I met Chuck from Wichita on the escalator. He insisted on showing me his app that tracks which time zone each of his team members is in for every standing meeting. Lois from Belgium was wonderful. I interrupted her cocktail on the expo floor. Turns out Lois developed an app that resolves one of life's great conundrums: is there fresh coffee in the break room? She created Foursquare for java (the aromatic kind). Brilliant!
Every conversation, every interaction, and every app inspired me and helped me understand how enhancements to our platform are making lives better. Seeing the expression on Chuck's face when I showed him the new Share portal was priceless. He lit up like a Christmas tree and gave me a bone-crushing two-hand shake (I'm told that's midwest for "hug"). Lois got all googly-eyed when I showed her the Service Creator. She said it's exactly what marketing asked for last week.
Four amazing, unbelievable, exhausting days reconfirmed my faith in the power of app creation. All of which helped me reconcile the fact that the Application Creation Index (ACI) continued its 2014 decline this month. It's an index that measures the rate of app creation across the industry using a broad set of indicators ranging from Tweets to stock prices to job postings to GitHub projects and Stack Overflow comments contributed by creators. Over time, it should demonstrate the growth of the creator community. Over the past few months falling stock prices for SaaS companies and a lack of major announcements - M&A activity, new product introductions, and high-profile partnerships - have led to month over month declines.
The market's fickle. The enthusiasm of creators isn't. I'm confident the ACI will rebound by end of year. For now, the only metric that matters to me is the CLQLI - the Chuck and Lois Quality of Life Index. Based on what I saw and heard at Knowledge14, it's at an all-time high and reaching new peaks every day.
