I’ve been trying to get into some Android programming for a long while now, fighting to find time to get the basics dow so I can start on one of the many applications we’ve dreamed up. This weekend I finally took a step in the right direction with the Global Android Dev Camp.
Starting Friday night, it was a weekend “hackerthon” where the goal is to create a brand-new app, from brain-storming to publication on the market, from 7:30pm Friday night through to 3 o’clock Sunday afternoon. As a “global” event, it was run near-simultaneously in over 30 locations around the world, complete with prize-categories, good company and the almighty beer-pizza combination.
The Melbourne event was held at OpenHub, a co-location workspace offered by Daniel Bradby and jTribe to young entrepreneurs, hacker-visionaries and the city’s digerati elite. jTribe graciously provided the Android Australia Users Group with this funky location, the beer and even Sunday’s pizza — and Daniel himself participated in the Dev Camp, writing an Android remote for his menacing Lego Mindstorm robot and hacking various other projects.
As Friday and Saturday were slated to run ’til midnight, Dee and I decided it was best if I found a hotel in the CBD and stayed there for the weekend — she would stay at home with Jules and taunt me with funny photos of our beloved son laugh-eating (which had me in happy tears). She even found me a hotel on Collins Street, less than a block away.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but the whole weekend was invigorating and fun. I met a bunch of different people, each sharing the passion for technology that has been all too rare in work-colleagues in my career. I discovered fun things about UDP, then fell down a rabbit-hole trying to understand Maven — thankfully Tim was nearby and somewhat of a Maven maven, har har. By the end I have Eclipse, Maven and the Android Annotations all playing nicely — but that’s another blog-post altogether.
More like this, please universe. Much fun!