OpenSocial Dev Garage Dallas

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Event Report

The sessions are over, the empty pizza boxes have been thrown away, the after-event drinks have been drunk, and somewhere in excess of twenty individuals are now officially OpenSocial developers, having signed up for an Orkut developer account (most for the first time) and uploaded and modified their first real gadget. Although they're no longer sitting around a table together, all of them now have developer friends in the Sandbox who are willing to add their app (and anybody who's tried to test a social network application without a pool of guinea pigs knows how valuable that is)

Things started out early, with the first couple of travelers (from far-off Ft. Worth) arriving around 8:30, and the core crew of about 20 people there for the start at 9:30. The WiFi held up tolerably well as the morning session kicked off with a mass Orkut signup. The biggest surprise for most was how simple an OpenSocial application could be (we used modified versions of the Gifting application from the OpenSocial tutorial) and how easy it was to get started if you were familiar with client-side design. That was a good thing, because an informal poll of the audience indicated that there were more designers and "front end" developers than hard-core server-side coders.

Some conversations at lunch suggested that a substantial portion of the attendees already had an application of some sort they were considering porting, and there was discussion of the various user-base estimates (400 million OpenSocial users? 500 million? more?) and how to take advantage of the huge (but possibly fragmented) number of potential users.

The afternoon finished with a breakout of those interested more in implementing OpenSocial than in writing gadgets. There was no formal presentation, but the Java coders did a quick walkthrough of the source and identified the key integration points (Reading about them is good, bringing them up in an editor and adding some debug statements is better). While that happened, those leaning towards the client side played with modifications to the sample applications, and there was some discussion of integrating with existing back-end applications interfaces.

Most of the attendees wandered off to deal with trivial matters like family, friends and the unseasonably warm weather, but a group ended up at Thomas Avenue Beverage Company for beers (the Londoner pub next door being closed. See: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=upcoming%3Aevent%3D1460416)

When, Where, How

Sat, Jan 17th 2008

Cohabitat Coworking

2517 Thomas Ave

Dallas, Texas

OpenSocial Dev Garage Dallas is your chance to write your first "Hello Friends" application in a supportive group environment. If you're more into writing containers than the gadgets that populate them, we're also planning to have a breakout session on implementing the API so your application can be an OpenSocial gadget host.

The event is planned for Sat, January 17th at the amazing new Cohabitat coworking space in Dallas's historic State-Thomas neighborhood. In the interest of keeping things focused we're capping attendance at 25 people:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1460416/

If there's enough demand, we may be able to open up some more space, but I'd recommend signing up now if you want to guarantee a spot!


Schedule

  • 8:00-9:30 registration, coffee and some pre-event networking
  • 9:30-11:30 introduction to opensocial development
  • 11:30-12:30 lunch
  • 12:30-04:30 build stuff!
  • 12:30-02:30 breakout: implementing the opensocial api
  • 04:30-05:30 mini-democamp of any apps that got built
  • 05:30-??:?? retire to a local pub for grub and beers (looking for sponsors!)


Sponsorships

We're looking for sponsors for lunch and dinner. Given the crowd size, we don't expect it to be a significant expense, but we'd really like to get some local companies involved in the event. Please contact ckstjohn@gmail.com if you're able to help out.

It looks like Google may be sending t-shirts.

  • UPDATE: Google sent the T-Shirts! (but... they only sent 10, get there early)
  • UPDATE: Traxo is sponsoring pizza for lunch! (Those with dietary restrictions might want to bring their own...)
  • UPDATE: Praxis Bridge is sponsoring morning coffee!


Publicity

Mentions in blogs, tweets, etc:

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