C4 - Day 2

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Today was day two of the C4 conference. I really like the format of this conference. Unlike most conferences I go to with multiple tracks, we’ve got just one track here, so I don’t always wonder if I’m missing something in the next room.

The first presentation was by Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software. He spoke about software acquisition, having just recently acquired both MarsEdit and Black Ink. Daniel’s a really interesting and down-to-earth guy. I’ve followed his story through his blog, chatted with him online, and had a chance to meet him in person for the first time at WWDC last June. So it was thrilled to hear him speak today.

For the second session, Shawn Morel of VMWare talked about virtualization on the Mac. Vinay Venkatesh was supposed to do this presentation, but apparently he was afraid of getting punched in the face by Drunkenbatman.

I met Shawn last night and chatted with him briefly. He’s a very good speaker, but the topic was a little too technical to me. Way over my head. It was about the history of virtualization on mainframes, ISA requirements, operating system traps, blah, blah, blah... Good time for a bathroom break.

During lunch I sat at a table with, among others, Craig Hockenberry of IconFactory and Cabel Sasser, one of the founders of Panic. What an incredible opportunity to talk directly with some of the current movers and shakers of the Mac community.

After lunch, Allen Odgaard, author of TextMate, discussed his product’s design model. The ability for other developers to extend its capabilities wasn’t just a product feature, it was an integral part of the product’s marketing plan.

There was a little extra time before the next session so Wolf brought up Bobby Andersen to show off his icon creation techniques with CINEMA 4D. I was lucky enough to be sitting at the table with the two of them during breakfast this morning with the two of them when they came up with this last-minute plan. Bobby, a fellow Denverite, has done icons for Sandvox, Notae, Last.FM, MemoryMinor, and many more popular Mac applications. You can see his work at The Pixel Implosion.

Bob Ippolito from Mochi Media was next with a demo of the Erlang language. He used it to write a very fast web server. Good stuff for some people I’m sure, but not terribly interesting to me.

However, the next session was right up my alley. Tidbits publisher Adam Engst talked about working with the press to get exposure for a software product. He covered everything from getting mentioned in an article, to getting a full review, to getting interviewed on the evening news. This is the kind of information that I came for.

Tim Burks discussed his work on RubyObjC, and then his new project, Nu. It’s a version of Lisp “written on, with, and for Objective-C.” Okay, cool. Nice demos. But it’s not for me, thanks.

The last session of the evening was a discussion panel of all of the C4 presenters, moderated by Drunkenbatman. He started with a long-winded rant about the questionable sales techniques of Pzizz, followed by some reasonable responses from the presenters and some interesting input from some of the attendees in the audience. This included a short discussion about the validity of neuro-linguistic programming and the ability of a developer to give Wil Shipley a hand-job.

After asking the panelists another question, Drunkenbatman tried to provoke a response with the statement “Black people don’t use Macs.” It sounded like an inappropriate statement to most of us in the audience (and on the panel I think). It certainly won’t be remembered as one of the high points of this conference.

For dinner we headed to Gino’s East for pizza and beer (a staple for most developer’s I assume). I took the opportunity to grab a free seat near Dan Moren of MacUser.com and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. I just sat quietly and listened to them discuss the state of Mac journalism. What an incredibly cool opportunity for a Mac geek like me.

Finally, back at the pool-side party at the hotel, I chatted with Sanford Selznik, author of PasswordWallet. Dispite the fact that I publish a competing product, he was quick to offer to help me out when I told him I was a little frustrated with trying to figure out how to integrate the eSellerate engine into my new product. Next, I had a great conversation about being self-employed and still having a life Mac with Roustem Karimov, one of the authors of 1Passwd.

I’ve had an opportunity to meet with so many authors of the products I use (or at least really respect) this weekend. This conference has been an incredible experience so far. There’s still one day to go, but I’ve already got my money’s worth.

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