Ubuntu Touch | joseeantonior

App Dev School in Lima!

On the 25th of January, the Ubuntu Peru LoCo Team hosted the first Ubuntu App Dev School. We contacted the National Engineering University, and they offered their help in order to host the event at their premises.

After some planning, we showed up that morning. I was a bit rushed with everything as the connection on my PC was not good and I had to run an Ubuntu User Days session just before the event started, so I ended up running it from my phone. At 10:00 am, around 45 to 50 people joined us in the newly-opened auditorium, where we presented Ubuntu Touch to the community and explained how it all worked – from the foundations to app development. This was the first time the community had showed a device with Ubuntu Touch, and as I got my own Nexus 4 I decided to give it a try, and show it to the rest of the community.

Everything starting by showing the phone with the OS installed, and then we proceeded to explain how the system worked, the concepts inside the system, how edges work, and many more things that are featured on the phone. After this, we had a break, where we distributed some swag and DVDs/CDs we got from Canonical, as we are a verified team. We invited some people from the press, but as they didn’t show up we ended up having more time for the next part of the event. We continued by explaining how foundations and applications work, and we gave some tips on how to install Ubuntu on a machine or use a VM, install Ubuntu Touch on a phone or tablet, and terminal tips and tricks. We also explained the process of creating and publishing applications to the Ubuntu Click Store.

We encouraged people to write their own applications, whether they are in QML or HTML5. I had a couple spare YubiKeys from when I went to UDS-R (literally, a couple), so I decided to raffle them to the assistants. We got a bunch of numbered tickets and started giving them out to assistants, and then we raffled them as we kept the other side of the ticket (works great if you decide to do a raffle in your LoCo Team!). We hoped this was an incentive in order to increase security in their accounts and discovering what else can be done with Ubuntu.

Aaaand, that was basically it. Everyone ended up super happy, and knowing what the future of convergence is.

If you want to organize an App Dev School in your LoCo Team, it’s quite easy! Just make sure to read this page to have a general idea. Daniel Holbach and David Planella will be hosting two sessions at Ubuntu on Air! to answer all your questions about App Dev Schools – both organizational and technical. The first one is on the 26th of March at 9:00 UTC, and the second one is on the 27th of March at 18:00 UTC. Make sure you’re there if you want to ask anything about App Dev Schools. Also, if you want to use the slides I used for the presentation, they are on my people.ubuntu.com page, and fully translated to Spanish. The original slides can be found at Daniel’s people.canonical.com page, including also a VM with Ubuntu and the Ubuntu SDK installed. Now, I leave you with some photos from the event!