I'm Patrick, the Education Content Creator at Adalo & former Adalo Expert. AMA!

Hi everyone! My name is Patrick Ford and I’m the educational content creator here at Adalo. I work on educational content (we have big things coming!) and help documentation. I started out as an Adalo Expert and have coached over 80 clients to help bring their dreams to life through Adalo. I’ve also built 4 apps of my own and have more on the way.

I’m also the founder of Adastacks.com - a service that extends the capability of your apps with recurring notifications, text messaging, email verifications, and more.

I’m fascinated by no-code and know it can change the way people build and interact with technology. Im also big into Web3 (blockchain) technology as well!

Ask me anything!

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Wow :star_struck:

Cool

What do you think the future of no-code looks like? How do you think no-code and web3 will integrate? What’s your favorite thing about working at Adalo?

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I think no-code is still a nascent field. Those who are in no-code take for granted that the vast majority of people don’t know it’s a thing at all. If you look at no-code in the Gartner hype cycle, I think we’re somewhere in the middle of the upswing, possibly approaching the peak in interest. My opinion is that disillusionment will happen before it becomes normalized. People will see faults in no-code, but ultimately it will become a mainstay in how we build and use technology, much the way WYSIWYG website editors did in the early and mid 2000s.

This one is one of my favorite things to think about because we have a quadfecta of technology that is all coalescing into one area - no-code, web3, XR, and AI. They are all being developed in tandem and I think that will continue to be the case. For instance, at the same time AI is becoming more innovative and widespread, we also have no-code companies such a Metaranx and RunwayML that are building no-code ways to train models and accomplish real life goals. Another example is that you can actually use Adalo (a no-code tool) to make apps that interface with the blockchain (web3). Granted, it’s in limited ways at the moment, but the prospect is still promising for the future.

My favorite part of working at Adalo is the people for sure! Everyone works so hard to thoughtfully improve Adalo without breaking too many things in the process. I love our standups and Donut meetings we have!

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Hey @pford Patrick,

What are your hypotheses for the sort of profile of users who are going to pick up Adalo through the Academy?

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This is a great question! I think we have several profiles or personas in mind for who the Academy will benefit the most. The first being solopreneurs and very small startups. This has been Adalo’s bread and butter for some time now, but I think the Academy will only help them up the learning curve even faster. The second profile I think is employees and mid-level management of SMBs and maybe even corporate people who need to build internal tools. The Academy will serve this population well because they will be able to quickly upskill their employees for free and enable more people in their company to develop and manage their internal tools - especially tools that they are able to build specifically for their use case. Lastly, our hope is that the Academy will draw in freelancers, Adalo Experts, and builders to teach content and drive people to their business. Our goal with the academy is not just to build an education platform for Adalo, but to create funnels of business for the freelancers and businesses who build on Adalo for a living.

Aside from those, I think other potential audiences down the road might be after-school programs (so elementary school students can learn Adalo for free), churches and non-profits (building apps for their organization), and even just people who want to build personal or family projects.

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Patrick a question about Adastacks.

Is there a team developing Adastacks or Only you?

Thank you

Currently its just me actually. But the process I have setup for Adastacks development makes it quite easy and fast to develop endpoints. Combined with Adalo’s ease of Custom Actions and there’s very little support load as well so managing Adastacks by myself is not terribly difficult.

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Congratulations, man! Your videos are excellent, really glad you’ve achieved this success! Are you still consulting?

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Hey thanks so much! I’m not doing consulting any more, but I am focused fully on created a ton of in-depth and free educational content for Adalo’s upcoming Education plans!

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Patrick, congrats on your new opportunity and for helping to enhance Adalo. Thanks for your coaching over the past year. Very helpful and inspiring.

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Hi Patrick,

You’ve helped me out a few times on here which I can’t thank you enough for. I have a few questions.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to implement no code and web3 through the addition of allowing users of my app to sell their product and accept other forms of currency. I want to implement a MetaMask wallet but I have no clue where to start or if that’s possible to implement with adalo yet, do you have any thoughts or resources ?

I want to establish a shipping quote between two user locations. I’ve tried to use zapier but I’m having trouble figuring things out in regard to the custom actions. I found a shipping calculator through shippo that allows embedding on websites, is there a way I’m aware of that permits the ability to embed external tools into your app through in adalo?

Lastly, I want to allow users to use an excel spreadsheet file to upload a product inventory list in order to update their individual inventory in adalo. I’m trying to emulate an available option through Amazon marketplace. Do you have any advice?

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First all thanks you so much for your answers and your valuable support, but can u show me the way in this part(Web3 with Adalo)

thanks