C4[2] Recapitulation

I spent this past weekend attending C4[2]. By all definitions I’m a true alumni as I’ve attended all of the C4* conferences [0-2]. This year however felt very different than the past few as this was the first year I had an application in the wild.

I started my journey back in September of 2006 leaving my full-time job for consulting. As a matter of fact the topic of consulting was one presented by Andy Finnell this year at C4. I had intended to use the jump into consulting to develop my software … instead, I spent almost all of my time trying to keep my client happy and paying. This was something that Andy talked about in his presentation as well and offered up a solution of having a few people work on long term company projects while a few worked on paid client projects. I can see how this would serve a company of many people but a company of one often lacks that flexibility.

So at C4[0] I had just started consulting and was trying to start working on my applications. By the time C4[1] had arrived I was deep into consulting and had made little progress toward writing said applications. Between C4[1] and C4[2] I have become a father, stopped consulting, started a full-time job, and released my first application named Fairway.

So what changed? How did I finally make something happen? A few things changed actually … first, I followed some of the advice of folks like Gus Mueller and stopped watching as much TV and instead started coding. It’s amazing how much time I had lost to this activity alone. The second thing I did was I stopped consulting. I know this may sound counter intuitive to going Indie but as I mentioned before I had lost my software vision due to the conflicting demands of my clients. Leaving consulting allowed me to refocus my new found free time towards my software projects. So how did becoming a father change things? Well, while it did mean a few months of little to no code I was blessed with a new baby that loves to sleep. In fact she regularly sleeps 11-12 hours each night.

What does this have to do with C4[2] you must be asking? I entered into this conference having finally attained the huge goal of releasing an application. I have also developed a new found focus and vision on an exciting new iPhone project. C4[2] helped me even more by elevating me to a new level of motivation, reached by listening to talks such as Mike Lee’s ideas on making a pimp application, Craig Hockenberry share his view on the evolution and future of the iPhone & touch computing, and many other topics ranging from SQLite to Going Free. The people @ C4 are always a blast and it’s great to thank the people who have listened to my banter and helped me with my questions throughout the year.

No write-up would be complete without ideas on future C4 topics. I’ve had a heck of a time getting coverage Fairway’s release. The biggest obstacle I’ve encountered has been the fact that most programmers and bloggers don’t golf so finding people to review or even mention the release has been difficult. I’d love to see a talk on not just developing buzz (we’ve covered that in the past) but infiltrating the non-Mac non-programmer press. I’d also love to see talks on internationalization of Mac and iPhone user interfaces, complete Mac or iPhone product life-cycle development, or how to drink a security analyst under the table without getting a hangover.

Many thanks go out to Wolf and his team for putting together and running a great conference. Thank you for enabling all of the conversations, laughs, and ideas by bringing like minded Mac & iPhone developers together to commingle and learn from one another. I’m already looking forward to C4[3] …