Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing

00:00:05 ◼   ► news of note and iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm

00:00:09 ◼   ► an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia. I'm now back from WWDC in Herndon

00:00:15 ◼   ► and looking forward to continuing the show. This is show number 56 and today is Monday,

00:00:20 ◼   ► June 18th. And today's just going to be a very, fairly brief show, fairly simple topic.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I'm mostly just going to talk about my experiences at WWDC this year as compared to the year

00:00:33 ◼   ► before because I think there's sort of an instructive lesson there for other developers,

00:00:39 ◼   ► other people who are trying to make a name for themselves in the community.

00:00:45 ◼   ► And so first I'm going to go back about a year ago to WWDC 2011.

00:00:49 ◼   ► So about a year ago, coming home from WWDC, and I remember very distinctly how just bummed

00:00:57 ◼   ► I was.

00:00:58 ◼   ► I was kind of sad.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I really wasn't sure if I'd go to WWDC the following year.

00:01:04 ◼   ► And the short version of why is that I felt like it was-- I've been doing this professionally

00:01:12 ◼   ► for three years.

00:01:13 ◼   ► I've been putting out successful apps.

00:01:15 ◼   ► I've been doing all the right things.

00:01:18 ◼   ► But as I went around at the conference, nobody knew who I was.

00:01:23 ◼   ► And there's a little bit of, I guess, arrogance in there or whatever, like, "Oh, no one knows

00:01:28 ◼   ► who I am."

00:01:29 ◼   ► But it was one of these things that that just really made me sad.

00:01:32 ◼   ► I didn't feel like a part of the community.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I really didn't feel like I was contributing, maybe is the best word for it.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And that made me really sad.

00:01:42 ◼   ► And it made me kind of bummed about what I was doing.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Am I doing the right thing?

00:01:46 ◼   ► Should I stop being independent?

00:01:48 ◼   ► Should I be part of a bigger team?

00:01:50 ◼   ► In a lot of the companies that come with big groups

00:01:52 ◼   ► of people, it's kind of nice to when it's like,

00:01:53 ◼   ► hey, I'm one of the omni guys.

00:01:55 ◼   ► I'm one of the panic guys.

00:01:57 ◼   ► You have a club and a clique that you are just built into.

00:02:02 ◼   ► And I didn't have any of that.

00:02:03 ◼   ► And I was sad for a few days or whatever.

00:02:07 ◼   ► And then I changed gears a little bit

00:02:10 ◼   ► and looked at how I could take that frustration

00:02:15 ◼   ► I was feeling and turn it around into something more useful, something more constructive.

00:02:22 ◼   ► And it was around that same time that I started blogging a lot and I started this podcast.

00:02:27 ◼   ► I started developing perspective.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And I started them with this goal of, you know, I want to be an active, vibrant member

00:02:37 ◼   ► of the community.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I want people to know who I am, not necessarily just so that people know who I am.

00:02:43 ◼   ► kind of a weak goal, just like, "Well, I want to be famous." That's not really it. It's

00:02:48 ◼   ► that I feel like I had a lot of experiences that would be useful to people, and I was

00:02:54 ◼   ► sort of frustrated that I didn't have a platform with which to help people with. I didn't have

00:03:01 ◼   ► a way that I could sort of take all the mistakes I've ever made and tell people, "Hey, if you

00:03:07 ◼   ► do this, this, and this, you can really avoid having these mistakes that have hit me, so

00:03:11 ◼   ► time in and time out. And so that's kind of what I did. And so I started blogging. And

00:03:17 ◼   ► so I started doing podcasts. And it wasn't anything fancy. It wasn't anything clever.

00:03:22 ◼   ► It started off, I just had a Tumblr site that was developingperspective.tumblr.com, which

00:03:27 ◼   ► was my blog, which has now been migrated to DavidSmith.org. But I just started putting

00:03:35 ◼   ► out information. I started sharing things that I think would be useful, things that

00:03:38 ◼   ► I personally find useful and other people share.

00:03:41 ◼   ► This is like I've had a huge amount of traction on my iOS stats post, which is just really

00:03:48 ◼   ► easy to do.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Anybody could do it who has an app.

00:03:51 ◼   ► It's just a question of sitting there and analyzing your server log data and analyzing

00:03:56 ◼   ► the HTTP headers to dissect which requests go to which device and so on.

00:04:04 ◼   ► It's fairly straightforward, but it's just putting in that effort.

00:04:07 ◼   ► And this year, and this is sort of I guess the happy conclusion, is WWDC 2012 was a totally

00:04:15 ◼   ► different experience.

00:04:16 ◼   ► I mean, it was night and day.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And I say this mostly just as an encouragement to other people, more than necessarily to

00:04:25 ◼   ► brag or whatever.

00:04:27 ◼   ► But if you really try, this community that we're in is very responsive to good information,

00:04:35 ◼   ► honest, earnest effort for people to try and kind of give something back. And so that seems

00:04:42 ◼   ► to be sort of what happened. And it was kind of remarkable that for the first time in my

00:04:46 ◼   ► life, you know, I've been a developer a long time, but for the first time in my life, it

00:04:52 ◼   ► was crazy to walk around and have people I've never met or people who I've only met online

00:04:58 ◼   ► recognize me and say, "Hi, are you David Smith?" I say, "Yes, yes I am." "Hi." And I say, "Hi,

00:05:05 ◼   ► "Hi, how do you know me?

00:05:07 ◼   ► "How do you know my name?

00:05:08 ◼   ► "Oh, I like the show, that was great."

00:05:10 ◼   ► And starting these conversations

00:05:12 ◼   ► with these really interesting people

00:05:14 ◼   ► who have really interesting stories

00:05:16 ◼   ► and it made me feel awesome that many of them,

00:05:20 ◼   ► it's like, you know, I love what you do.

00:05:21 ◼   ► It really helps me do my job better.

00:05:23 ◼   ► It really is interesting and motivating to me.

00:05:27 ◼   ► As like all the things that I'm trying to accomplish,

00:05:29 ◼   ► it's awesome to go to a place

00:05:31 ◼   ► where those things are tangible.

00:05:35 ◼   ► You know, there are people who are shaking my hand

00:05:37 ◼   ► who are saying that.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And then on the flip side,

00:05:39 ◼   ► and this is the part where it gets a little bit

00:05:41 ◼   ► into a humble brag,

00:05:43 ◼   ► you know, it's meeting people who I admire,

00:05:45 ◼   ► people who I respect,

00:05:46 ◼   ► people whose work, in my mind anyway,

00:05:50 ◼   ► I consider sort of in a class above mine.

00:05:53 ◼   ► I mean, running into them,

00:05:54 ◼   ► and rather than me and have,

00:05:55 ◼   ► you know, rather than them necessarily recognizing me

00:05:58 ◼   ► and having to introduce myself, fair enough,

00:06:00 ◼   ► but then once they know who I am,

00:06:01 ◼   ► like, "Oh, David Smith, I know you. I listened to your podcast, I've read your website."

00:06:06 ◼   ► And that is the best validation of effort ever. And it's great that coming back, I'm

00:06:15 ◼   ► excited, and I'm motivated, and I'm looking forward to, I guess you could say, the next

00:06:21 ◼   ► year of writing and podcasting and putting out information that helps other independent

00:06:27 ◼   ► iOS developers, other independent Mac developers, putting out information and hopefully just

00:06:33 ◼   ► making people's lives a little bit easier, making things work a little better for them,

00:06:38 ◼   ► and doing it in a way that is hopefully interesting, engaging, and fun.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And so that's kind of the topic for today.

00:06:46 ◼   ► It's a fairly short one.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Today has been a crazy day.

00:06:48 ◼   ► If anyone who went to WWDC I'm sure knows, it's a little bit nuts when you first come

00:06:53 ◼   ► back.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Your inbox is going crazy.

00:06:55 ◼   ► try to get things done while you're at WWDC, it just ultimately just doesn't make sense

00:07:00 ◼   ► to do anything other than the conference because that's what you're there for. You've spent

00:07:04 ◼   ► a lot of money to be there, socializing with people, going to sessions and doing all that.

00:07:10 ◼   ► So that's it for today. It'll just be a short show. Just kind of hopefully just motivating

00:07:14 ◼   ► people and saying, you know, if you really if you are frustrated with the voice and the

00:07:19 ◼   ► the position that you have to just, you know, our community is nothing if not a meritocracy

00:07:26 ◼   ► that good content will find a home.

00:07:30 ◼   ► And the best way to do that is to just start.

00:07:32 ◼   ► You just, you know, it's like our developing perspective, the podcast started, you know,

00:07:36 ◼   ► from episode of Back to Work where Merlin was like, the best advice I have for someone

00:07:40 ◼   ► who wants to blog is to write an article every day for 30 days and see what they like, see

00:07:46 ◼   ► if that works for them, see if they actually do want to blog.

00:07:49 ◼   ► And I'd say the same thing.

00:07:50 ◼   ► If you want to feel like, oh, man, I wish I had a voice,

00:07:52 ◼   ► I wish I had a popular website that everyone wanted to go to,

00:07:56 ◼   ► it's like, well, start writing.

00:07:58 ◼   ► There's nothing more complicated than that.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Start writing.

00:08:01 ◼   ► You want to do a podcast?

00:08:02 ◼   ► Start a podcast.

00:08:03 ◼   ► I started this, if you listen to their first episodes,

00:08:05 ◼   ► just with a USB microphone and Audacity,

00:08:09 ◼   ► like the free open source MP3 editor.

00:08:11 ◼   ► You don't have to have anything fancy.

00:08:13 ◼   ► It's very straightforward to get up and going.

00:08:16 ◼   ► and then you just keep at it.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And if what you're doing sticks, then it

00:08:20 ◼   ► means you're doing something good.

00:08:21 ◼   ► If it doesn't, maybe not.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Maybe that's not a skill you have.

00:08:25 ◼   ► But more likely than not, if you're

00:08:27 ◼   ► putting passion into something, people

00:08:30 ◼   ► are going to recognize that, and it'll be successful.

00:08:33 ◼   ► So that's kind of the message is just keep at it.

00:08:36 ◼   ► Because I really, when I started,

00:08:38 ◼   ► I really wasn't sure what would happen.

00:08:40 ◼   ► And I had a whole week of people validating the work

00:08:44 ◼   ► that I've been doing.

00:08:45 ◼   ► So thanks.

00:08:45 ◼   ► I ran into many of you listeners, and it was awesome to meet you.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I'm glad to put a face and a handshake to the amorphous download numbers that I can

00:08:54 ◼   ► look at.

00:08:55 ◼   ► I look forward to seeing you soon.

00:08:58 ◼   ► I'll be at CocoConf in DC in a couple weeks, so if you're going to that, I'll see you there.

00:09:03 ◼   ► I don't typically go to a lot of conferences.

00:09:05 ◼   ► That one just happens to be down the street, so I'm going to a center for travel.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Otherwise, I hope to be at WWDC next year, assuming I can get a ticket, assuming that

00:09:14 ◼   ► they don't do something crazy next year and that prevents me from going.

00:09:18 ◼   ► But otherwise, it was fun and let's have a good year.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Let's dive into iOS 6.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Let's dive into all these fun things that are coming up that it's an exciting time

00:09:28 ◼   ► to be an iOS developer.

00:09:29 ◼   ► I'll probably have a new phone probably this fall.

00:09:32 ◼   ► We definitely have a new version of iOS to work with and a whole bunch of new

00:09:36 ◼   ► stuff that I can talk about, some stuff that I can't.

00:09:39 ◼   ► But definitely, it's an exciting time to be a developer.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And I don't think there's any other platform that I'd want to be on.

00:09:46 ◼   ► All right, so that's today's show.

00:09:48 ◼   ► One note, I'm going to be migrating DevelopingRespective.com off

00:09:52 ◼   ► of its current host.

00:09:53 ◼   ► If you've had any problems loading the site and things,

00:09:56 ◼   ► it's been a little flaky.

00:09:58 ◼   ► It's still on the original free WordPress host

00:10:01 ◼   ► that I set it up that year ago when I thought

00:10:04 ◼   ► it was just going to be me talking into a microphone and no one listening.

00:10:07 ◼   ► And that worked fine to start with, but it doesn't really work great now

00:10:10 ◼   ► that it's somewhat popular.

00:10:13 ◼   ► And so I'm working on migrating it over to a static web

00:10:16 ◼   ► system, the same way that I do for my website, which

00:10:19 ◼   ► I use Octopress for, and just kind of migrating it over.

00:10:22 ◼   ► So it'll just be a simple static site hosted

00:10:24 ◼   ► with Nginx, which can scale to more users

00:10:29 ◼   ► than I'm sure I'd ever have.

00:10:31 ◼   ► So that'll be happening in the next probably day or two.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And so if you have any problems, please let me know on Twitter.

00:10:37 ◼   ► I'm @_DavidSmith there.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And just let me know if you have any issues, problems.

00:10:42 ◼   ► I'm doing it as best I can to make sure

00:10:43 ◼   ► that you won't have any weird duplicate issues where

00:10:49 ◼   ► an episode shows up twice or anything like that.

00:10:52 ◼   ► If it happens, I apologize.

00:10:53 ◼   ► But moving forward, it'll definitely

00:10:55 ◼   ► be better to be a new host.

00:10:56 ◼   ► So that's the direction I'm going.

00:10:59 ◼   ► So if you have any problems, let me know.

00:11:00 ◼   ► You shouldn't have to change anything.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Everything should just happen transparently

00:11:03 ◼   ► behind the scenes for you.

00:11:04 ◼   ► And the site should just look better,

00:11:06 ◼   ► and the feed should load much quicker.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Otherwise, as always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, complaints, hit me on

00:11:13 ◼   ► Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:11:15 ◼   ► The feed for the show is @devperspective.

00:11:18 ◼   ► And with that, happy coding.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Welcome back if you're at Dub-Dub, and have a good week.

00:11:22 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]