Digital Alchemist

Santa Fe’s Digital Alchemist

Self-taught app designer forges a high-tech career path of his own

Julie Ann Grimm | The New Mexican
Monday, December 27, 2010

Tyler White is getting an education in innovation.

White, 23, is not pursuing a piece of paper that will put letters behind his name, nor is he following a corporate organizational chart. Still, he’s a rising star in Santa Fe’s tech scene.

The self-taught developer is making a living on the sales of three applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, including one based on a program that won a top prize in an international competition this summer.

Although other people might label White an unemployed college dropout, his self-description defies archetypes.

Photo by Luis Sánchez Saturno

“I think of it as an artist. I’ve always thought of it that way, just exploring different mediums and canvases and paints and colors,” he said. “It’s being spontaneous and not being tied down too much to a certain job or being employed. That seems to be stifling to my creativity and my sense of agility.”

White grew up in Santa Fe and graduated from New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell before heading to the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. But after just one year in college, he returned home and started developing websites. This summer, he saved enough money to take a few months off, bought a book and learned Objective-C, Apple’s primary programming language.

Some might consider White an unemployed college dropout, but the self-taught app designer — who is making a living off sales of three such apps — considers himself an artist. – Luis Sánchez Saturno/The New Mexican

“I was sort of tired of the two-dimensional boringness of doing websites, and the iPhone offered so many cool things like accelerometers, compasses and microphones and touchscreens and GPS,” he said.

Then, White and friend Mick Thompson spent just three days creating an app for iPad that integrates Flikr photos with an interactive satellite map. An international communications and development firm called Alcatel-Lucent awarded the pair a $10,000 prize in July, picking their app from a field of 17 in a promotional contest.

“All of these things already existed, and I was sort of like this alchemist — and a lot of software developers are doing this. They are sort of the modern-day alchemists,” White said. “They take the ingredients of Google maps and the spice of Flickr and the mixing cauldron of the iPhone, and they throw it all together, and all the sudden you’ve got this new brew of digital information that nobody has ever been able to experience before.”

White also won a contest to earn free passage to the California ISODevCamp conference, where he received recognition through another programming contest called Hack-a-thon.

White and partners have three apps for sale on the Apple iTunes Store, where about 15,000 users have purchased a refined version of “Flickr Photo Map.” The instant-marketing strategy gives 70 percent of the $4.99 purchase price to developers while Apple keeps 30 percent. White hopes that app, or a free application called “Checkin Map for Facebook” — which is gaining hundreds of users each day since its Christmastime launch — will get enough attention to support him through future innovations.

Choosing an alternative career though computer skills isn’t for everyone, White says, but he’s part a group of young risk-takers willing to try.

Some of those who have trudged that path before him are industry powerhouses who also skipped out on college degrees and went straight into technical success — such as Apple founder Steve Jobs; Michael Dell, who founded Dell computers; Larry Ellison, who developed the Oracle Corp. software firm; and Richard Branson of Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airways and New Mexico’s Spaceport USA.

This fall, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, well-known as a PayPal co-founder and Facebook backer, caught heat from bloggers and politicians for establishing a foundation that will administer grants to people under the age of 20 to “further their innovative scientific and technical ideas.” Those awarded grants won’t be permitted to attend school for the two years that they are part of a fellowship.

Foundation board member Jim O’Neill, who was a science-policy adviser with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Bush administration, said he was surprised that criticism of the project wasn’t more broad. Although the deadline for entries is not until the end of the month, several hundred have already applied for one of the 20 $100,000 grants up for grabs. Educators, he said, have been among some of the strongest advocates.

“A lot of people are questioning the cost of college, the problem of student debt and how much value college adds financially compared to other ways people could spend their time,” he said.

O’Neill said he hopes there is a rising tide of young people who are more interested in the kind of career White is launching.

“We are hopeful that the next generation, the people who are now teenagers, will be a lot more interested in breakthrough innovation and entrepreneurship because in a lot of ways, our economy depends on that happening,” he said.

Even though White is too old for that program, he’s tuned into the idea that some programmers make a living entering contests like the one he won. Others find a breakthrough product that wouldn’t be possible, he said, if they devoted all their mental energy to a 9-to-5 office job or an advanced college degree.

If he does want a traditional gig, he’s already skilled in a growing field. For example, full- and part-time jobs in technical, scientific and professional services grew by 14 percent in Santa Fe between 2006 and 2008, according to data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.

White works from wherever he feels like opening his laptop, but he likes to hang out at Santa Fe Complex, a free workspace near the Santa Fe Railyard focused on economic development through collaboration in art, science and technology.

Complex founder Stephen Guerin said White’s among a growing group of people who are re-inventing the idea of career. It’s working, he said, because “there is a depth of technical resources and there are exemplars, people who work in a project-based world and make their own careers versus trying to find a job.

“Those two things give people the confidence that they can take on jobs that they may not have the initial technical expertise for, but there is a community around them that they can draw upon.”