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Learn Developers Podcast
docseason 1, episode 6 previous episode | episode index | next episode this is a transcript of one episode of the samsung developers podcast, hosted by and produced by tony morelan a listing of all podcast transcripts can be found here host tony morelan senior developer evangelist, samsung developers instagram - twitter - linkedin guest ash nazir iot gadgets in this episode of pow, i interview ash nazir, editor in chief for the website iot gadgets ash was an early advocate for tizen os, building a huge following, tizen experts with that success, ash and his team launched the website blog iot gadgets as a way to expand their coverage of hardware, software and all things internet in addition to iot gadgets, ash also runs the largest facebook group dedicated to samsung galaxy watch with over 75 thousand members listen download this episode topics covered tizen os maemo meego linux foundation tizen experts writing for iot gadgets facebook group, samsung galaxy watch more about iot gadgets based in manchester, england, iot gadgets is dedicated to bringing you the best internet of things iot news directly to you we are living in exciting times and are proud to be part of this new technology transcript note transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript tony morelan 00 02 hey, i'm tony morelan and this is pow! podcasts of wisdom from the samsung developer program, where we talk about the latest tech new trends and give insight into all the opportunities available for developers looking to create for samsung on today's show, i interview ash nazir, editor in chief for the website iot gadgets what started out as a small blog related to the tizen operating system ash and his team have built a super successful news and information focused website featuring articles on the latest software hardware and all things internet including a facebook group dedicated to samsung smartwatches that has over 75,000 members enjoy so tell me who is ash nazir? ashiq nazir 00 46 so that that's quite a deep question, but i'm going to keep it quite light and you know, you know, not too philosophical as fashion is as i'm basically a network engineer that's my background, and i'm from manchester in england as you can probably tell from the tony morelan 01 01 accent okay, now have you lived in manchester your whole life? ashiq nazir 01 05 yeah, yeah born and bred tony morelan 01 06 so when you were in school did you study network engineering? ashiq nazir 01 10 so i studied, wait for it the mathematics statistics and computing ventures in you'd probably spit them out by then but it was really my work life the jobs that i went to into after that, so i do love it support i did networking, implementation, network design, network infrastructure, and lots of other networking related jobs that was me fully immersed in that field tony morelan 01 42 so you learned after school, when you really dove into the workforce, that's where you got off your experience so when you're not network engineering, what do you like to do for fun? ashiq nazir 01 51 so this is one thing that not a lot of people will kind of understand, but i like fitness i like training and i don't work on the guns or the pythons as much as people think but i have got a modest you know and so for anybody who doesn't know, pythons guns, that sort obviously refers to your arms, which is what most guys, they love building the humps you know, they'll neglect the rest of the body 02 24 phenomenal tony morelan 02 26 yeah which is i'm kind of thinking that's not actually a typical engineer the physique of the typical engineer i think you stand out a little bit at some of these conferences ashiq nazir 02 35 um, once upon a time when i started doing a lot of this thing, and it support it sport was once the forte of the nerd yes, the computer geek in the in the closet you won't let him out when your computer's dying or near death, and then you lock him away after you use fixed your computer and i broke that mold i can tell you that so even a lot of the conferences that i attended over the years yeah, i did stand out a little bit tony morelan 03 08 yeah, definitely, definitely so i want to talk about iot gadgets so iot gadgets is a blog that you run that i know came out of your excitement for tyson os so can you tell me how you first discovered tyson and why you became so passionate about it? ashiq nazir 03 24 okay, now, so this is a little bit of a big question forgive me, i'm going to have to expand on this slightly once upon a time, there was an operating system called miko, and there was this mobile phone that they brought out, which was the nakia and 900 now, this was one of the first linux based true phones and there were lots of things that you could do you had a built in terminal, he had a real web browser that supported flash now, most people don't really know what that entails but once upon a time, you couldn't play flash animations in a mobile web browser it was just unheard of in the likes of apple and other things, you could not do those things so i started following this operating system and i started promoting it on twitter and, you know, unbeknownst to me, i became sort of a bit of an evangelist and before i knew it, i had sort of 6000 people that were following my twitter account wow and a year or so and then, you know, i was invited over to a conference in dublin now, and that was the point where meemo was becoming meego and this was when intel partnered with nakia and then it was a natural fit to me to follow on to meego and, and there's lots of wonderful things that operating system could do unfortunately, there's a change of direction and amiga was discontinued, but then intel continued with it and samsung came on board what we found was tyson which was favored by the linux foundation now for myself, i'm one of the few people that have traveled the world to almost every single ties and conference and summit all over the world being involved in ties in and helping promote it now at that time, i started a website called to ty's an expert's yes, that was to obviously promote tyson tony morelan 05 25 about what year was that? did you were started tyson experts that was back in 2011 so tyson experts at the site, they started how did you go from tyson experts to specifically iot gadgets? ashiq nazir 05 40 well, at the time were tyson experts we covered a lot of blog articles about tyson sdks ids so anybody who doesn't understand so sdks software development kit, ids, integrated development environment, and then what we wanted to do is broaden a bit of the coverage of seidman things that we were involved in and then in 2018, we started iot gadgets and started more dooms some blockchain cryptocurrency stuff, and more stuff related around iot or the internet of things tony morelan 06 16 got it okay so obviously, you've got a lot of writers that are writing for iot gadgets i'm assuming you've got some staff writers i actually did understand, though, that you do welcome guest writers so can you give me a little bit of background about your writers? and if someone wants to submit an article, how did they become a guest writer for iot gadgets? ashiq nazir 06 33 so basically, we've had lots of writers come and go over the years now and what we found is a lot of writers tend to be found on iot gadgets so even samsung themselves, they have hired a few of our writers over the years as well, tony morelan 06 53 really so they're being discovered on iot gadgets that's it that's it so ashiq nazir 06 58 yeah, we welcome people join in and, you know, if people have got the passion, love for writing and computing, by all means they can contact us and an easy way to join in is if you go onto the website, which is www iotgadgets com and just click on write to us, or write for us, shall i say, okay, you're straight through to us tony morelan 07 21 that's excellent so tell me personally, what are some of your favorite topics to cover? ashiq nazir 07 26 and so for myself, we've been very much involved in a lot of smartwatch stuff so that that's a lot of our focus is still smartwatch, based around smartwatches, the apps, the watch faces software updates, now, that kind of thing okay tony morelan 07 45 so another thing that i then when i was doing a little bit of background research on iot gadgets was that you run a pretty big facebook group that is focused on the samsung galaxy watch that i think you've got like almost 75,000 members so talk a little bit about that facebook group and tell me what it has to offer ashiq nazir 08 05 so, with the figure of 75,000, that you mentioned, we're up to actually, let me just have a quick look we're actually over 77,000 tony morelan 08 17 now really? ashiq nazir 08 19 wait not for nobody and neither does our facebook group it's a great place for people to meet each other, who are obviously smartwatch enthusiasts, and developers to showcase their apps, showcase their watch faces, and get relevant feedback you know, we all need to know what works, what doesn't work and it's an excellent place for people to promote themselves tony morelan 08 44 that's wonderful i mean, because i know that's one of the challenges, you know, when i was developing some apps, was you know, you've created this great app, but then how do you get people to, to discover it? and so always trying to find different ways to make yourself known out there is a huge challenge so, you know, knowing that you've got this facebook group with such a huge active community, that's going to be a huge benefit for developers just starting out so that's absolutely amazing to hear so tell me what's in the future for iot gadgets? ashiq nazir 09 16 well down the road, we're actually hoping to start doing a lot more wearable reviews and obviously, at the moment, people are staying at home a fair bit, for some reason, not sure why aren't doing lots more home fitness apps, and okay, for myself, i've got the background i've got the thing to sell that because hey, i love fitness so, just for me, tony morelan 09 43 that's great that's great so tell me what are some of the benefits for developers looking to create apps using tyson? ashiq nazir 09 49 so tyson, one of the propositions right from the outset, was this was going to be an operating system that you can use on a variety of devices, but on smartwatches on the mobile side, it has excellent battery life now, for a lot of people, you they might not comprehend what a brilliant battery life means until they actually try using a device when they're trying to use some fancy app and you know, they can only get half the day to assault so that was something that was brilliant right from the start and you've got solid performance, where like, say, for my smartwatch you know, i've never really known it to crash or have any issues it just performs and that's what you want from a smartwatch you want it to perform you don't want it to be another bane of your existence sure you don't want to be on the phone to tech support hey, what's wrong? you never want to talk to tech support you want to break that relationship and that's what i love about it tony morelan 10 53 that's great that's great so you've been doing this you know iot gadgets for a while i know that you've been experiencing a lot of different tyson app so you got to tell me what is your favorite type of tyson app you know what surprised and impressed you ashiq nazir 11 08 saw myself, i'm going to call back to a bit of that health and fitness stuff so obviously with samsung, they you've got the samsung health app that integrates very nicely with your titan, smartwatch and a lot of your apps that count your calories that count your steps, that they're all that information, then get stored into some health so for myself, i love that thing of, of being able to see things on my watch and then it's all collated and it's available at my fingertips to see how fast i was and what was my heart rate and, and from that data, you can then obviously, analyze your performance and figure out hey, what do you do next? exactly tony morelan 11 53 that's great so can you tell me do you have any ideas of a type an app that you would love to see a developer create ashiq nazir 12 02 you're going to call me boring i'm just going to say, perhaps but so i think it'd be great for having fitness apps where to watch us could actually chat to each other so, you know, for yourself, if you're doing a particular workout somebody else who's doing a particular workout, you can actually it'd be great to see two apps showing you performing against somebody in real time mm hmm i'm not sure obviously, that the use of the screen is really small on a smartwatch, but, you know, just look at some small metrics that can show you who's beating him i'm sure that'd be quite exciting tony morelan 12 39 that would be that would be so you know, i was doing a little bit of a research on this topic recently and saw that it was interesting a lot of the community when it comes to using a smartwatch as it relates to fitness, they don't want to be told that hey, great job you've walked, you know, so many steps today are a great job you've got it chair, you're doing exercise so the information they want to receive is that, hey, it's time to get moving that you haven't reached your goal so it's more of that motivation so it's not the encouragement that, you know, awesome, you did good today, it's more like, get out of the seat and let's get rolling so what's your thought on that sort of approach with an app ashiq nazir 13 23 um, so with that sort of functionality, we've actually got that in the titan smartwatches so every periodically if you haven't moved for a while, it'll actually tell you, hey, head up, do something and they'll give you a little, there'll be little suggestions that will show that, you know, you might want you to swing your torso around, or stand up or flap your arms around and the whole idea is that it can, you know, motivate you to start moving, because they say, you know, a, a journey of 1000 steps starts with one so even if you get up and you start doing something that is obviously a step in the right direction so that's built into the os so something that builds further onto that, another app, that state takes it another step further so then it can collate the number of steps you've possibly done that day and compared it to other days and just giving you a similar sort of, or slightly more encouragement to get you moving tony morelan 14 27 exactly think that'd be really good yeah, no, i completely agree so i know that iot gadgets is put out a lot of different articles, a lot of different blogs can you tell me which article or blog that you're most proud of? ashiq nazir 14 42 so i love the excitement in the ties and community of lights been on devices so we get a huge amount of interest in upcoming devices we're really proud of the fact that we are one of the blogs that come first with all the latest information have, you know what's happening out there? and what are the new devices that are coming out? so, no, soon, there might be some more galaxy watch devices coming out so you just have to go to www iotgadgets com, and you'll find out more that's a shameless plug so tony morelan 15 19 love it, love it so, you know, doing these for all these years, i know that you've had to face some challenges so talk a little bit about some of the challenges that iot gadgets has had to face ashiq nazir 15 30 wow so i think one of the biggest ones that and that we were fortunate enough to face and there's not a lot of websites that have this sort of issue is the amount of traffic we get so initially, like any other blog, you know, you set up, set yourself up with somebody servers out there and is able to handle your traffic and then we'd put some news out there, bang the website's dead is just way too much you know? traffic coming in to too many visitors so then, you know, you upgrade the server and then next time you have some big news, bang, that one's dead and you think, wow, this is deja vu so we've had that situation, unfortunately or fortunately so always good in the blogging world to get lots of traffic that, you know, there's so many times we had to upgrade ourselves to get to the point where we can click something and we're confident the surfers not going to die i'm going to say something i mean, we're going to publish a particular post, and the server is going to be able to handle the traffic so that's been the one unfortunately, that's been one of the biggest hurdles we've had to overcome tony morelan 16 41 and it's obviously a good challenge to have to face i mean, yeah, yeah, yeah ashiq nazir 16 48 yeah, you know, it's one of them things you might you've definitely doing something right if you've got that problem yeah tony morelan 16 55 so tell me what is the best way for people to contact iot gadgets? no, you'd mentioned the website are there any other ways that people can contact iot gadgets? ashiq nazir 17 05 yes, certainly so we've we're obviously on the web emails that are very good one so if you fire off an email to contact@iotgadgets com is a mailbox that's always monitored we're obviously on social media, which twitter, facebook, instagram, and they're all monitored as well so tell me what those your social media handles are so it's iot gadgets across all of them and yeah, they're, they're all monitored and you can see you'll hopefully get a reply within 24 hours, possibly instantly i'm awake at three o'clock in the morning wonderful, which hasn't happened in the past now tony morelan 17 48 yes, when you when you put out a big blog in the in your, your monitoring your servers, i'm sure you're up at all hours ashiq nazir 17 54 well, the world the world doesn't sleep unfortunately so even i've gone to some conferences i've got introduced to people and they've turned around and say, do you ever sleep? because they realize what time zone i'm in, what time zone they're in and the two things don't match tony morelan 18 13 i think what you're saying is that you want a developer to create an app for you for your smartwatch that says, hey, ash, it's time to go to sleep now couldn't sleep just ashiq nazir 18 21 yeah and it just automatically switches everything off there we go tony morelan 18 25 so excellent ash, it was wonderful, chatting with you and getting to know a little bit more about not only you but also iot gadgets, super excited about what you guys are doing and looking forward to reading some more blogs about upcoming information so again, thank you very much for being on the podcast today ashiq nazir 18 39 hey, tony it's been really great being here and thanks for having us on and thanks for taking the time once you appreciate it outro 18 48 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out develop samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
Connect Samsung Developer Conference
websports games – will also share how dolby atmos benefitted their game and you will find out how dolby supports game developers and other activities on our website. sessions health, wearable expand health experiences with galaxy watch the galaxy watch’s powerful bioactive sensor, together with the wear os powered by samsung, is transforming mobile health experiences. and now, this technology is even more powerful thanks to the samsung privileged health sdk. find out how the samsung privileged health sdk is allowing developers to retrieve raw or analyzed sensor data for their applications, including bia, ecg, blood oxygen level or sweat loss, and help users’ to accurately monitor their health stats. sessions web flexible and private web experience on samsung internet in this session, you will learn how to enhance and optimize your web experience for foldable devices using device posture api and viewport segment media query. we'll also take a closer look at how samsung internet protects users’ privacy online. sessions mobile, enterprise, developer program google and samsung strengthen enterprise ecosystem together samsung’s global mobile b2b team is working closely with the android enterprise team to build a galaxy ecosystem of partners who are bringing innovation into workplaces. discover how partner solutions create unique experiences on samsung devices and how we plan to work together to help future partners step into the samsung android ecosystem for enterprises and smbs. sessions contents & service, developer program, enterprise hdr10+/salt and automatic hdr video creations for productions hdr10+ is an essential technology for premium hdr viewing experience and it is widely reach to consumer displays including mobile devices. in order to provide hdr content services, it requires changing service provider's infra structure or workflows and video processing technology from sdr to hdr with a lot of engineering efforts. then, hdr10+/salt solutions and partnership program from samsung is designed to build an extremely cost effective automatic solution up for content creators, post production houses and ott service providers even including game developers. the solution package is designed with various standalone applications, reference apps, sdks on various oses and partnership programs to help 3rd parties for creation of hdr contents. hdr10+/salt partnership program provides full compatibility to hdr10+ llc certification program and major studios, ott service providers and tool makers are already partners of the program and samsung provides them the best hdr content quality. sessions developer program, open innovation, health healthcare research hub our open source project provides end-to-end solutions such as sdk, platform, and portal for various use cases from medical research studies to clinician services using wearable devices. medical research does not have to stay complicated. anyone can easily build and customize their own research studies or clinician services using this open source. recently, as the accuracy of sensors installed on wearable devices has improved, interest in healthcare research using wearable health data is increasing. however, it takes a lot of time for researchers to develop research applications and server infrastructure for storing and analyzing data from scratch. sr is developing android sdk and data platform solutions that support healthcare research using health data from our wearable devices (watch 4 and later versions) and provide them as open source in order to solve the pain points of these researchers and establish a digital health care research ecosystem centered on our wearable devices. sessions iot, monetization, smart appliances home connectivity alliance introduction of home connectivity alliance and how appliance manufactures can enable interoperability across brands. hear how hca interoperability can benefit consumers and partners including b2b (home builders, mfu, etc). join the hca and become a leader in innovation within the connected iot ecosystem. sessions ai, ar immersive audio we will demonstrate an audio system with dramatically improved immersive 3d audio experience. hardware will be similar to samsung’s critically acclaimed hw-q990b soundbar, but will include several new technologies that will be found in future samsung products. these technologies automatically correct for room acoustics and the location of the listeners and loudspeakers. visitors will compare the sound of the system before and after the system’s unique automated calibration process. listeners will enjoy improved spatial and timbral performance in stereo, surround and immersive audio formats with both music and cinematic content. sessions security & privacy introducing blockchain wallet with knox vault in this session, we introduce blockchain wallet for samsung smart tv. blockchain wallet allows our smart tv users to manage their blockchain accounts and transfer their cryptocurrency to another blockchain account. it ensures to retain a key for blockchain transactions in a secure way. dapp developers can build their tv dapp with blockchain wallet for blockchain functions such as blockchain connection and transaction signing. knox vault is an enhanced hardware-based security solution to protect sensitive data such as cryptographic keys, passwords and personal data. knox vault provides strong security guarantees against hardware attacks such as physical attack, side-channel attack and fault attack. as a core component of the knox security platform, knox vault is an isolated, tamper-proof, secure subsystem with its own secure processor and memory. sessions developer program, enterprise, android introducing samsung galaxy camera ecosystem discover how advanced camera technologies, based on samsung’s leading hardware and software, can enable developers to create more powerful camera experiences for their users. we will take a look at some of the incredible partnerships samsung has already formed with numerous app developers and reveal how these collaborations enriched users’ camera experiences. sessions mobile, android, productivity intuitive multitasking experience based upon android 12l join us to see how samsung continues to enhance the large screen user experience further with fast app switching and intuitive multitasking capabilities. to maximize the galaxy foldable experience, we're expanding flex mode even further with more apps and partners as well as google's ongoing collaborative effort in android 12l. sessions iot, mobile, uwb joint efforts on standardization toward open ecosystem of uwb services the presentation will introduce samsung's joint efforts with industry partners on the uwb tech/service standardization, which is essential for creating an interoperable open ecosystem of uwb products and services. especially, it will introduce activities at fira consortium, which was established by samsung jointly with industry leaders to provide interoperability specifications as well as certification programs. it may also include target uwb services and relevant standardization status & plan. sessions ar, game, tizen journey to immersive interactive exp in big screen with xr and avatar fw xr framework webapis enable developers to build xr applications on the tizen platform. we will go over features of the webapis, share some demos, and provide information on how to get started. additionally we will show you a sample code of how to capture and handle user's gestures and full body movement. avatar framework for tizen is a unified solution providing high level apis that allow samsung developers to easily include the 3d avatar models and features in their samsung tv applications. we will go over all the cool features and options of our framework in this video. sessions connectivity, android, mobile le audio: the future of wireless sound introducing le audio: a new standard for bluetooth technology on galaxy devices. le audio will enhance the performance of classic bluetooth audio and introduce isochronous communication, creating whole new wireless audio experience on galaxy devices. in this session, we will introduce the technical features of le audio, what it means for the galaxy ux and how you could enhance wireless audio experience of your app with le audio. sessions design, ui/ux one ui design principles in partnership one ui creates a unified experience across our galaxy devices, from phones and tablets to watches and galaxy books. in creating and refining one ui, we've followed four key principles: simplicity, effortlessness, consistency, and authenticity. with one ui, we've also made a commitment to openness, which means some of the best things in one ui come from partnerships. in this session, we'll talk about some of those partnerships and how we aligned them with our four design principles to get great results. sessions ui/ux, design, android one ui: customer centric design one ui starts with a true understanding what our customers want. hear more about what samsung have learned from listening to extensive customer feedback and usage data, and how we have adapted our designs in response. we'll take a look at some real-life examples of how the ux design of the calendar, settings and samsung health app has evolved over time to better meet customer needs. sessions enterprise, data, security & privacy our journey to responsibly handling data at samsung, we place personal data protection as one of our top priorities. learn how we responsibly handle personal data in our applications and platforms. we'll share with you our journey in protecting personal data. we'll talk about what it means to responsibly govern and access data in samsung's enterprise environment. we'll cover specifics on how to classify & protect data as a whole. pick up insights on privacy technologies and design patterns we apply in our data intensive applications today. sessions developer program, tizen, ui/ux prism: the new ux development tool and process in today’s environment of rapid and unpredictable transformation, establishing a creative and increasingly collaborative tech culture is one of the most challenging requirements. in this session, we would like to introduce a new method to revolutionize the tizen platform-based app development process. a new development process named prism automates most of the inefficient overheads from design to implementation of app ui, innovatively improving app development productivity. we will introduce prism-based development process and deliver this innovative app development culture to developers through the sessions. sessions developer program, smart appliances, tizen remote test lab: what’s new in tv development environment the current tizen tv development environment, represented by emulator and tv, is a very limited support method for developers. depending on the version of emulator, the latest features currently supported by the tv may not be available, and various models of physical tvs may be required to verify actual operation. rtl tv tries to overcome the limitations of the current development environment. sessions contents & service, monetization, data samsung tv plus: the advanced ad-tech and partnerships that fund free tv samsung’s free ad-supported tv (fast) service “tv plus” has been a breakout success. although it looks and feels like traditional tv, it is anything but! behind the scenes of this slick tv & mobile experience is high-performance technology, vast amounts of data & algorithms, and a thriving partner ecosystem. join this session to learn more about the mind-boggling world of advertising technology, how it works, and how multiple companies come together to provide free tv to millions of consumers worldwide. sessions android, contents & service samsung wallet, it's convenient, personal and safe as the growth of digital wallets skyrockets, samsung recently announced samsung wallet – a new platform bringing almost all of the cards you’d typically find in a physical wallet, as well as important documents, into one easy-to-use and secure mobile application. as samsung wallet rapidly expands its content set, find out more about the future of digital wallets and how open api’s can allow developers to build integrations for this service. sessions iot, security & privacy smartthings edge: the next level experience discover how samsung is transitioning the smartthings-published groovy dths to edge drivers while maintaining a seamless experience for our users. we’ll walk through the process of onboarding edge-based devices and how to set up an automation with an edge device that runs locally. sessions iot, monetization, smart appliances smartthings energy service introduction of smartthings energy service and how partners (energy companies, smart device mfgs, etc) can integrate to provide a seamless energy management service for their consumers leveraging samsung's smartthings energy ecosystem. sessions iot, contents & service, open innovation smartthings find: find alongside 200+ million users smartthings find is samsung’s fastest growing service, powered by more than 200 million galaxy users. discover some of the new features and functions added over the past year and learn how partners can leverage the service to innovate their own solutions to meet the needs of businesses and consumers alike. sessions iot, contents & service, open innovation smartthings platform enhancements for openness and interoperability the smartthings platform continues to evolve to promote openness and interoperability. in this session, we will share some exciting new updates to the smartthings platform to support matter and thread, and discuss the home connectivity alliance. sessions health, tizen telehealth in samsung devices samsung display device (smart tvs & smart monitors) users will be able to launch telemedicine service within the samsung products. once you pick your physician, you can use one of the approved usb cameras to connect to the tv and jump on a video call with a physician via external service provider's built-in web applications. after a few account setup process on mobile / pc, you can easily start your session any time on tv without any additional complicated inputs. at your session, you can also receive a prescription to be filled in at a mail-in online pharmacy (pc or mobile) to receive prescription drugs at your doorstep. sessions open innovation, enterprise, productivity the next generation samsung retail solutions in a mobile-first world, device convergence, simplification, ergonomically designed accessories, sw solutions and the connected galaxy ecosystem are helping to boost productivity and efficiency in the retail industry. in this session, we will explore how the next generation of retail solutions are shaping the industry’s future and will take a closer look at samsung’s three major retail solutions - data capturing, payment, and push-to-talk. sessions developer program, mobile, android the samsung knox partner program: partner success journey the samsung knox partner program (kpp) equips you with everything you need to build ideas and market your mobile solutions. in this session, we will take a look at some of our partners’ solutions and how collaborating with the samsung kpp has helped enhance their user experience. join us to see why kpp is causing a stir in the business developer community! sessions enterprise, tizen tizen everywhere this session highlighted samsung's direction and goals for the enterprise and b2b markets, focused on taking tizen to the next level on so many platforms. various enterpriser displays based on tizen and solutions suitable for business purposes will always be together. tizen enterprise platform will provide all the technology infrastructure you need, including the samsung developers portal for b2b for developer support and the samsung apps tv seller office for custom application support in your own business. after announcing "tizen open" at sdc in 2019, samsung established licensing system to provide tizen tv os to other tv makers. in order for partners to develop tizen tv products faster, samsung prepared reference tv solution. in europe, australia, türkiye, tizen tvs have been released sequentially through more than 10 tv brands since september 22. sessions wearable, design, android watch face studio's first journey and expectation for next a must-have to create beautiful watch faces! watch face studio (wfs) is now a little over a year old. hear the developers of wsh share the highs and lows of bringing the tool to life and meet the designers responsible for creating the eco watch face. this session is an insight into the year-long journey to create wfs – and the story of where we’re going next. sessions iot, tizen, ui/ux what's new in tizen? are you curious about the direction in which intelligent iot platform “tizen” is developing? this session introduces ui assistant technology and extended 3d ui framework for providing advanced user experience, and explains innovative technologies that make run the tizen platform on top of the android hardware abstraction layer to facilitate securing new hws. and introduce the iot standard 'matter', which will be newly supported on tizen. finally, we provide a guide and tip for cross platform application development. sessions ai, iot, smart appliances what’s new in bixby for smart home bixby brings the smart home experience to life with the power of voice. find out how our new tool, bixby home studio, will enable device manufacturers to build more intelligent, more engaging voice experiences for smartthings-connected devices. sessions mobile, design, ui/ux what’s new in one ui 5 one ui 5 pushes personalization and productivity to the next level. explore new features that enable you to build a galaxy experience that reflects your personal style and help you to get more done on all your devices, wherever or whenever you need to.
Develop TV Seller Office
docsports, lifestyle, information, education, etc warning service categories cannot be changed while certification and verification processes are in progress once the processes are finished, this restriction is lifted for apps serving a global country if the country of service includes china and other countries , you cannot select a videos category unless the app is allowed you cannot also select a category in which the mapping category shown in bracket is videos notethe mapping categories shown in bracket are those that will be provided instead if the original categories are not available new categories are not available on tvs under 2017, so they are classified as the old categories shown in bracket yes rating choose the age rating of the content in some countries, an additional rating certificate may be necessary if the application content is not suitable for the selected age rating, the service may not be released, and if this issue occurs after release, the service may be discontinued all applications must not contain violence, pornography, or abusive language applications with an age rating of 18 years or older cannot be offered in korea for more information, please refer to the age rating guide yes language enter the application languages the user can select when using the application yes privacy policy if your application collects personal information from users, you need to register the privacy policy url so that it can be explained on the smart tv yes seller information according to korean and european laws, register seller information to service your application need to the seller information such as the seller name, customer support email address, home page url, representative name, phone number, mailing address, and registration number duns, vat number, lei code, ein, ust-idnr, company number, siren, abn, acn, korean business registration number, etc if your group's account type is "individual", no registration number is required notewhen registering an application, a seller group's information is used for it by default, but you can change the information for each application note that the seller group's information changes, the application's seller information does not change accordingly, and vice versa to change the seller information displayed on the tv, you need to edit the seller information in the application, not the seller group information yes doc for eaa if you intend to release and register your application in eu member states except bulgaria , you are required to declare that your application conforms to the requirements under the european accessibility act, or the eaa if applicable, please attach the doc declaration of conformity document for the european accessibility act no if the applications collect user's personal information, you must enter a url where the user can view privacy policy to comply with legal requirements related to personal information, review samsung's privacy guide, as well as the legal requirements of the countries in which the service is offered after entering all service information, click the "save" button to complete the registration setting service country in the "applications > service country" menu, you can set the country/region where the application will be released partner sellers can launch tv application services in any country, including the us, whereas public sellers can only launch in the us input field description displayed on tv rating certification if you are issued a rating certification, you must register the certificate no country or region select countries where your application is offered no some countries require a certificate to launch the application in order to release the application for the brazilian market, you need to select an age limit and upload a certificate issued by mj/dejus the age limit may be changed according to review by samsung sidia applications with an age rating of 18 years or older cannot be launched in korea for vod applications if the service category or mapping category is videos , you cannot service global countries, including china, unless the applications are specifically allowed to release the application, you must also either exclude china or set the application to only release in china when you change the service country of an application that has already been released and is being offered on the tv, you must enter a reason for the change, and the change is deployed after samsung reviews the reason therefore, it is recommended to contact the samsung content manager first before making any changes, as changes made without prior agreement may be rejected warningthe service country and certificate cannot be changed while certification and verification processes are in progress or while an beta test or an alpha test is in progress once that process is complete, this restriction is lifted the same restriction also applies if a previously requested service country change has not yet been completed after setting the service country, click the "save" button to complete the registration if the service country of an application being offered on the tv is changed, the change is not implemented immediately, but only after samsung's review process entering billing information in the "applications > billing info" menu, you need to enter whether the application has a payment function if there is no payment function, select 'free' feature description samsung checkout select if your application uses the embedded billing function in samsung smart tv 3rd party billing select if your application uses a partner's own billing function you need to also select the billing type, either transaction-based or subscription-based free select if your application does not have a billing function if the samsung checkout option is selected, you need to check all items in the integration checklist after reviewing the guidelines presented checklist guide test in-app purchase in dpi sandbox environment at least once before submitting your app before submitting an app for qa, we require you to complete testing the in-app purchase with actual payment methods for any items enter your company's bank information correctly for settlement and remittance, we need your company's bank account information please enter your bank account information at samsung checkout dpi for more information, see the managing bank account information guide make sure that your product sku is created at dpi before submitting your app to test your product, you need to create your product at dpi to sell your product to smart tv users, you need to create the product at dpi please make sure that you register your product at dpi the app must check checkout-available country before calling the billing api ensure that the 'billing service available country check api’ is integrated to your app to check checkout-available country please ensure that checkout is supported in your service country by using the billing service available country check api once confirmed, your application can call the billing api at checking billing service available country/location in addition, to use the samsung checkout function, the related privilege api must be defined in the application package configuration file applications that do not have the privilege defined cannot be submitted for more information on the api, refer to the billing api guide after selecting the billing function, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application warningif your billing information is checking from samsung checkout, you cannot change this information and you cannot change this information if you are joining or moving a group entering application feature information in the "applications > app feature info" menu, you need to check whether smart tv features are implemented in the application the feature you checked previously is selected by default as a feature of this application, so the same information will be applied when you submit a new version unless you change it if you change this information, it will be applied from the new application version you will submit if none of the features are applicable, select "not applicable" but please note that when you select "not applicable" if you have previously selected features, all of them will be deselected feature description caption select if your application supports caption this feature does not refer to subtitles, but ip video closed captioning which is used mainly in the us subtitles are located under player features external devices select if your application uses external devices such as usb storage, camera, or microphone, and describe all external devices used game platform integration select if your app supports game platform integration service on samsung tv hdr select if your application supports high dynamic range in-app ad select if your application is connected to an advertising platform for monetization an application is not considered to be ad-supported if the advertisements are not connected to an advertising platform an embedded, static image in an application is not classified as an advertisement importantif you are using in-app ads, but do not specify as such, your app may be rejected also, apps that support in-app advertisements must be updated to use relevant api’s documented here mobile device select if your application works with mobile devices and attach the corresponding mobile application however, if the mobile application was developed using the 'samsung smartview sdk', select the 'smart view' feature instead overlay select if your application supports overlay pip the overlay technique means the pip is located in an html element in a tizen web application player select if your app uses a video streaming solution smart view select if your application supports a mobile application developed through the ‘samsung smartview sdk’ tts select if your application supports text to speech umd search make sure to select this if your content ingested on umd for universal guide/universal search if you unchecked this, all you content catalogue on umd are not populated on universal guide/universal search if you have any question for this feature, please contact your app spm/tam after selecting all implemented functions, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application if you select the caption, in-app ad, player, or smart view functions, you need to additionally enter detailed information for each function in the sub-menu importantcaption and tts functions must be implemented in order to release an application to a model group subject to fcc regulations applications that do not support caption or tts functions cannot be submitted to model groups subject to fcc regulations caption information if the caption function is applied, enter the caption application method and details in the "applications > app feature info > caption" menu to comply with the fcc's ip video subtitle rules, content providers must support subtitles for ip video applications are considered part of the device and strict rules apply, and cps must use their own or manufacturer's solutions for captions you can download and refer to the 'video caption implementation guide' and 'user interface accessibility compliance manual' through the "fcc guide document download" button input field description displayed on tv solution for captioning select what solution was used for captioning select cea-708/cea-608 or smpte-tt/sami if using samsung's solution, or application ui if you use your own solution no content title and location provide the video title and url to play with caption no after entering the caption details, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application importantcaption and tts functions must be implemented in order to release an application to a model group subject to fcc regulations applications that do not support caption or tts functions cannot be submitted to model groups subject to fcc regulations in-app ad information if the in-app ad function is applied, you need to enter whether to use tifa tizen identifier for advertising in the "applications > app feature info > in-app ad" menu tifa is a device identifier that is compliant with the iab guidelines for targeting and ad tracking in accordance with samsung terms and conditions,, tifa is a required parameter to be passed from the application through samsung’s ads api if you select yes/no and your app uses tifa in ways that don’t match your answers, the app could be rejected during pre-testing in this case, resubmit the app again after you correct the answers or fix your app following tifa guideline in addition, to use the in-app ad feature, the related privilege api must be defined in the application package configuration file applications that do not have a privilege defined cannot be submitted for more information on the api, refer to the adinfo api guide if the application is using tifa tizen identifier for advertising , you must select "yes" and then review and check the requisite guidelines and terms and conditions input field description displayed on tv use tifa select if your application uses tifa for advertising purposes collecting or using tifa information for any other purpose is prohibited no confirm tifa guideline select the check box after reviewing the guideline content and terms and conditions for using tifa no after entering the in-app ad information, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application player information if the player function is supported, enter the details of the video streaming solution in the "applications > app feature info > player" menu feature description video codec select the video codec spec between divx, h 263, h 264, hevc, motion jpeg, mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg4, mvc, rv8/9/10, vc1, vp6, vp8, vp9, wmv7, wmv9, xvid, and other audio codec select the audio codec spec between aac, ac3, adpcm, aiff, alac, ape, dts, flac, he-aac, lpcm, midi, mp3, vorbis, wav, wma, wma/dd+, and other container select the container spec between 3gpp, asf, avi, mkv, mp4 fmp4 , mpeg-ts, mstroska, ps, vob, vro, webm, and other drm select the drm spec between aes-128, playready, verimatrix, widevine classic , widevine modular , and other streaming engine select the streaming engine spec between hls, http https , mpeg-dash, smooth streaming, and other player api select the player api spec between avplay, c#, mse, and other subtitle select the subtitle spec between close caption, smpte-tt, webvtt, and other other describe if there are other player specifications not listed above after entering the player details, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application smart view information if the smart view function is selected, enter detailed information about the smart view function and mobile application in the "applications > app feature info > smart view" menu input field description displayed on tv service logo upload the mobile application icon or website logo no service title register the mobile application title on the app store or website no service access provide at least one of the following application source, website url, other no additional features select features you added on your smart view enabled application, between ble bluetooth low energy discovery, wow wake on wireless lan , and speaker no for the logo image, upload an image sized 512x512 or 1020x1024 pixels, in the 24-bit png format, and with a file size of 300kb or less images with transparency are also permitted depending on the service access method selected, upload the application source directly or enter the url information to access it if there are other ways to access the mobile application, explain them after entering the smart view details, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application entering verification information this information will be used by the samsung smart tv certification and verification team, and the process may be rejected if it is missing make sure you can fully test your application with the information you provide before submitting input field description displayed on tv app description file provide application documentation to help samsung testers understand the application's workflow and user scenarios for detailed specifications of the application description document file, refer to the application ui description guide no geo ip block select if geo-filtering is used for application content make sure that all ip addresses used by samsung testers are allowed on your servers no test accounts if your application requires a login to use, provide the credentials for test accounts you must provide at least 1 test account for each model group that your application supports each test account must have enough credit to comprehensively test all the application features on a specific platform importantthe application is tested simultaneously across all requested model groups consequently, you must provide a number of test accounts equal to or greater than the number of requested model groups insufficient test accounts can cause your application to fail verification at the testing phase additionally, if the content and user experience vary depending on the account, provide accounts that can test each specific scenario example if the presence of ads, live tv, or premium vod differs by account id samsungtest1@samsung com ads provided id samsungtest2@samsung com 4k content provided id samsungtest3@samsung com live tv provided no voucher code if you have content to use after payment, enter voucher information for testing no after entering the test information, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application
success story mobile
blogsports and fitness; i am also into singing. i was the singer of the official theme song "song of tencent" for tencent. i participated in many singing competitions during my college years and was pretty good at it. if i didn't become a product manager in the internet industry, i would probably have become a singer. yuki singing in fact, that was one reason i launched liveme. i started out as a broadcaster and gained a lot of fans by singing and dancing. everyone has the opportunity to grow their channel. nobody knew i was the ceo of the company. once they found out, they said “i knew yuki before as a broadcaster.” now, i leave the broadcasting to the other talent. jh: it's great you started as a broadcaster. so you know firsthand how to showcase your singing and dancing talents. kudos to you! thank you so much for this interview yuki. yh: you're very welcome. i am happy to chat with you. additional resources on the samsung developers site the samsung developers site has many resources for developers looking to build for and integrate with samsung devices and services. stay in touch with the latest news by creating a free account and subscribing to our monthly newsletter. visit the marketing resources page for information on promoting and distributing your apps. finally, our developer forum is an excellent way to stay up-to-date on all things related to the galaxy ecosystem.
Jeanne Hsu
Learn Developers Podcast
docsports course so let's say i'm watching a sports game like, oh man, i want to hear more about that player or i don't know i'm watching a football game and they call clipping and maybe i'm new to football, and they're like, what's clipping? wouldn't it be cool? if i could ask the tv? hey, watching the warriors on tv? hey, tell me how many points for game is stephen curry or who's stephen curry it is me overlays some information about stefan curry there and i can go back to watching the game or a football example hey, what's clipping and show me what's clipping is and i could better understand the game i think that's incredibly powerful to bring kind of interactivity, to tv a in and kind of empower what i see this kind of younger generation seems to want when they have their, their phones with the tv and quite frankly, i will often say we have we have some smart speakers next our tv and we'll pause and ask it a question so we want it to, yes, build that right in the tv, build it into where it just shows up and then goes away if you gave permission, you know, and i think there's some privacy implications to this, but about what you are watching on the tv to the voices, and then it could be really incredibly contextually aware and give you a really amazing information so i'm really excited about the devices that are that are coming out for samsung, and that's a differentiator the second big differentiator is really related to those devices all those devices have screens so if you look at the voice market today, and you look at let's talk about because they're obviously our competitors, alexa 85 to 90% of their devices are screaming just a smart speaker okay, on the google side, there's a lot of them, they do have on the phone, a lot of uses on their smart speakers that are in the home so most of what's being built is voice only with samsung devices, because all those devices i talked about, and it's fair to say in the future, most samsung devices will have a screen you need to build not only for a voice experience, but also a screen experience, that kind of multi-modality, which i think opens up a ton of opportunities and quite frankly, in some cases, some challenges around multi-modality and building that but it's a new frontier and a lot of ways to build truly multimodal experiences, where you can interact with voice and screen and think about how they interplay with each other tony morelan 18 49 so i hadn't heard of that term before so multi-modality that is where you have voice and screen at the same time on the same device roger kibbe 18 59 yeah, actually, i really refers to kind of you actually are using it today when you use the mouse and the keyboard so to put a different input mechanism, i say into that is multimodal, you know, i was talking about swiping and typing as the two prompt dominant modalities right now voice being a third one, i will tell you it's pretty interesting if you look at kind of the rise of those modalities we went from kind of keyboard and then about 10 years later, the mouse arose in the gui and then that and then about 10 years later, ah, smartphones with touchscreens were introduced there so swiping became and tapping became without, well guess what? smartphones of screens are just a little over 10 years old so by that 10-year cycle, it's about time for another modality to kind of arise sure and voice definitely looks like a modality it does not replace typing and swiping what it does is it augments, there's things where voice is the very best way to interact with technology there’re things we're typing in the very best way to interact with technology, there's things we're swiping in your smartphone, the very best way to interact with technology, it opens up a different way of interacting with technology and kind of powers us to do more with our tech tony morelan 20 21 so then, let me ask you, where do you see voice going, you know, in the next year, and then even beyond that, you know, for talking five to 10 years give me give me your thoughts, your ideas of where we really could be taking voice roger kibbe 20 33 yeah, so voice is in its infancy right now i like to say that we're at the point where we're kind of barking commands okay, at the voice assistance another one, which gives me a laugh, is we're in the fart app stage so that was the original apps on smartphones were all apps that party, right? yeah so we're kind of in that stage with voice right now really early what i think i'd like to see in the next year or two is a little beyond just parking command and actually get some things done i'm actually pretty bullish about voice commerce and if not actually going and buying things actually starting the buying process, and actually kind of that top of the funnel kind of marketing and there's a whole idea of paid marketing by listening to the radio or tv, it's a one way push toward me voice if i could have a conversation about a product or right, i want more information i don't kind of more of a pull marketing, i like to call it that and then i also, um, let me just jump in really quickly it sounds tony morelan 21 35 like what you're saying that maybe where this could go is like, if i'm actually listening to an ad on the radio, i could, in a sense, have a conversation and ask more questions about that product that's being told to me yeah, yeah, because that would be amazing roger kibbe 21 51 yeah so it's interesting because i'll mention so both spotify and pandora started you know, they have a free ad tier yes, and many are experimenting just in the last month or two in 2020, certainly, with this idea of, if they're on a device that has a speaker, and that and you're using their client, they'll play an ad and say, do you want to hear more? if you say, yes, get more information, you say, no, you don't right and that's really kind of infant kind of simple stuff works yeah, that's pretty exciting to me is, hey, you know, i, like all, many of us, you know, i kind of tune out the ads when i want to, but every once in a while, there's something i'm like, oh, that is really interesting i'd like to learn more about that or i'd like to call book market, of course so i think there's a huge opportunity there to say, hey, remind me of this or wow, that sounds really interesting i'd like to hear more and start a conversation there so that kind of interactive audio advertising i don't know when that's all going to happen but i'd sure like to see that happen in voice in the next few years i think you did ask about like longer term by 10 years out there tony morelan 23 03 yeah, definitely roger kibbe 23 04 yeah so i guess the industry likes to call this idea of ambient computing just computing around us that just does things for us and sometimes it's just ai that knows we need to get things done and kind of preemptively does it for us but voice is a big part of that i could just walk into my house and start talking to it, or in my car or in my office and talk and get things done i'm reminded of there's a funny scene in one of the star trek movies, i think it's one of the early ones when they go back in time and they go back to earth, in a running lead to a hospital and scotty sees a mouse and he picks it up, he starts talking to the mouse and of course, he doesn't do it he kind of mumbles under his breath about, you know, how advanced they are you know, maybe we're going to get there where voice works well enough, where much of our interaction with tech is done through voice scores yeah, like i said, i think we'll see keyboards have been around forever, they'll probably still be here in 10 years, and miles on swiping and typing, i just think there's a bunch of things that if we think about it, we can do better with voice or voice is part to that multi-modality, part of that interaction with our technology so that's what i like to seek out five or 10 years be kind of a, not a novel thing, like it is now in a lot of ways but it just you expect yeah, tony morelan 24 26 and it's, you know, it's crazy to think, you know, it seems like smartphones have been around forever but it was not that long ago that truly the first smartphone was introduced to us and 10 years from now is not much and just think about the advancements that definitely voice will take over that time roger kibbe 24 42 yeah, absolutely absolutely you know, like truly understanding yep human voices really hard i can say something to you in 10 different ways can you understand i'm seeing the same thing? oh, yeah that's really hard for an ai to do that yeah part of the challenges we have right now voice is when you're developing a voice application need to be pretty deterministic about if a user says this this way, then this is what you do and here's some variations and how they say, because the ai gets better, you won't have to be so deterministic in your development they'll just say, when the user intends this is their intention right? thank you yes, something like that that's going to be huge, huge unlock for the industry but it is a really hard ai problem tony morelan 25 32 yeah, you know, actually some of the biggest laughs that we get in our house, so it's when we listen to my wife try and talk to one of those voice automated systems that you see on phone systems when you're asking a question trying to be transferred to a different department and the phone system doesn't understand what my wife says she doesn't say it any differently she just says it more aggressively she gets mad or she gets angrier, but she's still saying the same terms and it's still sending her to the wrong department and you know, myself, the kids, we all are just laughing as she just gets have tried to deal with this really, you know, low level ai system roger kibbe 26 05 yeah, you know, this industry calls us ivr so they mostly been around for a long time and you know that the driver there was cost reduction right so it's expensive for a csr to answer phones cause reduction we all understand it, but sometimes doesn't put people first and i think you saw that with ivr it's funny when you were mentioning your wife getting frustrated and i likewise, um, you know, i will say hitting 0000 in an ivr often kicks you out of it but uh um, there's even websites that actually tell you how to if you're stuck in ivr hell, like this is how you say or this is the buttons you press to get out of that which is pretty funny but that you caught up in something i think is pretty interesting we can all feel as humans emotions in our voice, happiness, sadness, excited, bored that the there is a lot of research being done around voice assistance, understanding kind of the emotion in there because just hearing a voice we as humans hear obviously the words we also understand the emotion they're subtle cues and how we say things obviously, they're face to face there's also a body language one of the challenges and then ai i talked about, is it just understand it's saying, here's the words, what are those words mean? if i could understand the emotion of the user, that could be another input into my understanding, or if you're pissed and angry, and you're talking to an ai voice assistant, maybe you don't want it to be happy, full of personality and cracking jokes you want it to be direct and to the point and the other hand if you're having fun, maybe the personality of the voice assistant the personas industries likes to call it is more fun and crack some jokes in this kind of friendly i think there's a big unlock for voices systems to understand kind of the emotional cues that we as humans are giving with the tone and how we say things sure tony morelan 28 17 so let's talk a little bit about discoverability oh, you know, i can only imagine if there's a lot of third-party apps out there what's bixby doing to help make discoverability? a little easier? roger kibbe 28 27 yeah, there are a lot of third-party applications for all the voice assistance and part of the challenge is, you have to use the name so if i use if i call my voice app would say voice, the podcast helper okay, if i want to use the podcast helper, i have to say something like, ask podcast helper to start or ask podcast helper to play my favorite podcast the problem there is that ask podcast helper, i have to remember that phrase and i have to remember that term for the name of application the problem with discoverability is people don't remember that and so they don't use it and so if i just say, tell my voices to play my favorite podcasts, it's going to use whatever built in functionality it has to play podcasts as an example, and not podcasts helper, and not podcast helper on the other hand, podcast helper may be a better experience sure i, as a user, feel that podcast helper is my favorite way to listen to podcasts so what we did with big suzy, introduced late last year, somebody called natural language categories, and it's really to address that and the whole idea is, is these categories are way categories of interactions so like playing a podcast, podcast is one of our categories i'll give you another example and give you an actual real-world example weather is one of our categories so if i ask bixby what's the weather like? whatsoever like today, what's the weather like next week? what's the weather like? he will answer that in the built-in weather capsule i answered that, but i actually in my big city, so there is a weather capsule called big sky that i really like goes into more detail it's kind of for weather geeks, and i like weather and so in bixby once i enable big sky what i can do, because it's part of the natural light, the weather natural language category, i as an end user can go and say, i want this to be the default so the next time i say, hi bixby, what's the weather, big sky answers, built in weather functionality so what lets you do is choose and personalize your voices system the closest thing i mean, look, look at android phones look at samsung phones if you install two different map apps on an android phone, the first time you go to launch a map, it says hey, you have map app, a or have that be which one you want to use? and do you want to make one-year default? well, bixby has really exactly the same thing but for voice so what's the weather? like if i've enabled two of them and say, hey, you have weather capsule a, or you have big sky? which one would you like to use? would you like to make one the default? so i said, hey, use big sky and make it the default and from then on big sky answers that i can always go into settings and change that or i can always go back to that old kind of invocation name and say, ask weather app pay for the weather and it'll override, right because then i'm specifically addressing the name of a capsule, and that will answer so we've had this in about 20 different categories we keep on building these and thinking about it we think it's a big unlock to not only developers kind of solving this discoverability problem, but to my mind, even more importantly, as a consumer i said, i like big sky over the in weather app, but everybody has their own preferences there so let the consumer choose what they want their experience to be sure their favorite provider for x, y, or z, and really personalize the experience to the consumer so suddenly, it may come across in how i'm describing it, but we're definitely super excited about because he thinks there's such amazing possibilities there tony morelan 32 21 yeah, no, that sounds that sounds great so let's talk about getting started if developers or designers want to think about getting into voice, what advice would you give them? yeah, so a couple roger kibbe 32 30 things come to mind the first is when you're thinking about what you want to build is voice the best interface for it right so, you know, obviously, i'm a fan of voice i think it's amazing i also think there's areas where typing on a keyboard, or swiping on a screen or better interfaces, right for what you're trying to do so you need to think about if it's easy are faster or better to do it swiping or typing i probably shy away from it okay on the other hand, if it's hard or difficult, i always like to think about things where i'm like, wow, i got to go through 12 different menus to go do this wow voice might be really amazing there so if you're going to replace some functionality, think about stuff that were voices a better interface or where voice is just brand new, it would not work well without voice being the kind of the modality with which you interact with that technology so that's number one number two, i'd say is follow your passion okay, you know, the very best apps, pc, a phone or for voice are typically where the developer had some passion about it so it really comes through so if you're passionate about cooking, hmm, maybe there's something cooking voice experience you can build if you're passionate about exercise maybe there's an exercise voice experience you can build so i say, follow your passions, because you're going to build something that passion will come through to people using your app and you know what? it's going to be a heck of a lot more fun to build yeah if it's something that follows your passions, you want to build something that you use right, exactly this is fun i'd use it this is so cool i want to share it with the world tony morelan 34 28 yeah, yeah, i think that's a lot of great entrepreneurs get started as they're doing something that they want, that they're excited about and then they worry about, you know, the money in the marketing later but yeah, completely agree with you so, in doing a little research for this interview, i, i discovered i learned that you actually host your own podcast tell me a little bit about the bixby developers chat podcast that you host roger kibbe 34 56 yeah, yeah so just started that in january this year, you know how to get started, i went and told my boss and said, i want to start a podcast he said, go for it i don't know what that means i mean, he knew what it meant but it was kind of like, go for it let's figure it out and see how it works and really the genesis is, you know, every time i go to a voice conference, i have these kinds of long in-depth kind of conversations with people around hey, what are you building with voice? what's your thinking about it? where can you go in the future? and i really wanted to share some of those conversations with the world you know, i'm passionate about voice and these great conversations with it to my earlier point about what you're passionate about, go share it, so wanted to go share it with the world and so i think we're done we've done 11 podcasts right now we do one every two weeks on breeding, typically people in the voice industry in when we talk about what they're doing, what they've built what they think the future will look like on these our general conversations we definitely talk about bixby somewhat, but i really the whole idea was a little bit kind of a halo effect is hey, people who are interested in voice would go listen to this podcast and yeah, absolutely we want them to go listen and go, hey, i got to go check out that bixby and go try it out or develop something on it i like what those guys are doing yeah but the podcast yep, wide ranging i've talked to voice designers, i talked to some podcasters i've talked to developers and i continue to think of who would be an interesting guest to talk about it it's a lot of fun um, i continue enjoy it listenership seems to be growing pretty well so i don't know for one podcaster to another yeah, i think podcasting is a lot of fun tony morelan 36 48 yeah, definitely so for our podcasting fans how can they find your podcast? where are you guys hosted? what's it called? roger kibbe 36 54 yeah, great question bixby developers chat so any of your major podcast players, if you start searching for bixby, your bixby developers that'll come across we're also built in the bixby capsule so if you enable it you can say hi bixby, play bixby developers chat and then we're online if you just search for bixby developers chat, and you can see it and please listen, and then let me know what you like your what you'd like to see in the future i think a lot of the value of podcasting is listening to your audience and they'll say, i love this i'd like more of this, less of this love to hear about it tony morelan 37 31 wonderful so you've been around voice for a long time in fact, you know, not just with your podcast, but prior to that with all of your work with voice i'm sure you've got a lot of experiences around voice so tell me some of your favorite experiences and why roger kibbe 37 43 yeah, i'm going to say maybe my favorite capsule and bixby is something built in it's the yelp capsule and why i really like that is i talked earlier about i said, grace is a great way to interface in many ways, but not always so voice is a really great input modality so if i wanted to find a chinese restaurant in san francisco, that's open past 10pm on saturday nights that's a pretty easy you, you can understand exactly what i'm saying sure, um, there's a lot of information than that now think about that if i was to search using a typical web interface, right, there's a lot of clicking and typing and things like that and drilling down i need to do there yeah, but if i just ask the bixby oh, capsule, something like that, it could parse all that input, and then show me the results so it's great for input modality on the other hand, i get a list of restaurants and a list of restaurants via voice may be kind of overwhelming so that's a great place where the screen etc screen, this list here and then i kind of go back to touch when i swipe through those and touch and find more information why i like that is it's a great example of multi-modality and kind of using the mix the modalities together so the yelp capsule and bixby the other thing i'll say one of my favorite things to do on voice is, or just generally is i love trivia there’re some pretty fun voice trivia experiences one i really like on a very popular question of the day it's actually quite simple but really well done so boom, start question of the day aspects be hi bixby star question of the day, it gives you one question, multiple choice answers if you get the answer right, you get a bonus question and you can ask that what's really well done in that is the content is really well done so the questions are great, the content is great i'm going to say our content is king invoice and that's a great example it's incredibly simple what they built but incredibly great because the content so great, there's experience that isn't on bixby i'd love to see come to bixby what's that? it's a trivia game called feel the pressure feel the pressure which is on alexa yeah and you've done great content and really great sound effects the sound effects in that game made me want to play that game more and i love the thinking of what set sound effects and the impact upon your kind of psyche are so i love that game but yeah, those are two examples of things that i think are done really, really well with voice tony morelan 40 22 excellent, excellent laughter definitely check those out so if people want to learn more about bixby or even you as an evangelist, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? roger kibbe 40 29 yeah so for bixby so www bixbydevelopers com that is our website and by the way, that is where you can go i mean, today, you can start developing for bixby so you download the bixby developer studio or id, you can do all your development there's even a simulator in there so if you don't yet have a samsung device, you can go and build that simulator and just from a phone to watch the tv and smart appliance so you can build all that so that's www bixbydevelopers com kind of your home hub for everything big sweet the other things i'd say follow us on social we try to be pretty active on twitter so at bixby developers can also find us at facebook bixby developers search for bixby developers on social myself i am definitely pretty active on twitter at roger kibbe i love to talk about voice what people are doing, what's happening, learn about new areas that people are exploring so let's connect and continue the conversation on twitter tony morelan 41 37 excellent, excellent so let me ask you a few questions about bixby studio so that's the software that's used to create your capsules tell me a little bit about getting bixby studio is this free? does it cost? roger kibbe 41 49 yeah, hundred percent free you literally it's on the homepage of bixby developers calm for mac, windows and linux you download it it's a full-blown id with develop debug, there's a testing suite in there there's a simulator, like i said, so you can go from end to end testing and you all do it in that id, there's no it automatically syncs to the cloud that's actually kind of a big competitive advantage for us is our idx some of our competitors require you to do things and kind of sync to the cloud or use two different interfaces everything in bixby developer studio isn't one you can do it all there and do all your development there until you're ready to submit to the marketplace and then you start that within that, that studio as well so is there a process where developers have to be approved to publish their capsules? yeah, so much like what happens with the other voice assistants and happens in various mobile phone app stores there is a process so you submit your capsule with information for the marketplace and that is some information with the reviewers if necessary, and then there's a review process and they make sure you know, there's certain rules around, you know, appropriate content, or have you does that actually work particularly tricky with voice, right? people won't always phrase something the same way so you want to build over flexibility you create these things called hints, which are kind of phrases that will kick off your voice experience or capsule you want those to work so the reviewers check all that and make sure it all works and if that's all working, then we'll go live in the marketplace and if it doesn't, they'll give you some feedback one of the things we're particularly proud about is our developer kind of outreach in a lot of areas around there and if somebody doesn't pass, we try to give really useful feedback about hey, here's what you need to fix and we also get feedback around hey, this, maybe this went live, but this could be even better x, y or z because it's always in our interest to have really great capsules on the marketplace, so our developers spend our, our capsule review team spends a little more time reviewing things, because part of their job is to give some constructive feedback on sure you know, good degrade, i like to say, tony morelan 44 18 exactly so not just does it work or does it not, you know, pass or fail? you're actually giving more insight on how to improve this to get more success yeah, roger kibbe 44 25 absolutely tony morelan 44 26 wow that's great that's great all right so i am going to finish off with our last question here, our last topic, in doing a little research on viv labs and adam shire i came across this penn and teller video of him doing magic so and i've been found some other videos of adam doing magic, and i'm wondering, does magic work its way into viv labs i mean, a little bit about that roger kibbe 44 53 yeah, so absolutely this so adam is actually this pretty talented amateur magician he probably kickoff professional if you really put his mind to it so he loves to talk about magic and he seems to know everyone in the magic industry, he's incredibly well connected there um, so a couple things happen one, we have what we call friday magic so every friday afternoon, kind of near the end of the day, we have a magician come in use of magic, which is really kind of a cool way to start the weekend, you know? sure all right, you know, the work week is over, well laugh and be entertained with some magic and then we all we all go home that happens it's a lot of fun we definitely when we go to trade shows, we often bring magician in place, sometimes very entertaining results there but yeah, it's just one of these fun little side things that happens we had that friday, magic we talked about it we do it at trade shows and yeah, it makes me smile thinking about it tony morelan 45 59 yeah no, that's awesome that those things were great it was a it was a nice discovery well, hey, roger, absolutely appreciate you taking the time this has been a great interview i love getting to know more about you and also about bixby and voice so again, thank you very much for joining me on today's podcast roger kibbe 46 13 oh, my pleasure always love to talk to voice thanks so much tony morelan 46 17 so before i end this show, i want to do something a little fun with bixby bixby said she can rap but i want to know hey bixby, can you beatbox? roger kibbe 46 28 check this out outro 46 39 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
Learn Developers Podcast
docseason 1, episode 7 previous episode | episode index | next episode this is a transcript of one episode of the samsung developers podcast, hosted by and produced by tony morelan a listing of all podcast transcripts can be found here host tony morelan senior developer evangelist, samsung developers instagram - twitter - linkedin guest tomas joscak head designer, vienna studios in this episode of pow, i interview tomas joscak from vienna studios tomas is an amazing watch face designer, winning the 2019 best of galaxy store award for best indie watch face designer some of his designs? he's priced them in the hundreds dollars and people are buying them and, the software he uses to create the graphics? it's typically not used for designing watch faces you’ll want to listen in and learn not only how he designs high-end watch faces, but also his tips on marketing listen download this episode topics covered galaxy watch studio for tizen galaxy store coupons galaxy store badges banner promotions social media multi-language support best of galaxy store awards transcript note transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript tony morelan 00 02 hey, i'm tony morelan and this is pow! podcasts of wisdom from the samsung developer program, where we talk about the latest tech trends and give insight to all the opportunities available for developers looking to create for samsung on today's show i interview tomas joscak from vienna studios tomas is an amazing watch face designer, even won the 2019 best of galaxy store award for best indie watch face designer some of his designs, he's priced them in the hundreds of dollars, and people are buying them and the software he uses to create the graphics it's typically not used for designing watch faces you're going to be surprised enjoy so thomas, tell me who is thomas joscak tomas joscak 00 48 welcome, i just check interesting question oh, well, i will describe myself as somebody who has to learn as an example and cool class storage goals i said one goal a few years ago, i wanted to run a marathon so i prepare myself one year long and afterwards, i barely use the sport shoes so then i have other goals again tony morelan 01 18 so it sounds like maybe a short attention span that you're into something for a brief moment and then after that you move on to the next challenge tomas joscak 01 27 yes, definitely tony morelan 01 29 so tell me, how did you get your start in design, tomas joscak 01 32 design was always kind of a hobby of myself and even if i do have two phds in natural sciences, i always have to be somewhere in a field where nobody had been before so it is a research where i'm working on something new, or i'm producing something new in the field of design i love it tony morelan 02 00 so you're so your education is not design base you said you have two phds in natural sciences tomas joscak 02 05 yes, yes, i never studied design tony morelan 02 08 wow it's pretty amazing because i mean truthfully you are one of the top sellers on the galaxy store when it comes to watch faces and you know your quality is amazing so to hear that that is really coming out of as a hobby is pretty impressive tell me how did you first hear about the samsung galaxy watch tomas joscak 02 26 the exact moment i cannot remember right now however, i cannot forget the first day after my first launch phase having published on galaxy store and after i looked at the statistic and there have been more than 4000 downloads for this first model myself i was surprised shocked and i definitely knew that this might be something you how did you first hear about selling tony morelan 02 53 watch faces, you know in using our software galaxy watch designer at the time which is now a galaxy watch studio tomas joscak 03 00 okay, i was starting designing workspaces in a phasor creator studio before so i had some basics already learned before and so switching to galaxy stir was actually nothing new from the big difference was only the market, which seems to be extremely huge from my point of view tony morelan 03 26 so the market for the galaxy watch faces is much bigger than the market when you're producing them through facer? tomas joscak 03 32 yes, at least, this was my impression one year before tony morelan 03 36 okay, so how long have you been designing watch faces tomas joscak 03 39 right now it is three years i know it before i got my first model, which for my brand as a present to my 14-year celebration party and since then, my i'm just playing with watch faces tony morelan 03 53 or so is this what you do full time or do you have like a is this a side gig for you? this is, you know, what's your main focus? for income tomas joscak 04 02 at the moment is my full-time job and he has is creating nice income actually the best i ever had before even if i compare it with my company in vienna a few years ago tony morelan 04 15 in what was that company, tomas joscak 04 17 this was a pure research company at a field of renewable materials so completely different staff we had up to seven employees but however, from the revenue point of view now it's even bigger tony morelan 04 31 wow so you are based in austria but tell me where are you originally from? tomas joscak 04 36 so i was born in czechoslovakia, in slovakia in part where am actually right now as we are speaking, this podcast together, i was doing my parents and afterwards i got few opportunities in austria and germany and so i stayed in austria tony morelan 04 53 and is it just yourself or do you have employees tomas joscak 04 57 at the moment? my brother is strongly supporting me creating also some brands, domino's martinez, a luxury brand from our portfolio is coming from him so we are two full time now working at this project and sometimes we are cooperating with tony morelan 05 16 freelancers in this globally he'll reach out to freelancers from around the world to have you help with some of the design aspects tomas joscak 05 23 yes, we use platform where different designers are implemented or can make some projects corporation tony morelan 05 32 do you work out of your house? or do you actually have a place of business tomas joscak 05 36 i started as maybe also other designers in my kitchen so my first project so first watch faces have been created in a kitchen afterwards, i go to one room in my flat, and at the moment, we do have an office with my brother and as a next step, we would like to establish a full time or full-size photo studio tony morelan 06 02 okay, okay so i noticed that you have actually four different brands when you go to your website vienna studios com there's actually four different brands on their vienna studios masterpieces we are watching as well as dominus matthias, can you explain the different brands? tomas joscak 06 21 we have many different brands and actually the basic order first one has been vienna studios, which started everything else domino's martinez is luxury brand for my brother, as i mentioned before, is really creating original design i'm more focusing on the functionality and if you're asking about many brands, we are dividing different products into brands, according to price segment, basically tony morelan 06 52 yeah and let's talk a little bit about that because, you know, one thing that's unique with your brand is that you've got some very high-priced watch faces i mean, it's my understanding you have watch faces you know, you've been in the above $100 $200 tell me about those high-level price watch faces and why is it that you decided to offer them so expensive? tomas joscak 07 16 well, we started, i started to sell my watch faces at 199 $1 99 yes, dollar 99 for a piece however, this space is so competitive and it's really hard to be a good designer in this place that after i could feel skills and i was able to prepare high complicated watch faces, i decided to offer them for higher prices and actually, at the moment, you're correctly we are offering different special watch faces up to 400 was dollar per piece tony morelan 07 55 wow, that's amazing so another amazing aspect to you is that you actually won best of galaxy store award in 2019 can you tell me what the award was that you won and what that means to you? tomas joscak 08 08 i can remember well, this call will shout and charlotte called me and mentioned in a wonder indian designer 2019 only after nine months really to be full in the business, so i was completely shocked and even more impressed by the fact that we are to four bestsellers worldwide, so i would never expect it such a sexist after a few months tony morelan 08 39 that's amazing that's amazing and that's when i actually first met you is when you came out to the award show that i was hosting, to give you the award for best indie designer, so congratulations again so i want to talk a little bit about marketing and some of your tips and approaches for marketing tell me about your use of coupons tomas joscak 08 59 coupons is a big project for us it's excellent instrument however we use coupons very solely and actually, as a customer or a fan of vienna studios or dominus martinez, you can win a free coupon once a mount so this is the way how some people could get our expensive watch faces even for free tony morelan 09 28 okay, that's great that's great i also noticed that you when you go to your website, you actually are doing promotions where you're giving away actual watches so tell me a little bit how you're utilizing that as a promotional giveaway tomas joscak 09 42 yes, after a few months, as you mentioned before, we are pretty successful in the business and we try to give something back to nice community which is growing and we do have more than 3000 subscribers at our website and everybody who is subscribing there has a chance now to be not only free coupons, possibly, but also a smartwatch galaxy watch active two at the moment we are running this giveaway until end of this year, and we will think about something new for the next year tony morelan 10 19 excellent that's a great way to build your subscription community it's interesting, i can tell that you've got a lot of marketing experience so tell me a bit about how did you gain that marketing experience? is this something that you're just learning, you know, on the fly right now? or do you have a background a little bit with them with when it comes to marketing? tomas joscak 10 36 i think a good opportunity to learn this stuff was to have my own company so i am partly not only a designer, but also a kind of businessman so we are always forming activities and evaluating it and checking what is working for us, where we do see some revenue streams who are not and this elevation happened maybe on a daily or weekly basis so there's a lot of adjustment and trial and error actions we are using tony morelan 11 13 that's great it's great to be so active when you're, you know, figuring out your marketing approach, or using any social channels like instagram to promote your watch faces tomas joscak 11 23 we are in instagram right now we do have a couple of thousands of followers however, we are not sure if this will be our future instruments, at the moment as a best a marketing instrument for us is to collect email addresses through subscription of our website, which was also in a recommendation from around from samsung, who don't know us this feature could bring something even after maybe three months of my activity at galaxy store thank you okay thank you here's tony morelan 12 02 ron's got a lot of great advice ron's the one who he runs our forums so yeah, much appreciation to ron what about galaxy store badges? are you using any badges on your on your platform to help promote your watch faces? tomas joscak 12 17 yes, we are using standard general veggies for our different stores and those are placed actually in description of our watch faces as well as the instagram on or on our website tony morelan 12 33 excellent and i know that badges are a great way for you to go back and see the analytics you know the data on what's driving your sales so always happy to hear when designers are using the using badges what about banner promotions, have you had a chance to be featured on any of the banner promotions on the galaxy store? tomas joscak 12 50 yes, we are featured in the banner promotion is always a great and profitable issue for us or the banner can drive the revenue really high so the laughter banner promotion and we are happy that we are in tony morelan 13 11 sure and for any new designers out there that are listening in band promotions they run for is it two weeks? is that what it is on the on the galaxy store? tomas joscak 13 19 yes, yes, two-week periods tony morelan 13 21 and this is where you provide a graphic of a banner it's basically an advertisement that appears that helps drive users to your to your store and i know speaking from my experience of banner promotions are huge so great way to get your name out there and drive up your sales so one thing unique about your business is your quality of your photographs and your videos tell me a little bit about that do you have some experience? are you hiring an outside photographer to come in and do that or is this something that you're actually doing yourself? tomas joscak 13 55 and my short fuck us character i was happy to be a photographer as well for a few months before so i have pretty nice lenses and some good technique from that time so i just use the good quality stuff i have already and maybe the pictures are now good or we are we are happy able to quality however, i started just to be in the front of a window and making my first video with a smartphone only so all of this you can actually see it our youtube channels where we delete the old videos where the quality is so poor however, to have a visit video presentation seems to be really important at every watch face so 99% of all our watch faces do have a promo video tony morelan 14 48 okay, and it's you can always spot a vienna studios watch face video because of the white gloves that's something unique i always see these white gloves you know, holding the watch very elegantly are you? are those your hands inside the gloves? or do you have a professional model that you're bringing in to wear the white gloves tomas joscak 15 10 these are my hands the big advantage of making these videos was that before as i work from home, i prepared a small mini photo studio close to my computer so after which phase was ready, i just turn my position into this photo studio beside me and making a video really in a short time in the best possible quality and then i sell off the first two videos that at this magnificent because the watches are so small, have different displacements or some few nice places of my fingers have been there in a really big screen so i started to use goals and find now so i don't need to care about my nails quality anymore? tony morelan 16 01 got it so you don't have to hire a professional hand model that you don't have to worry about getting a little dirt under your fingernails because you just put on the nice fancy gloves love that tomas joscak 16 12 that's the point i think customers like it too tony morelan 16 15 sure, sure so how many watch faces have you published to date? tomas joscak 16 21 published maybe together it will be more than 700 wow, think about this number the three years? yes i think the 700 are solely on galaxy store so like count also my former watch faces it would be somewhere around 1000 and more watch faces tony morelan 16 40 i do understand though, that they're not all available that you actually utilize what you're calling a pop-up brand, which is where it's just for a limited time this watch faces available which kind of helps drive up you know the uniqueness behind the watch face which increases the value so tell me a little bit about your approach on offering a limited release, watch face tomas joscak 17 00 okay, we are playing with different business models and this was one of those we created a brand out there limited, which is a lot more available and to store it delimitation was only 30 days during this time we sold a nice amount of this ultra-limited brand so we'll prepare something for the future as well tony morelan 17 26 excellent no, that's it's a great a great approach again, showing off your marketing experience to help drive your sales so tell me where do you get your ideas from your watch faces tomas joscak 17 39 it's hard to say i'm just walking through the streets or driving and has the hardest time when i got some ideas under the shower tony morelan 17 51 so in the shower, tomas joscak 17 53 in my shower tony morelan 17 54 yeah, typically people are singing in the shower but you're actually designing watch faces in the shower tomas joscak 18 00 well i'm singing to, and then i find myself as i'm running to the corridors our white paper and putting ideas on it and then i can dry myself and doing other stuff tony morelan 18 14 that's good it's great yeah, you're already on the paper so is your approach into first sketch? or do you start designing your watch face straight on the computer? tomas joscak 18 23 yes, i'm sketching a lot i have much more ideas let's say it's time to make a real product out of it tony morelan 18 32 okay tell me a little bit about the tools that you're using so what software using like adobe photoshop adobe illustrator? what are you using to create and design your watch faces? tomas joscak 18 42 well 95% of all my vote faces are created in powerpoint tony morelan 18 51 powerpoint yes, the microsoft program for doing slideshows you're using that to create your watch faces? tomas joscak 19 01 yes, yes, definitely a lot of designers surprised whenever when i mentioned this, however i am is a really powerful instrument of powerpoint tony morelan 19 12 that's crazy i mean, i've used a lot of powerpoint, you know, in my years in fact, i often tell new designers, if they're looking to start a career in freelance graphic design, they really need to learn powerpoint, because people typically don't like using powerpoint, you know, when it comes to putting presentations together and if you can become, you know, a master of powerpoint, well, there's a lot of work out there because people just hate using powerpoint so to hear that you're using powerpoint to create the graphics on these luxury watch faces is just mind blowing i mean that that is absolutely amazing that you have figured out a way to use powerpoint at that level so that's excellent so tell me to date i think i read somewhere that you have over 1 million downloads, is that correct? tomas joscak 20 04 oh, well done 1 million, i think tony morelan 20 10 no, actually at the moment we have more than 5 million downloads 5 million wow that is just amazing so congrats on that tell me a little bit about leveraging free watch faces i know that a lot of designers they'll offer some of their watch faces for free but then the others are paid give me your idea on utilizing free watch faces to help raise your brand level tomas joscak 20 44 free workspaces are great however we are using it very rarely maybe there's one or two per brand and in our stores where we are offering luxury, luxury watch faces which we did $100 plus, we don't use any of those free watch faces so my recommendation would be it's a nice to have some, but not a lot tony morelan 21 11 got it? yeah and i agree with that because you want to really drive your sales so, you know, utilizing free watch faces to help raise brand awareness is excellent but don't over saturate the market with free watch faces so yeah, totally agree with you with that having been a designer now for watch faces for three years and millions of downloads i'm sure you've come across a few challenges so share a little bit about some of the challenges maybe that you've had to face tomas joscak 21 39 well, at the moment, i cannot remember any issue according to brands selling points or design, however, are big challenges right now, according to the coronavirus i spoke to other designers and currently we are the most hated at this crisis at the moment so our sales go to really down in everyone met this year and what we saw was that actually the elect luxury segment a lot of watch faces was actually stopped selling in this time really? tony morelan 22 17 yeah and that's not surprising considering all the you know, our world is going through right now that can understand where people are wanting to you know, watch where they're spending their money so hopefully that will change in a soon enough time so tell me are there any features you would like to see added to the galaxy store or to galaxy watch studio? tomas joscak 22 38 well, i'm personally very adaptive person so i, i am working, whatever is on the table, i try to squeeze the most possible out of it and i asked myself, what can i change to be successful at the market or with the two which is provided to us so basically, i could have some issues but i'm focusing on the on the market right now and on the on the revenues we are able to produce tony morelan 23 12 okay okay so tell me what is in the future for vienna studios do you have any, you know, any updates? what's your plan for the future? tomas joscak 23 23 we will definitely launch some new limited additions to the code successful pilot project we ran before and we have a plan to make a really, really very realistic digital watch face version of a real mechanical watch i cannot tell you any more to this project we are right now speaking to possible licensing partner, but these will be i think, very original offer at the galaxy store tony morelan 23 57 awesome super excited to see that when it actually becomes available so can you talk a little bit about multi language support and how you're utilizing that feature on the galaxy store to help market your watch faces globally tomas joscak 24 11 in the galaxy store, we are starting always with only english version of our watch faces however, if this one particular watch face is popular in other countries, so afterwards, we are translating all the descriptions and promo pictures into the language where the sales are growing tony morelan 24 31 okay, so just to just to help new designers understand, when you first publish a watch face, you publish it in english, that's the preferred language but seller office allows you to create alternative pages that you can put in the native language for different countries so that if a user from that country is viewing your seller office page, they'll see it in their native language it's great to see that you're united in the future, and it's a nice approach when you're just looking at you know, if you've got increased sales in those different regions that it's worthwhile to then translate it so who's doing the translation? tomas joscak 25 10 basically, we are using automatic translations, okay and for example, german language is familiar with me so i look at the languages where we are in and rest is automatic at the moment tony morelan 25 24 okay, nice so i also understand that you're doing something that you're calling an outlet store so tell me a little bit about your outlet store and how you're utilizing watch face watch faces on that tomas joscak 25 36 outlet store is a really another success story of vienna studios as we started promoting and selling, high priced looks at a watch faces there was a lot of people who would like to have one but i don't want to pay as much are cannot afford for these high prices so afterwards we have a certain amount of dyslexia watch faces, we decided to put the oldest one into a new creative outlet store with a huge discount so at the moment the people are able to buy alexa watch faces even for much lower prices in the outlet store tony morelan 26 23 that's a great approach it's the first that i've actually heard of someone using that approach to sell some of their older watch faces so very interesting i love that so i'm guessing you're familiar with some of the other top watch face designers out there on the galaxy star can you tell me you know, give me some names who are the designers that you that you are impressed with that you follow with the names that kind of jump out for you? tomas joscak 26 48 okay, there is a lot of great designers out there i can i could mention a few x9 studios, infinity watch faces however, the best one for myself and now level four for himself is matteo dini a few of his watch faces, and he could claim be like designing every pixel so i'm really impressed by work of matteo tony morelan 27 18 yeah, he is he's an amazing designer based out of italy you know, one of our top watch face designers i think a lot of people are impressed with what matteo dini has done some of the other names that you had mentioned x nine i actually am doing a live chat with john from x nine studio tomorrow so we're going to be doing a live chat and i'll be talking to him about theme designing and watch faces signing he's also another past winter with the galaxy store awards let's say you had mentioned infinity watch faces that's chris shomo he's an excellent designer he's actually the one who i first discovered when i learned about galaxy watch designer at the time, which is now galaxy watch studio so, you know when i first learned about chris and what he was doing with galaxy watch, and let's see, you mentioned your rarity oh urarity yeah, he's got just amazing designs and if you have a chance to look at his videos, the work that he does with his videos is just outstanding is definitely someone that can inspire a lot of people tomas joscak 28 25 yes, uratity tony morelan 28 27 yet another guy? yeah so bergen is great he's an excellent designer again, one of the designers that has been there for a while, who does some very nice realistic watch faces so definitely some designers to go in and look for when you're looking to get inspired for creating watch faces so i have one more question for you when you're not designing watch faces what do you like to do for fun? tomas joscak 28 50 oh, fine and except designing watch faces, which is really relaxed for myself if i am looking for fans my buddy, i love to visiting sauna tony morelan 29 02 oh, asana yeah oh, nice that's a good time to relax good time to relax now, i also heard that you are the father of twin four-year olds is that correct? yes, correct good i'm sure you're looking for a lot of time to relax i can only anticipate that that would be a little crazy at times tomas joscak 29 23 now, and they have been my twins have been at the beginning of my business, actually, because i couldn't work only during day slept so we started to get actually tony morelan 29 33 oh, nice nice nice wonderful okay, tomas i absolutely appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me and record this podcast, tons of fun lots of great inspiration so keep up the great work and i'm looking forward to seeing what vienna studios puts out in the near future so thanks tomas joscak 29 48 thank you thanks outro 29 50 looking to start creating for samsung? download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
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docsports which is isn't easy all the time to motivate yourself but yeah, i'm going to click on that there’re two funny books, movies games tony morelan 32 29 well, hey, tan, thank you very much for being on the podcast absolutely appreciate you taking the time tan nguyen 32 35 thank you for having me, tony and thank you for all the opportunities you're giving to us it's really great to be part of your ecosystem and the relationship we have with you guys it's really amazing thank you very much closing 32 52 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung tony morelan 33 08 the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
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docsports and staying outside nice cover is a beautiful place it's on my short list of places to visit once the lockdown is removed, i will definitely be up there soon yeah, once tony morelan 01 07 they opened up the borders exactly so you are the program manager for the knox partner program morgan parker 01 14 so what exactly is knox so samsung knox is a security platform that's, that's really built into all samsung smartphones and other devices as well as wearables and tablets and what it does is really secures the device from you know, boot up, you know, and during runtime to ensure that the data is stored and secured in the most secure way there's also a suite of solutions built upon the knox platform, you know, enabling, you know businesses and other secure organizations to, you know, ensure the devices running and operating in a way that meets their needs, you know, the most secure needs as in government and financial and other really highly secure industries and as well, you know, we as the samsung knox partner program provide a bunch of different sdks and development tools to build on top of that knox platform as well so, you know, we extend that functionality to our partners to build, you know, kind of those next grade solutions and really, you know, provide tailored solutions to our customers as well tony morelan 02 13 excellent so what exactly morgan parker 02 14 do you do? hmm so we, we break down the program really into for different areas so we provide a bunch of resources that, you know, our developers and partners can come in and really discover and learn what we do as a program you know, what we offer is the samsung knox partner program and, you know, the different tools we offer to build upon samsung knox and the other technologies we provide, and then, you know, moving from that, you know, it's really the sdks and support and, and other development resources, so people can get started building and then really facilitating, you know, better go to market activities to, you know, get more exposure to these solutions and then also further from that, you know, the growth phase which is really building a deeper connection in relationship with samsung so, what i focus on is really providing more resources under each one of these kinds of four categories so right now, that's really been more focused on, you know, increasing, go to market resources and activities for our partners and really, you know, working to build out the benefits we provide to our partners and looking internally to see what else we can provide and extend to our partners from kind of each one of those segments as well so really focused on building out a really rich program for our partners that delivers a lot of real-world value tony morelan 03 29 yeah, that's great you know, my role as a developer evangelist for the samsung developer program, you know, kind of falls in line a bunch of what you're doing as far as trying to help a lot of developers with different tools so that they can be successful creating for samsung so i think a lot of our responsibilities kind of intertwine absolutely, morgan parker 03 47 yeah and as samsung as well, i think like we're so big, and i think it can be pretty easy for us to extend you know, some things that are kind of like small exposure things from our channels, but some of our partners are very you know, big opportunities so i think looking for more of these things where, you know, they're the channels there, and everything's ready and extending that further to our partners is, is a big win for us and our partners tony morelan 04 14 so i understand that that you actually had an opportunity to go work for a year in korea at our headquarters i did tell me a little bit about that and how exactly did you end up in this role at samsung? morgan parker 04 26 yeah, that was an interesting one so i've been at samsung now for almost six years and this was about after my fourth year so i was on a business trip actually in california and i got a phone call, you know, stepped out into the hall to take the phone call and it was my boss then at the time, who said morgan, i've got a job that i want you to go and do by the way, it's in korea, and also, i need to know right now so without being able to think of a reason, you know, not to go you know, i committed to it and essentially, it was two months later, and i wasn't real you know, fantastic experience, i think it was really good as probably the first time i felt truly out of my element and maybe probably the first time i felt truly stupid in a while where, you know, you look around, you can't read anything and, and it's, you know, you can get yourself pretty lost but overall really great experience, i think learning how the company operates from, you know, an hq level in korea, and working with a lot of really, you know, talented, intelligent people was really fantastic and enabled me to, to kind of figure out how to make a bunch more things work when i'm back home and venture tony morelan 05 34 you know, i actually had an opportunity to spend a week in korea at hq and one of my fondest memories was getting on the subway there and not having any idea what my exit was because i just couldn't read the language and by the time i realized what my exit was, we had missed it and i looked at the map and saw that it truly is just a big circle the route oh, yeah, i thought you know what, what a great way see, seoul, korea so i just stayed on it for an hour and just got to see all the sights and to loop back around to my exit so morgan parker 06 08 oh, yeah, some of the infrastructure there is pretty fast yeah, exactly and still miss the food it can't get quite as tony morelan 06 13 good absolutely, yeah i love that in cycling too i'm a big cyclist so when i was there, i rented a bike and just took off for the day and just rode along the river it was absolutely beautiful country definitely so can we talk a little bit about the samsung enterprise alliance program? because i understand that was originally in place before the knox partner program, correct? yeah, it morgan parker 06 36 was so yeah, the samsung enterprise alliance program was i think it was up and running for, you know, about five or six years before we transitioned that into the notch partner program you know, the, the program was great i think the difference in why we wanted to transition is to really have another go to build out the program to you know, take all the great things that were in the samsung enterprise alliance program, roll them into this new program but also, you know, expand our focus not just on the enterprise, which, you know, obviously was in the name of that something enterprise alliance program, but look at other ways in which, you know, samsung knox, you know, it's really applicable to, to more than just, you know, the enterprise segment, i think, you know, smbs is a great play i think there's a lot of, you know, b2b to see examples that are really good you know, even looking at some, some b2c examples, potentially, and other ways that knox can be used in that in a great way and i think, you know, by changing the name, you know, and really trying to push the what we're doing with knox platform forward, and how are, you know, offering some of these development tools to our partners and developers, you know, we just get to really, you know, move ahead and build these things out to use these in a different way tony morelan 07 48 so what are some of the development tools that you're offering to partners? morgan parker 07 52 yeah, so we offer a few different developer tools and resources so the first being the samsung knox sdk is a collection of, you know, a few hundred unique samsung api's that really give our partners and developers the ability to have more granular control over the device mostly based in security, authentication, and device and app management so those are typically used by a lot of our utm and mdm partners you know, the next is knox so it's a way that our partners can have a little bit more control over the air firmware updates and how those are handled on the device there's also knock service plugin which enables our developers to really save you know, ongoing development costs and time by integrating with the knock service plugin to have more automatic updates amongst other benefits right so when there's a new knox feature released, the use of the knock service plugin helps the you know solution kind of update to the latest knox you know, version and solution that is available and the last one, knox mobile enrollment so this really helps our partners figure out how to enroll thousands have devices at once easier, and really controlling how those devices are, you know, enrolled and rolled out into an enterprise environment so that's a, you know, very, very high-level view, but encourage people to go to www developer samsungknox com to go dig deeper into those tools and see, you know, how they may fit in with, you know, what is desired for the partner developer solutions being created? tony morelan 09 21 that's great that's great, you know, because i know one of the biggest challenges when developers are creating their solutions are staying on top of the latest devices so you know, you put all this effort into making compatible with a specific device, but then when there's a new release or a new update, you've got to you know, start right back into it so exactly great to hear that you guys are making that a little easier that's morgan parker 09 40 that's the goal, right? yes tony morelan 09 43 yes, what would you say is the primary goal then of the knox partner program, morgan parker 09 47 really is to increase the success of our partners so what i really look to do is just find ways in which, you know, we can provide those resources, additional resources to our partners to help them make more sales you know, when our partners are successful, we're successful and so i think looking for ways to increase the successful partners is really what we're trying to do tony morelan 10 07 charge a fee to join the partner program nope, everything's totally free morgan parker 10 11 and there's a lot of really great, you know, free resources in there as well, including, you know, one of the biggest ones is really technical support as well so, you know, anyone who comes in and joins the program starts building, they can actually put in support tickets and get help when they're when they're building their app, so they don't get tony morelan 10 27 stuck what would be some of the other ways that the knox partner program is supporting partners? morgan parker 10 32 yes so i think, you know, while they're building, as i mentioned, the support is very important our documentation is fantastic you know, there's support forums that, you know, obviously, you get peer, you know, feedback and support through that, but also those are monitored by our support professionals as well so really, while you're building, you know, we do everything we can to help support you you know, moving from that, you know, when you're going to market the program is really designed that when you start to have some in market success, and you're actually serious about going in selling and creating a business with this, you know, we take notice so the, you know, we can see whose kind of activating licenses and who's making some sales so we have really good regional contacts and people that work with the program around the world so we work to, you know, once you start having some success really start working with you and this is where we really can build our relationship and start to promote you even further where, you know, once you get some notice, you know, we can promote you on our different websites there's a solution catalog on www samsungknox com as well as starting promoting solutions internally to our sales teams as well so, you know, once you kind of build some momentum, we work to help you, you know, increase that momentum and get more exposure and conquer, you know, make more sales is really the goal is tony morelan 11 43 this where the different tiers start to come into play, because i understand that you do offer i think it's four different tiers morgan parker 11 49 exactly yeah so everyone joins that, what would be a bronze tier, and really that is you get all the development resources and you can come in and start building and doing what you need to do to get your app off the ground, when you start making some sales and you know, started getting some notice, that's where, you know, we as the program would bump you up to what would be a silver tier partner, put you in contact with regional contacts and start you on that journey from there, you know, as you start to, you know, get in more and more sales, you know, we bumped you up to gold, and then platinum, those right now are pretty large partners, platinum partners right now are no blackberry and sony so at that level, you know, that is just more, you know, obviously, like joint pr and doing events together and that type of thing so yeah, we just really want to, you know, create more silver and then create more gold and hopefully create more platinum partners as well to really start growing our ecosystem so then what is it that you're doing for the small and medium sized businesses? yeah, that's why i think it's really the promotional, and connections with samsung that are really important so that's where the solution catalog comes in where, you know, we start to, you know, do things to jointly promote the solutions to you know, our base of customers and potential customers so i think, you know, doing that and having the relationship with samsung to pull you into more deals at that phase, i think is a really good and important, some really important benefits tony morelan 13 13 sure so giving a lot of visibility then exactly, morgan parker 13 16 yeah and that that comes back into, you know, with our global scale, i think this is one of the best ways that we can we can do this is, you know, providing more visibility from a very large customer base to our partner solutions tony morelan 13 30 so, tell me a little bit about the knox validated program morgan parker 13 33 yes, we just launched that this year so the nox validated program is for our partners and really what it does is it validates the implementation of a couple of our samsung knox products essentially so with that, you know, having no these rich implementations of samsung knox, we do a check to see how those are implemented make sure that you know both from a technical and security perspective, as well as some degree of you know, user friendliness, that these things are done in, you know, a really good way to then give our customers confidence that if they're buying these solutions that, you know, these things are implemented in kind of the best way possible so really designed to give our customers more confidence of these partner solutions, and to, you know, give our partners that, you know, go through this validation process, you know, even more promotional opportunities to promote those solutions further, as you know, kind of our chosen top, you know, validated solutions so, can you give some examples of these additional resources? yeah, absolutely so, first of all, it's really collecting all the existing sales and marketing resources that we do provide, whether that be you know, device imagery, and a lot of the latest device imagery, you know, then other sales and marketing collateral as well so, you know, our partners get to see you know, what we use and how we sell some of those solutions to our customers and get a better understanding of what those are and those can also be reused with, you know, their customers as well to show you know, what is the knox platform and if you're putting all this effort into integrating with the knowledge platform, you obviously would be good to have an understanding of what that is, and then convey that to your customer as well so those are a couple of, you know, kind of key areas of the sales and marketing resources and there's a bunch more in there as well and then really, as i mentioned before, really pushing ahead, and, you know, even doing the active promotion of those solutions, so, you know, getting in front of the obviously more customers, as well as our internal sales teams and other internal business units as well tony morelan 15 29 it sounds great now, you had mentioned the acronym utm in, for those who might not be aware of that, can you write exactly what are those acronyms? morgan parker 15 38 yeah, so i guess in the world of mobile device management, which is mdm, people can classify their solutions in a different way so ucm is unified endpoint management, enterprise mobility management cmm so they're all you know, basically a different way of managing mobile devices or endpoints and i think, you know, depending on guess who you are, you may classify your solution as a different way uvm could be the latest, as you know, endpoints can be more than just mobile devices it can be, you know, other type of smart devices or dongles or whatever so yeah, i think how you classify your solution and what you manage, you can name it something different tony morelan 16 18 so what is the next partner program done to drive awareness? morgan parker 16 22 yeah, i think the biggest one, and we'd work pretty hard to just get our solution catalog launched on www samsungknox com which is what i've mentioned before, so that is taking our silver and above partners, you know, getting what we call a solution brief or a solution profile off them and then putting together a full catalog of the solutions to promote to our customers and anyone coming to that website, essentially, you know, we also work hard to promote a lot of solutions more internally as well so we have some features coming later this month that will really help you know, promote a lot of these solutions more internally again, taking that solution brief solutions profile and working to support are no sales and technical sales teams so if they're working with a customer, and they identify a need that a partner solution they fit, we give them the catalog that they can go and search to find the partner solution that, you know they're looking for to fit that customer needs so, really working to promote that solution sale so, you know, i think a lot of times it's, you know, samsung knox and samsung devices plus partner solution or partner solutions, equals like that full solution that our customers are looking for tony morelan 17 32 you know, right now our society is going through a big transition, dealing with covid-19 can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges the that your team is facing? morgan parker 17 44 right, yeah, this is a, you know, as i mentioned, you know, trying to put together a lot of new features and things for our partners you know, we still have a lot of development on the program that that we're doing i'd actually say where we're probably more in still the growth phase, you know, coming out of something enterprises lines programs still, you know, pretty freshly transitioning before, you know, covid-19 happens so, you know, it's challenging with, you know, keeping our development timelines and still adding lots of new features quickly so, you know, we've had some, some delays with that, i think, you know, i'd like to see a lot of richer features in the program that we've had to wait a little bit more forward but yeah, i think, you know, just really keeping our heads down working more as a team globally to still get these features in the program as soon as possible excellent tony morelan 18 27 that's great to hear so, can you tell me what are some of the success areas for the next partner morgan parker 18 32 program? yeah, we, i mean, even as you know, the covid pieces, one example i mean, you know, having partners come in and use our development tools and new and innovative ways to, you know, solve for real world problems, whether it be social distancing, or, you know, contact tracing and that type of thing you know, there's some great uses of our tools for that, you know, other you know, large partners, you know, doing really great implementations and you know, again are the demand for the knowledge validated programming, how many partners we've had past that, so far has been really good to see as well and i think for what i look at successes, as, you know, people coming in and really using those development tools to make something great that, you know, has success in the real world so there's the opera world need for these things and that happens quite frequently so, you know, there's, there's lots of those successes and i would say, you know, a good way to see a lot of them is go to www samsungknox com and check out that solution catalog and see those solutions and see other success cases on there as well tony morelan 19 31 are there any companies or solutions that you can talk about that are built on knox? morgan parker 19 36 yeah, so, you know, i think, you know, starting with our platinum partners is blackberry and sony, you know, really full rich implementations of samsung knox really, you know, giving those customers using those solutions and samsung devices, extremely rich way to manage those devices and tailor them for you know, different business needs so i think starting with those guys is the probably the reason just implementations of a lot of them, you know, samsung knox sdks and those api's they use that's great tony morelan 20 08 any upcoming news? any webinars or events that you guys are participating in? morgan parker 20 13 yeah, i think i mean, you mentioned how covid slowed a lot of this stuff down so obviously, you know, not as many physical events this year but we do have lots of webinars that we run typically we do at least a monthly webinar, covering, you know, other more technical topics, or you know, how to work with samsung so those are actually posted on the blog at its developer, samsung knox comm so yeah, keep on checking there, and we have events going all the time online tony morelan 20 40 so what advice would you have for companies looking to morgan parker 20 43 join the next partner program, but really just come in and join? i think, you know, it's a very easy thing to come and join to sign your company up you know, come poke around and see, you know, what we have and you know, how we can start working together and really just don't get started you know as it's free and registration only takes probably about 1015 minutes yeah, just come and join and come see how we can work together tony morelan 21 09 so now are there any requirements that must be met in order for a company to be eligible to join the partner program? morgan parker 21 15 we just asked that the partners register with no corporate email address and their corporate details so other than that, there's no real strict requirements it's just we asked for it to be a company and we do a quick duns check for the you know, company registration that's actually it's nice to hear that you've tony morelan 21 33 made this so available to companies to get started to create opportunity morgan parker 21 37 absolutely yeah low barrier to entry is really the way that we wanted to make it so you know, people can again come in and check things out and see what we have to offer and tony morelan 21 47 just get started quickly and again, that website is www partner samsung knox com exactly morgan parker 21 53 and there's the you can go straight to the development tools that guide www developer samsung knox com as well so we've made that quicker for the more technical audience to really get started tony morelan 22 03 okay? are you guys active on any social channels like youtube or twitter? morgan parker 22 07 we do work with our, you know, developer teams as well so you're yourself and we actually have a little sub channel on your youtube channel, where we post all of our more technical webinars and everything they're so tony morelan 22 20 excellent, a great way for people to, you know, get online and check out some more of what you guys are doing so, absolutely, yeah happy to be a part of that yeah, it's really great to work together morgan parker 22 28 yeah, i think yeah, you know, one of the things that is really top of my mind is, you know, how we work together as one samsung, right, i think, you know, coming across to our audiences is not really fragmented, even though we're, you know, quite a large global organization it's really important so, you know, keeping working together with yourself and your team and other teams globally to make sure that, you know, we're working to, you know, come across as one unified front tony morelan 22 52 yeah and i think also one thing that we push how accessible we are exactly, you know, i mean, it's obvious that you guys are very accessible with the program being free and how easy it is to get started i know from our side that we're extremely accessible i mean, i'm constantly, you know, reaching out to people when they're posting questions, whether it's on youtube, or they're contacting me, you know, directly, whether it's linkedin or twitter or whatnot, that we are here to absolutely help so we've made it really easy for developers to get a hold of us whenever they have that, that need absolutely, morgan parker 23 21 yeah, yeah, i sit next to some of our support staff, and they're really great and, you know, they're, they're right on every ticket that we have yeah, i think, you know, i would echo that, that, you know, there's a real person behind, you know, every ticket and every issue and, you know, really working to solve these things as quick as possible tony morelan 23 37 definitely us too you know, we work as a team, i sit really close to some of our support people, and a lot of times it's a team solution that we're putting together so absolutely that's great it's really great so when you're not working, what is it that you do for fun up and up in vancouver? morgan parker 23 52 yeah, as i mentioned, i mean, vancouver's got a wealth of things to do so in the winter, it's really snowboarding and spending every moment i can in the mountains and yeah, just getting as much snow as i can in my life in the winter when there's a lot and then lucky enough as well once the snow starts to kind of melt, i start riding motorbikes so dirt bikes and street bikes and do a little bit of racing here and there so really, yes really full season of activities around and tony morelan 24 19 outdoors person and outdoors morgan parker 24 21 person exactly you like tony morelan 24 22 the wind blowing through morgan parker 24 24 yeah, exactly i mean, it feels good gone gone quick, sometimes tony morelan 24 28 sure excellent well, hey, morgan, absolutely appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me and talk about the next partner program so thanks very much appreciate it thank you outro 24 37 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out www developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
Learn Developers Podcast
docsports netflix animated series arcane working at riot games diversity and inclusion helpful links riot games website - riotgames com riot games linkedin - linkedin com/company/riot-games riot games twitter - twitter com/riotgames riot games facebook - facebook com/riotgames riot games instagram - instagram com/riotgames league of legends esports - lolesports com eric krause linkedin - linkedin com/in/erkrause samsung developers homepage - developer samsung com samsung developers newsletter - developer samsung com/newsletter samsung developers blog - developer samsung com/blog samsung developers news - developer samsung com/news samsung developers facebook - facebook com/samsungdev samsung developers instagram - instagram com/samsung_dev samsung developers twitter - twitter com/samsung_dev samsung developers youtube - youtube com/samsungdevelopers samsung developers linkedin - linkedin com/company/samsungdevelopers transcript note transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript tony morelan 00 01 hey, i'm tony morelan and this is the samsung developers podcast, where we chat with innovators using samsung technologies, award winning app developers and designers, as well as insiders working on the latest samsung tools welcome to season three, episode one on today's show, i'm joined by eric krause, global head of marketing for the league of legends group at riot games not only do we chat about the latest success around wild rift, their award-winning mobile game for the league of legends franchise, but also riot games unique process for game development, and how diversity and inclusion play an important part of riots culture internally and within the gaming and entertainment communities well, yeah, and all of the music you'll hear in today's episode, it's from the wild rift soundtrack enjoy hey, eric, i want to welcome you to the to the podcast eric krause 00 57 thank you for having me it's a pleasure tony morelan 01 00 who is eric krause? eric krause 01 04 good question my wife, i think is asking the same question i am german so by my accent, you might be like, where is he from? so i'm super passionate about gaming you know, we're really trying to be part of, you know, making people feel better to be a gamer all around the world but beyond that really love technology, talking about anything technology so that's why i'm super excited to be here talking about, you know, partnership with samsung, because samsung is known for technology, but also loved cars so i'm very stereotypical german that way, because i also really love football and i mean, real football, not the american football thing tony morelan 01 40 no, i you know, i appreciate that they did bring the mls to the us for all of the soccer fans here but yeah, i can only imagine you're probably a big fan of the european leagues eric krause 01 51 yes, i still wake up early in the morning and watch some of the games the good ones in europe still live? it's an addiction, maybe? i don't know but it's a good one tony morelan 02 02 so what is the what is your team? what team do you follow? eric krause 02 06 being german, i have to go with a german team so that's brucea, dortmund right now a second plays unfortunately right behind bayern munich but maybe this year, maybe we have a chance i'm cheering on i'm going to sit there with my jersey on when they play and i have a small figurine, that is like dressed up as a barista don't want a character and depending on how they play, that the finger is allowed to look into the living room? or if they badly have to turn around and then just stare the wall it's kind of the you don't you didn't do well so go into the tony morelan 02 37 so what is the current state? is he is he looking positive and into the into the future? is he in a timeout? eric krause 02 43 it just turned around? actually, because two matches ago, they last had a turnaround but the last one they actually won so it's allowed to look back into the living room yes tony morelan 02 54 nice so riot games, you are global head of marketing for league of legends tell me what exactly is that role? eric krause 03 01 yeah so in that role? no, i have the pleasure of overseeing all the amazing teams that do all the crazy and awesome marketing work across liga legends on pc, and wildrose, which is the old version of liga legends and we've kind of created this as a group, because it's kind of the core of of league of legends and that's how people perceive it and it's actually very similar in terms of what we're trying to promise to players, right in terms of, hey, if you play this type of game, this is what you will get out of this in the state ultra competition i had and that is kind of the whole purpose of that group to really defining you know, what does that competitive aspects of league of legends look like? what does it mean to, you know, build a platform ecosystem that's built around celebrating mastery? sure but also, through league of legends, a lot of people do get to know our characters, and our champions that they know and love so we're also taking care of that, right, making sure that, you know, as they, as our fans, you know, have their champions that they really cheer on to give them as much love as possible for the champion that they love tony morelan 04 11 so, yeah, yeah, no, i know, it's a huge, huge community how long have you been in that role at riot games? eric krause 04 18 fairly recently, actually, um, you know, i was, i was given that role last summer and before that, i was actually leading up the marketing team that launched all draft, so okay, from that roll into this new role that started to exist as of last summer got it tony morelan 04 38 and you've been at riot games for how long? for eric krause 04 41 over five years, and it's so weird, because i always think of myself as somebody fairly new to riot sure but when i now meet new rioters, they're like, oh, we've been there for five years you're a veteran, and then myself, like, don't say that to me that's not true i feel like i just joined yesterday but yeah, it's over five years tony morelan 05 02 wow, no, but you are originally from germany so there has to be some sort of journey that's led you from your home country of germany, to i understand you now live in southern california eric krause 05 12 yeah, right now i do live in sunny los angeles and the passion for gaming eventually, you know, moved me over here because at the beginning, during college, i started to work for an agency that was working with ea back at the time and through that i became a community manager being coming and kind of the phase and local go to person for various games and franchises that ea had in central europe and eventually, through that work, ea was like, well, can't you just move over to the west coast, because you're working with all these teams already and you're, you're, you're flying over so many times, sure, just move, just come over and i did that and that was more than 10 years ago, at this point, our move to los angeles, and from there kept working for a couple more years, at ea working on things like mass effect, command and conquer and others, and moved on actually to a korean company, also in gaming, which gave me a new side of learning about like free to play and life service operations, which obviously is a big part now of gaming and then eventually, that led me to working at riot which, as we said, it's more than five years ago, which crazy to say, tony morelan 06 32 wow, now riot got their start back in the in the 2000s correct? eric krause 06 36 2006 yeah, as a tiny, tiny startup just with a with an idea and, and now it's like, it's so obvious, but back then it wasn't tony morelan 06 47 yeah, cuz i know, back in the early 2000s, you know, when gaming really started, you know, becoming extremely popular gamers were kind of looked upon as this is just like this, this little hobby, and, you know, go spend your free time but i mean, with esports, it is just blown up over the years eric krause 07 05 yeah, totally and i can proudly say that we're part of that i have because we believe that and we actually spend ridiculous amounts of effort to really promote and build up the professional esports circuit around liga legends and when we did that originally, which is also now more 10 years ago, people laughed up on us i had they're like, what is this? like? this is not a sport, right? like, it's just four people in the basement i had like, doing these things and now we look at it and you're like, yeah, if we look at our world championship i had has more viewers than most sporting events that americans know and love, like nba finals, we have more viewers in the nba finals, right? that's so easy it has come a long, long way since then tony morelan 07 51 so league of legends, they got their start around 2009 set, right, the first eric krause 07 57 version of the game came out 2009 because over the years, it has changed drastically for the better if you look at clips of the original league legends in 2009, it's pretty rough but again, it was 2009 you know, that's the beauty of life services, and also being really player focused, right, is that the game has come a long way not because you know, we necessarily had the most grandest vision for it but because once you put something out there, your players will tell you, well, we like this, we don't like that and we just kept listening and that's kind of our thing and we'll keep listening and evolve the game, you know, based on how our players really think, you know, what they believe is best tony morelan 08 40 league of legends has become a franchise and i know there's a whole bunch of games that have come out of that talk a bit about some of those individual league of legend games, eric krause 08 49 for talking about the games, but and how they've been talking about the ecosystem behind it i think it's important to understand why because most of the time, like yeah, just you know, making more games cool, you're making more money, right? that's, that's the traditional answer, if successful, if he just makes more of it for us, it's a little bit different because what motivates us really, is to create that ecosystem that allows people to express fandom very differently, okay, because right now, you know, as we all human beings, we all have different ways and how we play, right how we consume entertainment so we want it to be built something a large ecosystem that people can be really proud of, because it's not just forcing them to play one game to remain to be a fan of this thing that they might have started playing a 10 years ago but now they all these other different ways that depending on how their life changes, how they interest changes, how the new friends might play, different things are sure want to be entertainment and things we want to build them an ecosystem that it can be proud of and that's how we started to be like, okay, part of that is not only to make music and tv shows and what that's also making more games, right and through that lens, we actually announced a bunch of them doing a 10th year anniversary of league of legends, which was a big surprise for people and a good surprise and there, we announced a bunch of games ranging from like legends from terra, which is, you know, a card game that we made digital card game, then also tft team fight tactics, which is this auto bed law genre, which is a new upcoming one, which is really kind of chess meets, you know, game strategy put on top of it it's really, really weird one, but if you really lost strategy, like that, one is for you but we also announced brand new things through the lens of, you know, working with indie companies to really make games that are go really deep into very specific area that riot probably wouldn't make through our riot forged label and those have been received pretty phenomenal as well and last but not least, we also announced our first new ip, which is valorant, which we've launched now, as well, which is right now, first person, tactical shooter, tony morelan 11 06 it's really interesting so you've got this franchise, and you found all these different ways for different types of personalities to in to engage in the game so you know, from runeterra, being that that collective card game, it's similar to something like magic the gathering, but in a digital format and then what i'd love to hear about is how, you know, you're looking at the mobile space, creating a game to be played on mobile devices and that's where samson kind of comes into play with the game wild riff so i love seeing how you've taken this, this single game league of legends and turned it into a franchise to really expand the community and in the different ways that people can play and interact eric krause 11 43 part of it as we think about all these new games has been mobile, i'm actually pretty committed to mobile, because i'd wildwood is one that is built natively for mobile, which was one of the really big challenges for us but also, as we thought about some of our other games, like legends of runeterra, team fight tactics, they all have a mobile component of it, too so you can actually play it on a mobile phone as well because that's where, right if you think about trying to give players what they want, if you think about even today, right, the way people consume entertainment, which i include gaming in, has changed drastically in the earlier days, people have really made dedicated time for it, either, like, i'm going to be on a pc, thursday night for four hours, you know, i'm going to meet up with all my friends, you know, online, and then we'll just play or spend time on a couch or, you know, really make a block available, where i can just watch movies and whatnot but now, it really changed right now, you know that the trend that we're seeing that we're trying to lean into is, you know, people just whenever live gives them a small sliver of time yeah, in that moment, no matter what the situation is, people want to have the highest quality form of entertainment available to them no matter if it's on pc, tablet, tv, mobile phone, right, truly, wherever it is and that change pushes us as game developers to adopt, and this case to really embrace mobile ai, because it's not just about that trend it's also for a lot of people mobile is kind of the first and maybe only gaming platform they ever own yeah, so for us, it's also so important because they're all these hundreds of millions of people all around the world, that define who they are, as a gamer through the lens of a mobile phone and we want to be there because we want to show them what it could look like to be a gamer through the lens of riot, because we really want to make sure that they get the best possible experience and that's why we've started to embrace mobile and this took as a really long time, arguably too long because it's paired with other beliefs that we have, that we really want to deliver the highest quality form of entertainment and mobile took us a while to get there at the beginning, it was like the technology wasn't really there for us to have the capabilities to create these deep and engaging experiences because we didn't just want to use rip and you know, put something on a phone that when people look at me like right, what you put on a phone has nothing to do with the game or the ip i know and love over here so where’s that game? like the gameplay that made that pc game so special? we wanted to make sure that when people pick it up, and they're like, hey, this is a league of legends game that the mechanics to the quality that they can be like proudly say yes, yeah, this is a league of legends game so it took us a little bit longer to get there but now it's definitely part of how we think about the entertainment world right that mobile is a big part and arguably more growing part compared to pc and console tony morelan 14 50 so last year, riot games won a best of galaxy store award best strategy game for league of legends wild rift, tell me what did it mean to win that award? eric krause 15 01 people can see it right now i'm still smiling just kidding about it, because it's so awesome to see i called validation i because you can say all day long, right? that, hey, we're trying to, you know, really build the best things possible on a device on a platform to make players proud but it's really hard sometimes to quantify that right, as hundreds and hundreds of people are working on this day in day out so when do you know that you're probably on the right track? and one part is, obviously, players will tell you if they're happy or not yeah, but the other one is also, you know, recognition by the industry and that's why this actually means so much to us, as a team that is working on the game because it is that signal, i would like, hey, you know, samsung galaxy said, you know, this is one of the best games of the year and that makes us proud and that's why we should not only share that with, obviously, our fans, to make sure that they're like, hey, you know, we won this thank you guys, all out there yeah, to make it ultimately happen because without players, we wouldn't do these things but there's also now a very important part of, you know, how we think about the game and trying to recruit people because it's also the thing i'd like, as we all recruit for talent, i have so many choices of course, using it like, hey, this is an award-winning team definitely helps riot as well as a company to get more super awesome talent and to make even better experiences down the road so it's a very important thing for us yeah, tony morelan 16 33 i know, i've done a lot of these interviews with past winners this is the first time that i've heard that a company actually uses that award is a way to entice and encourage, you know, talent to come their way so while griff is fairly new, when was it actually released, eric krause 16 50 radware was released or started to release in fall 2020 and as they started to, because what we did is we launched in multiple waves, we started in fall 2020 launching in southeast asia and slowly over the course of time, up to our more recent launch in china, we just did a wave by wave and start to expand the availability of wildlife globally tony morelan 17 17 what's the what's the reason behind that sort of rolling release? eric krause 17 21 it was more of a technical nature, trying to because you find the balance right between when is everything totally ready for a global launch? versus when we have something we believe in? how fast can we deliver player value? yeah so finding a balance, sometimes it's this inner pole between you because one side i really wanted, like, don't do it, don't do it other than that, go push it out, push it out, of course so we decided to do that way to really, you know, get more player feedback along the way earlier, but also still give them experience in the earliest stages of the rollout that we still believe then being a good experience for them tony morelan 17 59 got it so it's almost like doing a beta release for software? pretty much yes so you know, knowing that league of legends was extremely popular on pc, and then you decided to come up with this mobile version wild rift, tell me about what is the process for building a mobile version game? eric krause 18 16 it was a long one you know, we spent several years trying to figure it out, really and what it led to was rebuild everything because the first instinct, right, when you have something that is working on pc is all let's just see what we can port over right? and, sure, we tried, but it didn't feel right when we want to be on a platform, right? when we want to put a name on one of our games, we want to proudly say that this is the best we can do it it's that's the best possible experience you can have right? and but just porting it, that didn't feel right, because a pc game wasn't made for the different screen so we decided we need to rebuild everything, using a different engine, you know, rebuilding all the art assets because when we started that approach, that's when it started to really click in terms of making use of the capabilities that a phone has, and also making sure that it just feels right, because now the thing is with the touchscreen, right? you can almost feel your champions and i obviously say that in a crazy way but if you just think about right like now you drag like an ability of a champion really on the screen, you see exactly what the tell the champion reacts to it it's almost some degree more direct the interaction with your champion, so it needed to feel super crisp so we decided to rebuild everything but it also gave us the opportunity to touch up a few areas of the game that you know, as you can imagine, at that point, you know, the game being more than 10 years old on pc that didn't hold up, you know, as well over the course of time so we actually started to rebuild a bunch of things to even like in terms of what champions look like, visually, to get them kind of on par with a modern for 21st century, it was kind of an opportunity as well and for us tony morelan 20 11 yeah, no, you know, we are really proud and excited that you guys decided to bring your game over to the galaxy store tell me are there any unique aspects or optimizations to the to the game that fans download from galaxy store? eric krause 20 24 yes, i'm not going to voice with the technical details but at the end of it all, is we wanted to make sure that no matter if you have a high end, samsung phone, or if you have, you know, a more entry level one that the game really gets the most out of the phone is that you get the smoothest possible experience and that require actually really working with samsung, they were super open for him to really work with us and help on optimizing the engine, but also working with us on some new sdk functionality that really allowed to make sure that the fight between terminals, like how much heat is being generated on one end, but also, how much power do we really put into all the components like cpu gpu, that we always find the right balance, that no matter, you know, how heated the fight is that your phone doesn't overheat, yet still gives you the smoothest experience, and been working endlessly for a couple of years, you know, with everybody at samsung, and we believe, you know, we achieved what we wanted to achieve, which is really giving you the best possible game experience on a galaxy device tony morelan 21 37 yeah, and knowing that, you know, we have so many different form factors with our traditional phone, as well as the z fold, and the z flip, all of which can be used to play wildlife correct? eric krause 21 48 actually, in fact, i do play wild rifts on my phone tony morelan 21 52 that's great so tell me about this relationship with samsung how did that first start? eric krause 21 58 it's fun sorry, because you know, samsung and right, we're thinking very similarly, about the space and that is really, how can we provide the best possible entertainment experience on the go? i had that is true for samsung, right through their products but it's also true for riot with our games and software so through that those early conversations, we pretty quickly identify like, it's pretty obvious for us to work together on this site and from there, it was all history, i had started to partner and really figuring out the ways on, you know what that means for us as two companies collaborating with the sole purpose of giving gamers the best possible experience on a mobile device and that partnerships now ongoing for like, last two, three years tony morelan 22 47 yeah, that's one thing i do love, you know, working at samsung, they really do push that the partnership side of things i mean, i made myself totally available to the community when it comes to my areas of expertise at samsung and they've really pushed out with a lot of the people here so it's not just that, you know, we're a platform for you to deliver your content but we want to work with you to make the experience truthfully better for all those that are using our devices in your content so with wild ruth being such a new game, i'm sure it is extremely important and challenging to do that, that initial marketing, to promote your game so tell me about some of the tools and techniques that you guys are doing to help let the community know that hey, there is wild riff, and it's time for you to play eric krause 23 28 yeah, absolutely um, so in today's world, but when you think about it, you know, you have to really be where players are, you can't be as selective anymore as you might want it to be 1015 20 years ago, and that really is the guiding thing for us when we thought about, you know, marketing the game and you know, celebrating the launch of it and specifically being a mobile game what does it mean being where players are for us that was, you know, heavy emphasis on social media, on content creators, and just general video platforms, because that is the core circle of you know, how people on mobile phones consume content these days so that was a very big investment of ours, to really lean into that, you know, and work with the right parties but the other thing that's exciting is when you think about mobile is, you know, the capabilities that it brings that you weren't really able to do on a pc, even when it comes to marketing what i mean by that is like, guys, a great example is, you know, using ar and vr technology, you know, on a mobile phone, it's actually pretty straightforward so we played with a bunch actually made microsites for events and launch events we turned them into three dimensional things you can actually walk around in and up there we did 180-degree videos so as you watched it depending on you know, what you were looking you saw a different thing of the scenery and of the story being told that video, and all these fun things i did you can start doing and creatively unlock if you embrace mobile as a platform, not only what the game is app, but also how people consume content, right? and then the other aspect being a mobile game specifically as it sounds, it's mobile, right? it's on the go deck will have it everywhere, even real life so for us, it was also important component to figure out what, how can we promote it, where people are out there when they use a phone, right, so not just being on the phone, but in the actual real-world context so obviously, with the covid, 19 situation happening was a little more tricky for us to do so but we still were able to find, you know, arguably great and yet safe ways to do that in the real world like, for example, in southeast asia, in some markets is all about food, right? like people love food there, they'll go to street vendors, you know, just grab something and even make it a social hangout space, i will just meet around a food cart sure, we really leaned into that aspect in southeast asia and actually created a campaign that celebrated some of the fruit that you find in the game on the map, brought it to real life actually created something that looked like it but felt very specifically, i guess, different, sure, and created an activation around it and we're really proud of that one because again, not only were we able to pull off, despite all the constraints around us but it also was more recently recognized, winning a grand clio, for one of the best marketing experiences over the last couple tony morelan 26 26 of years wow, that's exciting and for those that don't know, the clio awards are basically the oscars when it comes to marketing and design so and i understand you also did something pretty creative with youtube, as far as an event, so yes, eric krause 26 41 we also did something, youtube, which we also want to clear for and that was really the concept of while people are waiting to play the game, because we're doing it in rollout stages, like one wave after the other what can we give people in a cool interactive form, to kind of experience the game without playing it and wanting to come to mind is as part of the game key objective, and the game is bare nasher, which is this massive, giant warm thingy, that that you can slain as a team and we made a game on youtube, about that experience but it was kind of an all versus one kind of experience we're all players watching the stream had to come together, and actually work together to in this case, slay and bear nowshera through various inputs that they could give through chat and whatever the chat inputs were that the community decided something would happen on the screen, in terms of fighting him with a specific attack called different champions and for help heal yourself and things like that so it's kind of a massive, interactive game, that that people play it and it was really cool to kind of again, test the waters with what's possible, with all the platforms out there tony morelan 27 59 wow, what a great and super creative way to truthfully build a community to, you know, act as one so all total to date, how many downloads? how many users would you say i've played while drift? eric krause 28 11 it's hard to say, but it's definitely high up there to 10s of millions but i think the best number that describes you know, when we think about league of legends, you know how big it is, is a number we just recently announced and that was for the end of last year, we had 180 million people in a given month, play, you know, a league of legends game wow and the majority of that is driven by wild drift actually, i have because, you know, people were waiting for having finally a mobile part of this ecosystem available to them and that that is really, you know, the promise that we delivered upon, giving them something that they could proudly call legal legends is now you know, available on a mobile phone, because it is league of legends, it is the core game and people pay that back to us by coming, downloading and playing the game and we're really proud that we were able to expand the ecosystem for our players the way we did tony morelan 29 15 that's amazing and that is that is huge, especially for a franchise that just shows the longevity of the of the brand, after all these years to still be creating new experiences for the community and seeing the community grow that big eric krause 29 28 it's the proof point that the product lifecycle curves that they teach people during the mba is that they can be defied if you just really have a customer focus, tony morelan 29 38 but how do you guys come up with your ideas for games? the beauty eric krause 29 41 of making video games is really, if you can dream it up, you can make it sure and so that really the creativity in your mind is kind of the limiting factor here and because of that inspiration can truly come from anywhere for making a game and finding like what what's fun about different experience, being it reading a book, you know, watching just our fans talk on youtube about something, right, playing a board game, or just generally just sitting there in a rocking chair and you know, thinking about, like, what could be better in the world, you know, truly, ideas can come from anywhere and that's the exciting thing about gaming as a medium, because it's like creating these things that are interactive, for people to then explore themselves and be surprised and delighted by and because of that, you know, an all push for finding new ways to give players what they would want and that is that more robust ecosystem, we now have invested into a pretty robust pipeline of r&d games so that visit different genres, to really make sure that one day we can give as many players as possible, kind of the ecosystem that they deserve tony morelan 30 54 i love what you said about if you can dream it, you can make it a game and that's true, because i remember the first time i picked up cards against humanity, absolutely love playing the game and as soon as i was done at a notepad, i'm like, okay, how can i make my version of cards against humanity, it just was so simple but so, so much fun and that was true you know, for many years, i've often come up with ideas for, you know, game boards, or collectible, you know, items even going so far to pitch some of these ideas none of them worked out i ended up deciding to go into tech but yeah, i love what you said that if you can dream it, you can make it eric krause 31 33 yeah and that's the thing i had, it's like it all, it doesn't have to always work out, right? even was trying to see if there's something there with your idea as crazy that might be sure there's a high chance it will not work out that's the same for us in our r&d pipeline and just because we're starting to invest into a game, it doesn't mean that we're going to make it ibm has a high chance that as we go down that rabbit hole, and we're like, yeah, we weren't really able to find the fun or like, yeah, i don't really know how to make that game it just possibility i so there are a bunch of things that are being canceled internally or put on a shelf but the things that you learn from it, probably inspire something else and that's something else might become the next big thing it might change humanity forever beyond yeah because a lot of the things that we now take for granted in all worlds, sometimes were accidents, i will people will actually try to invent or find a different solution to different problem and then as a side product, they invented x, right? yes and that is what's always keep trying tony morelan 32 41 so when it comes to like developing a game and pitching that, that that concept i can imagine it must be a little bit like actually pitching a movie i mean, with storyboards, storylines, characters, i mean, games have become so involved that that's how i think it would be but tell me, is it? is it anything like, you know, pitching an idea for a movie? eric krause 33 01 it's, tony, it's definitely a process because a lot of people think about making games, just pay a bunch of people get together and just make a thing, and then they release it right and sure, that could be a way but probably will not give anybody the results they're looking for and players probably would look at me like, what is the scam? is it's not fun, it doesn't feel right so that's why it's really going through that process of multiple stages that kind of really stack on top of each other in a sequential, right, because we want to make sure that first, the core idea of what makes that game fun, potentially, is really thought out i've really thought and it goes through the process and figure out like, hey, do we believe that this will be true? then it kind of when that is happening goes to the next stage of like, can we actually make that game before even really making the game? because that's the other thing you might dream up this crazy idea, but nobody has an idea how to actually make it clear and that will also be problematic so that's really about focusing on all the kinks i'd like so what would an animated character look like? and feel like? how much work? is it actually to make it or whatever it is like, what would this open world feel like? and what's the visual quality target? we're aiming for all these things, trying to figure out these answers to all these questions to before the game actually goes into full production that's when you actually make the game and again, it seems a little counterintuitive, right? because people like well, why waste all the time at the beginning but it's really part of the process for us to make sure that when we release a game as riot, that players can be proud of it yeah, when they pick it up it doesn't just feel awesome but it really changes and provides value to their lives, right as a gamer we want to have that high borns high bar that's why not every game will make it to that pipeline it's okay everybody knows that but that's really important aspects of it tony morelan 34 55 so how long would you say it takes to go from concept to actually a published game? eric krause 35 00 it's really depends on, you know, the genre, the type of game, the scene, the scope of it, either you can see games that are actually done in two years but you can also find games that will take five years plus, i had to go through that pipeline so it's really variable based on kind of the project tony morelan 35 18 and that is quite an investment, you know, to have to forecast out like, hey, this is we're not going to see a return on this for another three to five years that just shows you the commitment that riot has eric krause 35 29 well, i think we're right, it's not it's not even that it's not that we're thinking about, hey, you know, what's, what's the investment for just putting a game through r&d? because the philosophy of riot, it's about that long term value to the player ecosystem? sure that that is kind of our very first way of thinking about it so rather than thinking for us, it's like, okay, it doesn't take two or five years to put it through, it's more like, once it's out, can this be a 10 plus your game that really pushes the genre forward, that really changes the game exchange that really adds to our ecosystem in a long term way, and provides value through that that's how we think about it and that makes it a little bit different in terms of sure how we approach games but again, that that's how the whole belief of the company is built around that and it actually makes for in our eyes for better outcomes for players tony morelan 36 22 sure, sure you know, there's a lot of competition out there with the with gaming, what has been your your strategy for discoverability? eric krause 36 31 it is, obviously, you know, people have choice there's no way around that but there are a couple of things that that we try to do a really put our flag down in terms of making sure that players actively seek out riot games, because obviously, there's the obvious answer of like, hey, you spent all this money on media on user acquisition, right? i mean, that's a fair way of doing it and riot is participating in that way right of pushing discoverability but there's also the other aspect, right? if you do create an environment that people cherish, i've been through a super recognizable ip that has stepped or through really providing highest quality entertainment options available, no matter the platform, all of a sudden, you get players that want to play your games yeah, i had that actively, you know, looking for the next strike game, not only for themselves, but even to the degree to talking to the friends about it and that is kind of the other part to us, either naturally, probably the leading thing, actually, for us to really invest into these high quality, ip driven ecosystems, that gives players the best experience and then through that kind of grow from the inside out what were people who are in within the ecosystem are happy to go out to their friends, you're like, hey, this is an amazing game, you should play it with me and that is the two components for us but as i said, the latter one being the more focus piece of tony morelan 38 01 it yeah and i think in another way, it's also evident how you don't have to pay to play that there is an opportunity for people who just want to pick it up and, and have a little fun with it but yeah, obviously, you know, you can generate revenue through wild rift so what has been your strategy for generating revenue? eric krause 38 20 all goes back to when it comes to how do we make money because yes, we do have to make money one way or the other because our philosophy is we want money to reinvest back into the ecosystem sure for us, we don't want to just do it in a way that feels bad that's like a big thing like, if somebody gives us money, we want a player to feel good about it, because they got great value and that means we don't want to partake in some of the more predatory monetization models that exist out there so as gamers, for example, you know, you hated when there are these energy systems that limit the amount of time you can actually play a game, or you have to like refill your energy or whatever to, you know, play another match or something like that we don't do any of that we don't want to limit how many times you can play we also don't want to sell anything that give somebody an unfair advantage in terms of making them stronger, or having all of a sudden different abilities that you don't have access to so it's really about, you know, allowing people to monetize to do by things that are more appearance based, more vanity based because that way it's about them deepening their almost relationship with their favorite champion with a favorite character and that doesn't have really any impact on somebody else playing with them in the sense of being unfair, but instead gives, you know our players actually more diversity for the champion that they already no love, and more different appeal, and almost celebrating it with them that they have gone so deep, you know, with the champions and that's really the majority of, you know, for us and how we think about monetization yeah and that is really the focus for us tony morelan 40 16 now, you know, the user experience on mobile is different than it is on pc what were some of the challenges that you guys face when, when it came to designing a mobile game? eric krause 40 26 it's, it's very different, right? that's why we really, really had to rebuild it in terms of design as you have a smaller screen, sure, but also completely very different input mechanics and how you steer, i had a champion so really rethinking all of that was a really big part of the prototyping phase of the game, to redo even some of the champion mechanics to better fit the, you know, mobile environment, to again, really make the best out of it or another great example, for the design experiences, you know, average game on pc is probably 30 minutes to play league of legends but nobody wants to spend 30 minutes, you know, into a heated match on a phone, actually, for people that think about phone more so is like, more bite sized experience that they can have on? sure so that was a big thing for us it's also well, from a design perspective, it's like, oh, how do we bring it down to let's say, 15 minutes i to make it more bite sized, without losing the core experience that people know and love from pc so that was like, as an example for, you know, how we thought about the design problems to solve going to mobile, but again, to really make use of mobile, not just a software for the sake of it, but to really leverage, you know, what mobile is giving you then when it comes to publishing is also very different we self-publish, you know, the game, on pc and that obviously, is only means that, you know, we use our own tools, everything sure but if you think about mobile, and we work with great partners like samsung, i had to get the game out to make sure that people have a great convenient and safe environment to get the game from so there, it's actually for us learning all the ins and outs of the tools and the capabilities and even working, you know, with samson to figure out if there's any functionality that might be missing, that would be cool to make it even better experience for players so that was actually also a big switch for us, that we had to learn and really invest into to teach ourselves what that looks like sure and then also the marketing aspects of it all as well you can't just copy whatever you're doing on pc from a marketing front and just call it day i like yeah, we did it cool because it's not only the way again, people consume media slightly different but as far as i can go back to opportunity, because people might notice that, you know, the game is actually called league of legends wall drift it's not just called league of legends or league of legends it also looks slightly different feels slightly different and that was purpose because as we think about wild rifts within the ecosystem that we've built, while two of more so is kind of to inspire the next generation of legal legends fans so what does that mean, for us, as we, as people consider playing us or not? yeah, are the changes that we should be making to be more appealing? and that's what we did because also the game is slightly different in some detail mechanics, we didn't want to mislead our core fans as well, but completely saying hey, they exactly the same because they're not core fans will immediately be like, hey, this ability, eric, that's that one is different so don't call this exactly collections, because, you know, that's slightly off and that's, that's, that's awesome, because our fans are as dedicated so we also didn't want to mislead them hence, also part of the marketing experience being slightly different be like i know, this is league of legends while drift, which still totally deserving of the name league of legends because yeah, it is that core experience, but it's still slightly enough different to give it that different tone tony morelan 44 01 yeah now, you know, one of the things that stood out for me when i first played the game, was the music i mean, it was extremely cinematic so tell me a little bit about the music of league of legends wild rift eric krause 44 13 yeah it's so interesting what music can do to an overall experience i remember, i had to play test at some point and it wasn't a music it was like a bug it was like, pre before release and it was so interesting to me because it felt so wrong but initially, i couldn't pinpoint what's wrong with it, because i actively didn't notice that the music was missing but it really felt i was like, what's going on? is this this doesn't feel right and then eventually, we were like, oh, yeah, the music is not playing any of this i'm like, ah, yeah, that and that now i feel it i and that's the thing it's, you know, most of the time people don't really think actively about music, yet it plays such a big part to connect you better to the experience you're having to how can music be part of that emotional connection to what you're doing so it's not just some fireworks going off on the screen but that also that you feel that if something is on the line, the music should help tell you that at least subconsciously like, hey, something's on the line but the same, so it's like, if you go back to, you know, your home base, your fountain in the game, the music policy tell you like, hey, take a breather, right? it's okay, like, this is a safe space and that's really how to think about music i'd like making that like a way to connect better with the experience, even though people don't actively notice tony morelan 45 35 and all of the music that you're hearing in today's podcast, is from the league of legends wildlife soundtrack so now that you've worked with samsung, so closely on bringing your game to the galaxy store, what advice can you give developers that would like to do the same? yeah, eric krause 45 51 i mean, being on mobile, for me is about reaching massive audiences, massive audiences that use their phone to really define who they are as a gamer and when you think about it that way, samsung is a massive part of it, i had, it's one of the largest phone manufacturers in the world dedicated to creating the best possible experience on the go and that lens, kind of, at least for me, thinks about as like, and it's a no brainer, i had to be on the galaxy store, especially, you know, as we found out through our experience, that the extra work required to do so it's actually very minimal so it's a great value add, add to reaching, you know, more players, and eventually more fans of your products, through again, a lens of quality and pushing experience forward so i guess the short answer is just do it tony morelan 46 51 wonderful that's great so tell me what is in the future for riot games eric krause 46 57 our ceo, nicolo, he just recently actually shared a blog post about that on riot games com that kind of spilled the beans a little bit of our next five plus year journey that we're taking on as riot games and because for us, it's really about that expansion of the ecosystem and how can we, again, make it better to be a player? how can we find better ways for people to express fandom? how can we give them more experiences, beyond the ones that we've already provided to give them a more diverse way of interacting with riot games, league of legends, ip, or maybe even new ips, and says long blog posts, it talks about all these things in detail but that's kind of really what you can expect for us to keep chasing, you know, our players and then needs that will see us invest in our existing games, but also many new ones across many new genres we will really push esports further beyond our games, because we believe that esports is just an integral part of the entertainment environment in the future i had so we'll try to innovate and push forward there but also explore different mediums i mean, we've just done it with arcane, that released on netflix, just several months ago, but expect us to do more things that are not just games again, the pursuit of providing super rich ecosystem that people can be proud of as a fan tony morelan 48 27 yeah, so arcane is the this new animated series on netflix i actually watched a little bit of it, it is hauntingly beautiful tell it tell us a little bit about that eric krause 48 36 you might think about like why is riot making a tv show? right? again, it goes back to you know not everybody has time to play games all the time yet, they're still a fan of thing that that you made many, maybe many years ago so how can we give them like a connection to their fandom back without telling them hey, play this new game or play this old game and that's where it is really about entering different mediums that have different accessibility bars miss case tv so for us though, and through that lens was very important to make arcane as kind of that first statement nardone to expand the universe really beyond just games for people to think about the league of legends, ip and ecosystem as kind of this multimedia experience that you know, crosses all these different mediums and this was the first kind of statement that we made and it goes really into the story of some of our most beloved champions and their background but there was also made in a way that if you are a fan of league of legends, and you couldn't really convince others why you're so crazy about legal legends that you could give them that show i'd be like, hey, let's watch it together it in an attempt for you to explain, hey, this is why league of legends is awesome, because you can watch it without any context of the league of legends world sure and that was also important to us to give our fans kind of an invitation that they could send to their friends and loved ones to be like, hey, you want to share my passion? he has a different way, how we can do that? tony morelan 50 21 yeah, so it really is obvious that riot games has become an entertainment company, not just a gaming company how big how many employees work for riot games eric krause 50 34 at this point, we're well past 3000 and still growing quickly because as you can imagine, right, it's creating all these dreams making them try to reality for our fans, you know, is requires a lot of people and, you know, we're not shy of investing into those impossible dreams come true across all of our offices, right? it's not just you know, here in la i know, we have offices all around the world and as part of our next evolution of riot, you know, we've seen more offices and games being made all around the world, and experiences being made all around the world it's really, you know, also capitalize on, you know, there's not just one type of gamer, depending on where you go around the world what means to be a gamer also does look and feel different so that is also something that we have to really think about, as we expand into, you know, the future of what riot can look like tony morelan 51 33 yeah, so people listening to the podcast if they're interested in working for riot games so what's the best way for them to learn about how to apply for a position at riot games? eric krause 51 43 yeah, i mean, you can find us on almost all the networks you can think of but generally, the two ones i do recommend is either go to riot games comm where you can learn more about riot, but also, you know, what we're up to, and you know, what positions we have open but also like on things like linkedin, where we all have our own presence and you can also check out you know, blog posts there and as well as our openings, and also even connect with writers and ask them about their experiences tony morelan 52 11 that's great and i'll be sharing all of the urls in the in the show notes for not just rankings, but also for wild rift and, and your social handles so with diversity and inclusion being such an important aspect of our of our society, right now, tell me what is riot games doing related to d and i eric krause 52 32 it's a very important question, tony and for riot, you know, the two lenses that that i described to people on how we are thinking about diversity inclusion the first part is obviously the one that people probably think first and foremost off, which is riot as an employer and, you know, me talk about my personal experience here, the way that, you know, riot has invested over the last couple of years into that space in terms of time, but you know, money and just general resourcing has been phenomenal i've never seen, you know, such a heavy investment being made to do the right thing because yes, it did require a wake-up moment for us as a company but that moment was really turned an opportunity, i had to make better to be a writer to work at riot games so now you know, it, there's not just an d and i team that exists, but also, you know, what they do and how they impact the company is part of all the processes all around i to ensure that no matter what might be, that riot is a welcoming, and fair environment for everybody and that is an extremely big investment, and actually really proud to have seen the reaction to arguably, you know, the not-so-great moments that we had in the past so i'm sure that that makes me actually pretty proud, based on my experience but the other part also that sometimes people forget when it comes to diversity and inclusion is right as a game creator, right? because with that, you kind of have a responsibility as creatives to create experiences for millions of millions of players around the world that kind of allowed them to relate or in better set like that, feel seen it through the things that you make sure, because you can quickly fall into a pit trap or, you know, just create the same things over and over again, that fit a worldview of specific group, but makes other people feel left out yeah and that's part of the responsibility that you have as a game creator so as part of the development process, to promote diversity and inclusion through that content that you make and a very recent example actually is valorant our shooter that we have because they're one of the most recent champions that just launched or agents it's called, is actually a female karen actor inspired by filipino culture because we want to make sure that you know, if you are, you know, not just one, but in the philippines, which arguably if you think about gaming, especially, you know, often a completely overseen and overlooked that if you are a filipino gamer, you're like, yeah, i feel seen sure i because there's now this agent in this game that, you know, celebrates my culture and i'm proud of them and that's an example of i had for how we as game makers also have some form of responsibility to promote diversity in our culture tony morelan 55 36 yeah, i love what you said not only about how riot is taking diversity and inclusion within the company, but then you're impacting your influence outside of the company into our society that is absolutely wonderful so tell me, what do you do? outside of all of your work at riot? what do you do for fun? eric krause 55 58 what to do for fun? getting to learn anything about new cars or old cars, so i spent unhealthy amount reading and watching videos about it tony morelan 56 08 so what was your what was your first car and what is your dream car? eric krause 56 15 my first car was, was an older audi a for a vons station wagon because in europe, we love our station wagons, which i know for americans like and don't like, of course, dream car is really hard, because there's so many amazing cars and sometimes actually fantasize about it like, i'll just pick one which one would it be? and, and probably right now, my dream car is a porsche 356 a, which is a very old school, porsche, but in terms of just the body lines, you know, just amazing unfortunate i never had a chance yet to drive one i'd probably drive so amazing tony morelan 56 56 that is so funny you said that because i was waiting for my turn and mine is also the porsche 356 ever since i saw the movie top gun, beautiful porsche just yes into the sunset i've always wanted to get my hands on one funny story my wife, she had asked me when we were dating, where do you see yourself, you know, later on in life when you retire? and i said, i see myself with a porsche 356 so hopefully, when that day comes when i do decide to retire, shall let me get that dream car, eric krause 57 28 if not some amazing fortune i get one i'll call you up and then we can ride together in the sunset tony morelan 57 34 thinking for a swim but hey, let's stay away from that la traffic eric krause 57 37 that's sure yes, that's we'll definitely have to go outside of las tony morelan 57 41 hey, eric, i really appreciate you taking the time to be on the podcast it was wonderful to hear not only about yourself, but the great things that are happening over at riot games eric krause 57 49 thank you it was a pleasure yeah, definitely thank you for having me closing 57 52 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung tony morelan 58 08 the samsung developers podcast is hosted by tony morelan and produced by jeanne hsu
Learn Developers Podcast
docsports? i mean, what is that perfect game for you role playing games, diego lizarazo 19 56 you're playing games, like i mean, i enjoy all kinds i really suck at action games so all shooters i think my brain has kind of like a disconnect on 3d on a screen so i tried to shoot in one direction and i'm kind of like getting killed and the other day i cannot really coordinate that but role playing games it has always been countered me thing because they usually tend to have a story something engaging and at the same time you have the interactive part so to me it feels almost really interactive book and then having like to develop that story and trying to figure out like all like how all the characters interacting and making this story a little bit my own story that's like one of the things that i really like, obviously, like i said, i don't have the time sometimes to kind of go into these deep stories so right now i'm not doing a lot but if you asked me like what are like my, my favorite games, pretty much all of them are role playing games so like, final fantasy six, fable and wonderful latest ones that i didn't play the original one, it was my kid that ended up picking it for switch, sell the breath of the wild and that thing totally blew me away i still haven't finished it because it takes so many hours and they cannot just do like the main, the main path through the game, i have to do all the side quests and that takes forever so if they go into one of these online sites and tells you like, hey, this game is going to be 100 hours if it's sort of a role-playing game for me, that's going to be $300 so i can't know just sue did the main quest so yeah, like i think we're playing games is really the thing that is close to my heart and competitive well, they're complicated to create and there are some that are much more engaging than others but tony morelan 21 49 yeah, that's funny you know, i can tell you, this is what we're the opposite i am not into role playing games i need games simple so i am into racing games so, you know, speed is pretty much it or like, you know, just the simple arcade style games, the, you know, the old retro games, two dots, you know, just using really simple puzzles yeah, that's about as deep as i get when it comes to comes to gaming diego lizarazo 22 18 well, but believe it or not, like when i actually create games, those arcade games are the ones that i really go for because usually, it's about a mechanic, they can have like one or two mechanics that are incredibly polished, and they're repetitive, bad, bad day, and it really gives you the, the satisfaction as a player to accomplish something so like a platformer, or like the typical thing of like, space invaders that you just really get into sown and your brain is not really like thinking much is just kind of reacting those are also great, you know, and especially the old style of the old school games oh man, i don't know how many hours i spent going out like playing dos, an actual arcade but even at home in an arcade? tony morelan 23 05 yes, much of my childhood was spent out it was called merlin's castle, down in saratoga in california that was the place to be every night, we would go down there and drop our quarters in, play asteroids don't kill the plays close up so i'm going to actually date myself here for a moment when i was growing up, one of my friends, his father worked on the very first game, which was pong, very well known that this is the very first you know, computer generated game he actually brought it home before it was publicly released he's like, he got to come over here i've got this game that you hook up to our television so i actually got to play pong before it was out into the public and let launched obviously this amazing genre of games diego lizarazo 23 58 i would have i would have left in the house of your friend, if, like i would have tried to break him somehow and well, everyone is just leaping, tried to just play into their living room or whatever they have the game so yeah, that that that is a little bit of an addiction that i had growing up but it was kind of like the cool thing it was not the thing that i it was like, let's escape and let's do this really cool thing for a few hours and then let's go back to the ad well, in my case, the ad is reality that it was around me and then well, let's go and check the next game, you know so it was it was really cool and somehow, i think those simpler games in many ways were kind of like, more fun that some of the orders i think people didn't take it didn't take them as seriously, they were just to steal games the it was not kind of like the entire thing like my life revolves only around this game it was like, well, they're incredibly cool, but i know how to count like braid the two so i think the perhaps like the entire thing that you begin to listen that it like simpler times, so perhaps they were in immediate games, at least they were simpler and i think their interaction that he had with the players were simpler to him so i recall, you know, tony morelan 25 16 yeah, definitely so if we could then jump into the future, how do you think or how would you like to see games evolve? diego lizarazo 25 25 now you do see the trend already of the esports so they are going to turn more into kind of like a well i sport so like, global entertainment so just watching the game is going to be part of entertainment, which i don't particularly like because i think one of the coolest things about games is playing the games you know, but well, i've also enjoyed watching some people like it really cool ones really good ones, but they do doing dad but i think you're going to count like how it's kind of weird to say it on one end stream like more complex, more technically advanced games and then on the other hand, you're going to have the hyper casual when you when we start getting like even more and more mainstream technologies like ar and vr, then you're going to start having like more of those games that are going to get to the general public, not just like gamers, but kind of like everyone else, and then more gamified experiences so then you're going to have things that i don't know, you could go to the store, and they directly own the stands, you're going to be able to have like minigames you know, because there's going to be so simple that you could pretty much put a game on anything clicking the wrapping of candy or something like that it's going to be possible and then some of these interactions, at some point is going to be similar to what happened to the two technology in general they're just going to be in so many places that's some point you're not even going to realize that you're just playing a they're going to be just so immersive and so, so commonplace that you're just going to be playing without realizing that you're playing or you're going to be working with some gamified aspects and i think all that obviously has some good aspects to that and some aspects that we should reconsider our society but well, that's not really up to me to decide what's right and what's wrong i think the those who are going to be kind of the main things that we're going to see more and more tony morelan 27 34 yeah, no, i definitely agree you know, my son's a gamer and when he's not gaming, i'm like, okay, cool he's off, you know, the game and he's just chilling out and then i'm like, so what are you doing? he's like, oh, i'm just watching videos of other people gaming that's when i realized that like, oh my gosh, so there's this whole you know, social community around gaming that is more than just individuals playing the game i mean, there's just so much to the community so, yeah, that was that was interesting so let's talk a little bit about building apps you know, i want to know what your approaches when you want to develop an app do you first like outline what the concept is? or do you just start like playing with a code and kind of build out from there? what's your approach to that? diego lizarazo 28 19 usually, for me, it has been, at least have a problem or have a, like, at least the concept, you know, that i build the app around so it could be i'm trying to solve something, or somehow, i was able to, for example, with games that happens a lot that i already have a game mechanic that i really like and he said, like, where is it going to, to fit? so usually, i don't just come and start playing, i usually start playing with the with the code when i already have like a skeleton like a base that is the year and then it's like, okay, let's figure out like all the other aspects, the ones that may not be as important how, how can i do that? obviously, to solve that initial core concept, or that initial problem solving it, you end up calling like trying different approaches but additionally, and that's something that i do in many other many other things, i like to at least have an outline, you know, like a, grab a piece of paper, and say like, i want to do abc, and c, and then try to figure out how to do that and then that mabel, or dan may stay in into those original ideas bad but usually, i like it i prefer it, when there's something that guides me like, in goal, even if i if he didn't stop changing, but at least have a general idea where i'm going tony morelan 29 42 so tell me about some tools or tips that you may have, that you can recommend for someone creating their first game app diego lizarazo 29 49 well for game, so i have a couple of things that that i can share so for games in general, i think one of the things that will people don't realize is that games can be sometimes hard to program so i have like two tools for a person that has no idea how to create games that i recommend and the first one is construct three, i think that we can put the link in the notes so the company is called sarah and you can create games like javascript games that are going to run on your browser and you don't really need to do a lot of programming so it gives you a good idea of how to start creating games without doing a lot of the understanding what of what goes behind so that's really good if you already have a little bit of experience programming or want to learn how to program a also would recommend something like phaser, but it's also a javascript game, but you do have to write the code so it gives you the idea if you're going to teach a kid perhaps then you can find things like a scratch so those are a little bit more visual programming languages and it helps you to understand, like a lot of the logic on how like, yeah, well eaves, wiles loops, things that you still need in programs and you know, in apps in general, and specifically for games if you're currently trying to create a new app i have, well, the game is a good way to do it but there are like several code several like places that you can learn how to do some programming i think javascript is really great not just because of the language itself bad is because you can find it almost anywhere whenever you visit a website usually it has a little bit of javascript so i know that a lot of people are going to complain and say like new it's better to start with python or is better to start with other programming languages but i think for someone that is starting to learn how to program is really easy to create a piece of code with notepad and then it means run it using a browser so you don't need a lot of tools and you can see results right away and it's so extended a they can find so many resources, look at no free code camp org or w three schools, that they give you a lot of tutorials on how to start creating and those are counting gen now, if you're a little bit more experienced, and perhaps you know how to code and you want to create, let's say, your first like big game, unity is a great way to go about it it could be a little bit hard at the beginning, because it has so many options it has so many buttons, the ui is really complicated so if you open it for the first time, and you don't know what you're doing, just go to youtube, or go to one of the unity pages, because you're going to be overwhelmed so that's why i'm saying like, i think it's a great tool it's just that if it's your first game, you may be a little bit like whoa, whoa so that would be a good thing and if you're going to start creating apps in general well, i would recommend to start creating something with android so it could be android studio or even with tyson or for samsung, it could be like a, you could go to tyson org or the developer something com page and you are going to also have the chance to start creating mobile applications or applications for smartwatches and well even look like if you just want to see something with a smartwatch it's a no that follow tony, because he's going to give you a lot of places where you can go and well, i think i'm going to share with tony like a lot of older things that data developers are counting tips and things that you can use so places like if you are like most developers a little bit design challenged there you could find like cool images like pixels or game art that is open game art or if you want to just kind of like find like colors, the right colors for you ui you could go to places like wireless coolers not colors but cool or schoolers casio and immediately gives you like a palette that you can use in your in your application so you break now there are fortunately, a lot of resources that you can find online and well, quickly we can put some of the links in tony morelan 34 18 yeah, definitely yeah so as you'd mentioned, we'll include everything in the show notes you're giving a lot of great information, a lot of great resources so we will link to all of that down in the show notes so thank you thank you a bunch for that so one thing that's been wonderful, you joining the team is see speak spanish so you've been able to reach out to the spanish speaking community, you've had some very successful live chats and webinars that you conduct all in spanish so and our reach is global so as you know, you know, when we're doing or live chats or videos and whatnot, they are reaching countries all around the world so i want to ask you, how do you think the developer communities differ? around the world, diego lizarazo 35 02 i think it's a little bit of a level of, of engagement, you know, like it in the us in particular, a lot of the technical content is already created an english, you know, so sometimes is really easy for a developer or anyone that wants to be a developer, just go online and search for whatever and you immediately are going to find a response no, like it's right there in other places, especially places that have where english meaning have become like a yeah, kind of like as extended, then then it could be a little bit more of like people that really want to get the answers though sort of ones that somehow or have to learn english or try to kind of like understand more of the content that there is there but also, sometimes even they are the ones that try to translate, you know, they figure out like, hey, i have this i found this awesome video and no one has that in spanish or a translation in english and then be recruited that same content so i think it's a matter of kind of, like availability of tools and resources and sometimes you see a little bit more of those dynamics in in user groups, you know, so a lot of people kind of like, some are more motivated by that and notice, on the other hand, feel a little bit shyer you know, it's kind of like, well, i know that i'm not going to get older with all the responses that i needed so you have to kind of like work around that whenever you're coming, like reaching older countries in and people from other languages, but yeah, it's really interesting and also, you see that sometimes certain technologies are more popular in certain countries and sometimes you don't even understand why he knows like, why that that programming language is so popular in brazil i don't know that it is more popular in brazil, you know, or websites and things like that, because well, they'll be communities evolved differently tony morelan 37 01 sure, you know so my specialty is design so i help a lot of developers from the design aspect for their apps and i'm always amazed at how many russian watch face designers there are so when i've been communicating with them, you know, exchanging emails, or responding to different posts and whatnot, you know, i'm conducting all this in english, and we're having these great conversations well, i reached out to a couple of them the other day to invite them onto a phone call, and came to find out that they don't speak english they've just been using google translate in their comments exactly it just hit me and i'm like, so for all these months that we've been carrying these conversations, this is all just been russian translated using google translate though exactly pretty neat to see the board is really, you know, taken down diego lizarazo 37 50 yeah, and exactly so sometimes, certain content like videos i personally prefer videos, but then in order to places they may prefer the text, you know, or code, because it's something that you can easily copy paste somewhere else and get a translation so in a video, you may not get the accent, or you your understanding of the language is not as great so then you still can have like a barrier there but it well, people, if they really want to do it, if they really want to, like get to the content, they figure it out it's just like the how, like how the solve that problem could add like a couple of steps there in the process tony morelan 38 32 so we've talked a lot about conferences, you know, we used to do a lot of outreach in person so can you tell me about some of the experiences you've had at these conferences? have you had great experiences? have you had any challenging experiences? tell me about maybe unique people that you might have met at some of these conferences? diego lizarazo 38 52 yeah so i'll tell you one, like that it was challenging that was not what samsung but i was going to man booth in a conference for another company and we had a product and a like, this is called like the entire thing about demos, whenever you have some product, if you don't pay attention, or if you don't cross your fingers long enough at sometimes a demo is going to fail and they told me like, okay with the confidence, let's say start tuesday, 9am and i came there early, set up everything, everything's ready to go and they put my computer there to show the product everything's working, and it suddenly stopped working so i had like half an hour before people who started coming to the floor, and they had to show things and i literally had to call like go outside of the of the conference floor, and start pretty much figured out what was the error and at some point, it was called, like calling someone from the team and trying to figure out it was of course the most stupid thing like a package got updated last minute automatically and then bad one had a company with something else, and then you just can't change one file and magically everything is working but it is incredibly stressful to try to solve something like right before you have to show it and i have had some things like that, even in webinars and things are dead and you're like, what do i do now? and you have to figure out like the solution right in but that one was, like really stressful for me a really cool one on the other hand, for example, in adobe max, which you were last year, so like a good portion of our team was there last year, i had the chance to talk with a really cool developer so his name is derek miller and he went back and talk with us and what really blew me away for ones is that well, he's a teacher i have his video that's something we did we never really just share outside of our team, because we wanted to really give it the promotion that we wanted, but it was a little bit hard sometimes to promote some of these things but the thing is that he had a real-life problem sometimes we're talking about apps and, and games and, and really well if a game does work or doesn't work usually doesn't change anyone's life but in his case, he was dealing with diabetes and he wanted to be to have well pretty much a regular life in and figure out how to do it use technology because he knows how to use technology he lived he teaches a lot of like, maker things who are things with raspberry pi's and things like that and pretty much he designed and implemented a full system to be able to check his level, his blood level, you know, like glucose and everything in in to be coming in that regular stable state, regardless if he was on the road or if he was changing his diet, etc , etc so he kind of like told us all about that and he was using something technologies and i was blown away again because at the time it's one of those things since i don't have dad disease, i don't have that problem, that health problem i never thought about that, like how to solve it and then he was already explaining, like, hey, i did this and i can't create the keys for him for my sensor and this is how it connected my phone and i was asking, like, how long do you meditate? he was like, oh, well, like one or two days and was like, really, it would take me forever for me to do that, you know, and it is because obviously, he had a personal need and he had a personal problem, a real-life problem and he really wanted to put his knowledge into something that that could be used by him or by anyone else and he figured it out without even having can like a commercial solution for that and he was still able to figure it out so that was one of the times that i felt good at that i get kind of like a personal satisfaction to see someone using their knowledge to solve a real problem and it was amazing and he was, again randomly we were in a design conference that is adobe max last year it wasn't even about guest programming, he was more towards like the design part and he just came to our booth, you know, to be able to talk with us and show us the kind of things that he was doing so, so that wouldn't really blow me away tony morelan 43 16 that's, that's great you know, i think that for me, i've had a few of those experiences where i've met some really unique people from the design community since that's been my primary focus, whether it's meeting individuals that are just happen to be coming by our booth, or meeting some of the other people who are at the conference to present i've met some of what i call like my rock star designers in the community out there andrew kramer, who's done a lot of work with motion graphics he worked a lot on star wars i follow him he was the one who truthfully his tutorial videos are what inspired me to get into motion graphics many years ago and here i was at a conference right next to him and next thing you know, we're starting to open a conversation and we must have chatted for about 30 minutes, just the two of us chatting away and i just still couldn't believe it that i was, you know, next to him, mr doodle who's an amazing artist, he was at adobe max so just being able to see these people in person was just so rewarding i can't wait for us to get back out into conferences to get back into that environment diego lizarazo 44 28 yeah, absolutely and, and, and we think that's one of the cool things that are, you asked me before about this kind of rolls, sometimes we end up talking with some people that eat or know, that have such an amazing experience so personally, for me, like and well, you can share this one i have always kind of like beanie to, like you say to the role-playing games that are also games are not just like the video games, you know, like, also tabletop games and there is this one that that is numbered masquerade so it's called dungeons and dragons but couldn't like darker green here because it was the 90s and i was a real fan and i came here to georgia i had the bugs i played that and they didn't know that that game actually started here in atlanta and at some point, someone told me like, hey, you should come and talk with andrew sure and his name is andrew greenberg and right now he's the president of the georgia game developer association so he helps like videogame developers, but also tabletop game developers, and a lot of people in the gaming industry and entertainment industry and he started talking with him and then later, i found out that he was one of the original developers, not the creator, but one of the original developers of this game so it's one game that have been kind of like fanning out for i don't know how many years since i was a teenager and then i was able to, like meet someone that literally was in the offices creating the content that i was reading and all that and you don't know in these conferences or like when you go to use groups who you're going to be able to find me, it could be like someone that already has a lot of expense or it could be someone that 15 years from now could be the next you know, maybe the next genius, game creator or app creator, and you don't know, you don't know and that's why i really love to talk with people, because that's when you make these connections tony morelan 46 21 yeah, no, definitely which then leads me to hackathons in game jam so we've talked a lot about conferences and some of our outreach let's get specific and talk about hackathons what's your involvement around that? diego lizarazo 46 34 yeah, so well, a hackathon is pretty much usually they have this format of let's get doing a weekend or let's get for a few days and let's put together like an application or a system, or do some coding to create something cool sometimes the hackathon could have like a theme so let's create something around a specific technology or like any api, or let's create something to solve this problem, or it could be something more specific, which it would be like a game jam, where it would be a game jeremy's car, like, let's get together and instead of having a music jam, where we're creating cool things that sound cool, it would be let's create some games that look cool and play cool so sometimes they end up creating like a small game sort of times they are a little bit more polished, but usually that everything is created in that span of 4872 hours sometimes there's orders a little bit longer, like half a week or something but there's always this entire element of pressure of let's be creative, like pretty much on the moment and let's meet people that we haven't met before so sometimes some teams can like form right there on the spot, and have been able to kind of like it participate in many of those some are a little bit more professional, more enterprise sort of thing, or is mean in universities or game associations for example, usually around the end of january they have the global game jam so i had the chance to go there and sometimes a sponsor and sometimes, like talk with people i always go like in depth like not participating myself creating that i always click start creating like a concept that i'm going to end up doing and i end up doing something else so it doesn't work out but he's really great to go and see the results of the apps that people created hackathons or the games and the people are game jams and it's something that brings a lot of energy from young people creating cool things together tony morelan 48 28 yeah and i think that probably what i enjoyed the most around that is, everybody there is they're all there for like the same reason you know what i mean? it's to be creative i one time participate in a 48-hour film project so this is where different teams break up and you have 48 hours to put together a film and you know, so you're writing your script, you're filming it here, you're editing it, you're doing everything all within 48 hours, and just being around you know, like minded people so i can totally understand that when you're at a game jam or at a hackathon, just being around the energy of all those people i mean, that's got to be pretty, pretty exciting diego lizarazo 49 11 yeah, yeah and sometimes people come up with, like some things that you were like, how did you even come up with that idea? you know, and it's really cool so and last year with something we had one in washington dc, that one was created in conjunction with mit, and it was around health and coming up with liquid use to help people in the health industry and the health sector to well help people that will have actual diseases or health problems, etc , etc and we were able to talk with some teams that were coming up with so many incredible solutions so one of them and one team was kind of like chicken india, the smartwatches, the samsung smartwatches and have to do with elderly care so like, trying to check things around the gap, how it could take someone falling, you know, someone that is older and could be falling and maybe the gyroscope he did watch could help with that detection, or how they could collect information like i don't know, like the heartbeats or their sleep patterns, things like that so they were calling and saying like, we already have this awesome house record, how do we do? how do we use that to help others? and i thought that it was incredibly interesting, and usually don't do anything that has to do with health so that particular hackathon was kind of like, oh, that's, that's different than that yeah, that's the entire point, to bring some creativity and bring, like, two different things that sometimes don't go along and put them to work together tony morelan 50 51 yeah, no, that's, that's so true i once went to a meetup group, where people were presenting their apps and somebody had created app for the elderly, the chance of them falling down and this person who had worked their way through this app, not realizing that when people fall, they don't fall like a tree falling in the forest, they crumble so this app developer hadn't really thought of that, that the motion is not, you know, a tree falling it's just someone kind of collapsing down and that was because of the, you know, the people that attended that meetup group that then helped this app developer, you know, understand kind of, you know, a basic thing that it was just an oversight diego lizarazo 51 35 yeah, but i don't think you'd seen a bit of an oversight is that sometimes that happens a lot with developers, and you can see it with a lot of technologies that didn't have to be adopted and it has to be that way sometimes, developers end up solving problems that don't really exist, what are the problems, something different? tony morelan 51 53 so you've done a great job on reaching out to the community and sharing your knowledge and no one of yours a very popular series is the tyson tidbits yet you've been publishing on youtube can you tell us are there any other upcoming topics that that you have planned? diego lizarazo 52 10 yeah, actually, i it's kind of fun like how these things work and coming back a little bit more to towards the gaming side of things so i'm going to be putting a little bit more like short videos on showing how to create games with samsung technologies and in general, i'll try to put like different technology so right now we have so many technologies that you can use so many platforms like apple face or construct two dimensions before and unity and so it would be cool to solve the specific things that have to do with games and did help to publish them because i think, i think sometimes when you are creating a game or an app, if you are not forced to share with others, then it can stall otherwise, if you know that you want to publish it in the app, regardless if it's successful or not you still have kind of liquidity that a goal to achieve that is shared, like that game so, so that's where quite likely i'm going to start creating and you actually have to finish a video in the next couple of days around that so we'll see how that goes so i already have like a few that i need to record well, i have to start one by one so we'll see how long it takes me to create him and publish them tony morelan 53 24 so if developers want to get in contact with you, what is the best way? diego lizarazo 53 29 well, they can go directly if it's especially something technical, it's great to send me an email and you can use my samsung email so you're going to see it on the notes that's diegorivera@partner samsung com so like we'd like it's better that you check the notes so you can send me an email there and specifically we are talking about an error it's great that you send me like a screenshot sometimes people describe their and like, well, it's given me a lot of information, screenshots sometimes works best if not the still can find me online so the best thing that usually i go by helo777 so that would be like the translation of ice in spanish so that's h e l o 777 and you can find me like that on twitter, in our instagram, etc , etc so twitter, i receive a lot of messages so i can respond directly there leave dog, like i say to my email, that's a good way to get in contact with me tony morelan 54 28 when you're not coding when you're not working, what do you do for fun? diego lizarazo 54 32 spending time with my family, have a big family so literally get some popcorn, get in front of the tv and watch an animated movie i have still like little kids so we were still not at the age where we can all just watch like people on the screen they still have to be cartoons at some point we will graduate to real people and live action bad in the meantime is dad or going on some road trips so i'm kind of fortunate did an around the area, we have many other smaller cities and towns that we can visit and every other month we are currently going somewhere so that with my family that's its own adventure just like taking them one hour down the road that that's still interesting tony morelan 55 15 excellent well, hey diego, absolutely appreciate you taking the time to join me on the podcast this has been a ton of fun i am glad to even get to know you better than i knew you before so thank you again oh, thank you, tony outro 55 25 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding it all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
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