RWDevCon Inspiration Talk: raywenderlich.com Folklore by Marin Todorov

iOS 5 by Tutorials

Speaking about team, the first team book was iOS 5 by Tutorials. It’s a funny story how it came together.

Let me rewind a little bit. I’m going to go back to June 23, 2010.

There is an email from me in 2010 to Ray. It says, “Just an idea, have you thought about putting together all of your great tutorials like maybe in a downloadable pdf, have some exclusive, extra nice stuff?”

I thought it was a good idea and he was like, “Oh that’s a great idea, definitely something I’ll have to consider.”

So nothing afterwards and now we jump back to 2011, fifteen months later, in a Steve Jobs-like way, he pitches it back to me:

“Hi guys, we’ve been discussing the idea of joining together to write an eBook about iOS 5. So far there are three of us interested, me, Felipe, and Steve.”

The best thing, I totally bite back, “Hey Ray, that’s the best idea I’ve heard.”

Great stuff.

But seriously, Ray was the one that actually got us together and organized the first iOS Feast, and the launch, and we did the book together.

He was really the one that started it for all of us iOS book authors. This was fantastic.

Too Much Awesome For One Book

Interesting story, at the time, we made a total rookie mistake. Of course as it was our first book together, we didn’t really have a process.

There was about ten guys around the world. Our plan was:

• We start writing.
• In two months, everybody sends in their chapters.
• Ray puts it together.
• We put it on the website.

We ended up with so much material that when we had to print the book, we had to do two volumes because the printer couldn’t bind one out of all the content we had.

If you ordered the print version of iOS 5 by tutorials, you actually got two volumes because of this.

I don’t know what we were thinking.

Felipe Joins the Team

Speaking of early team, remember how I mentioned that one of the three authors on the original book pitch was Felipe? Well, he is also one of the early members of the team and here’s how he took over the team in one swift motion. :]

That is how August 2011 looked for Felipe.

August 1st, he’s about to join the team. He’s promised to write a tutorial. In a way, he’s not really a tutorial member. He’s a pending member so to say.

On the 12th, I got an email from a cool company called Lextech. They’re actually one of the conference sponsors. They were like, “Yeah, Marin how about working for us?”

I’m like, “Well, I’m just trying to make it as an indie, maybe later, not right now.”

So I just forward it to guys on the team. Felipe was a pending member so he got the email. Actually, that’s what started for him at Lextech. He still works there this very day.

Then, Felipe was officially announced as a member on the 23rd. Then Ray sent the email I was talking about earlier, and Felipe was one of the three authors that were mentioned on the 25th.

In one month:

• He got a job.
• He became an author to-be.
• He joined the team.

That was only August of the whole year!

It’s not a coincidence because Felipe is adorable and brings a lot humor, passion, and Apple fun into the team.

A final fun fact about him, there’s a game on the app store called Flappy Felipe. It’s a flappy bird clone with Felipe with a sombrero.

But seriously, Felipe made one very important contribution to the team at about that time. He was the first to go “out of line” from an online acquaintance to a friend.

After we were done with writing on iOS 5 by tutorials, he sent to everybody on the team this email where he shared he needed some guidance and some help about the universe, life, and everything else.

Some authors on the team, we just play along, and shared some of our experience with him and guided him. This is the very first time where we stop being just some guys around the world and we actually became a team. He was the one that made this first step, and it was a very emotional thing for all of us that were there.

The Fun Continues

While the website was rapidly changing and growing. Ray somehow managed to remain goofy and oblivious of all design trends. Not to mention the hilarity of the nerdy Christmas song he posted on the website.

For the April Fool’s joke for 2012, Ray told people that there was an undocumented thermometer sensor in the iPhone. He put out this post where he said that he figured it out.

He’s selling a thermometer app starter kit. Using the starter kit, people would develop all kind of applications from thermometer app. Basically you would:

• Stick your iPhone under your tongue and measure your temperature.
• Stick the iPhone in the turkey, and the turkey in the oven and the phone would let you know when it’s done.

Quite a lot of people tried to buy this.

iOS 6 by Tutorials

In 2012 we wrote iOS 6 by Tutorials. This time we did it professionally, editors and all.

This is important because the editors at raywenderlich.com are known to be sticklers for detail, and they write pages of feedback. For example, when I had my first feedback about iOS 6 by tutorials, I was in a café. I was about to burst in tears.

Just to make clear what is here. The black text is my text. Everything else is edited. These are all the edits that’s been done to just these two paragraphs.

Not to mention that this is just my text. Then comes the feedback from the editors. This feedback for a simple tutorial was 2,300 words.

Yeah, but what can you do?

You buckle up, and you up your game and that’s it.

But let’s not get too emotional.