APIs & IPAs

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APIs IPAs

We’ve spent 2013 on the road, hosting a series of events called APIs & IPAs in several cities. So far we’ve been to Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Boulder, Denver, Kansas City and Chicago. Here’s a bit more about the events and why we do them:

When it comes to developer marketing, evangelism and outreach, we’ve dabbled in just about every approach.

We’ve hosted our own hackathons, sponsored different types of hackathons, hosted online contests and attended, hosted, sponsored and spoken at tons of events.

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53738_556473561052388_1220149535_oHackathons have been great. They give us a chance to truly showcase our API and solicit direct feedback from people who are implementing it.  Conferences and meetups are great, because they have a focused theme, with specific talks attended by specific types of people.

A few months ago, we decided to head out on the road for a series of events called APIs & IPAs. These events aren’t meetups or conferences or hackathons, they are essentially just happy hours. By partnering with the coolest local tech companies, choosing a bar in a startup neighborhood, and promoting through lots of local channels, we are able to reach a wider swath of the tech community than we might be able to with a hackathon or a conference.

So far, here’s who has co-hosted these events with us:

Singly | APIs & IPAs » Singly

Singly exists in part to make apps more social, and break down barriers between the silos of networks and services. Similarly, by promoting through various meetups, blogs, co-working spaces and incubators, APIs & IPAs aims to bring the various tech circles in one city together.

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858347_542487282451016_1816939278_oThis project has allowed us to go to various tech hubs (so far: Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Denver, Boulder, Kanas City and Chicago) and spend time at the local incubators, stop by some startup offices, offer a tech workshop, and then meet and hang out with the Who’s Who of that startup community. Given our limited resources (mostly, a tiny evangelism team), this has proven to be truly valuable for us.

From Pearl Street in Boulder to the KC Startup Village to Gastown in Vancouver and others, we’ve had the opportunity to experience the nuanced differences that make each of these communities special. We’ve even had two people show up to APIs & IPAs in multiple cities.857859_542488439117567_339787697_o

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It’s important that we make sure people walk away from the events with an understanding of Singly and what we do, but these events are also largely about community. We aren’t coming just to pitch a product and walk away, we are hoping to bring the community together for an evening of sharing and networking, and to show our support for both small and large tech hubs everywhere.

Singly aims to make the web more social, compelling and programmable by breaking down down barriers and facilitating interactions between applications.

APIs & IPAs is our way of solving a similar, offline problem. We hope to build bridges between the circles within our innovation hubs, and build bridges between those hubs.

Many thanks to the wonderful companies that have co-hosted these events, and the wonderful people who have attended them. We’d love help deciding where to go next!

Makers vs Takers: The Developers Dilemma – Conscience over Profit

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Earlier this week, VentureBeat featured a guest post by Jason Cavnar, called Why Developers Should Start Choosing Conscience over Profit.  This is a subject that the team at Singly cares greatly about and that has helped shaped our company culture and values. Ultimately the demand for developers often faces them with choices between extreme profit and the value of the project on which they are working.  No doubt, the future of many innovative companies is at the mercy of developers, but there are many projects that are extremely valuable and important that may not be as lucrative as others.venturebeat

 At the employee level, a growing percentage of Silicon Valley engineers are exploiting a red-hot labor market by jumping startup to startup or cashing in on comfortable jobs in large companies that are overpaying to retain workers. Far too many of them are happy to be peddled by recruiters who exacerbate their god-state with terms like “rock stars”, “unicorns,” and “ninjas.”

Companies and apps that focus on social good, open sourced technology, and crowd funding are delivering great results and the developers who help to create such products are often passionate about their work because they are inspired and happy. These are The Makers.

Makers don’t need to be valued at the highest end of the market. They don’t need the micro-fame of tech blogs. They don’t aspire to be “acqui-hired.” They don’t ask questions about optimizing their paycheck, their communal fame, or their personal brand. And they don’t need good pick up lines (or apps) at the bar.  Makers choose their work based on impact and happiness…  

Click here to see examples of the Makers on the Rise including GitHub, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Change.org and more.

We pride ourselves on being a company of authentic, open, and service oriented individuals. Here are our company values:

Singly Values

The post created a whirlwind of comments on VentureBeat, HackerNews, Twitter, and many other social media channels. Although a few opinions are opposing the theme of this post, they do echo the validity and passion behind the issue. Technology innovation is at the mercy of talented developers who are often faced with dilemmas regarding salaries, project integrity, open source vs. closed work styles, and even immigration issues.

On Tuesday, NPR’s Martin Kaste did a story on “Older Tech Workers Oppose Overhauling H-1B Visas” which touches upon the same issue of the ultimate value of developers and the demand for highly technically skilled workers.  The issue here is the value of visa status rather than profit or salary.

The biggest gating factor on the industry’s ability to keep innovating and keep producing more products is the ability to hire more engineers. It is slowing us down.

We’d love to know your thoughts on the issue and how we can all work together to build a more socially connected society through our work, or technology, and our values. Send them to us on twitter @Singly or email community@singly.com.

DeveloperWeek and AppsWorld

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With the amount of time we spend on the road, it is always fun for the San Francisco segment of our team to attend a hometown event, and recently we got two in one week.

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DeveloperWeek was kicked off with a hackathon, and then featured a packed week of speakers, panels, happy hours and other events. Singly co-founder Simon Murtha-Smith gave a tech talk at the event (video below).

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Here’s where we set up camp for both days of AppsWorld

Next was AppsWorld, a conference at Moscone center that drew an international crowd of 5,000 people involved in the app industry, from developers to dev shops to engineering/hosting tools and services to VCs. Our booth was right in the center of the action, and we enjoyed meeting a vast array of people.

Below is Simon’s talk from DeveloperWeek. If you have any questions about it, please email community@singly.com

Singly Developer Challenge – Complete the challenge for a chance to win a Kindle Fire HD

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Last month we had a competition to build and launch an entire app for the chance to win a prize. This month we’re making it a bit easier.

We think the technology we’ve built can make certain things incredibly easy, and we want to show you a couple of those things. If you complete these two challenges, we’ll enter you into a drawing for a Kindle Fire HD. Simple as that!381281576990

  • Make a call to the Singly API to find something you did on the internet on 11/11/11. It can be a photo, a tweet, a checkin or a status. (If that day is empty for you, find one within a few days or weeks) [Hint]
  • Find a person you are connected to on three or more services. [Hint]

Then, send a screenshot of the JSON returned by Singly for each of these queries (feel free to anonymize it) to community@singly.com, and we’ll enter you into the drawing. That’s it!

Deadline: February 15, 2013