Millarian

The first real day of the conference. I’m not gonna lie to you, the first day seemed pretty light. Registration was from 10:00am until 2:30pm with no panels, sessions, etc. scheduled during that time.

We got to the convention center in Austin at about 11:00am, registered with ease and proceeded to B. D. Riley’s Irish Pub for an Austin Refresh meetup. Not wanting to partake in the suds before noon, Gist and I headed for Starbucks for some early afternoon pick-me-up.

After the Refresh meeting we headed back to the convention center to prepare for the first panel of the day. Then a strange thing happened… While we were shooting the shit, Gist comes up with a great idea for a simple application for Twitter. We laugh about it, throw some ideas around and viola we have the beginnings of a new project. After taking a poll amongst the others, we decided to devote a triple to working on a first release – me, Jade, and Gist.

While Gist drew some sketches, Jade and I borrowed a laptop from Heidmo to begin development. Just a few short hours later we have our first version of an app we are calling “Props and Drops”. It is a way for people to give props (or drops) via Twitter. It’s pretty easy to get started, just visit http://props.integrumtech.com and click ‘About’ to get started. It also has a nifty iPhone interface, so if you’re lucky enough to have an iPhone check it out!

It was really awesome to see an idea progress so quickly. Here is a brief timeline of the day (totally estimated):

• 1:00pm – Mother jokes
• 1:07pm – Gist mentions way to vote people up or down via Twitter
• 1:08pm – Someone says props
• 1:12pm – More mother jokes
• 1:17pm – The idea turns serious and Jade, Gist and I volunteer to build it in the few hours before the 5:00pm panel
• 1:21pm – Another mom joke…
• 1:35pm – Gist sketches interface
• 1:30pm to 3:30pm – Jade controls laptop while I pair and we write the app in under 2 hours
• 3:30pm to 4:52pm – Deployment takes about another hour, including minor tweaks discovered on deployment
• 5:00pm – People begin to use ‘Props and Drops’ during the 5:00pm panel
• 5:45pm – Strebel gains a substantial props lead over all others
• 6:10pm – High fives are exchanged amongst Integremlins
• 6:11pm – Mother jokes resume
• 6:40pm to 2:00am – Alcohol is consumed

What a completely awesome day. Thanks to Jade and Gist for kicking ass to get this app out there and ready for use. Thanks to everyone already partaking of the Twitter Props and Drops goodness. Send us feature requests!!

Props and Drops