The Best Session Thus Far...

I went to the best preso thus far at WWDC tonight hands down. It was fantastic!

So the evening started off with Gus Mueller from Flying Meat talking about what it takes to be an indie mac developer. He had some great stuff to say but the most important thing I got from him is to be organized. Starting back in March when I heard his interview I really liked what he had to say. Be methodical, automate so you don't mess up. Make your processes work so that you don't waste time doing stuff that won't make better product. Its good stuff. Gus also stressed how important it is to have passion and lots of it, because lots of folks will think you are crazy and might say that to your face :-)

Take Home Point: Be Organized

Next up was Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater and he talked about how to get paid as an independent. It was what you'd expect. To get started you can go easy but expensive, to get more control and more of the money you have to invest more time and energy in learning how to do stuff. You can spend time and energy learning how to take money and you will get to keep more of your money but you have to give up the time you could have spent making better features. The stuff he recommended getting started with was Esellerate or Kagi, because they are easy and you can focus on your app. Then you can do pay pal and their Web Site Payments system, then if you are really crazy you can process your own visa payments and such.

Take Home Point: Start Simple

Wil Shipley and he talked about marketing and how he got started. Wil got started by giving away a bunch of free software. At Omni Group they built software and gave it away on the NeXT and got their name known so when they did have a product to sell people knew who they were. Funny statement 'if we give our software to half the people in the world and they convince the other half to buy it we will be very rich'. Another thing he said is that Apple is your best friend. I spent a bit of time in the 'go to market' lab on Monday and it totally true. Apple bends over backwards to make your product known. Wil had a million things to say but mostly what I got from him was 'just do it'. Whatever it is that you want to do, do it, get out there and make it happen.

Take Home Point: Be Passionate

Everyone talked about passion and how important it is to be passionate. What I took from that (and it might not be what they meant) is that you need to have passion, you don't have to be passionate about organizing CD's or local wiki but you do need to be passionate about what you are doing.

Finally Scott Stevens was fantastic for putting this all together and thinking though the questions that were on everyones mind. It was great, thanks again Scott!