Solving Problems for Yourself - And Accidentally Thousands More

For someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In late 2019, I was simply exploring the craft of screenwriting as a hobby, visually plotting stories before writing the details. When the pandemic hit, the developer in me saw an opportunity, not to build another screenwriting tool, but to create something that let writers map their narratives in a way traditional software didn’t. And so, Scrite was born.

Little did I know, that itch wasn’t just mine. Over the past five years, over 35,000 writers found Scrite and made it part of their creative process. But the most rewarding part? Witnessing real human connections emerge around something I built. What started as a personal experiment soon became a collaboration, as two filmmakers joined me in shaping Scrite into a tool that truly serves storytellers. Their perspective helped refine the experience, ensuring it wasn’t just built for writers, but with writers.

Today, I’ve had the privilege of meeting writing greats from our film industry, watching films written in Scrite come to life, and noticing writers proudly sharing their drafts on social media, celebrating their creative milestones. Some of those stories have even reached esteemed film festivals.

And beyond just adoption, Scrite has become a platform that writers care deeply about, so much that their bug reports and feature requests are loaded with emotion, sarcasm, frustration, gratitude, and profound joy. Some filmmakers mentor, contribute, and actively help shape the product. That level of engagement is more meaningful than any metric because it proves that the work matters.

All of this was made possible while keeping the code open, proving that monetization and openness can coexist. With a subscription-based model for official builds, Scrite sustains itself not because people are forced to pay, but because they want to support something that has become valuable to their craft.

Join me as I share the highs, hurdles, and unexpected wins in turning a personal itch into a platform that thousands now call home. If you've ever scratched an itch only to discover thousands of others had the same one, this talk is for you!

This session blends storytelling, technical insights, and a few code walkthroughs, making it engaging for developers, writers, and anyone curious about the journey of building an open-source product.

Discover:

• Why solving a problem for yourself is often the best starting point for an open-source project and how passion-driven development can lead to widespread adoption.

• Why you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. From Qt and QML to many other open-source libraries, there’s always existing FOSS tech that helps solve parts of your problem.

• Why the world is always ready for a fresh take on an old idea, as long as someone steps up to tell the story in a new way.

• Why keeping code open is not a barrier to building a sustainable business model and how Scrite thrives with a subscription-based approach while staying fully open-source.

• Why every project takes you through an emotional curve, from the exhilaration of shipping an update, to the never-ending need for refactoring, redesigning, optimizing, and adding new features.

• How interacting with users teaches you far beyond coding, bug reports filled with emotion, frustration, joy, and feature requests loaded with deep care will challenge and expand your understanding of communication.

• How filmmakers, writers, and creators stepped up; mentoring, contributing, and throwing their weight behind Scrite, not just as users, but as partners in its evolution.

Whether you’re a developer, a storyteller, or just someone with an itch to create, this talk will challenge assumptions and inspire new possibilities.