GOTO Keynotes

A couple weeks ago I went to the GOTO Berlin Conference. My StartUp VersionEye sponsored the event. GOTO is a conference with a wide scope. You have sessions related to all kind of computer languages and technologies. And there have been many talks to agile. I am enjoying the wide mix of technologies that’s why I decided to go to this conference.

There have been many awesome sessions. But specially I enjoyed 2 of the KeyNotes. Nathan Marz, Inventor of the Storm framework, did a KeyNote about “The Epistemology of Software Engineering“. His talk was starting lame because he talked about philosophy and I was wondering if I am in the right room and at the right conference. But then it made a lot of sense, because he questioned all our propositions. He encouraged us to build failure tolerant systems. Check out his slides! It’s worth it!

The last Keynote was from Mike Lee. He talked about “The App Universe After the Big Bang“. Very inspiring talk! At the last Keynote they removed the chairs. Everybody was standing in the big room. He asked a lot of questions in his talk but he gave answers, too!

“What kind of ideas are worth pursuing? Are app-based startups a thing anymore? What kind of business plans make sense? Is there room for indie apps? How about indie games? Can we still make a living doing this? Can we still live the dream and be our own boss? Can we still be artists?” – Mike Lee

He talked about the Silver Age of App Development.

The Gold Age of App Development we passed already. But there is nothing wrong with Silver!

He talked a lot about the StartUp life. How it is to start something and to pursue it with all your passion and all your time. One of the consequences is that you will lose friends.

If you are really passionated about something you will work day and night on it. You will skip parties, birthdays and weddings. Your attention is focused around problems related to your startup / product.

Another truth is that you will need help.

You can not build something really awesome on your own. You need good people around you. People who are completing you. People who are in certain areas much better than you are!

There is 1 single thing Mike wanted to share with us more than anything else.

Don’t make games!

There are every day a couple hundred new games in the Apple App Store. If you submit your game, the chances are very high that most people even don’t notice it. Building games for the Apple App Store is a bad business model!

He talked a little bot longer than expected but it was so interesting that most people stayed until the end. Even without chairs!

Check out his slides. And his blog: http://mur.mu.rs/.