RWDevCon Inspiration Talk: raywenderlich.com Folklore by Marin Todorov
Enjoy some of the stories of how the raywenderlich.com team began and grew, attracting individuals from all over the globe to join in on the fun. By Marin Todorov.
Brian Joins Razeware
In 2012, Ray figured they needed to make another huge step and hire their first employee who turned out to be Brian Moakley, whose workshops you probably attended today or yesterday, and you probably met him around.
The question is, what made Brian the one?
Although Brian looks adorable, he’s one tough cookie. Besides being a brilliant iOS developer and web developer, he also has a minor in creative writing. And a high point for Ray, who is a huge Walking Dead fan, Brian has a zombie blog with over 1000 posts.
He had to survive all the interviews, all the many interviews that Ray and Vicki had plotted out for him. The last one of the series of interviews took place in DC in a hotel and lasted five hours. This is the agenda for the interview.
Brian had to do:
- iOS programming
- Editing
- Algorithm development
- and more!
All of this was on Brian’s ancient MacBook with missing on the keyboard, and seg faulted every now and then.
But luckily Brian made it, and one of the first things that he took on when he joined the team was integrating the new design for raywenderlich.com. I’m happy to report that somebody else other than Ray was in charge of cutting the logo.
The Two Book Summer
2013 was the year where the team really came together. This was the summer, when we decided to write two books because we’d already wrote one book per year. Why not do two at the same time?
These two books, iOS 7 by Tutorials and iOS Games by Tutorials, involved more editors and authors than ever. This thing, it really pushed us to the edge. Then some of us, over. But you know what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so we did the two books about iOS 7.
This brings us to the launch day of iOS 7 in 2013. We had the books prepared, everything’s ready to go, we’re just waiting for Apple to actually release it so that the NDA has lifted.
We’re in IRC and we’re all just nervously chatting and waiting for it to go. Greg Heo, one of our editors, sent me this screenshot from our actual conversation that night. It reads:
- Marin (me): Guys I really need to go to the toilet, but I’m afraid I’ll miss the big moment. Can you hold the release another ten minutes please?
- Ray: Haha
- Felipe: Marin, take us with you, you’ve got WiFi.
- Greg: No! Do not take us with you.
- Mic: Marin isn’t really to the loo, he’s actually the chap at Apple responsible for flipping the switch.
- Greg: In that case, hurry to the “toilet” and “flush” iOS 7 already.
You see when there’s enough editors in the chat room, every line is a pun.
As soon as I was off my laptop, of course, iOS 7 came out. It was Greg actually who was screaming, “Marin come back.” I came back and the launch was awesome.
Christmas 2013
This brings us to Christmas time 2013.
Let’s go to November 18th. A message comes around to a secret team from Marin, me, called Xmas surprise for Ray. Read inside and keep quiet about it. It reads: DO NOT TELL RAY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. It’s in caps and it has umbrellas on the sides, it’s top secret.
It reads further, “I thought it would be funny if a number of us send a Xmas care package to Ray and Vicki so that everyday they will have a new present on the door and so forth.” I thought it was fun. On the next day, I had 10 people participating so we set this conspiracy in motion.
Let’s jump to December 2nd. I was at the post. I sent my package and I thought I’ll write to the guys to remind them. Here’s what I wrote, “I sent mine today, and the not-so-nice lady at the post said it’s gonna be there in about ten days.”
While we were basically chatting about it and planning how we’re going to send our packages and things like that, then Matthijs comes on December 6th with this, “Okay, Ray got my package. It’s for the Sinterklaas holiday which we celebrate in the Netherlands. It’s on the 5th of December, not the 25th. So he got it right on time.”
Yeah well, everybody else sent it for 20 days later, it still worked. :]
As each package arrived to Ray’s home, Ray sent back a thank you Xmas card. It was at the time when he had bought his green screen as you can see:
It was a great Christmas!
A More Diverse Group
This brings us to the present day. Do you remember how we all started? It was Ray in his mother-in-law’s basement. Now it looks pretty much like this:
We have all kinds of bright people joining in, all kinds of skills. If you’re interested in joining the team, ping Ray. He’ll tell you if you’d be a good fit or not.
It’s really a community effort, so everybody joins and brings something to the team. We’re open to folks from all backgrounds.
For example, Darryl Bayliss is one of our most recent team members and he’s our resident Android correspondent.
He had one thing to tell us iOS devs, “I hope you enjoy AutoLayout. We’ve dealt with this pain for years. :]”
Is Ray Even Real?
At last, let’s bring this right around and look into does Ray exist? and what is he like?
It was last Autumn when Ray and I, after four years of working together, met for the first time, to record the iOS Animations video tutorial series.
We decided to meet in the middle between where he lives and I live. We met in a beach house in Portugal. We would combine recording videos throughout the day and hitting the beach later on.
For me, it was an emotional event. I was one of the first people on the team, and yet I hadn’t met Ray at all.
He existed and he was still a down to earth guy. It was also a lot of fun. We
- played board games
- drank wine
- rode around in a car
It was really awesome.
Since I probably really don’t have so much time left, I’m just going to tell you a quick story from this time we spent together in Portugal.
We were coming back from lunch, and we were almost through recording the videos and it was the very first time that we spoke about the book that you saw earlier yesterday, the iOS Animations by Tutorials book.
That was just an idea back then. I felt really overwhelmed. I said, “Thank you Ray. Without the team, and the editors, and your leverage, this would never have happened to me.”
He said, “That’s one of my goals for raywenderlich.com: to empower developers like you, and to help them grow and make a living doing what they love to do.”
He said it very simply and honestly as it was like really nothing. You could never imagine this guy has built and run a 100 plus team that is spread around the world.
