Speaking at RailsConf 2007: Teascript, a homesteader's story
Matthew is heading to Portland, Oregon this week for RailsConf 2007, and he’ll be speaking on Saturday, May 19th at 10:45 AM. His talk, Teascript: A Homesteader’s Story, tells how we built Teascript, our web app that helps homeschool families create high school transcripts, and what we learned along the way.
What is homesteading?
Homesteaders built their own homes one board and one nail at a time. Homesteading software works the same way: a small team, or even one developer, builds a focused web application piece by piece, keeps it lean, and lets it earn revenue on its own instead of trading hours for dollars.
What the talk covers
Using Teascript as a real example, Matthew will walk through each stage of building a homesteading app:
- Finding an idea: pick a niche, start with something simple, and solve one problem well
- Getting started: scope out the competition, build a skeleton app, and put up a teaser page
- Building what people need: run a beta, listen to the feedback, and be willing to change course
- Knowing when to stop: launch with the minimum functionality and avoid getting sidetracked
- Deploying: choosing a VPS or shared hosting, proxying Mongrel behind Apache, and deploying with Capistrano
- Marketing: newsletters, letting others spread the word for you, speaking, and Google AdWords
- Revenue: building multiple income streams that don’t depend on billable hours
The talk draws on ideas from 37signals’ Getting Real: build less, stay lean, and ship updates continuously instead of waiting a year or two between releases.
Matthew previewed the talk for the Raleigh-area Ruby Brigade at Red Hat in April. If you’re at RailsConf, stop by on Saturday morning. We’d love to hear about the app you’ve been wanting to build.
Update: The talk was a hit, with lots of questions about Teascript and how it was built. The slides are still available. Teascript was later renamed Transcript Maker and is still helping homeschool families today.