I saw a few familiar faces at the event today and a few unfamiliar ones. It was raining lightly, as I walked from my office to the venue - 350m / 8 mins. I saw a technician putting the bicycle stand in place above the bridge. That city bike station is in gray on the HSL may at present. If it becomes active, I may park my city bike here. It’s closer.

1. “From Layoff to $9K/Month: Lessons from Building and Selling Mobile Apps” by Steven Phuc, indie developer

• People are paying to use apps on mobile now
• learn to build and sell
• Build
  • Build for yourself / what you want to use
  • Build to sell / how to reach them / why use your app
  • Build simple - one feature / get feedback early
  • You don’t need to know everything to start building. Just build. Shoutout to The Pareto principle
• Selling
  • Find your mentor - someone who is maybe 6 months to 1 year ahead of you so that their lessons are useful
  • Build in public
  • Find your marketing channel
• It takes time to build and sell

2. “Vibe Coding Without Losing Your Edge”, Johanna Wäänänen, Founder, Systemic, PhD Researcher

• the talk had a striking visual design - striking images with text on top
• Dev work has shifted from focused to constant context switching
• We go into a stressed/anxious state - reducing our cognitive state
• This is a new competitive advantage - everyone will have access to the same tools - the capability to collaborate, think clearly, learn fast
• how?
  • Learn to know your state
  • Learn to shift your state
  • Create rhythm

I have been thinking about this a bunch these past few days and had a few micro posts on this - Human cost of 10x productivity was a recent one. So this talk felt timely.

3. “The Job of Product Designer in the Age of Al”, Lassi A Liikkanen, PhD, Director of Product Design and Insight, Qvik Ltd.

• when building products we are trying to balance a few things -
• Tools are changing, process remain, designers are busy
• what designers do may change, who they are won’t
• How UI may change - algorithmically generate UIs
• Design agent - human led, agent operated
• ai makes every one feel like a generalist. Judgement matters more in this world.