The day is designed to be community driven with the attendees selecting the content that will be presented through a voting process.  Much of the content in the twelve 40 minutes sessions selected this year was related to social media and mobile design.  As a result, I now have looked at my Klout score more in 24 hours than I have in the past 24 days.  And because of the excellent new connections I made, I have seen the score increase.  Back on the developer side it was good to see shoutouts to GitHub, open source and The Pragmatic Programmer.  Brad Montgomery and Cliff McKinney of Work for Pie presented a huge list of resources (need link to the slides) that they used to build their startup.  Several members of Lokion shared their experiences in designing mobile applications.

The event is a terrific bargain costing a mere $20 with students getting in for $5.  In addition, many discount codes were passed out.  In other words, cost should not exclude anyone from attending as mentioned on the conference web site.  Lunch was provided by Rendezvous, who also sponsored the event.  A complete list of sponsors can be found at the conference web site at http://barcampmemphis.com.  Dave Barger, Lunaweb and Launch Memphis delivered another excellent conference that will be continued next year.

First off I am expanding beyond the .NET platform.  Please don’t get me wrong.  I still think Microsoft makes a fantastic product.  However, it’s not for everyone.  It is the ideal choice for large businesses who have to maintain thousands or desktops or for IT development shops who need to get large applications out the door quickly.  And, yes, it is definitely feasible for smaller companies as well and even ISVs.  Visual Studio is by far the best IDE on the market.  But I feel I am pigeonholing myself with the Microsoft solution.  I’m a geek and I like to play with all the cool toys (even though I don’t have time).  I’m still developing for Windows Phone 7 and will continue to enjoy that.  But for a lot of the platform I’m not sure it applies to me.  I am still working with ASP.NET MVC and am excited about WebMatrix.  MonoTouch is one of the things that I need to spend more time on.  Mono is incredible.  WPF has merit and will really be big once Windows 8 and the Windows Marketplace are released.

So I have had the whittle down my stack.  For example, recently I had SDKs for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry and WebOS on my machine.  And that was just for mobile!  I got rid of two of them.  The WebOS decision was more or less made for me and Blackberry will be that way soon.  Another decision I made was to stop messing around with Flash (except for one case in which I get paid to do it) and also to not pursue Silverlight (except on WP7).  HTML5 is the future of web apps.  I’ve bought into the craze.

Speaking of JavaScript, I’ve also become part of the node.js community.  I think that node.js is one of the most innovative platforms I’ve seen since probably .NET was released.  I’ve certainly never been more excited about one since .NET.  Also, with JavaScript, I can just crack open a text editor (Sublime Text Editor is my new fave) and start writing.  I can’t do that with .NET, Java or even iOS.  Sure, you can do that but those starter projects exist for a reason.  Also, I can target mobile apps using HTML5.

So, my new dev philosophy is basically like this:  I can’t afford, as an aspiring ISV, to depend upon one platform any longer.  I am convinced that mobile is the way of the future, but people still want a desktop experience.  The desktop experience can be provided by the web and HTML5.  However, even though HTML5 is supported on mobile devices, it’s not to the point where it can provide the same experience as an native mobile app (ie. WebSockets, IndexedDB, and WebGL).  Also, even on desktop browsers, these highly scripted apps use a lot of resources.  Go to Chrome Experiments on battery and see how much the remaining time goes down.  Obviously, server side applications will be needed but they will have to communicate with many different clients.

For mobile apps, I am using Objective-C (iOS), C# (Windows Phone 7) and Java (Android).  I’ll continue to wait on HTML5 for mobile but for the desktop RIA, HTML5 is my go to platform.  The server side is still up in the air but right now I am moving towards node.js.  There are still some very cool Python frameworks out there (Tornado) that I can ignore either.  Finally, I am adding something new.  I’ve been critical of this web app for a long time but I’m beginning to see the usefulness of WordPress as a development platform.  Like I said, .NET is not for everyone and neither is WordPress.  However, so many people today want a web presence, and that is what WordPress gives them … easily.  Also, customizing WordPress with plugins is much easier than it used to be.  The plugins are almost like apps in an app store.  I still haven’t seen how WordPress functions as a CMS but I’m willing to be proven wrong.  Re-learning PHP has been an experience.

Going forward, my primary challenge is not to get distracted.  Everyday I get my RSS feeds and find at least a dozen cool new things that I want to try.  I keep meaning to get a podcast going but I have to have a theme for the material first.  I can’t get that if I am jumping from one thing to the next.  Also, when you’re wanting to be an ISV, you have to focus on platforms that get your product to market easiest.  For me, this is anything with an app store.

This should hopefully work for me.  It’s still open for tweaks though.

I am sure everyone reading this has heard that Steve Jobs passed away Wednesday at the age of 56.  All we see of Apple today is the retail stores, the keynote addresses, the media hype surrounding product launches and the long lines to be the first to get a new product at release.  But also, Steve Jobs was the epitome of an entrepreneur.  He had a vision, that computing was accessible for everyone, which very few people shared.  He and Steve Wozniak bootstrapped the company.  Most importantly, he never gave up on that vision.  This quote, from his 2005 commencement address to Stanford University transcends high-tech and even entrepreneurs:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Also, I have read that Tim Cook and the Apple executives knew of Jobs condition when they went on stage Tuesday for the iPhone 4S launch.  This is why the presentation didn’t have the usually Apple flair that we come to expect so we only notice it when it’s not their.  But, they did it anyway.  That is another trait of an entrepreneur, to be able to inspire people to believe in your vision.  While hindsight is always 20/20, knowing what they did, the presentation was wonderful.

Steve Jobs definitely had his own vision of computing but he also listened to the customers.  For example, when the iPhone was originally released, Apple was the only developer for it.  There may have been works for a few 3rd party developers but Apple expected that new technologies such as HTML5 would enable web developers to create products accessible via the web through Safari on the phone.  Many such products have been created but the customers wanted more.  They wanted to be able to access the distinct features of the phone to create amazing products.  So, they got it.

Finally, Steve Jobs also created a whole new type of entrepreneur.  I personally have been inspired by this one.  That is the concept of the App Store.  An App Store lets anyone create a software product and distribute it to millions of people and outside of a small $99 fee, there is no other financial risk.  People are able to concentrate on their own unique idea and not have to worry about billing or distribution.  The App Store empowers the developer which is what technology should do.  There have been many new businesses from the App Store.