On Monday I joined Spencer Blum, a local meteorologist for the KESQ TV station (ABC), to share the story of my app. This was my first ever TV interview, so I was very nervous. There was no reason for my nerves because it was actually a lot of fun. The final piece aired twice, at 4pm and 6pm.
We spoke together a few minutes, and the final edit was about a 2 minute segment for viewers to learn about my app and evaporative coolers. Spencer asked several questions, including my motivation for making the app.
My answer to “why” I made the app: “I own an evaporative cooler in my home and one of the problems I have with it was: I didn’t know if it would work on any given day because of the weather. The humidity affects whether or not it’s going to be comfortable. So, I thought: I’m a software engineer, I should be able to do something to help solve this problem.”
Spencer then gave a terrific summary of the app’s purpose: “Pierce spent more than 2 years working to develop this app. And the app shows everything from temperatures to humidity and it can even show you how much money you can save by using your evaporative cooler. [T]hose settings can even be fine-tuned to better fit your exact situation.”
I couldn’t have said it better! You can get the app here!
Spencer also showed a couple of screenshots of the app and then asked me what was the hardest part of making the app. My response was: “Meteorology is not simple. It is very difficult to calculate all of the different numbers involved. And so it took me a very long time not just to write the code, but just to learn what I needed to know in order to know how to write the code.”
In closing, Spencer let the viewers know the app is available in both of the app stores. His fellow news anchors were enthusiastic and I felt a lot of positive energy from the segment when it aired.
The only downside was that I wasn’t fully prepared for such a synchronized reaction from the viewing TV audience. Rather, my cloud server struggled to keep up with the sudden influx of new users setting up the app simultaneously. Thankfully, it squeaked through the surge without crashing and I got an amazing boost in new installs from people who are all my neighbors! I’ve since expanded the cloud server capacity, and I’m looking at optimizations to better handle any future surges.
This was an incredible experience for me as an independent app developer. My past software engineering experience in corporate America often kept me at a distance from the people using my code. As much as I tried to connect with and build relationships with “our users,” there were usually several org chart branches of distance and separate layers of corporate funding budgets that put distance between me and the people I was helping with my code.
All of that changes as an independent app developer and entrepreneur. I have no org chart. All my “users” are only one step away, and I hope many of them feel a connection to me after seeing this segment on TV. In return, I feel both a responsibility to not let down my users, to keep the server running smoothly and fix any bugs as they emerge, and I feel really motivated to deliver a great app experience. I use my app for myself, and now a whole lot of my neighbors do too!
I have a lot of thanks to give to Spencer and the team at KESQ. He wrote up a blog post on the KESQ website to describe the app, as well. I even saw this same post show up in my Google News app feed! Well, it was the “Local” section, so I’m not getting a big head over it.
My takeaways from this TV experience are twofold:
- Relax more when talking to the media. Everything will work out fine, especially when I share my enthusiasm. It’s okay to open up about the excitement.
- Start thinking about scale. I began this app thinking wouldn’t get much interest because evaporative coolers are such a niche appliance. That’s clearly not the case. There’s much more interest out there, and I’m only scratching the surface.
I have a long To-Do list ahead, so thanks for reading this far! Stay cool!
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