I hate exclusivity. I would never suggest to anyone that they shouldn’t come to San Francisco for WWDC/AltConf. At the same time, I have to acknowledge that coming to San Francisco in June, especially for a guy like me who doesn’t even bother trying to get a ticket to the WWDC itself, is becoming less justifiable from a business perspective every year. And thus, it’s getting harder and harder to recommend to others. Folks say that WWDC is the one time where everyone in our community…

Today’s Release Notes 2015 Speaker announcement is the culmination of several months of hard work and cooperation from many people. It’s only March, and already this show is well on its way to being a tremendous success. I can’t thank my co-organizer Charles Perry enough for spearheading this entire show from day one. He’s the man with the plan, if you will. And he’s had a clear vision that has driven every decision we’ve made thus far. When you want to put on a…

We indie developers can be a pessimistic bunch. Almost every week, there’s a new doom and gloom story brewing. One recent example: Monument Valley Forgotten Shores. Sold as a $1.99 USD in-app purchase (half the price of the original title), the new levels are insanely well crafted and allowed me and many others to rediscover much of what we loved about the game. But a few hours into the release, Monument Valley was getting some 1-star reviews from disgruntled customers. How dare they charge another $2 for brand…

When Charles and I started Release Notes, we had one central theme that drove us. This would be a show by independent developers, for independent developers. Not a technical show or a round table of nerd-famous talking heads discussing the latest Apple news. There are already many excellent shows doing that. What we felt we could offer was a glimpse of what it was like to try and make a living on the App Store. It would be a show about the business of app development, from the little guy’…