As file storage giant Dropbox’s first-ever DBX developer conference kicked off at Fort Mason this past week, Drew Houston, the company’s young founder and chief executive officer, tried to set realistic expectations for the crowd.
“There’s no new iPad, and no one’s going to come skydiving down,” he said, drawing big laughs.
The reference was to events like Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and Google I/O, both Moscone Center mega-productions that seem to consume half of San Francisco and typically lavish gifts and outlandish presentations on the computer programmers in attendance.
But that would be the only concession Houston would make to his company’s place in the “platform wars,” as they are increasingly known. Every year, the number of digital ecosystems to build software grow — think Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s iOS or OS X, Google’s Android, Facebook, etc. — so developers are constantly weighing which ones they should build their own software to support.
That makes these conferences giant sales pitches. And each of them has a set of essential ingredients for the wooing they do.
Software makers key
A platform serves as something like the playing field for all the teams in the game. Without teams, there is no game, so companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, Box and myriad others hold these events to encourage software makers to build out their products.
Apple, for example, has one of the biggest developer conferences in consumer technology for the makers of apps and software on its iOS and OS X operating systems. Last month, the Cupertino giant’s WWDC consumed the Moscone Center for almost a week as app and software developers talked shop and heard from various Apple executives about upcoming tools for them to improve their software.
By comparison, DBX was not much bigger than one of WWDC’s breakout sessions. Though there are more than 100,000 apps on the platform, Dropbox didn’t expect more than 500 developers total at Fort Mason.
Founded in 2007, the China Basin company has become one of the largest services for storing files, pictures, movies and important documents in the cloud. The company provides some free storage, but charges for users who require more. With all the data consumers generate with camera phones and digital documents, the company has found no shortage of need.
But to become more than a digital file cabinet, the company needs outside software makers to incorporate the service into their products and features. So DBX, without big giveaways or mega-announcements, was about convincing the coders in attendance to do just that.
Fun and glitches
Like most developer conferences, DBX had an extremely upbeat feel. Over cups of artisanal coffee, fancy boxed lunches or a few rounds of video games, developers chatted about how to optimize database storage and bolster security for their users.
DBX participants played oversize games of Connect 4 and Jenga, and, after the presentations ended, a sort of spelling bee for coders of Python — or as Dropbox puts it: the “ultimate throwdown” for coding “taken to a comically obnoxious extreme.” Later, popular rock band OK Go played a private concert.
(At its conference, Google has had such headliners as Billy Idol and Jane’s Addiction. Later this year, Oracle will host a customer and developer “appreciation event” with rock giants the Black Keys.)
No developer conference is complete without at least one embarrassing technical goof. At DBX, a poor Wi-Fi connection played a part in grinding one demonstration to a complete halt.
“Sometimes technology does punch you in the back of the head,” the presenter said, as everyone laughed to relieve the thick silence in the room. (A similar hiccup happened at the recent WWDC to a far larger crowd.)
While developers are happy to be courted, they also realize that finding the right platform for their creations is crucial to their success, or survival. So every hosting company makes certain to reassure them with statistics about users plotted on graphs that move up and to the right.
When Houston boasted that 175 million people are now using Dropbox, the room burst into applause. When he noted Dropbox would be able to store many new, different types of programming files, the applause was even louder. For developers, those facts can translate into bigger customer bases, higher revenues and easier operations.
New services
Like its bigger counterparts, DBX also featured ingredients like take-home messaging and sound bites. Dropbox used the conference to begin pushing a new catchphrase: “Sync is the new save.”
Its meaning? Consumers save files across smartphones, tablets and computers. Yet oftentimes contacts, files and pictures duplicate, delete or generate annoying error messages when “syncing,” causing users to grind their teeth, curse, or pull their hair out.
Houston pointed out that such annoyances also cause developers to give their scalps a good yank — they want the product to work.
“Would anyone make a button that says: ‘Please destroy the user’s information’? Probably not,” he joked.
Knowing that the code behind syncing files across devices is one of the hardest aspects of a developer’s job, Houston announced that Dropbox will offer new services that unburden those complexities.
Developer partners
Another key element of any developer’s conference: big promises. So conference hosts typically bring out developer partners — who’ve been given early access to the product — to attest to how well the new offering works.
Jeff Shiner, CEO of AgileBits, which makes password-syncing service 1Password, attested that his company had been facing the prospect of buying a lot of computer servers and building a bunch of complicated syncing code before partnering with Houston’s company.
“This would have put us back to the drawing board,” he said, “if it hadn’t been for Dropbox.”
Such arrangements can make for strong partnerships. Yahoo Mail lets users save and share from Dropbox, as if it were the desktop behind the e-mail client. Yahoo boasts storage space, and Dropbox has a new channel for customers. Other mail clients are doing the same.
But with all the platforms out there for developers to partner with, every conference host has to be aware of the competition lying in wait.
Among the attendees at this first-ever DBX was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. His company hopes that users will decide to keep all their photos on its own servers.
Dropbox, of course, is hoping they’ll decide otherwise.
Caleb Garling is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cgarling@sfchronicle.com
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