Last night I went to the TechDays GeekNight in The Hague.
It was a bit of a disappointment, but not a complete waste of time.
I emailed beforehand to find out if attending the GeekNight also entitled me to visit the exhibitors hall and was told that it did, but they were all closed in the evening.
I went to three sessions:
1. 3D gestures for Kinect - Kay Hofmeester
The speaker effused his enthusiasm for the subject of how to make the Kinect usable as an input device for more than just gaming. For games it's an exciting challenge to achieve something by making the right gestures, but for non-gaming situations you just want the gesture to work effortlessly.
2. Android app visibility - Raul Portales
This was about how to get your app noticed in Android Market. It was mostly about how fickle the Market is. When you launch your app it will sit in Market for a while, and then may or may not get featured - you either win the lottery or you don't. He also said that bloggers and early adopters will always pick up on your app at the beginning, but then it will plateau. Niche apps are a bit more reliable because people look for them and are more connected, so they tend to have a slow, constant growth.
His recommendation seemed to be to go for a free/paid model. In-app billing is more trouble than it's worth. A lot of people will buy the paid app just because they like it, and to remove the ads that you have in the free app. If you have a free app, people are most likely to try this first and then buy the paid one if they like it, which means that the paid app will have better ratings. But you should make sure there's a migration path so that people don't lose their data from the free app when moving to the paid app.
He also said that the price level doesn't have much effect on sales, so he recommended raising the price. If there's no effect on sales, raise it again.
3. jQuery/HTML - Jeff Prosise
The basics of jQuery, so nothing new if you've already used it a bit. Jeff also took the opportunity to show off his model jet plane hobby.
After these three sessions was the announcement of the winner of the Appathon.
That was a bit weird. I guess you needed to be there for the whole event, but since I was attending presentations, I missed that and the winners announcement was a little out of context. I didn't know how many teams participated and I didn't know what the challenge was. I later found out that the challenge was "use of multiple sensors". There were two finalists and they both won with unoriginal apps that had little to do with the challenge and could easily have been prepared in advance.
It was a bit of a disappointment, but not a complete waste of time.
I emailed beforehand to find out if attending the GeekNight also entitled me to visit the exhibitors hall and was told that it did, but they were all closed in the evening.
I went to three sessions:
1. 3D gestures for Kinect - Kay Hofmeester
The speaker effused his enthusiasm for the subject of how to make the Kinect usable as an input device for more than just gaming. For games it's an exciting challenge to achieve something by making the right gestures, but for non-gaming situations you just want the gesture to work effortlessly.
2. Android app visibility - Raul Portales
This was about how to get your app noticed in Android Market. It was mostly about how fickle the Market is. When you launch your app it will sit in Market for a while, and then may or may not get featured - you either win the lottery or you don't. He also said that bloggers and early adopters will always pick up on your app at the beginning, but then it will plateau. Niche apps are a bit more reliable because people look for them and are more connected, so they tend to have a slow, constant growth.
His recommendation seemed to be to go for a free/paid model. In-app billing is more trouble than it's worth. A lot of people will buy the paid app just because they like it, and to remove the ads that you have in the free app. If you have a free app, people are most likely to try this first and then buy the paid one if they like it, which means that the paid app will have better ratings. But you should make sure there's a migration path so that people don't lose their data from the free app when moving to the paid app.
He also said that the price level doesn't have much effect on sales, so he recommended raising the price. If there's no effect on sales, raise it again.
3. jQuery/HTML - Jeff Prosise
The basics of jQuery, so nothing new if you've already used it a bit. Jeff also took the opportunity to show off his model jet plane hobby.
After these three sessions was the announcement of the winner of the Appathon.
That was a bit weird. I guess you needed to be there for the whole event, but since I was attending presentations, I missed that and the winners announcement was a little out of context. I didn't know how many teams participated and I didn't know what the challenge was. I later found out that the challenge was "use of multiple sensors". There were two finalists and they both won with unoriginal apps that had little to do with the challenge and could easily have been prepared in advance.
