The arrival of pizza around 6:00 sparked conversations among the 38 geeks in attendance as they mingled and served themselves. We continued informal networking until 6:30, which gave plenty of time for stragglers to arrive before the meeting proper. This worked well and I plan to follow a similar pattern for future meetings.
Meeting Slides
Packaging and Releasing Android Applications
Drew Denardo the Senior Engineering Manager of the Android team at Comcast Interactive Media (CIM) gave a presentation/demo about packaging and releasing apps in the Android market. After his presentation, he answered many questions about managing a mobile team, CIM’s build process, testing considerations, release guidelines, market distributor selection, proguard pros & cons, and what it’s like to work at CIM. The members enjoyed his talk and kept him answering questions for nearly an hour!
Community Discussion
Following Drew’s presentation, we discussed what we wanted out of the organization. I stressed that our community will only be as strong as the members make it, and I have no doubt we will create some great things this year. Overall I was impressed with the feedback and look forward to making this the best tech group in Philly!
We collectively decided on a loose organizational structure to be headed by a steering committee. This committee will drive event planning, social events, and securing talks for meetings.
Members expressed interest in creating community events and partnering with other organizations. We discussed having a monthly speaker series (drawn from members’ experience), hackathons, Android bootcamps & workshops, and “office hours.” In addition, we decided on separate social events (e.g. happy hours, potlucks, and picnics) occurring between meetings (member or steering committee suggestions welcomed).
Post Meeting Activity
- A partnership has been formed with CocoaHeads to host joint mobile office hours.
- A steering committee has started forming on the Google discussion group.
- Already discussing event ideas and upcoming community events.
- Group cross-pollination and partnerships are starting to form.
- Securing of speakers for next month’s meeting: It is shaping up to be a design and XML layout implementation theme.
Special Thanks
We greatly appreciate the sponsorship of space, pizza, and drinks from Comcast Interactive Media!
What do you think has worked for other groups you have participated in? What is the biggest problem you see with Android development/apps and how can we address that? Are you interested in becoming a member or part of the steering committee? Do you have suggestions on how we can increase diversity by reaching out to gaming, QA/test, design, and/or other tech groups?
Hi,
The meeting sounds very informative; thanks for the notes! I believe the biggest gaps in the Android development experience are:
1. Poor support for unit tests — There should be an Emulator free mechanism that starts up instantly (or worst case, in the same startup timeframe as a Spring app context.)
2. No native dependency injection — Roboguice is maturing but to miss this feature is a little shocking.
3. The use of XML for view layouts — It seems like Java classes with static methods or constants that return instances of the metadata would have been easy to implement and would have eliminated the need for R.java. Or, a DSL would have been more compact and flexible (in Groovy, perhaps.)
Hi Ben!
Maybe we should consider some sort of streaming/podcasting/recording for the next meeting so you can join us virtually! 🙂
Agreed with you on the points above! I think another huge problem with the ecosystem is the lack of consumer trust. The quality and usability really isn’t there in most apps and the entry bar is pretty low. I don’t fully agree with the walled garden approach of Apple’s store, but it does provide a degree of customer trust. For example, I haven’t bought a single Android app and bought around 20 when I was an iPhone/iPad user! I have high hopes for the alternate markets and want to do my part to elevate the standards for what makes a good app.