Personal essays
A conference talk is often about more than one thing
Maintenance
I hate weeding.
There are weeds growing between cracks in my sidewalk out front.
The beds on either side of my front door have weeds so high I sometimes pretend they are intentional.
Fortunately, the tulips come up early along the side of my house and along the driveway so that by the time the weeds take hold the tulips are done for the year.
Then there are the weeds along the back of my house, in the patio, and along the back fence.
I really should do something about them - but I hate weeding.
You have to crouch or bend over and I’m not big on either.
My weeds have sharp thistles that poke through gloves.
My weeds have an attitude.
They look at me as I pull into my driveway on my bike or in my car and say, “you’re not going to do anything about us.”
They’re right.
30 minute apps
Last week I was in Macedonia.
Technically, it’s North Macedonia.
Anyway, Jordi gave a talk I’d seen him give the week before in Chicago.
He asked the audience of iOS Developers if they’d ever come up with an idea for an app that they never shipped.
So many of us nodded.
“Never shipped,” I thought, “there are a bunch of apps I’ve never started.”
Jordi addressed that.
Instead of starting, you think of all of the obstacles ahead of you. You think of all of the things you need to do first to prepare to create your new app.
And so, in a space of about thirty minutes Jordi created a new app for the Mac (a different app in Chicago and North Macedonia), built it, released it, promoted it, and had sold half a dozen copies.
Neither app was life-changing, but each app solved a specific real problem for people.
Each app had a clear goal.
In each case, he reached out to people for help and used existing work from other apps.
He didn’t worry about including everything in the first version of the app.
In both cases he listed things he might add later and allowed people who downloaded the app to vote on them from inside the app.
He’s going to give the same talk later this week near the White Cliffs of Dover.
Three talks in three weeks.
I don’t know what else he will accomplish in that time, but he will have shipped three apps.
Weeding the front
At conferences there are technical talks and inspirational talks.
A technical talk is how to use a particular technology.
Jordi’s was an inspirational talk.
A good inspirational talk should be about more than what it’s about.
This was not a talk about shipping an app in thirty minutes.
It was a talk about getting unstuck and doing something in the time you have available.
Every developer I know that wants to start a blog begins by designing their web pages or writes new blogging software.
These are nice to have but have nothing to do with writing posts and publishing them.
It took me nearly a decade to publish my first video because I kept fussing with the look and feel and the process of producing them.
I should have created a video, shipped it, then improved things around it.
The talk says, narrow your focus. Understand the core of what you want to provide.
As other things pop into your head, consider whether they are essential or they can wait. If they can wait - let them wait.
Use your friends, use things you’ve done already, ask for help.
At one point Jordi asked for suggestions on what would make the app better. As people volunteered suggestions, he noted them down. At another point he had made a mistake in the code that he couldn’t see - someone shouted out the cause and he fixed it.
Ship what you’ve done quickly.
When appropriate, let other people know.
There are so many areas in my life that can benefit from these lessons. This talk about writing apps was not a talk about writing apps.
It was a talk about weeding.
I’ve written to my neighbor so see if I can pay the kids who work on her lawn to weed mine.
I haven’t heard back so when I get back home, I will start by weeding the front sidewalk.
That should take me thirty minutes.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 217. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe