Were we ambitious or crazy?
Either way, we looked at the calendar and realised that it was just too short a time to put together the event we had thought of.
The new date is November 25th to 27th.
There will also be a “warm-up” event on Wednesday 23rd in the evening, so keep that time free as well 
So, we got the confirmation and the event is ON!
Bonnier publications is partnering with MDC to run a hackathon.
The core ideas are; to have fun, learn new stuff, meet new people.
Oh, and if you build something that changes the world, that’s a bonus
There will be a “warm-up” event earlier in the week to help teams (designers, developers, product owners etc) form up. The idea being that the team can get some actual productive stuff done on Friday evening rather than spending the whole evening match-making.
This means the team has from Friday early evening/late afternoon until Sunday to work together on their project.
On Saturday afternoon we will have some lightning talks, so that people are encouraged to look up from their screens and then on Sunday afternoon, short demos from the teams. As always, it’s more about what you have achieved, than looking at final products.
So, a number of folks have talked to us about setting up a more “hacking” or “doing” type event, and this time of year seems appropriate.
Doing something exactly 6 months after MDC would put it in August (still Holiday season), so we have slid it a bit later in the year.
There are a couple of details waiting to drop into place, and then we will announce the event.
Standby fro more information (hopefully by the end of the week!)
This year we remembered to ask the speakers to upload their slides somewhere
So, in the order they were on the main stage, here are PDF’s of the sidesets (titles are links!);
Evolving mobile industry Tomi Ahonen
Angry Birds returns to Mobile Dev Camp, Ville Heijari
bada: The Next Wave, Manfred Bortenschlager
Introduction to mobile development using QtQuick, Attila Csipa
Windows Phone 7 – A different kind of phone, Mika Okkola
Efficient architecture independent apps using Python and QML, Juha Liukkonen
How not to monetize 10 million downloads, Elias Pietilä
There are also some videos on bambuser but be warned, the audio is not that great, and there were quite a lot of battery problems early on in the day (Note to self, always have a full battery before streaming stuff!)
If anyone has better quality videos or other media, then please put your links in the comments.
P.S. I know not all the presentations are on here yet, but as we get links we will add them to this post (and tweet about it!).
Thanks everyone, hope you all enjoyed the day, and maybe see you next year.
Of course we need to thank the speakers, who all managed to deliver their talks within the allocated time (makes it so much easier to keep things sort of on track!), and who all delivered interesting and different talks (or at least I thought so).
Thanks also to the competition judges;
Manfred from Samsung (although in the end on-one actually built something to show Manfred),
Claudio and Maksim from AndroidAalto (who had the tough job of judging between their friends)
Attila Csipa (who judged the Qt category, which had the most polished apps at the end of the 48 hours ),
Teemu Kurppa (who also had an easy day as it seems the iApp hype has died down, or is it that all the iDevs are too busy?)
Lari Tuominen of Qvik, who looked at the Windows Phone 7 entry (which was the most impressive achievement, 6 hours from nothing to working app, with no experience of the platform)
and last but certainly not least, a big thanks to all of the sponsors for enabling this years event
Samsung and their bada platform
Forum Nokia
Windows Phone
Symbio
Culminatum
Applifer
Although the Aalto Venture Garage is only 10 minutes from Kamppi by bus and surrounded by offices of the biggest names in Finnish Industry, for many it seems it might as well be on the other side of the moon
Those that did not brave the cold and the short bus ride, missed
For those that asked where we came up with the idea/theme of this years competition (Communication and/or Journalism), it was that the uutisraivaaja competition deadline is fast approaching, so even if you don’t win here at MobileDevCamp you can continue to develop the app and try again there.
If you build your app using Qt, then the deadline for the Cute Qt competition over at Travelling Salesman has been extended, so you could also enter that.
At the end of his session, Jani promised to provide some links.
I just got them via email, so here they are;
—-
To get up to speed with Windows Phone 7 development, follow these links:
Free Windows Phone 7 developer tools download
Windows Phone 7 Training Kit for Developers
Getting Started with Windows Phone
App Hub, the place to submit applications and get more information
You have 48 hours to build an application based around the theme of “Communication and/or Journalism” in one of the five categories;
* bada
* Qt – one or more of Symbian, MeeGo or Maemo
* Microsoft Phone 7
* Android
* iOS
The judges will be looking at (these have different weights and are in no specific order);-
** Freshness of the idea
are rating how new the idea is to you (i.e. when you got the idea, last year or last week), AS WELL as if it is similar to an existing app (i.e. we slightly punish coping existing apps that exist on another platform)
** use of bleeding edge tech
the more blood and screaming the better!
** implementation
i.e. is it a flawless working app ready for the store or does it crash 4 times out of 5 when started up. Although there is a slight benefit if the crash is really spectacular
** length of time spent coding on the platform
we are rewarding n00bs and punishing grey beards! The idea is to encourage you to try new platforms (and reward you for doing so!)
** your general coding experience
again there is a slight benefit for the less experienced)
NOTE: You do not need a physical handset to enter the competition, but you do need a running demo. Demos on a device a slightly favoured
On Saturday, you can fill-in a judging form (you can find them where you pick up your name badge)
Then find the appropriate Judge for your category and he/she will then write a score for your application on the sheet and sign it.
Once that is done, bring the sheet to Mike in the main auditorium, you have until 16:40 on Saturday (Generous souls that we are we have given you an extra 10 minutes ). When you hand me the form, I will also take a short video of the app running.
We are using #mdchel11 as the supper short version from character limited services (like twitter)
Feel free to use this shorter one in other places, but I think it makes more sense to use the longer tag #MobileDevCampFI in places like Flikr etc. that do not have character limitations.
Inspired by our keynote speaker, Tomi “Mobile Stats” Ahonen I just had a quick look at some statistics from previous years and it looks like this year we will have bigger event than previous years. Following are some stats from our Facebook pages. And before someone comments I know that facebook RSVP do not usually show the truth. This is not the first event I’m doing With Mobile Dev Camp the correlation is stronger than with many other events. That’s why I feel confident writing this blog post.
2009
97 attending
94 maybe attending
Official estimate of attendees: 100
2010
156 attending
121 maybe attending
Official estimate of attendees: 200
2011 (3 days before the event)
176 attending
116 maybe attending
Target attendees: 250-300
Interesting detail is that this year we have less people “maybe attending” than last year and more attending. Perhaps people are getting more familiar with Mobile Dev Camp and know what to expect. We will have a great event once more with great hacking competition.
As the date for MobileDevCamp2011 is fast approaching (it’s next Saturday for those keeping count), we thought it would be a good idea to drop some hints that could help you win prizes that are available on Saturday.
First tip – DON’T build an iApp!
The winners of the iOS category last year ended up waiting for a pretty long time to recieve their prize(thanks to Apple for taking so long to release in Finland!)
Also, last year the iOS category had the stiffest competition with around 7 enteries for just the one prize!
Second tip – take advantage of the Thursday evening workshop and see just how far you can get in just a couple of hours with a new toolchain.
Use the time to experiment with another platform like bada, Nokia’s Qt Quick and QML, Microsoft Windows Phone 7
Third tip – if you can, install and configure the tools before Thursday
Forth tip – If you build something worthwhile or useful using Qt Quick and/or QML there is a good chance for it to be promoted in the Ovi store!
Fifth Tip – Try to have fun, this is in your spare time remember
