Appsterdam Rising
By / On / In Appsterdam
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!