Life £5 App MeetFebruary 28, 2007

$5 Apps – a new geek meet

By Ian

Quoting from The Five Buck Idea:

“Face it, startups are cool”
“You aren’t looking to build a service that solves world hunger, or manages the schedules of entire companies, or does anything really that complicated sounding.
You want something simple, almost to the point of ridiculousness, and heck, worth probably about five dollars. Extra points if someone under 20 scoffs and says,
‘Shit man, I can code that up in a weekend.'”

John and I are organising a series of geek nights, along the lines of the Sussex Geek Dinners, Girl Geek Dinners, and the Ruby Meet, aimed at those of us who like ‘$5 Apps’. The notion being that the value is in the sweat-and-tears of the implementation rather than in the original idea.

The nights will be themed around:

  • One or two man bands writing apps and making them work
  • Agile development
  • Little or no conventional marketing
  • Taking a simple idea and just getting on and doing it

The first night will see me and John talking about ShowMeDo and Chrss, with a few more speakers already planned.

More details to come, drop me a comment if you want a notification.

18 Comments

  • Pingback : Psychic Origami » Blog Archive » $5 Apps - a new geek meet
    [...] It appears that I’m helping organise “$5 Apps - a new geek meet” with Ian. Should be interesting. [...]
  • Jonathan Markwell
    Great idea Ian. I'll be there and I'll see if I can get the rest of the team down.
  • Ian
    Hey Jon. Great, thought you'd like it, you were on my list to mail today... It'll be nice to play with this format and see where it takes us, there are certainly a lot of people working on these kind of spare-time apps and a whole bunch are growing into something bigger. John and I figure it makes sense to get us all together and talking. Ian.
  • Pingback : Entrepreneurial Geekiness » Geek Dinner, $5 Apps
    [...] John and I stood-up and asked about our $5 App Meetup proposal. We received a grand response and now we have 20 people interested (and I have quite a few ears to bend yet). I guess we’ll have 20-30 people along for the first meet. [...]
  • Clive Walker
    Hi Ian. We met at a previous Sussex Geek Dinner. I'd be interested. Just one quick question, is the meet aimed at hardcore developers? That's probably not me. I'm interested in the ideas more than the coding, I guess.
  • Ian
    Hi Clive. Grand, I have added you to the email announce list. The night is *not* aimed at hardcore developers - it is more about getting people together who are interested in the ideas and talking about them. Some techy-talk is to be encouraged and I know that John (the other half of this night) is keen on the techier side. I'm more interested in the ideas and stories of what people have achieved. Cheers, Ian.
  • Joh
    I'd be really interested in attending this. Sounds like it could be really great fun. Feel free to sign me up!
  • Ian
    Grand, you're on the list too :-) I should also note that we have our first proposed speaker for our 2nd event, Andy White talking about a Rails time-management app that scratched an itch.
  • Tom Hume
    Sounds interesting Ian...
  • Ian
    Hi Tom, cool, you are on the list :-) Ian.
  • Stephen Wolff
    Hey Ian, yes, i'm up for it too... Stephen
  • Ian
    Hi Stephen, cool, you're on the list too, i.
  • Dan Glegg
    Hey Ian, Sign me up!
  • Ian
    Hi Dan. Yes, you are on the list. We have a venue arranged in Brighton and we think that Tues 27th March will be our first day. As discussed on email, we'd love to have you talk about how you developed Tails at a future meet :-) Ian.
  • James McCarthy
    Hi Ian, great idea, you gotta love those $5 apps :) James
  • Ian
    Yes James, you're on the list. As I mentioned in the email we may need to limit numbers, there will certainly be a limit on seating and on how much beer John and I can provide. More details soon once we've announced to Upcoming.
  • Pingback : Entrepreneurial Geekiness » £5 App - Great Inaugral night :-)
    [...] Great stuff! Our first £5 App night ran smoothly, we had 22 people listening to our two £5 App talks. We’ve been planning this for exactly a month now and it was great to see it run so well. It seems that the free beer was a hit and the building itself lent itself beautifully to the event [...]
  • Pingback : Entrepreneurial Geekiness » Jeremy Keith talks for £5 App on October 9th
    [...] Simon Willison blogged about our 6th event and I wrote a short history. For those new to the idea - we took inspiration from a blog post on the ‘five buck idea’ to create the first event. [...]