Deep Dish Swift 2025 Discussion

Hello, everyone. We are here live from the Deep Dish SWIFT conference in Chicago, Illinois. I've got special guests here, Adam Wolf and Dave Nutter. Say hi, everybody.

Hey, buddy. Excited to be here.

And so we're gonna give just a little bit of a mid conference update on exactly what we're what we've seen here, what we're doing here, and the kinds of things that we've seen and enjoyed. So let's start with Adam. What is what is your favorite thing at the conference been so far, whether that's a talk, a post event, anything like that? What what have you seen so far?

Okay. So I have two things. The first is bottomless coffee. I was so excited

when I

when I finally got here, and I could just refill my coffee forever because the day of my travel, I was underdosed for sure on my caffeine. As far as talks, I've really enjoyed, Jordan Morgan's talk. He Yep. We'll get into that later, but he did one on marketing that I thought was great. But, honestly, there have been so many good talks.

Antoine VanderLeest talk was great. Danielle Lewis had an amazing talk. Allison McIntyre had a great talk. Adam Schott, like, there's been a lot. So Stuart Lynch, there's been, I don't know, so many.

So I'm just happy to be here because I can't If you

name enough, you're gonna sound bad for the people you didn't name.

I know. Yeah.

Everybody except.

Everybody except. Yeah. Yeah. So I should say so Michael Flareup, Adam Shaw, Stuart Lynch, Jacob, Kijich. I I'm sorry, Jacob.

Allison McEntire, Antoine VanderLee, Adrian Eves, Sima Nourish, Danielle Lewis, Jordan Morgan, Vidit Bhargava, Hide van der Plug, and, Charlie Chapman with his whole podcast recording is what we've seen so far.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. We we are recording this on the evening of day two of the event, and, yeah, we have one more left to go tomorrow. So, yeah, let's pass it over to Nutter.

What have you what have you seen so far? Yeah. What's your favorite thing?

This is my first attendance at Deep Dish. I've been wanting to go for a very long time, and so I've been thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere, the camaraderie. The Swift developer community, it's been stated multiple times, but just a bunch of all around awesome people who are willing to share and be supportive of one another. And I think that's very apparent when meeting people face to face. Both just people who I'm meeting for the first time, as well as people who are famous in the community, who have been given talks, the content creators and whatnot, they're just also approachable and nice and willing to talk and spend time.

So I think that was a very big plus for me. And then just secondly, yeah, the talks that we've been able to receive so far have just been phenomenal. Today especially was there were a lot of speakers that whose content resonated with me in particular about in the app development and the things besides the coding that we need to make a part of our package deal, so to speak, when we're trying to create and share our own stuff.

Yeah. So one of the big things that they always do at DeepDeskwift every year is they have a section that is dedicated specifically to speakers who are and who are speaking to indie developers. And that was the second half of today's talk. We had four different talks who Adam named earlier that were from indie developers who had know, were talking about their experiences and about things that specifically were important to indie developers. Jordan Morgan gave a talk on on indie dev marketing.

Vedit gave a talk on, you know, like, you know, keeping a maintainable experience as an indie developer, you know, avoiding burnout, that kind of thing. Danielle Lewis talked about getting Danielle? Did I describe her name?

Danielle. Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. Danielle Lewis.

Yep. Danielle Lewis gave a great talk on getting started as an indie developer and, you know, just how you can really kind of build up an audience out of the gate. And then hit it. Hit his talk was a little bit funny. He did a design roast of a couple of developer apps, and so kinda giving hints and tips on designs by taking apart some indie developers who had volunteered for sacrifice in the audience.

So that was a pretty fun and and interesting way of teaching design to to a bunch of indie devs who may not have designers on their team.

I I really wanted to have one of my apps be roasted, and I'm also very glad that one of my apps was not roasted.

It it was very fun. Good idea at the time. And then

Right. Right. Yeah. It was certainly fun to watch, and it was probably fun to be on the receiving end too. Was a he was a good sport.

Good, good sport. Yeah. So, yeah, like, and I just said, also one of the really great things here has been kind of the quote unquote hallway track where you're getting a chance to talk to other people. And there have been so many people like, you know, I maybe even a lot of people that I've never heard of in the community that have just come up and they've shown me, like, such cool stuff that they're working on. And, you know, I've I've gotten to talk about some of the stuff that I'm working on.

And, you know, people just constantly bouncing ideas off of each other, really building each other up, really praising each other. I've I've found that absolutely awesome. What about the two of you?

Yeah. I think what I really appreciated was that there was almost always at least fifteen minutes between talks,

which

meant that there was actual meaningful time to have a real conversation with somebody. Some of the other conferences I've been to, it's been, you know, five or seven minutes or it's been just enough for a bathroom or a coffee refill. So you can't really get deep with somebody. But the people I've met have been wonderful, and the conversations we've been able to share are more than surface deep because you can really start talking about, what you work on and what some of the struggles have been and how you both appreciated this talk and why and what it meant to you and how it how it applied to your specific situation. So that, I think, has been really, a special part of this conference for me is the balance of super cool talks, but then enough time between them to actually process them and chat with others about them.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's not just the other attendees. I mean, one of the great things has been the amount of chance that the speakers themselves have really given of themselves to be able to talk to people in the audience. I mean, Dave, I know you got a chance to speak with Stuart Lynch for quite a while.

Oh, yeah.

How was that?

That was great. Yeah. I, you know, Stuart is such a wonderful teacher. His videos, he's well crafted. You know, you can tell that his teaching background is just it's incredible.

And he shares all these things, and he does it so well. And I'm sure a ton of people have come up to him these last couple of days. But, you know, he was walking my way, and I was like, hey. I'm just gonna shake stick out my hand, shake his hand, and introduce myself. And he's very gracious, you know, and spent oh, gosh.

It must have been, know, five to ten minutes where we're just talking about YouTube and and about editing and just the process and, you know, commenters, know, the the just everything that comes with that. And just, you know, it was it was really a special moment. And just in agreement with Adam, it's like that extra time where you that spaced out where you can mingle, interact with the other attendees. It's just so important, especially in this day where many of us work remotely or are in satellite offices. There are not many people, not very many chances to interact with human beings face to face.

As great as remote work is, and I love it, and it's absolutely amazing for my situation, having the chance to meet new people and to be social, it can't be beat. And when you're meeting with a group of people that all have similar interests and can share how they solved a problem or can

Can be

empathetic to like, oh, yeah, this sucks. It still sucks. And we got to figure out how you know, fix this. It's just it's just, you know, an incredible experience. And I'm I'm very, very glad that that I came.

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Yeah. I I know a large part of Vidit's talk was about the benefits that you get from fostering a community and how that helps you even as an indie developer, how this helps just motivate you, just having the people around to talk to and, you know, just, yeah, like I said earlier, build each other up and kind of hype each other and, you know, get excited about things, you know. It's tough to do in, even if you work for a company, if you work remote, like you're not seeing people in person as often and whatnot, that, you know, getting out to something like this, getting out to a conference like this, or even just like local meetups and whatnot, it really helps kind of keep up your motivation to do these kinds of things and to build cool stuff and continue to ship when, you know, it may seem like everything's hopeless. But yeah, no, definitely the community here has been great and loved, getting to interact with everybody.

Yeah, it's really nice to just pull my head out of the sand because I have to sit at home and I'm just in my own little world working, And it's so refreshing to meet so many different people that are in the same industry doing entirely different, very interesting things. And it just lets me open my eyes again to what's possible and what's available and just, I don't know, give me interest back in in everything that can be done. I mean, to between the talks, the other nice thing has been just down in the hotel lobby. Since there's a block of rooms in the hotel, almost everyone at the conference is staying here. And so then in the evenings, there's a big group in the lobby that just kind of hangs out and chats and compares notes.

And, it's another great time to just meet people and expand, you know, meet new friends. I think that's the best part is the

Getting a chance to connect with all new people. Like I said earlier, you know, like I there have been people that I've met that have been, you know, really interesting, great people to talk to that I myself have never heard of before. It's just like, oh wow, this person really has something exciting to tell me and, or something exciting that I can talk about. Know, it's like, had I not come to DeepDish, I may never have known this person existed. Yeah, just getting a chance to just meet a bunch of really interesting people has been a great part of this.

Yeah. I want to echo the earlier comment about being able to resonate with one another on why we're in this industry, why we are doing the things that we do. Like, what are we building and why is it important to us? Hearing these stories from other developers on how they made something that at first they thought it was just for them, but then also seeing how it has helped somebody else is it's a big boost to recommitting to quality software, but also looking at ways to make people's lives better. That's one of the reasons why I am doing software development is because I want to make something that is good for me, but also I want to make a difference, however small that may be.

If it helps one person, if it helps 10 people, then that'll be time well spent.

Absolutely, yeah. And unlike a conference like WWC, we're not all just focused on pleasing Apple. There's a lot more of a focus on, you know, hey, what are the Looking at ways to, you know, just really focus on the craft of building an app and not just on, well, what does Apple want us to do this year? And what are the new APIs? What are the new things?

Getting a lot more of this cross pollination and this understanding of, you know, what does it mean to just build an app? And yeah, I find that kind of energy very prominent here. Could we talk about

specifics from from talks that we have

Yeah. Go for Yeah.

Okay. So one one of the biggest influences on on you know, from today's talks, especially, came from Danielle Lewis. And and I think, you know, we all spoke about this later and just

Danielle also is somebody that we got a chance to speak to for a couple minutes after her talk. Yeah. Just really go off on, man, that talk was very meaningful.

She started off Such a wonderful talk.

She she she knew she wanted to build something. She didn't know how to make apps and she, you know, she ended up making and publishing 10 apps within a

year. Yep.

And which is wild to me.

It's Vision lesson. Thank you.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

All all across. It's just incredible to hear. And it wasn't it wasn't focused on I gotta make everything perfect until I release. She made something, she released it, then she said, okay, on to my next one. And that kind of mindset of build and ship has always been something very difficult for me because I tend to look at something and want to be perfect before I release it to the world.

And spoiler alert, I haven't shipped anything in a very long time. I tend to make my development career has been mostly working for companies shipping apps under, you know, the company, which so so yeah, I have shipped, it's the company app, not my app. And so and as a result, you know, my personal portfolio is quite minuscule just because I haven't given the time or the effort making something and sharing it with the world. Listening to her talk just kind of motivated me to be like, hey, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be something that works.

And you know, we after shipping, you can post updates. There's nothing that says, yeah, this must be we're no longer in in the age where, you know, you gotta you gotta ship a boxed product and that's it. Like, you can you can push updates. And so I that's something that I took to heart and hopefully will will help me in, you know, releasing something this year that I that I'm proud of.

Who was it that said everything I'm everything I'm doing is making me uncomfortable? If the thing that I need to do is uncomfortable for me, then that means I have to do it.

I think that was Danielle.

Was that Danielle? Mhmm. I thought it was, and I I couldn't quite remember, but I loved I loved that quote because that that's what holds me back so often is, well, I could either fix this thing that's comfortable to me or I could fix this thing that's uncomfortable to me. I know which one I'm gonna pick. I'm gonna stay in my rut and keep doing my thing.

That's definitely been a common theme across a number of talks too.

Yeah. It really has.

I know Jordan hit on that in his talk. He's saying something along the lines of, as developers, when we feel like we need to do something to make something better, we go to what we know. We go to coding rather than going to marketing. And Michael Flareup in his talk, he was the opening keynote speaker. Like, one of the things that he says is just like, you know, really, like, you just gotta focus on, like, velocity and volume and really just getting your name out there and get getting constant feedback and constant improvement.

And so yeah. Danielle definitely had the, like, most crystallized version of this talk and, like, really focused on that really on that idea in specific. But, yeah, it's it's been something that

Yeah. It's been lot of people.

Us over the head with, hey. You know? Just shit. Just just get it out there.

Just do the thing. Right. Yeah. Which is, you know, is the easiest thing to to hear and to say and to say, yep. I'm gonna do that, but then so hard to actually just do.

But that it's been so inspiring to hear from people who actually did this and have paved that way and can say, yeah. You can do it too. There was there was one of the other talks. My memory is obviously not terribly great, so you're gonna have to remind remind me of this one too. Someone said that Indie Dev is I don't know.

I don't think they said lonely, but it's Isolating. Isolating. Yeah. That was that was Vedit's

talk. Okay.

Yeah. Man, I related to that a lot because so many times, it just feels like I'm wandering alone in the desert. Mhmm. And the nice thing both about the talks and about chatting with people between talks and this whole experience is knowing, oh, other people are wandering in the

desert too. You're not alone. Yeah.

Yeah. You're not alone. You don't always see them, but, you can encourage each other and yeah, keep walking. You're doing right. It's tough.

It's uncomfortable. It doesn't always feel right, but we're here with you and we're doing it too. And here's how I've seen success. Here's what keeps me going forward And sharing that inspiration and hearing that inspiration have been, really wonderful.

Time for a break.

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Break time over.

Yeah. I believe the the name of his talk was, like, p pizza can help your startup or

something along save your startup.

Pizza will save your startup. And and and the the punch line was he learned how to make pizzas. Like He was in the physical world. He was building something. He was creating something that had nothing to do with development.

And that helped him recover from burnout because he experienced burnout. And one of the things that he had to do was find something that he could find passion about unrelated that also could help he could share it with the world. And he ended up having these what was it, like monthly gatherings where he would just have pizza parties where he would make the pizza and his friends would come. And he showed his progress on how his first pizzas weren't so great. I think his parents said, oh, yeah.

They're great. And he knew better. But he but he showed the progress pics of of, you know, of of his his skill. And he eventually passed some sort of exam for, like, being like an official pizza pizzeria Pizziolo. Pizziolo.

Yes. So that was that was a delightful talk. And I I thoroughly enjoyed that.

So in addition to the talks themselves, we've also got like, there's an area right outside the main conference area with a bunch of the sponsors around, and they have booths and various things that you can go and learn about their products and a bunch of cool swag as well as you get at conferences like that. So have either of you had any fun experiences at the sponsor booths?

I think I am going home with more than double the t shirts that I came with. That's that's a win.

I've been steadfastly refusing t shirts, but I will, I'm a total sucker for pins and stickers. I'll take any of those. So, yeah, I've got a bunch of pins. Also, a thing that plenty of other attendees have brought as well is pins and stickers. Those are quite fun as well.

Yeah. I'm a sucker for swag for sure.

I know, like, additionally, like a bunch of the sponsors have been, you know, just similarly, like as the attendees, like very open to talking about things that aren't necessarily even their product. I know Nader and I had a long conversation with one of the founders, I guess, of Swiftly Workspace. Mhmm. And, you know, he he mostly just talked about, like, the VC backed indie experience. Like, not not really indie, but, you know, kind of going from a small startup to really trying to find venture funding and trying to build up this large thing and then becoming a sponsor of Deep Dish because he'd attended the conference in the past.

You know, like what the conference had meant to him as he got his company started and really the importance that this conference was to his backstory. And so, yeah, fun experience that really had nothing to do with the product itself, but still quite an interesting experience.

Yeah, was cool. It was very sincere and you could tell, you know, it wasn't just a soulless company shoveling their wares. He had a story behind what he was doing and what was meaningful to him and that was really cool to have that interaction.

I would not be surprised. I don't know what the count is, but I know a lot of the sponsors are previous attendees or have been sponsoring since the first year. Yeah, they are here because they love it. So it's a lot more than just, you know, the hard sell for the people walking up. Yeah.

But it's really parts of our community.

Yeah, they're meaningful parts of the community as well. Like, yeah, I know Josh put up a at the very beginning that, yeah, like more than half of the sponsors have been sponsoring from the very first year. They've been around this whole time. RevenueCat is the primary sponsor, and I think that's a little unfair because Josh works there. Know, like there are several other sponsors there that have been here every single year and have been a major part of the community just as much as all of the attendees and all of the speakers.

And so one final thing to hit on before we leave. This place is called Deep Dish Swift. So I wanna get your experiences on the deep dish that you've had so far this week.

Oh, man.

Nutter, I think you Yeah. We we all we all had some last night.

It was delicious. So, yeah, I went to Pequaz with with a with a group. It was great. There's the the Discord channel. People were basically setting up groups to to go head out for dinner.

And I and I just joined a group and it was it was delightful. The the company was great and the pizza was fantastic. I haven't had deep dish before in Chicago. So this is a first for me. It was quite good.

And we wondered like how much should we order? Because there were four of

us And we're like, should

we get like a should we get two larges? And we're like, wait a second. No. It's not just it's not just diameter. It's also like depth.

Right? So like, don't wanna

of pizza if you want.

You literally called a deep dip. Yes. Yes.

So so we're like, oh, yeah. Okay. Maybe we'll go two medium. So we did two medium and we still had plenty of leftover for someone to take home. I was stuffed.

I was like, I can't eat anymore because I knew that like there was gonna be there was gonna be pizza just around the corner. And sure enough, there was for lunch today.

For lunch.

Yeah. Yeah.

But it was yeah. It was it was it was quite

delicious. My group also ended up at Pequads. We had a group of nine and we ordered four pizzas we pretty much polished them, four large pizzas, sorry. We ordered four large pizzas and we pretty much polished them off and oh my God, I was regretting that that That's impressive work. It was tough.

I had three slices myself and oh, good God, that third slice was a mistake. But yeah, no, definitely delicious. Like, that's not to say that the pizza was disgusting. The pizza was amazing. It was great.

But that volume of pizza, like after a day of, you know, wandering around and talking to a bunch of people and then you gotta head home and oh man, that was, it was was still with me the next day. I did not have pizza for lunch today because I was just like, I can't I can't deal with this. Adam, where did you end up?

Yeah. So I forget the name of the place. Crusts Pizza, maybe, something like that. It was tavern style pizza. Oh.

So it was not deep dish, but it was the other pizza. There's a guy from Chicago here that told me, like, yeah. Chicago's famous for deep dish, but really

Really, you want the tavern style?

Everyone eats tavern style when you go out for pizza. So I had pepperoni and hot honey pizza, which I had only ever heard about once joining the, deep dish discord and kind of getting involved in the getting involved in the pizza culture here. I'd never heard of hot honey before, but it was really good.

I did put hot honey on my, April Fool's Day pizza, but that was, I couldn't really tell what was going on there. There was a lot

of things going on. It

was one of many mistakes.

It was one of many mistakes. Yeah. So I have not had a proper hot honey pizza.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was good. It was, it was delicious. So that was fun.

I wanted that. I definitely wanted the pepperoni, hot honey experience here. And I got that and then had my first deep dish slice for lunch, which was good. And, so the next thing I need to do before I go home is that Pequot strip

There you go.

And they can roll me back home after I finish there too.

Alright. So I think that about wraps it up with our deep dish experience. I'm gonna give everybody a chance to tell people where they can find you.

So let's start with Adam. Yeah, you can find me. Well, I'm going pitch my product and you can find me from there. Museapp.com, m u s e app Com. Then you hit the about section and you'll see all the Twitter and blue sky and websites and things like that.

Or my website adamwolf. Me adamwolf. Me.

Neutter?

Yeah. So I'm I'm not much of a social media guy, but you can find me streaming on Twitch. Nutterfi is my handle. And I stream software development. I'm working on an app right now.

It's like a vector drawing app that I'm hoping to publish soon. And if you go check out the page there, there's beta link if you'd like to run the test flight version.

And of course, you can always find me and everything that I do at cocoatype.com, and you can find out all of the information that you need to know about the podcast, the very podcast that you're listening to right now at compileswift.com. So thanks for hanging out with us tonight, and, we will see you all next time.

Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

Thank you. Bye, everybody.