In late April, I had the wonderful opportunity to fly out to Palm’s corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, California and be a part of the first ever Developer Day conference. This recap is long overdue, and for that I apologize. In any case, here’s a (hopefully) concise recap of my time in sunny Sunnyvale.
I flew in on Thursday night (April 22) and arrived in San Jose pretty late after several delays thanks to storms in Denver. I took a shady cab from a shady character to Sunnyvale and checked into the Motel 6 on Mathilda Ave.
Day One: Bootcamp
On Friday morning I woke up ready for excitement of the first day of the conference, which was a bootcamp intended for those new to the platform to get familiar with webOS. I was attending just to talk to new developers and potentially learn anything I missed when I was learning webOS development. When I arrived, Lisa Brewster (@adora) and some other Palm employees greeted me as I checked in. They directed me to the Palm Café where the in-house chefs were cooking up delicious breakfast items for the hungry developers.
Josh Marinacci on webOS architecture. Photo by Lisa Brewster
After that, the webOS bootcamp sessions began. Palm opened an extra room for the sessions due to the high demand of new developers. Informal polling during the event led me to believe at least 75% of the developers there were new to webOS development, which was great to see. I was in the second session with Justin Tulloss (@justin_tulloss), while others joined Josh Marinacci (@joshmarinacci). The sessions were as you would expect, overviews of the webOS architecture, development, and the SDK. Sometimes it seemed like the training went a little too fast for some of the people there, but to be fair, there was a lot to cover.
During lunch on Friday I got to meet many people I know from Twitter and the developer community including Alice Carback (@acarback), Roy Sutton (@Pre101) of webOSroundup, and Dieter Bohn (@backlon) of PreCentral. We had some fun conversations and it was really cool to meet the people I’ve been talking to on Twitter and watching on podcasts.
Steve Lemke on debugging. Photo by Lisa Brewster
The sessions continued and the folks in Josh’s session were treated to a surprise appearance by Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein (or Ruby, as we affectionately call him). Also, Palm engineer Steve Lemke (@lemketron) dropped by to talk about debugging techniques and to unveil the new stand-alone Ares debugger. By the end of the day Palm was ready to give us our gift bags that they had been taunting us with. Inside was a brand new Palm Pre Plus, a Palm pint glass, Mitch Allen’s webOS Development book, and some sweet Palm stickers. Coolest free gift bag ever!
Later on in the evening Lisa Brewster was kind enough to drive me and a few other developers to Dish Dash, a local Mediterranean restaurant. We met up with a few other Palm engineers and developers including Josh Marinacci, Steve Lemke, and Dieter Bohn. I had a great time trying new foods, enjoying a few beers, and talking about terribly geeky things with some really cool people. After that Josh was cool enough to drive me and a couple of other developers back to the Palm campus.
Day Two: Developer Day
After all the excitement from the first day, I was totally stoked to see what the second day of the conference had in store. Saturday morning started out with a keynote address from dev relations bosses Ben Galbraith (@bgalbs) and Dion Almaer (@dalmaer). They announced all sorts of exciting new features coming to the webOS platform, including hardware-accelerated CSS transformations, microphone and camera API access, and improved datastores, just to name a few. You can watch the entire keynote online.
Dion Almaer during the keynote address. Photo by Lisa Brewster
I left halfway through the keynote address to film an interview with a production crew that Palm had hired. I got to answer questions about webOS development and the applications I’ve developed. I even got to show off live demos of Digloo and Cabbie. It was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see all of the interviews once they get posted.
After that, it was time for all of the various workshops. I attended the following sessions:
- Advanced webOS with Justin Tulloss
- Marketing Your Apps with Joe Hayashi
- PDK Hybrid Apps with Andy Weir
- Effective Javascript with Justin Tulloss
- Adventures in Facebook with Kevin Decker (@kpdecker)
- Creating Standout Apps with Jeremy Lyon & Adil Dhanani
Videos and slides from all sessions are available on Palm’s website.
The sessions were great and throughout the day I also recorded interviews with Dieter Bohn of PreCentral and Roy Sutton of webOSroundup (both of which have not been posted online yet). I got to talk to a lot of developers and share my experiences and show off my apps. I also had some lengthy conversations with James Harris (@PalmFlashCards), who developed one of the most popular apps for webOS – Flash Cards.
The After Party
A rare sight of multiple Palm Pres in public. From left to right: Dieter Bohn, Me, Lisa Brewster, Josh Marinacci, James Harris, Markus Leutwyler. Photo by Lisa Brewster.
Afterwards, Palm hosted an after-party at Tied House microbrewery for Dev Day attendees and the folks from the jQuery conference down the road. There was great food and I had some really good beers there. I got to spend some more time with fellow developers, bloggers, and Palm fans. I also got to meet Jay Freeman (@saurik), who, among many other things, created the Cydia store for jailbroken iPhones.
Wrap-up
All in all, Palm’s Developer Day event was more fun than I ever could have imagined. It was inspiring to meet so many other talented developers and to interact with members of the community face-to-face. Palm and their developer relations team were extremely hospitable and friendly, and went above and beyond what anyone expected. The workshops and talks were very informative and I’ve already noticed that my development practices have improved.
In the end, I have to say it was a great pleasure meeting everyone on this trip, and I hope I can see you all again soon. It was an experience I will never forget.