Turning code into cash: notes from my talk at BDigital Apps and the developer dilemma

On November 17th I attended BDigital Apps in Barcelona, an event aimed at industry, start ups and developers in the mobile apps space.

The event was really good. It was oversubscribed, with the audience exceeding capacity by far, to the extent that they had to use extra rooms with TVs outside the main auditorium. There were some ties, people from the Industry and media but the biggest share was of developers, start-ups, people eager to see and find new business opportunities, ways to commercialize their apps, monetize them or fund their developments. And there was one question at the end of the first panel that really raised my interest. One developer posed the question: “What is there for me? I have problems, fragmentation and people's salaries to pay and I don't see any proposals from you to help help my business.” And that's true. We, organizers, sponsors and speakers, should focus more in listening and understanding developer needs to try to help them as they are a source of growth for our society and country.

And that's exactly what I missed during the time I was at the event; I would have liked to have seen more relevant products for developers. I'm sure La Caixa and Tecnocom, have or are planning to have products that may be cool or at least useful for developers and people is eager to lay their hands on anything new. Would't it be nice to see La Caixa explaining how to embed their Caixa Tickets service in, for example, a music app to allow concert ticket purchase straight from an ad  shown while you listen to a song of your favourite band?  

Well, moving on to Telefonica's story, it was good to see a positive response from the audience to my presentation. I received lots of tweets on it and was mentioned several times in Twitter. 

Main comments, learning, thoughts from me are:

1. Open Telefonica/open telcos an oximoron?

Exposing APIs and allowing developers to sell to Telefonica's customers and utilize our billing represents a huge change of the paradigm. From the so used term "walled garden" to an Open Telefonica? That's why we are here!

This is the beginning and a trend in the Industry. We see a lot of value there for developers and in a few years that will be a reality.

2. People are surprised when we admit that working with telcos is difficult

Yes, definitely. And this isn’t just a problem with telcos. All big companies are difficult, slow, full of complex processes. And complexity kills. Ray Ozzie explains this situation well in his post: dawn of a new day.  Recognizing it is a sign of maturity and willingness to change. And there we are, using technology to avoid complexity. That should allow developers to interact with us in a frictionless way.

Now it's about execution: "release the APIs, listen, re-shape, new release, ..."

3. People are surprised when we mention that the fanboys effect is starting to disappear

If you see the recently published Vision Mobile Developer Economics research you might perceive that the drivers to chose a platform to develop are starting to be market share andmonetization opportunities. Technology is cool, yes granted, but developers are businesses and businesses need to pay salaries and that is turning developers to look at new opportunities to turn code into cash. It's natural to pass from a fan level to a pragmatic one.

But, of course the fanboy effect will last long in the consumer consciousness. The brands themselves will come and go, but the effect remains forever. 

4. There is always an open question about what operators can offer to developers

It's all about APIs, distribution channels, business models and customers, customers, customers... more to come soon.

After my talk was done with, we received more than 20 requests to become part of the Closed Beta [and contact me if you want to know more about this too]. We are starting soon and that shows us that we are not going in the bad direction. We'll try to proceed all them

Well, finally thanks a lot to the organizers, other sponsors and, of course, the developers. And to Andres Martinez who attended the panel discussion and Yashim Zavaleta for his support.

Looking forward to BDigital Apps 2011!!!