Bryan Anderson is the Director of Art and Media Production for the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland. As a professional musician, recording engineer, internet entrepreneur, and video producer, Bryan has used LiveCode and other xTalk applications to address unusual business needs and sticky technical challenges. Some of his first apps built almost 30 years ago are still being used today in a small business in Canada.

Bryan’s wife Blair is a silversmith who operates a teaching studio in the Washington DC area. Their son Daniel is an author, painter, and the Director of Engineering at a Silicon Valley startup focused on STEM education that leverages data from the International Space Station. None of them have ever been in space, but would like to someday.

It’s pretty easy to imagine, specify, and build an app when you are your own client. It’s a completely different process when you’re building an app for someone else to use. After building dozens of apps for his own use, Bryan proposed building an app for a department at the University of Maryland that made sense to him, and seemed to make sense to the client.

What could possibly go wrong?

After delivering the app to the specifications they both agreed to, a few months of use revealed that both parties had made assumptions that limited use cases and functionality. While version one of Scenario Designer was incredibly helpful to the client, it could have been much better. We will explore faulty assumptions and unasked questions that resulted in a useful but inflexible app. We will then look at changes that were made in version two that created an infinitely more flexible app that is far more future proof. If you’re considering creating apps for others, learn how to avoid needless pain and suffering when starting down that road.

Author Ray Bradbury left this earth June 5, 2012. His book Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian story about a time when books are outlawed and burned by “firemen”. The story follows one fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role and turns to save books instead of destroying them. It is considered by many to be Bradbury’s best work, and happens to be a favorite of my wife Blair who is an award winning silversmith.

When the news of Bradbury’s death broke, Blair was a month away from opening a show featuring jewellery that included some kind of historical meaning or artefact. Pieces were already completed that included artefacts such as Roman glass, coal from the Titanic, and fabric from the payload bay of Shuttle Discovery. Just 30 days out from opening day, she wanted to create a piece that commemorated Bradbury and his famous work. We’ll look at how LiveCode was used to create an interface to access over 10,000 books that were housed inside the finished pendant.