David's App Making Manifesto - Fall 2012 - Monterey California. Most of you understand my perspective on "app making" but you can't imagine how many hours, days, weeks, months, years I've been thinking, tinkering, improving this approach / process of getting a high quality mobile app project off the ground and completed. I've literally hand-typed tens of thousands of lines of code over thousands and thousands of hours in the past 5 years. We are nearing our official 3 year anniversary, public, online. I've personally met people (online and off) in dozens of countries, the buzzmap shows bubbles in more than 50. I've posted nearly 6,000 "answers" to wonderful questions and testy complaints. Tiny little devices have "pinged" our speedy backend nearly 200,000,000 (two hundred million) times. Nearly 165,000 thousand folks have registered and participated in this grand experiment. Countless thousands remain anonymous. I still remember the first registered users email address - I should, it's mine. Through all of this, my focus has remained the same: Perfect (to the best of my ability) the app creation / updating process to the point that quite literally anyone in the world thinking "mobile project" will think of us an embrace our approach. I am hell bent on doing this. WordPress = blog. PhotoShop = images. DropBox = online storage. Twitter = tiny text messages. Facebook = friends. Google = search. buzztouch = mobile. Someday. We have a long way to go but are for sure closer today than we were 8 macs, 13 iPhones, 4 iPads, 9 "droids", 3 Blackberries, 1 Windows phone, boatloads of tiny white and black cords and connectors ago. I'm one guy. My family is four. Way too many gadgets. What I know now that I didn't know then: I've categorized ALL app making projects into four distinct categories. These are not guesses. These are facts. I've established these facts after analyzing more than 150,000 projects in the last few years. That is a huge data set to draw conclusions from. I spend more time than I have available reading, learning, tracking, asking questions (of myself and this insane goal) and thinking of tomorrow. I've come to the conclusion that every single app project on the planet, without fail, falls into one of these 4 categories: --Business / Organization Projects: Usually started in house but not always. Almost always dreamed up within the organization. Think business, church, school, government agency, etc. --Client Projects: Folks starting projects for hire, for somebody else, professional or otherwise. These are the designers, web-masters, coders, paid-to-produce folks. In most cases they are paid by businesses and organizations, occasionally individuals. Lots of mobile dev falls into this category but not as much as it will be in a few short years (months?). -Personal Projects: People tinkering, looking into the process, trying to figure it out. Many of them give up, many continue on. Many become app making addicts! Commonly learners, oftentimes young but not always. Think events, school projects, family stuff, experiments. Many of these projects turn into actual apps, most do not. Tremendous opportunities await those that stick with it long enough to become confident enough to think: I can make that. --Developer Projects: Projects that are started by folks looking to make something of value. A project that the creator intends to finish. Usually with an aim at a market, like the App Store. A profit motive is common but not necessary. Development is almost exclusively done alone or with a very small team. Many of these folks dream of making the next "big thing" and hope to strike a cord with their grand idea. In nearly all of these cases, regardless of experience, the person starting an app project adventure runs into unanticipated problems. Newcomers are surprised more often than experienced developers but everyone gets surprised along with way. Something doesn't work, operating systems don't behave, mega-corps change the rules, batteries die and pocket Wi-Fi goes on vacation. It's just part of the process. When most of these things happen, the app gets blamed. More commonly, the person that made the app gets blamed (it can't be Apple's fault, right?). The good news is, I'm crazy about keeping track of these problems too. I have an amazingly long list of gotchas that lots of folks would be well served by reading, learning, listening too, understanding. I hope to figure out how to best communicate these ideas in the future. Podcast? Book? Video Series? Blog? iPad App? I'm not sure how to distribute this data but I'm convinced that we (you are part of we) would be well served by understanding at least the most common issues you MUST be prepared to deal with when your app project is designed, developed, distributed. Change is good, if you're prepared. You'll begin to see changes on buzztouch.com in the coming weeks and months. Don't panic. We don't make arbitrary changes willy-nilly. When things change we are thinking of you. Always. People that don't know me may think the changes we implement are self-centered and designed with us in mind. This is the furthest thing from the truth. The changes we implement are designed to help people avoid the gotchas and situations I mentioned earlier. Changes are our best effort at improvement. Some changes end up not improving anything, we realize this and sometimes shift gears after giving it our best. Each and every one of the categories and people I mentioned earlier must understand how and why buzztouch is the best approach, regardless of what kind of app project they may be considering or we will not realize my vision. Like I said earlier, we have lots of work to do. We will get it done. Lastly, if you're using buzztouch you're helping us help lots of people. You should feel good about this. We and they send a sincere thank you. Without you, your criticism, your feedback, your sincere respect for our approach, your genuine support for our vision, and your successes, failures, and stories, we are nowhere near as far down this road as we are. Until the next 1,000 words.... Cheers from Monterey, David Book buzztouch.com

David, I would like to send a big "Thank You!!!" for your efforts to develop Buzztouch. I have been here about a year and in that time Buzztouch has changed my life! I have become addicted and am loving it. Geraldine

Some crazy numbers in there, nice one. Agree with @webwizz wholeheartedly. In the immortal words of Buzz Lightyear, to infinity and beyond!

Wow, that is a lot of people using BT Apps. Will the changes to buzztouch.com be huge changes? Thanks, Jake

The Anonymous User was me, I was accidentally logged out.

The "gotchas" and "lessons-learned" should be in blog format. Then it can be searchable. Categories and tags can help, but not necessary. I like to read, but not listen to podcasts. Looking forward to the changes. That means evolution is happening, not laying stagnant !

Thanks for building the back-end and GIVING us all a toy to play with. Great summary of the app categories. I've said it before that the reason BT does advance and will succeed is because YOU are here to guide and steer the mission. YOU put a friendly face on what is usually a drab and faceless technology. It's a rare hands on approach. I'm sure other good technology have good support watching their forums - but your willingness to help and enthuiastic personality really is what seperates BT from the competition. Go ahead and change the site, just don't change yourself!

It would be good to get some of these stats in a press release. While press releases are at the mercy of the press, it is a very inexpensive way to get the word out. I think there is a real story here and that the press will embrace it. There needs to be a milestone or announcement in the headline, e.g. "Buzztouch reaches 200,000 registered users" or "Buzztouch announces new plugin market" or "Buzztouch announces a community driven approach to app building". Another idea would be to encapsulate the vision into a brief vision statement. Vision and mission statements help others to see the mission (or vision) and embrace it. I love the vision! Together we can do it!

David... Well said. Looking forward to supporting you in any way with your vision. Let's get your message out there. Some live webcasts that are recorded is a quick and easy way to start... but that is just scratching the surface my friend. You have lots of people to reach, let's get your message to them! Cheers!

I'm totally with Susan on getting a press release out there. People need to know about buzztouch...word of mouth is good, but places like MakeUseOf or SlashDot would draw tons of people! Totally loving the direction of buzztouch, and am in it for the long haul. Can't imagine myself anywhere else! Mark

Well done, I agree with the folks who are mentioning press release idea. The numbers are fairly impressive I must say. Good job everyone:)

To the coming anniversary, happy 3 year anniversary! I must admit I work 12 hours a day still b/c of my income drop 40% I was having hard time making living with 3 kids after buzz touch apps added to my life I am in better Shape thank you BT for Ben tire. After the creation v 2.0 our apps are spoil with lot options I am sure BT will concord the app world . Thanks!

Cool! I'm definitely excited to see what the future holds - those numbers are crazy. I'll end this post by echoing the sentiments of a recent thread I posted...BUZZTOUCH IS AWESOME! :)

It would certainly help if the users of BuzzTouch who have their own blogs, would blog about their experiences and successes with BuzzTouch.com. The more links to the site that are out there, the better.

David, you know how I feel about buzztouch.. you -personally- have changed and affected my life like I never thought possible. Thank you so much for being my friend and for everything you do - I'll always be here. David

Yeah Buzztouch is life changing!! I agree with the blogs and posting our experiences. I cant wait to see where this takes off!! off to work now!! Lets go :)

Just getting started but stoked to be a part of this. I love everyone's attitude, and I think it all seems to start at the top with David.

Welcome to buzztouch, @AUNE! You came at an amazing time in the development of this community. Please don't hesitate to let us all know how we can help you! Mark

Happy 3 Year Anniversary! I just sent this link in a letter to the editors of the following: 1. Inc.com 2. ComputerWorld 3. MakeUseOf 4. SlashDot 5. Entrepeneur 6. Silicon Hills News 7. FastCompany 8. Forbes...worth a shot! ;) 9. I even sent a message to the Monterey Herald for some hometown recognition. :-) .... Write your own letter to the editor, too. Or, just send me the name of another magazine or website, and I'll send a quick e-mail. My major is Public Relations...my first love...before Buzztouch. :-) Thank you to David and everyone in the forums for all of your help and "virtual friendships." :-)

Thank ou so much for all your hard word. I send an extra thanks to your fingers!!!

I agree with the fact that BT certainly deserves the media's attention through press releases. But with the above stated numbers (and some other metrics that David has mentioned to me in the past), its obvious that people are finding buzztouch. I think one of David's concerns in the past was not so much getting more people to show up here. But rather, making sure as many people as possible are actually successful in their efforts here. Retention of visitors by way of "infecting" them with the same passion that most of us in this thread have. Most of us have reached out to the general "audience" in an effort to help out (websites, tutorials, videos, webcasts, podcasts, etc). But all these efforts don't always find their way to every new signup. With that in mind, I fully understand the idea of being spread too thin. I would need to clone myself 20 times over to accomplish everything I have ideas about. And I think that is what David is running into (he might need more clones than myself!).

@ALFREA: Giant thanks! Concrete action like this is a huge help. Smiling at the replies to this years manifesto :-)