Teaching Ubuntu App Development

[Daniel Holbach]

Hello everybody,

At the vUDS in November we talked about having events where local 
communities could learn more about app development for Ubuntu for the 
first time. Since then we have come a long way:

  * We have some really nice materials [1] set up.
  * The first events were held in a number of places around
    the world.
  * We got feedback and improved our docs.
  * Before the Ubuntu Global Jam [2] and the release parties [3]
    for 14.04 LTS we will have two Q&A sessions where you can
    ask all organisational and technical questions you might
    have.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoRunningAppDevSchool#Materials
[2] http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/global/2656/
[3] http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/global/2702/


You don’t have to do everything yourself!
=========================================

When we started the initiative, we first talked to members of the Ubuntu 
community who knew a bit of app development already. Many of them liked 
the idea, but didn’t quite know how to set up an event or how to 
organise everything. We tried to address this by bringing them in touch 
with some of the LoCo teams which helped in a bunch of cases where 
events have already happened or are going to happen quite soon. We want 
more of this to happen.

It’s only understandable that you can’t do everything yourself, or that 
one person’s skills lie in a more organisational field and somebody else 
has some more experience with app development. Bringing the two 
together, we are going to have more interesting events, more people 
introduced to writing apps for Ubuntu, which will be great for everyone 
involved.


Getting started
===============

Sounds good so far? Here’s what you can do to get more folks exposed to 
how sweet and easy it is to write apps for Ubuntu.

As somebody who can organise events, but might need to find a speaker: 
Ask in #ubuntu-app-devel on Freenode or on the ubuntu-app-devel@ mailing 
list [4], to see if anyone is in your area to give a talk. Ask on your 
LoCo’s or LUG’s mailing list as well. Even if somebody who’s into 
programming hasn’t developed using Ubuntu’s SDK yet, they should be able 
to familiarise themselves with the technologies quite easily.

[4] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-app-devel


As somebody who has written code before and didn’t find the Ubuntu app 
development materials too challenging, but might need to find some help 
with organising the event: Ask on the loco-contacts@ mailing list [5]. 
There are LoCos all around the world and most of them will be happy to 
see somebody give a talk at an event.

[5] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts


Whichever camp you’re in:

  * Check out our docs. [6] They explain what’s required to make
    the event a success.
  * Join our Q&A sessions at:
    - 26 March 2014, 09:00 UTC
    - 27 March 2014, 18:00 UTC
    on Ubuntu on Air (http:/ubuntuonair.com).
  * Talk to us. Just follow up on this mail and we can surely
    help you out somehow.

Let’s make this happen together. Writing apps for Ubuntu and publishing 
them has never been easier, and they’ll make Ubuntu on phones/tablets 
much more interesting, and will run on the desktop as well.

Have a great day,
  Daniel


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