Welcome to episode 003 of The Swiftjitsu Podcast. Can you dedicate one to two hours a day on your app idea?  Today’s guest, Steve P Young, the host of App Masters Podcast and our first office guest on The Swiftjitsu Podcast, found time to work on his app idea by driving to his corporate job an hour early.  When his office moved to San Francisco, he focused his efforts on coding and editing his podcast while commuting on the Bart Area Rapid Train (BART).  When his partnership didn’t work out, he didn’t let that stop his development.  Steve attended a Corona Meet-up with his brother-in-law and then decided to leverage what he already knew, html and css, and continued his app development using the Corona Software Development Kit (SDK).  When he ran into issues or wanted to learn something new, he would sit down next to programmers, showed them what he was working on, and ask them to show him how it is done.  If you want to get started on your app, Steve recommends looking for sample code to base the app idea on and then get started.  Steve used industry tools like App Annie to measure his app downloads and industry services like 99 Designs to create the designs for his apps.  Developing custom apps, he recognizes that programming is not his expertise, Steve outsources the programming for his app projects.  In our conversation, Steve mentions “Don’t build the obvious app.  Built the app that's gonna be the most beneficial.”  Being a new app developer, he started a podcast to pick the brains of the experts.

 

 

To get started, Steve recommends starting your first app on your own or if your going to hire out, don’t spend too much and try to figure it out.  At least for the very first time.

 

Unity Game Engine - http://unity3d.com/

99 Design - http://99designs.com/

Sensor Tower - https://sensortower.com/

Lua - http://www.lua.org/

Meetup - http://meetup.com

App Masters Podcast - http://appmaster.co

App Annie - http://appannie.com

Corona SDK - http://coronalabs.com/

Phone Gap - http://phonegap.com/

App Store Optimization (ASO) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_store_optimization

Udemy - http://udemy.com

Acompli - http://acompli.com

EP003 - Getting Started On App Development With Steve P Young

Thanks for joining us in episode 004 of The Swiftjitsu Podcast.  The Gut Check Progress Report is just Romeo Lorenzo updating on what’s going on with the website, the podcast, and his apps.  He also shares the most significant thing he learned in the past two months.  

RevMob - https://www.revmobmobileadnetwork.com/
Applovin - https://applovin.com/
Chartboost - https://www.chartboost.com/en/

EP004 - Gut Check Progress Report

We have Adam Wulf, the creator of Loose Leaf as our guest for today’s show.  Adam was the former co-founder of the company Jotlet, an online calendar tool, before Jive Software acquired his company.

At a very young age, he started programming in 4th grade with the Q-Basic programming language.  His first exposure to programming was modding the nibbles game.  In high school, he was programming games on a TI-82 graphing calculator.  After college, Adam learned web programming on his own.  

Starting up Jotlet, Adam’s first lesson in startups was: 

“It doesn’t matter how good your product is or how good you think your product is…product is only half the equation.  You've really have to nail the marketing side and you've really have to understand who your customers are and how to talk to your customers and how to get customers."

After realizing that their product was dead, Jotlet focused on the marketing side and stop building new features.  Features that they didn’t know if their customers wanted it.

Jolter’s first marketing dollars were focus on going to conferences and that’s where they met Jive Software which led to selling their company and acquired by Jive Software.  Adam noted that it was luck selling the company but its about creating the opportunities where you can be lucky.  The more opportunities you create the luckier you’ll be.

Another lesson he learned was that sometimes you just have to pull your head up and look and see if their are any opportunities available.

One of the things Adam struggles with is validating the idea first before investing too much time or money on the project.  It’s easy to get wrapped up in the project but without checking to see if it is what the customers want, you could waste the time and effort building the app.

After working 4 years at Jotlet, it took Adam 2 years to develop Loose Leaf.  Loose Leaf is  a brain storming scratch paper app for the back of the napkin idea.  He built it to quickly get the ideas on paper.  Through out the development of Loose Leaf, Adam made parts of the app open source and on top of that he created a YouTube channel where he talks about the development.  Adam believes in sharing the technology.

For the beginner indie developer, Adam recommended to just get started.  Use starter codes to get you started and then build from there.  

Shoutout to:
mitch, maxime, and touchopia for signing up early on the Swiftjitsu Newsletter
Steve P Young for the highlight on the App Masters Podcast

C# -
LAMP stack stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP
Paint Code - http://www.paintcodeapp.com/

This podcast is all about inspiring you to jump in and get started.  As you know, I’m still working the corporate life.  It takes me 1 hour to commute one way and so that is at least 2 hours of driving a day.  i needed to make a change because i was tired of the mindless circle of sitting in traffic memorizing the license plate numbers of the cars in front me and so i turned off the radio and started to listen to audio books.  That instantly changed everything for me. Now, my commute is not long enough.  I’m listening to books like 'The suitcase entrepreneur' by natalie sisson.  virtual freedom by chris ducker, the 4 hour workweek by tim ferries, and so much more. oh and how can i forget Podcast Launch by John Lee Dumas the blue print i used to create this podcast.  change your commute experience today and sign up for your free 30-day trial of audible.  you’ll get 2 free audiobook from a collection of 150,000+ books, receive 30% off the price of additional audiobooks and cancel anytime.  If you use my affiliate link swiftjitsu.com/book I would be most grateful and thank you for supporting this podcast.


EP005 - Do you think you have what it takes to see your ideas come to life? - Adam Wulf

In this episode we have Dr. James Jaurez, an associate professor at National University. He teaches C/C++, human computer interface, information systems, information technology management, web development/design. He is a regular speaker at scholarly conferences. James always tries to build or use technologies that will help end users perform some task.

James is most enthusiastic about apps that helps students connect with their teachers. He uses apps from Blackboard Learn and Blackboard Colaborate to communicate with students and other faculty.

What he likes the most about working with digital media designers who transition is to help bridge the gap to be able to make that transition to be able to say i can transition that idea from graphic design to interactive design.

Many start with a fear or a concern about learning how to code. Its not uncommon to meet a designer who can mock up a beautiful interfaces or layout but don’t know how to wire those interfaces into something that is interactive.

EP006 - Transition Into App Dev From Digital Media With James Jaurez

Our guest for today is Maxime Defauw.  He is a 15 year old author, app developer, and is inspired to teach what he learning.  Maxime began programming when whe was 11 years old.  He started to learn how to programming by copying snippets of VBS code on notepad and prank his friends by tricking forcing his friend's cdrom drive to eject over and over again.  Maxime didn't know exactly how the code worked.  He would just copy and paste the code and saw the results. Maxime's curiosity enabled him to start learning how to program on his own.  He started start to learn VBS and C# (C Sharp).  After a while, he started to learn C and then Objective-C.  He learned alot from doing and then started with Swift.  Maxime began learning how to program on his own by reading the Big Nerd Ranch books and by taking a few Swift courses on Udemy.com. He also learned how to program from reading the Apple documentation.  

Believing that teaching is one of the best ways to learn, Maxime decided to write a book about learning how to program in Swift, Apple's new programming language.  At the time when Maxime was trying to learn the language, there weren't a lot of resources available on learning how to program in Swift.

Maxime found that it was difficult to write the book because he was still a high school student.  He believes that you have to be really motivated and that you have to write every day.  Besides, his daily school homework, he also added 1 to 2 hours a day dedicated to writing his book.  He started to write his book around the Christmas holiday in 2014 and it took him approximately 2 months to complete.  In his estimation he wrote about 7 to 10 hours a week.

So while he was learning how to code in Swift, he started to teach by writing his book.  While finishing up his book, he looked to his grandmother, a former english teacher, to edit and make any corrections because english is not his native language.

While learning how to program, Maxime took his learning a step further by publishing 3 apps in the App Store.  2 of the 3 apps are games that he developed with Apple's Sprite Kit and the last app he published in both the App store and Google Play building the game in Unity 3d.  Unity is a 3D game engine.  Maxime said, "The best way of learning is by doing."

At only 15, he is already inspriational.  On top of learning how to program on his own and writing a book about learning how to program, Maxime took it a step further and decided to contribute 10 percent of the revenue from his book to a worthy cause.  Instead of thinking about helping a charity that is local to him, Maxime decided to look for an international organization.  Believing that diabetes needs more global attention, he dediced to contribute a portion of the proceeds to Life for a Child.  It is a program to help children with diabetes that is run by International Diabetes Federation.  The International Diabetes Federation helps helps children in 170 countries.

By wanting to learn and inspired to teach, Maxime wrote a book about Apple's new programming language, Swift.  At such a young age, he is already inspiring other to learn how to program while helping children across the world.  Maxime's book is available on his website, http://www.maximedefauw.com as well as a iBook at iTunes.

EP007 - Teaching Is One Of The Best Way To Learn - Maxime Defauw

Bobby Gill is today's guest on The Swiftjitsu Podcast.  He is the Co-Founder of Blue Label Labs who live in NYC while Jordon Gurrieri, the other Co-Founder, lives in Seattle, WA.

Blue Label Labs is a transcontinental app development company based in New York City with offices in Seattle, WA.  Bobby talks about how he leveraged his experiences and the knowledge he learned during his MBA to evaluate the markets and started Blue Label Labs.  Blue Label Labs is not setup like your typical corporation.  They are a small group who leverages the power of the internet and have their employees located through out the world.

Word Hack is a challenging word game that is a spin on Hangman and Wheel of Fortune.  Word Hack is ideal for those how like to solve words and figuring out puzzles.  It is an app developed internally where they took a basic concept and added their flavor to the game.

Bobby also talks about what he recommends for new indie developers to target your ideal audience.  He goes through some examples.  Learn how to get your apps to the peple.

Thank you Bobby for taking the time to be on The Swiftjitsu Podcast!  Everyone, reach out to Bobby and say 'Hello' or 'Thank you' on Twitter!