- Posted by
Scott
on
May 16, 2008
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A couple of weeks ago now, I had the chance to attend DevConnections 2008 in Orlando, FL. On the third night of the conference, I had the chance to sit down with Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell and Paul Litwin. Richard and Carl are hosts to the one and only DotNetRocks which has over a half a million listeners worldwide on a weekly podcast they do. Paul is the Chairman of many conferences including DevConnections and is a lover of running.
I had a chance to spend around four or five hours with them over the course of a few beers. I must say I truly enjoyed talking with them and learning about their humble beginnings. I must say the end of the night didn't end up like Rory Blyths night with them, but I can't complain. The Humble beginning of Rory is below.
My career got kicked off for the most part when I crashed a party on the roof of a hotel in LA. I was looking for Carl Franklin and Mark Dunn. I was a fan of .Net Rocks, and all I wanted was to tell them. It was important to me. They took the normally stuffy community of business and turned it into something fun. By extension, my own life became more fun, and, for that, I was thankful enough that it was necessary that I tell them in person.
Nobody up there knew who I was, but because of that one meeting, I wound up being interviewed by them, and went on to co-host the show not long after. The visibility provided by the show led to being noticed by Microsoft, and that led to some of the most interesting work I'll have ever done, and it began with a risk.
The night started with me talking to my Girlfriend and then letting her know I had Richard in my sights and must have a sit down good night with them. So I asked my Girlfriend if I could let her go and she graciously agreed.
So, I started with getting a beer at the bar and then contemplated how to walk over to them. After about of minute of contemplating, I decided just go for it and with the kind of crazy enthusiastic person I am. I grabbed a stool and pulled it over and told them hello. They of course came right back and were extremely polite and outgoing just like me. I was like this is perfect. We covered many topics including Google, Microsoft, the fact that they do little coding anymore and they have actually turned down sponsorship for their podcast. Impressive, I thought. I asked them to do a show on ColdFusion V.S. ASP.NET, told them I want their jobs and if they would ever higher me, I would work like a beast. To no avail, they didn't need any personal assistants.
Carl and a old school host of the show named Mark Dunn came in a bit later and had the chance to talk with them too. Of Carl and Richard, you can definitely tell Richard takes his job a lot more serious and Carl is all about having fun in life. It makes for a good duo and team.
I spoke to Richard about my job and how un-innovative it is. I get bored at it and sometimes can't help my self, but to wish for a better job. I would imagine other jobs are the same way which is understandable. I do get great benefits and the ability to have an open schedule which is one of the best perks. A big perk that I am proud of is I get 9/10 requirements on my Bill of Rights all except for the comfortable chair. :(
I have included pictures of them below that we took at the end of the night. The guys were just an over all humble people. I enjoyed the company and would hope that we get another chance at this.
P.S. I will be speaking about our conversation with Google and Microsoft in the coming posts. so stay tuned.
Thanks Guys for one of those nights.
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- Posted by
Scott
on
May 7, 2008
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Two weeks ago, I went to Dev Connections in Orlando for Microsoft. It was a blast and I must say if you ever get a chance to go, then do it! One of the nights there, AT&T had a Developer party where they wanted developers to start developing on their network, because they can see a lot of income come from it. I agree now knowing the total cost of Text messaging.
At this party, AT&T gave out free Tilts which is currently the best mobile phone on the market if you ask me owning one my self. They also gave out free large HD LCD screen monitors for a group of six. Oh and lets not forget about the free food of course.
Sending a text message to another person can only take 160 characters of text. For the phone companies, it is not compressed data. It is 160 characters only. Why such a weird number you ask? Well let me tell you. When phones are on and waiting for a phone call or any type of data retrieval, they are ALWAYS connected to the cell phone tower. The phones and cell phone towers exchange little packets worth of information back and forth so when ever a call comes it, they can find you straight away. Cool huh? That is the way they designed it when they did. Can anyone guess how big the packets are that are sent between cell and tower? If you guess 160 characters, you are right. So to recap, a task that already needs to be completed by cell phone companies, they make back by charging an astronomical of money to the consumer.
If you look at the per Text message cost, lets take Verizon Wireless which charges 0.15 for every text message that gets sent. The figure is small enough, but when you think of it on a kilobyte level it cost the cell phone companies 0.015 cents and it costs us $1.09 per text message Kilobyte. The markup for costs is 7314%. If you think of it like this, they markup the cost by 7314% when it reaches you, the consumer. If it were me, I would think of it as pretty arrogant of them to do this. I am on a plan and only get charged $5.00 per month for 1000 text messages. If I were to use their rate at which it costs them I should be able to send over 33000 text messages a month!
2nd Part:
Short Codes, you know the ones that when you send a text message to shows like American Idol which can cost the developer anywhere from $15,000-$30,000 a year for their company. That's right, the current costs are estimated at $5,000 a month to hold a dedicated number and a REQUIRED $1,000 a month for a testing number. So when AT&T threw this developer party, I decided to go up there and ask them. But sadly to say they were only third party contractors. So as a Developer you can spend around $20,000.00, and then the cell phone companies charge the consumer another astronomical markup. If your still reading this, can you please leave a comment if you have ever seen a higher markup on a particular item.
These kinds of costs need to be regulated. The companies are charging an extreme amount of money for very little and we are buying it up. Someday's, I wish I could just start a company that would be able to compete with companies like these. I do know that I think I will probably invest some stock into AT&T seeing that they bring a pretty good rate of return.
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