Last week, we caught up with BitMethod co-founder Daniel Shipton about Impromptu Studio, the Des Moines coworking space he co-founded in 2008. The reason for the catch up was to reflect on the life of Impromptu as it had closed down on October 29th. (See: Impromptu Studio co-founder reflects on coworking & community.)
Today, we’ve reached back out to Shipton to learn more about the latest happenings at BitMethod, a web and mobile development firm. Most recently, they relocated their offices to downtown Des Moines – following the close of Impromptu (formerly 300 Southwest 5th Street), BitMethod moved into the 12th floor of a downtown office building located at 418 6th Avenue (left, photo of new location and notations by Daniel Shipton).
To celebrate the new office, BitMethod is holding an open house from 4 to 7 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, November 16. Learn more at bitmethod.com/blog.
Here’s our catch up with Shipton, conducted by email this past weekend:
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Silicon Prairie News: Over this past year, you’ve brought on two more team members, adding copywriting and design skills. Can you talk about your well-rounded team?
Daniel Shipton: I’ve tried to build an all in-house strike force to build, launch and iterate on multiple projects. We now have enough talent onboard to take care of the “little things” which is really important to us (as evidenced by its presence in our Field Guide, bitmethod.com/fieldguide/little-things). With any given project there are certainly more than five hats to be worn, but we have a team that looks good in quite a few different hats.
(Photo from twitter.com/danielshipton.)
You’ve mostly developed iPhone apps in the past – will you be sticking to that product offering or expanding to other platforms?
We enjoy the thrill and nuances of building mobile products. Mobile is accelerating very rapidly and it’s a very exciting place to be. If you’re launching something new, iOS is the place to be. It’s a stable, developer-focused platform with a limited number of devices that share a the vast majority of features and functionality. That said, we are quickly building up our Android competency for some upcoming releases. Standards based HTML and Javascript Development are core expertises for BitMethod which makes Android and the mobile web a great fit.
If you’re able to share – what are some of the client projects your team is currently working on?
We’re not able to share, sorry. A little bit for legal reasons, a little bit because we don’t like to “brag” about things that haven’t yet materialized. Not really our style.
Again, if you’re able to share – what are some of the products your team is currently working on?
With the team we have and the rate that ideas are flowing at BitMethod HQ, it would be easier to list what we’re NOT working on. We’re not working with Augmented Reality. We’re not developing any killer Blackberry apps. Anything death ray or giant robot related is simply a labs project for now. Joking aside, again, we don’t like to talk about projects until they’ve actually materialized and real people can use them.
You and your team have done a nice job of keeping your blog, Brick by Brick, active. Do you have a strategy around the blog?
Scott is in charge of the blog. Here’s his two cents:
I started with a really complicated editorial calendar with off-days, group days, shared features, etcetera. It sucked and didn’t work. Now everybody has a day of the week. If they blog, great, if they don’t, I get grumpy. We’ve been slacking the past few weeks with the move but it’s about to go into high gear again. The main strategy right now is to show as much of our personality as possible while still giving out good information to try and rally some true fans and believers. The most important thing I do is listening carefully for moments of incredulity, anger, or excitement about something we come across and saying “Blog about it!”
Anything else you’d like to add?
Shameless plug: We’re actively ramping up our focus on training, consulting, and education. If anyone out there is looking for some assistance building a mobile strategy, I’d love to hear from them.
Learn more about BitMethod at bitmethod.com.
