The Web App Guru explains it all (well for his space).
Digital Marketing is all encompassing and often includes web development as tactic. However, one could argue the web developers came first!
Enjoy a great podcast with guest Ryan Jeffords, CTO of Epicenter a seasoned veteran in Web Development.
Now he is sharing what is the difference between application development, web development, and web application development.
- What is native and what is not...
- Which is the best way to go..
- Some pitfalls to avoid in a web development/app project
- And more..
Listen in for to the podcast now...
Transcripts are also below! If you would like to be a guest, learn more and schedule your podcast with Jeff Stanislow here.
Also, if you like this and want to up get a certification in web development by taking an exam check them out
The Host: Jeff Stanislow, CEO of Chief Internet Marketer
Transcript of the Digital Marketing Podcast focused on Application Development:
Jeff Stanislow
Hey, this is Jeff Stanislow, the chief at Chief Internet Marketer. I just want to welcome you to our podcast today. We’ve got a special again guest, it's Ryan Jeffords. He's the CTO of Epicenter Consulting. How you doing today Ryan?
Ryan Jeffords
I'm doing well. How about yourself?
Jeff Stanislow
I’m great, doing great. So where's the epicenter? I guess the epicenter for you is right where you're at, but for our listeners, where is Epicenter?
Ryan Jeffords
Global spread, a little bit all throughout the United States. We are I would say concentrated between the Eastern and Central Time Zones, we have a few people also on the West Coast as well, but a bulk of us are between the Eastern and Central Time Zones.
Jeff Stanislow
About the headquarters for the for the organization or the company, where do you guys call home?
Ryan Jeffords
We used to call 41 Madison Avenue home, that now really functions as kind of an “as needed” office but… Yeah, we're a distributed team, so we don't have an official headquarters anymore. We do have an office in Houston that is functioning probably as close to a real headquarters as possible, that's where our CEO and a few of our other executive team work out of.
Jeff Stanislow
Oh man, I was just in Houston a couple weeks ago, playing a little golf out there before out. Maybe I could set up some time to meet the CEO. So anyways, thanks for the introduction. Tell us a little bit about your background and what do you do at Epicenter and maybe a little bit behind the scenes how you got there, and give us a little 411 or that.
Ryan Jeffords
Sure. So I've been in the IT field for about 20 years now. I started off as a graphic designer, I moved up to being a web application developer, spent probably about 10-12 years developing. And I would say the last 10 years have been kind of naturally pushed towards leadership roles over the past 2 places that have worked. For 8 years now, I've been the CTO here at Epicenter. I started here as a developer, and as we kind of grew, I stepped up into the CTO role.
Today as a CTO, I basically oversee the development team. I do a little bit of sales as well and focus on just B&D, the client liaison between the developers and obviously the project stakeholders.
Jeff Stanislow
It's a pretty vital role. I think a lot of times when a project fails is maybe not having someone like yourself that understands what goes on behind the scenes, but also is able to communicate that in business terminology to executives who may have started a project, so….
Ryan Jeffords
That's right. That's right. Well, and I think really what it comes down to is, in all the years that I've been doing this, it really comes down to communication, is one of the most important things at least in my experience. You can have timelines, you can plan out the wazoo, but when it all comes down to it, software is really complicated. There's a lot of moving pieces and sometimes things can come up that you don't know about. And my kind of go to solution has always been very high touch communication. A guy that was kind of my mentor, he taught me that at a very early time when I started with Epicenter, and he really just kind of instilled that concept of high touch communication. And it's worked well you know, Epicenter has been around for see about 12 years now, and I've been with the team for 10 years. And you know, that's saying a lot for a software company. Usually, companies kind of come and go, but we've been able to maintain happy clients for the better part of a decade.
Jeff Stanislow
I know one of the things we talked a little bit prior was a win that you've had. And maybe a little bit backstory on this kind of what I consider a big win; the InVisionApp.
Ryan Jeffords
That's right. So yeah, InVision. So if you're not familiar, InVision is one of the leading prototyping platforms that's available to the design community. This was actually an idea that started right here at Epicenter; Clark Valberg is one of our co-founders. Him and Ben Adele, again another co-founder, came up with this concept of building this platform to really revolutionize the way people are prototyping software. And additionally, bring in a very key piece of that puzzle, which is collaboration. So this idea turned into InVision, and I was actually tasked as kind of the main developer to take this idea, take this proof of concept and turn it into a product. So right here at Epicenter, we came up with the idea, we designed it, we built it. And I believe it was 2011...? Yeah, I think it was somewhere around 2011, better part of 2011. I spent basically working with Clark, to basically bring this idea to life. And at the end of the year, Clark received his first round of seed funding, and took the product from there. And now it's, I think they have something like $2 billion valuation and about 800 employees working for them. So it's pretty exciting to be a part of that, it was quite the journey to say the least.
Jeff Stanislow
Yeah, I can imagine. So you guys are the founders of Epicenter, actually birth a $2 billion baby. That's pretty cool.
Ryan Jeffords
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Jeff Stanislow
Currently you know, what does Epicenter do? I mean, as far as like if you're doing the elevator pitch, talking to someone while you're on vacation. What do you do?
Ryan Jeffords
Yeah, so I mean, pretty much over the over the past 12 years, we've focused on design, we've focused on development. These days, we consider ourselves a web application development company. I think development covers a lot, but we focus on the web application world, we do mobile apps as well. But basically anything that touches developments, whether that be software design, architecture, we even do a little bit of marketing; anything that has to do with web application development.
Jeff Stanislow
So let me ask you this. I mean, you have a web application development, which is agnostic, and then you have native apps like in iOS and Android. Why isn’t everything just like a web app? Is it just more of the control and ownership of the like…? I can understand maybe a little bit more about Apple needing its own dedicated solution, but an Android owner. Talk to us a little bit about that. What does it all mean? Is that going to go away? Is it going to emerge? Are they going to stay independent?
Ryan Jeffords
Well, that's a good question. It seems that obviously, you can you can build a native app for iOS, you can build a native app for Android, but what I think is pretty exciting is a few years ago, these new technologies have come out that allow you to build native applications using the same basic technologies that you would use to build a web application. Adobe actually owns a product/framework called PhoneGap. I'm not sure if you're familiar with PhoneGap. But PhoneGap allows you to basically take HTML, JavaScript, CSS, put together an application and then build that into a native application that can be that can be listed in the app stores as a regular, full blown native application. What I like about it is it really reduces the number of languages that you have to learn to be able to be kind of a full stack or full service developer. So if you know how to build a web application or website, you can be just as effective at releasing a native app now.
Jeff Stanislow
And that's how you would recommend it as…. I was you know, when I talked to people about it is like you build the web application and then you use a tool like the one you mentioned from Adobe, and then you get into those particular stores. But if the route is the web application, it's a lot more dynamic, a lot more flexible, a lot more different things with it, versus just building an app for iOS.
Ryan Jeffords
Right. And it really depends on the particular use case. Some applications are not a good fit for this. Applications that really need that…. Like for instance games; games, while you can build games in PhoneGap, or ionic or another framework like that that would allow you to compile into native apps. The downside to using these frameworks is that they come with a little bit of overhead. So they come with a lot of stuff that's kind of baked in, that's not going to run as nicely on as a native application. However, you save a tremendous amount of time in development, because again, a lot of these technologies are very easy to use, we already know them. So we can repurpose a lot of code from the website to the web app and just basically poured it into these frameworks, and most of the time of it works pretty well. It's not a one size fits all though I will say that. I would most of the business applications or things that require data and data outs are usually a pretty good fit though.
Jeff Stanislow
I mean you know, it's always a thing they kind of given take even in just like maybe…. Someone might be more familiar with like building a website. Using a theme or a template or a system like WordPress, it makes things a lot easier, but it also adds a ton of stuff that you don't really need.
Ryan Jeffords
That's right. That’s right.
Jeff Stanislow
But you have to wait, how we say it's a three legged stool, right? Do you want it fast, cheaper, good? Pick any of two of those and you kind of think about it, but it lets like 80% of the heavy lifting get done. And then so what if you have to you know, I always like having people kind of clean up the code after. You know what I mean, and working some stuff, be it streamlined, we're going to be trim, we're going to be made faster, we're some junk. And but you know, get it out the door a little bit quicker using the tool set. So you have something progressive web apps? I mean, what's the difference between like a web app and a progressive web app? Is it just something that kind of layers on like a strategy, like MVP type thing where you have a minimum viable product? Tell me a little bit about progressive web apps?
Ryan Jeffords
Yeah, so you know, progressive web apps. I mean, I think that's a new term that's been kind of thrown around a lot. And so for instance, if you take a look at something like PhoneGap or ionic, that basically allows you to take you know, using web based technologies and compile them into native code. Progressive web apps basically use the same technologies; you would use the same JavaScript, HTML and CSS to build out the application. But they don't basically get compiled to a native application, they're more of a web application that just looks and feels like an app. So yeah, I would go out on a limb and say, it's kind of a new term that that has kind of popped up recently. It's a similar concept that we've been using for a little while, but now I've noticed that this is a term that's been kind of thrown around a little bit. The good news with a progressive web app is that if you skip the whole need to compile it down to a native application, you can develop a little bit quicker and might run a little…. You can do deployments a lot easier because again, a web application is very easy to just make a change, deploy, and everything is great from there. You don't have to go through a whole submission process to the App Store. Does that make sense?
Jeff Stanislow
Yeah. You know, clubs everywhere are always talking about clouds for the last half decade or even more. Some trend now is even like multicloud support, and even server lists. Can you talk a little bit about those two concepts?
Ryan Jeffords
I'm going to talk about those and I'm going to expand it a little bit further. So just to take it from maybe those 2 concepts and turn it into 4, it's interesting, because I was just thinking about this earlier. You know, back in the day, we used to have, server racks with physical servers, and that was the cool thing. Like let's get me these servers in these racks as possible. And that's kind of how we did it in the old days. And we found that wow, number 1 servers are expensive and there's a lot of maintenance involved, and we've got to come up with a better solution here. So then virtualization came, gosh, I don't know, maybe about 15 years ago, give or take. And virtualization, that was kind of the second layer if you will, or the second step. And virtualization allowed us to “okay, now we can spin up as many servers within reason.” As many virtual servers as we want, based off of one physical server. And that was nice because it made things a little bit easier to like, in case of some sort of hardware failure happened, we could spin up all those virtual servers on another server relatively easily. And that was nice, and I think probably a bulk of the internet is using some form of virtualized servers. I know most of our clients are on VPSs, virtualized private servers, which are really great, they're cheap, they're effective, and they work nicely. But kind of some of the new trends that are coming out, which the next step you know, just after virtualization is going to be containers. I'm sure everyone's heard of Docker; Docker is a really popular technology, which basically, the cool thing about containerization is you could package your software up and deploy it. It's really nice because what containerization, whatever that specific architecture allows you to do is basically, you can run your application as a packaged up deployments you know, quickly and reliably from one environment to another. And you don't have to worry about…. Like in the old days, you'd have to set up your local development environments, and you'd have to make sure that it mirrored your production just right, otherwise you'd have different results. Well, with containerization, you just run everything in a container and it's same on your local environment, your beta staging, and production. So containerization is really really cool. That's kind of where things are heading, and more and more people are adopting that. It's also nicer because instead of setting up a server, you can just configure a server basically with configuration files. And you just send a configuration file up to wherever you're deploying it to, and it takes care of all that so you don't have to manage a server. And the final step… Well, I don't call it final because who knows what's going to come next? But the fourth iteration of kind of where things are heading is this whole server list concept. And it's still pretty you know, we've actually used it for a few projects here. So server list architecture is really nice because it basically allows you, it takes it one step past containers. And you don't even have to worry about where your code is being deployed to, even though it technically still runs on a server. You don't have to worry about that all at all, and it focuses more on things like…. I believe the term is function as a server’s FAAS. Like for instance, Amazon has a service called lambda. And lambda basically, you can use it as you need it, you don't have to spin up a server to use any functionality on it. It's really nice. So if you just need to process requests, maybe for a total of 2-3 hours a day, it's a whole lot cheaper to pay for 2-3 hours a day for a lambda function to run, as opposed to a full 24 hours a day on something like EC2. So server list this is pretty cool, because you can get completely out of managing any sort of server.
Jeff Stanislow
Wow, that's really cool.
Ryan Jeffords
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Stanislow
I'll tell you what? Maybe spend some more time together and talking about some of these emerging technology and what it means for the development world. And you know, I'd love to have you come back, but for now Ryan, tell us a little bit about like how one might be able to reach you, websites, socials. What have you? I'll put them on our podcast page as well for our listeners. But go ahead and let us know. And then kind of wrap this up with maybe one of your last thoughts of most important thing to you and in business that you can maybe share with our readers that you found?
Ryan Jeffords
Sure. Yeah, so I guess the best way to get in touch with us is [epicenterconsulting.com]. You can always email me at [ryan@epicenterconsulting.com]. But check out our website, I think that's the best place to go for information on us. You can contact us right through the websites or feel free to email me directly. As far as any parting thoughts. It's a good question you know. I would say that I can maybe offer different thoughts probably. Let me talk maybe really briefly about just Epicenter and kind of our culture. I think that we have a little bit of a different culture, we were kind of one of the early companies to embrace this kind of remote atmosphere, we're a completely distributed team. As far as kind of the kind of my parting thoughts here, I would say that one of the things that makes us great is truly our team. It's all about the people that actually do this I mean, we have people who have been in with us for 5, 7 and 9 years on our core team, and we've built this culture here at Epicenter that I think really speaks for itself. I'm glad that we've been able to prove the point that you don't have to sit in an office somewhere and still be effective. We've done some amazing things here as a distributed team. And like I said, I think it really all just comes back to that team and making sure that we have the right people on board, and I absolutely think we do.
Jeff Stanislow
That's great. That's great. One last thing before we go is you know, a lot of times people look at development, they look at offshore type solutions. What do you have to say about them? You live and breathe in the industry, you see the globalization of development, maybe something that has been good about it and maybe something that, a pitfall to avoid as we finish up here?
Ryan Jeffords
Sure. You know, offshore development I think has this negative stigma because I think a lot of people are worried like “well, how am I going to be able to communicate with somebody that is on the other side of the globe? Unfortunately it does have kind of a negative stigma because there’s been a lot of challenges in the past. But I think that if you find the right people, it doesn't matter whether they're in Romania or Poland or India. It doesn't matter where they are. If you find the right people, you can make it work. However, that being said, I think the key component is having a project manager, stateside, that can be a good liaison between the stakeholders and the actual development team. I've had good luck, I've had bad luck with offshore development. Or even near shore developments you know, where maybe you work with somebody in South America. We've done that as well. But anytime there's going to be some distance either through time zones or whatever, I think that the key component is having a strong project manager that has vetted these specific developers. And like I said I mean, we have a few developers that are offshore that we work with very successfully. One of the quick little plug I have, I have a front end engineer that I've worked with for about the past 8 years, and she's based out of the Philippines and she's one of the best front end engineers I've ever worked with. Super reliable, she gets the job done every time, she's a fantastic communicator. And really just proves that while there is this negative stigma towards sending stuff overseas, it can work. You just have to make sure you find the right people, because when it all comes down to it, I'm sure you're going to save a buck by going overseas. But it really comes down to you, you’ve got to make sure you find the right people. And sometimes they cost a little bit more, but it's definitely worth it.
Jeff Stanislow
Yeah I mean, I think part of the stuff, we talked a little bit about the culture too and the culture of caring and the culture of being connected to the build and believing in it and all those things, really take set hold and set forth and in regards to making that collaboration.
All right Ryan Jeffords, I appreciate your time today, and we'll be in touch soon and we'll do it again man.
Ryan Jeffords
Thanks so much.
Jeff Stanislow
All right. Take care. Thank you.