Bringing App Dev School events to your LoCo

Tue Mar 18 11:27:06 UTC 2014

Hello everybody,

App development for Ubuntu is a hot topic and many have blogged and 
talked about this in the past months. Still I’d like to point out two 
things which never cease to amaze me:

  - Writing the code of the app once and have it work on everything from
    a phone to a TV.
  - It’s easy. We had people join the Ubuntu Core Apps team, who had
    never written apps using QML or HTML5. These people now delivered
    some of the apps which will come preinstalled with Ubuntu phones in
    stores [1] this year. Getting their feet wet and initial drafts of
    the apps up and running was a matter of days only.

This is just fantastic and something we should share.

[1] 
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/02/bq-meizu-ubuntu-smartphones-confirmed-for-2014-release

Ubuntu App Dev Schools?

At UDS we had a really nice discussion [2] about how to bring more App 
Development training events to our Ubuntu community. We came up with a 
number of work items [3], focusing on

  - improving our presentation materials,
  - making it easier for newcomers to step in, learn and present,
  - reaching out to app developer communities and our LoCo teams at
    the same time.

With the Ubuntu Global Jam [4] coming up in just 3 weeks and soon 
followed by the 14.04 release [5]  and its release parties, we have to 
move fast to make this happen. To coordinate this better, David [6] and 
I decided to have a daily standup meeting on Google Hangout at 9:30 UTC. 
Let us know (maybe on #ubuntu-locoteams [7]) if you want to join the 
conversation.

[2] 
http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-1403/meeting/22160/community-1403-appdev-schools/
[3] 
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-1403-appdev-schools
[4] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam
[5] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseSchedule
[6] http://davidplanella.org/
[7] http://loco.ubuntu.com/irc/

We need help.

Obviously we need teams to organise events, but we need other help as well:

  - Planning. Join our planning events mentioned above.
  - Hosting. If you are interested in running an event, you should check
    our docs [8] and see if there’s anything missing in there.
  - Collaborating. Talk to your LoCo team and see if you can host an
    Ubuntu App Dev School [8] for Ubuntu Global Jam [9] or your local
    14.04 release party. Give us feedback on how it’s going.
  - Slightly unrelated. Help me with a VirtualBox question: I set up a
    VirtualBox image using Trusty, so we can have an up-to-date image
    with the newest SDK preinstalled, so we’re prepared if Mac or
    Windows users turn up to an event. Unfortunately the resolution is
    just up to 640×480, even with the Guest Additions loaded. Can anyone
    help me out?

If you are preparing to run the event, please check our Materials [10] 
section, review what we have and give us feedback. Either leave a 
comment on this page, or…

On the following days we are going to have some Feedback / Q&A sessions 
on Ubuntu on Air [11]:

  - 26 March 2014, 09:00 UTC [12]
  - 27 March 2014, 18:00 UTC [13]

There you will not only have the opportunity to ask questions about 
organising your event, but also all the technical questions you should 
have for running your presentations.

Another opportunity to find out more, is the LoCo Teams Update on Air 
[14] on Saturday at 19 UTC.

Bringing more apps to Ubuntu is lots of fun and will make Ubuntu for 
phones/tablets/laptops/desktops/TVs/everything else a lot more 
interesting! :-)

[8] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoRunningAppDevSchool
[9] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam
[10] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoRunningAppDevSchool#Materials
[11] http://ubuntuonair.com/
[12] http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140326T0900
[13] http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140327T1800
[14] http://lococouncil.ubuntu.com/2014/02/28/loco-teams-update-on-air/

Thanks a lot and keep up the good work everyone!

Have a great day,
  Daniel

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