Were you and I to have a conversation, if recent experience can be trusted, your half would look something like this:
Have you moved to California yet?
How do you like it?
So what exactly is it you’re doing?
What does this mean for United Lemur?
Wow. How can I get in on this?
All these questions, and more, will now be answered.
Have you moved to California yet?
Yes indeed! With deadlines looming, our move was very accelerated. While I was living in airports, Mary packed, sold, or gave away all our belongings. We spent Thursday, April 30, loading the UHaul and cleaning the apartment, with a brief stopover at Jalisco for one last Nacho Night.
At 6:30 the next morning, we got into our cars, while our dear friend Bradley drove the truck. We pulled into Mountain View, California 20 hours later, then spent the whole next day moving into the new apartment. Sunday was a day of quiet rest and reflection. Monday morning I was in my office in Palo Alto getting my code on.
How do you like it?
California is fantastic, but that’s not exactly news. While I grew up in Hawaii, my California roots go deep. My sisters were born in Long Beach, where my parents grew up. My mom is a sixth generation Californian, and my dad, while born in Japan, lives in San Diego with his wife. I’ve also been a frequent visitor, and not just because of Apple. My best friend Mike Chow lived in the Bay Area for years.
Seattle has a reputation for being depressing, and it’s well earned. You don’t realize how much seeing the sun affects your mood until you go without it for months at a time. The people are relatively unfriendly, the women are fat, and the coffee, like the traffic, is terrible. I’m not saying it’s all bad, but after ten years, I was ready to leave.
Silicon Valley, for its part, is a lot like Hawaii. The weather is similar, as is the tremendous diversity in the cuisine and population. The class stratification, the pride people have in their cars, and the relative cost of living are also similar. (The key word here being “relative.” The actual cost of things in Hawaii, including housing, is on par with Seattle, but the wages in Hawaii are much lower.)
The best thing about being down here, though, are the people. Yes, the Bay Area is generally known for its friendly population, but I’m talking specifically about the nerds. Traditionally, I’d come down for WWDC or a kitchen and bask in the dinner conversations and other fringe benefits of being around my own kind. Living down here is kind of like being at WWDC all the time. Moreover, instead of simply reading about Porkapalooza, Maker Faire, and other social events, I get to actually participate. It’s a little slice of heaven.
So what exactly is it you’re doing?
I work at the second 2D rendering unit within the center for 3rd-party operations, otherwise known as C3PO, R2D2. OK, that’s a lie, but the truth, alas, is still shrouded in secrecy.
What I can tell you is this: I’m co-founder and Chief Architect of Client Software for an iPhone startup. That means I spend about half my time in business meetings and half my time building, leading, and coding next to a team of some of the most brilliant engineers I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.
We’re building a team much like we had at Delicious Monster, but bigger. That is to say, it’s an elite, high-pressure environment with a commitment to beautiful applications built on beautiful code. In a situation like that, you need to know the guys on your team have your back, and that’s definitely the culture we’ve got going.
There’s probably a whole blog entry on this subject alone, but the hardest part of this decision was moving from engineer to engineering manager. I like to make beautiful things that people use. Why would I choose to spend an indeterminate amount of my time dealing with the political bullshit that is the very antithesis of creation?
One word: scalability. I could sit in a dark room and build one beautiful app, or I could sit in a dark room with nine other engineers and build ten beautiful apps. Moreover, I’m training a whole new group of engineers to do what I do, just as my mentor, Wil Shipley, did for me.
What does this mean for United Lemur?
I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t trying to make the world a better place. This company will continue that by making charity a priority. It will also serve to test some of my Power of Charity ideas on a larger scale and inspire other companies to aspire to similar ideals. This also means I can scale my own goals. No longer and I content with raising a little bit of cash for the Madagascar Fauna Group. I can now see being a major force behind the complete restoration of Madagascar to the island paradise it once was.
That said, this doesn’t kill United Lemur. In fact, it actually helps quite a bit. It’s tricky trying to make my living running a non-profit, because I’m automatically at cross-purposes. It also raises sticky issues regarding royalties and such, and dilutes the message. If I’m employed outside of United Lemur, it makes the message very clear. This is a 100% nonprofit enterprise, with engineers and others donating their talent to produce salable products, which can then be sold to raise money for charity.
In more direct news, everyone’s gotten really busy with WWDC coming up, so things have stalled a bit with our first application, LP. That said, Victoria Wang designed a T-shirt graphic so awesome, I’ve actually adopted it as our new logo. The shirts themselves are at the printer, and will be available for sale in the next few weeks. Once again, my friends at buyolympia.com have donated their services to makes this happen.
Wow. How can I get in on this?
By applying for our Summer of iPhone program, of course. What is the Summer of iPhone, you ask? It’s your chance to come spend two months building your dream app with my team in Palo Alto. Just in case you live a monkish existence like I do, we’ll spring for your plane ticket, and give you a monthly stipend of $2500 to cover your rent and expenses.
But here’s the crazy thing: you get to keep the rights! Oh, we’ll help you build it, provide graphics, and give you access to our secret ingredients, but at the end of the day, this is your baby. All you have to do is commit to maintaining it as a free download as part of our network for one year.
What insane hoops must you jump through to have a piece of this fantasy? Just send your résumé and a short proposal to summerofiphone at this domain. Your résumé should show some Mac or iPhone coding experience, since you’re going to hit the ground running and ship this puppy in two short months. Your proposal should cover the whole product experience, including engineering, interface, and branding. It should also match the theme of this year’s Summer of iPhone, which is: “Social.”
If I can get my legal on for a moment, all submissions become the property of my company and will not be returned. We might not respond, or even look at them. We might laugh at you behind your back. Also, by applying for the Summer of iPhone program you agree that if you accuse me of stealing your ideas, I have your permission to publicly lambast you including, but not limited to, calling you a tool in an essay explaining why patents are stupid.
The deadline for submissions is Friday, June 6th, 5 p.m. PDT. The Summer of iPhone begins on July 1st and ends on September 1st. Now get to work!
One more thing...
There’s a me in team, but there’s no I in WWDC. Despite the fact I’ve been proclaiming, in a rather loud and public fashion, that this WWDC was going to sell out, I don’t have a ticket. You can’t imagine my red-faced embarrassment when it turned out that “we definitely have at ticket” meant “we definitely tried to buy a ticket, but ran into some trouble with the website, then put it on the to do list and forgot about it.”
I bring this up not to beg you for tickets (but seriously, if you have one you’re not using, message me*) but to bring up an interesting story. It turns out there’s really no process in place for dealing with this situation, so I had to appeal to Steve Jobs personally. I wrote him a big long email explaining who I was, that I had 5 applications in the ADAs this year, and that I was willing to accept the fact that this is my own fault and that I am a buffoon.
Imagine my surprise when he actually responded. Sadly, the response was sorry, we really are sold out. Alas.
* I am willing to pay $2500 for a ticket. Please do not send me links to eBay, as they are depressing. Also, I already have a several “I only bought a ticket for the events so you can use it for the sessions” offers, but thanks for the sentiment.
Addenda 
Ticket obtained! Thanks to Jott Networks and Scott Guelich for their help there. There were a few comments, mostly in defense of Seattle — a city that may have grumpy, lumpy women, but is not without its fans.
Gus Mueller
Some of the people are unfriendly, and some of the women are fat. I’ll have you know, according to Wii Fit, Kirstin’s BMI is 21.something!
-gus
Some of the people are unfriendly, and some of the women are fat. I’ll have you know, according to Wii Fit, Kirstin’s BMI is 21.something!
-gus
Fellow Seattle Mr Glenn
“The people are relatively unfriendly, the women are fat, and the coffee, like the traffic, is terrible. I’m not saying it’s all bad, but after ten years, I was ready to leave.” I say with all insincerity, fuck you, fuck you forever. Actually, this was a pretty funny statement, partly because you’re wrong on each count, and I think that’s intentional!
We will, in fact, miss you up here, even if I have mostly met you in California, and just once at Zoka. Best in the new venture.
“The people are relatively unfriendly, the women are fat, and the coffee, like the traffic, is terrible. I’m not saying it’s all bad, but after ten years, I was ready to leave.” I say with all insincerity, fuck you, fuck you forever. Actually, this was a pretty funny statement, partly because you’re wrong on each count, and I think that’s intentional!
We will, in fact, miss you up here, even if I have mostly met you in California, and just once at Zoka. Best in the new venture.
Hans Gerwitz
It’s exciting that you’ve found a way to do what you love and excel that assists rather than hinders your dreams of leaving the world a better place than you’ve found it.
As I’m moving to Seattle in 2 weeks, I’m going to blithely disregard your remarks therein.
It’s exciting that you’ve found a way to do what you love and excel that assists rather than hinders your dreams of leaving the world a better place than you’ve found it.
As I’m moving to Seattle in 2 weeks, I’m going to blithely disregard your remarks therein.
Mike Lee
The joke here is if you think any blanket statement is spoken other than tongue-in-cheek, you deserve to be offended.
The joke here is if you think any blanket statement is spoken other than tongue-in-cheek, you deserve to be offended.
What is the Summer of iPhone, you ask? It’s your chance to come spend two months building your dream app with my team in Palo Alto.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Summer of iPhone
