steve. I guess there was a serious problem with people getting caught in him like deer in headlights. They were probably blocking the sidewalk. He hates that.
I never talked to Steve at Apple. Not once. I would talk about Steve. I was appalled at how little people at Apple knew about him for all the time they spent worrying about what he was thinking. “He’s not an unknowable entity,” I would say, exasperated. “There are books you can read about him.”
After my shift at the sausage factory, I would go home to continue coding in my Silicon Valley garage, get ferociously stoned, and email Steve.
I emailed him before camping out at Valley Fair for the iPad launch (sixth in the door, behind Steve Wozniak). I was so excited about it, and I wanted him to know how excited I was. I told him about going to the Star Trek Experience and how all the tablets ever envisioned for Star Trek look like crap compared to the iPad.
I emailed him to tell him that I had to choose between being in the same room as Steve Jobs or a naked woman, and chose the woman, because I thought that’s what he would do. I wanted to let him know that bmf@apple.com was a pirate. I hoped that would make him smile.
I emailed Steve for the last time before leaving Apple and Silicon Valley behind to ask a question: when I was a kid and I thought of the future, it wasn’t as good as my life is now, so what am I meant to think of now when I think of the future?
Like the other late night missives, Steve never responded, which made me realize the answer was obvious: the future is ours to invent.
A lot of aspiring App Makers contact me, wondering how to get started turning their idea into an actual product. Should they hire a coder, or learn to code themselves? Or should they start with a designer? Or an investor? My advice, as always, is to start at the end. That is, make a video that shows people using your app.
This accomplishes several things. First and foremost, it establishes the story of your product, which is what people will tell each other about your product. It also gives you focus. People always tell you to do one thing and do it well. This establishes that one thing right up front.
When you’re making the video what you’re doing is you’re putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. You’re stopping to think, in a formal way, about what it’s like for people to use your product. As you go through those motions, you realize what the product needs to be, the genesis of design.
Making a video also establishes a vision of the product. I’m a big fan of generating marketing materials early in the product development process, because it helps everyone know just what exactly you’re intending to build. Great products come from great teams, but only if everyone agrees on what they’re building.
By the time your video is finished, you’ll know what you’re building, what it looks like, and how it works. You’ve also got the video itself, which you’ll show to potential recruits, investors, and customers. In addition to showing the world why they would use your product, the video shows them how they would use your product. This is Apple’s favorite trick: pre-training people with commercials, making the products seem intuitive.
App videos have become increasingly popular if only because they fill the gap left by app stores cutting out trial periods. If you can’t try it, at least you can see someone else trying it. For a lot of people, that’s the push they need to buy. That also means that app videos are as competitive as apps themselves.
The standard presentation rules apply. You want to entertain, inspire, and educate, in that order. A minute is a gigabyte of attention span, so try to keep the video short. Be creative, but don’t go overboard. Getting the audio quality right is more important than all the stunts in the world.
With all that’s happening in Appsterdam, I know it’s hard to keep track of everything going on, let alone what’s already happened. To review from a few weeks ago, we expanded to South Holland with Appsterdam Delft.
Since the launch, App Makers from Delft, Den Haag, and Rotterdam have been getting together at Cafe Belvedere at the same time App Makers from Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Utrect have been getting together at Cafe Bax. They’ve been working together at the Appsterdam Approved Hangout at Grand Cafe Sping, as we’ve been working together at Appsterdam Noord at NDSM.
We’ve been busy in Amsterdam as well. We launched Meet the Makers, powered by IceMobile, the last piece of our Summer of Appsterdam infrastructure initiatives. Meet the Makers is how App Makers share their latest and greatest, connecting directly with users.
The event was a blast. IceMobile did a tremendous job with both hosting and presenting. We had a huge turnout, with around 80 people showing up to learn about the new ABN AMRO banking app. Check out IceMobile’s sweet dual beamer action!
Appsterdam Delft is preparing their own Meet the Makers, powered by Sping. Come see the newest apps by App Makers of South Holland: Noodlewerk, Innovattic, ii studio, Share Square, and more.
If you’re an App Maker in South Holland who’d like a free place to work among friends, this is the perfect excuse to check out the Appsterdam Approved Hangout at Grand Cafe Sping. It’s exactly the dream: a private cafe with coffee and wifi, but no live music or screaming babies. It’s a little slice of heaven right next to a tram stop.
Meet the Makers, powered by Sping
August 30th, 14:30 – 17:30
Grand Cafe Sping, Nieuwe Plantage 58, Delft RSVP
This week in Appsterdam, the first ever convening of Apps For The Planet, a two-day sustainability event where people design and build apps for the benefit of the health and future of our planet.
Three months ago at an early Appsterdam Meeten en Drinken, Casper Koomen asked the question: What if a dream team of developers, designers, conceptual thinkers, sustainability experts and charities came together for a 48-hour hackathon to save the planet?
From that conversation sprang Apps For The Planet. An amazing lineup of partners stepped up to support the idea, including Greenpeace, Pachube, 1%club, and, yes, Appsterdam. I have the very great honor of delivering the opening keynote that kicks off a fun, but intense, program packed with lectures and workshops.
And work! Apps need to be built! Experienced and newly-minted App Makers will form teams of four to design, build, and pitch their ultimate planet-saving app to a jury. The theme this time around is “The Home.” Winners take home cool prizes like Wacom tablets.
Why do we do this? We want to stimulate the creation of great planet-saving apps and build awareness about how apps can help solve sustainability issues. And, we want new startups to emerge from all of this. More than a few hackathon teams have gone on to start companies.
Bring your talent, skills, and ideas on Wednesday and Thursday, August 17th and 18th, from 9:00 to 20:00, to the headquarters of BNO, the Association of Dutch Designers, at Danzigerkade 8a, in Appsterdam.
Appsterdam is the best place in the world to be an App Maker. One of the things that makes that is true is the number of coding contests held here. We’re getting to the point where it’s not such a crazy idea to actually live on the free money circuit, each demo propelling your company toward launch.
Apps for Noord Holland is the latest in a series of government-sponsored hackathons that award cash prizes for apps using open data.
Sanoma App Challenge is an open call for ideas, with an awesome prize for best entry. This year’s contest will involve a hackathon in the Appsterdam tent at Picnic.
Google is hosting a competition for Chrome apps for its Dutch Web Store. The best apps will win free Chromebooks and prominent placement.
Shipping a product takes months, but most contests only require a proof of concept, which takes hours. When you’re trying to get started, or are interested in exploring new ideas, contests are a good way to go.
In addition to cash and prizes, winning contests is a great way to make a name for yourself, and the events around them often bring introductions to connections and opportunities. Sometimes the people you meet even losing a contest are worth more than the prize!
Coding contests are also the perfect opportunity to check out a new platform. What better motivator to learn a new skill than the chance to win something in the process?
