Mike Lee is a product engineer in the Netherlands.
Follow @bmf on Twitter. If you have comments, email bmf@le.mu.rs.
For more information about Appsterdam, check out http://appsterdam.rs and follow @appsterdamrs.
When we announced we were expanding Appsterdam to Delft, many people exclaimed with glee, but some people responded with confusion—and concern that we were diluting or diverging from the mission of Appsterdam. Haven’t I, myself, said, on this very blog, that location matters, and that the best location is Amsterdam?
Indeed, but you have to look at the bigger picture. We have made Amsterdam the best place in the world for App Makers, because we want App Makers to come to Amsterdam, because we want to bring App Makers together.
In a perfect world every App Maker in the world would live in Amsterdam, and we’d all be together all the time. In the real world, a lot of people can’t make it to Amsterdam just yet, but we can still help them in their careers, thereby instilling in them our values—chief among them the benefit of getting together with other App Makers.
This is what it means to be a center of gravity. We want people to come here, entice people to come here, and help people to come here. But more than that we want people to look to Appsterdam—for help, for guidance, for culture. We want to be the first name, and the last word, in apps.
Outside of the Netherlands, our facilities will be called Appsterdam Embassies, because they are exactly that—a little piece of Appsterdam in another city. What better way to show people what we are all about, and in doing so entice them to join us in the City of Apps?
Inside the Netherlands is where we have always drawn our borders, because it’s easy enough to get around inside this tiny country that even someone in Maastricht can make it up to Amsterdam for an Appsterdam Family Weekend once in a while. Moreover, for most of the world, Amsterdam is the Netherlands.
I know a lot of people resent that, but it is what it is. Amsterdam is a powerful brand, which is one of the reasons we chose it as our home. But we are not in the business of building walls, nor of excluding people. We are building Appsterdam not as a fortress of solitude, but as the capital for a unified world of App Makers.
Given our goal of serving all the world’s App Makers, the things Appsterdam builds are not intended to be exclusive to Amsterdam, but to duplicated in cities all over the world, franchised by other passionate people who share our vision of building community, encouraging unity, and fostering collaboration.
This is why it gives me great pleasure to introduce our first Appland location, Appsterdam Delft. Delft is a great location for Appsterdam, not just because it’s convenient to people in South Holland, but because it is home to Technische Universiteit Delft, the oldest and largest technical university in the Netherlands, sometimes called the Dutch MIT.
It’s also a lovely town with a rich history, not unlike Amsterdam. We’re kicking things off there just like we did here, with a Meeten en Drinken, this Wednesday (July 27) at 19:00 at:
While we’ll be having our regular Meeten en Drinken at Cafe Bax in Amsterdam at the same time, I and several other Appsterdammers will be in Delft to help kick things off, pass out stickers, and talk about the future of Appsterdam in Delft.
In addition to the evening’s festivities, innovative ICT company and incubator SPING is offering its Grand Cafe to App Makers for the day. Meet your colleagues and spend a couple of hours working beside them. SPING is providing WiFi, coffee, tea and lunch.
One of the goals of the Appsterdam movement is to provide a place for the best and brightest from around the world to come together to make great things and train a new generation of App Makers. This is why we’ve built the world’s most advanced infrastructure for app development here.
It’s also why we’ve been quietly working to bring top names to Amsterdam. By leveraging our network of immigration, business, and tax specialists, we make the decision to come to Amsterdam easy. This is why it gives me great pleasure to welcome the Big Nerd Ranch to Appsterdam.
Big Nerd Ranch will be holding a 7-day iOS Bootcamp here from October 22-28, taught by yours truly. If you want to make apps for the iPhone and iPad, you should attend the iOS Bootcamp. After a brief introduction to my beloved Objective-C language and Cocoa framework, we’ll kick it into overdrive and make you an App Maker.
I’m thrilled to welcome Big Nerd Ranch to Appsterdam, but I’m just as thrilled to be a part of the team. I, and nearly everyone I know, learned Cocoa from Aaron Hillegass’ books. I’m also a big fan of the kind of immersive education the Big Nerd Ranch provides. I am really looking forward to it!
In addition to the upcoming public class, Big Nerd Ranch will be doing onsite classes for businesses in the Netherlands. They’ve done so for such big names as Cisco, AT+T, SAS, and many more.
Attending the Big Nerd Ranch is the quickest way to change your life, kickstart your career, and achieve your dreams. An intense, battle-tested program, and the insights of the World’s Toughest Programmer? Only in Appsterdam.
News from the front has not been promising. Tech blogs read like Tolkien short stories. Our colleagues are being overrun by patent trolls. Widget Press is about to fall, and Iconfactory may be next.
None of us are ready to take up this fight, but if we don’t bring the fight to them, they’re going to bring the fight to us.
At this point we have two options. We continue business as usual, going along our separate paths, spending each day praying we are not the next to fall. Or we stand together, here and now, and fight back.
Abandon the notion that lawyers are our enemies. There are many lawyers who would like to help stop this misuse of patent law. I know because when lawyers and others want to help App Makers, they contact the Appsterdam movement.
Our goal is to serve the interests of App Makers all over the world, and there is no greater interest than fighting the destruction of our industry, our businesses, and our way of life.
Let this be our rallying cry. We’re starting by putting the call out for attorneys and patent experts who would like to help assemble a legal team: email bmf at le.mu.rs.
In a few weeks, we’ll set up a legal defense fund to fuel that team. Then we will formulate and implement a strategy to fight these bastards.
Together, we will get the message across: If you come after indies, we will come after you. They can afford to fight, but we cannot afford to lose.
If you were ever curious what the Mayor of Appsterdam does all day, the answer is talk to people. A lot of that talking is in the form of answering questions. When I get the same questions again and again, or if the question is a particularly good one, I write about it here in this blog so I can refer people to it.
The faster I can respond to people, the more people I can talk to, and the more great stuff we can put together for Appsterdam. This also lets me spend more time teaching, which is really what I came here to do. My feeling is that my time belongs to the community, so I want to spend my time benefiting as many people as possible.
Which naturally leads to two questions I answer every day: “How do you feed your family?” and “Can you look at my app?” Good questions, and interesting answers, because it turns out, these questions answer each other.
I need to buy food and pay rent. You want some of my time to be your time. Hence, I make myself available as a consultant. I don’t have a lot of time, so rather than being picky about who I help, I set my rate to $1000 an hour. When I moved to Europe, that price became €1000 an hour.
That number usually shocks people. Has anyone ever paid me that? Yes. Have a lot of people paid me that? No. It’s a lot of money, though it’s not as dramatic as it sounds. If I go to a conference and give an hour-long presentation, for example, I’m there all day, but I’m only paid for an hour.
I really do want to help App Makers in Appsterdam make their products as successful as possible. That’s why we’ve built the world’s most advanced infrastructure for App Makers. So you can get lots of free advice to improve your products, your business, and yourself.
I also want to make myself available for individual mentoring to as many people as possible, which is why I’m introducing an Appsterdam discount. Appsterdam members can have an hour or two of my time for only €100 an hour. This reflects my feelings on how to price things: just low enough to make it an easy decision.
There are a couple of simple restrictions to qualify for the Appsterdam rate:
You or your company must be Appsterdam members.
(Suspended until the membership sign-up page is online).
No contracts, NDAs, or other legal documents.
Our meeting must occur in the city of Amsterdam.
You pick the time and place. Lunch / Beer / Coffee is on you.
Limit 2 hours per member, per week.
Cash up front.
If you’d like to book time, contact Judy.I.Chen at Gmail with a time window and location. Once she schedules you, she’ll send you an invoice, which you will pay, in cash, at the beginning of our meeting. (This ensures I can deliver a completely honest assessment and escape cleanly.) Judy will then send you a receipt.