Recently I joined an initiative by Appcelerator called Titans, with the intention of hosting meetups for web developers without previous mobile experience and contribute to the community with my open source framework. My goal is to plan and execute some event before this summer.
Behind Titanium Mobile is the well funded Appcelerator, who got a boost from investors last fall, allowing the platform to grow exponentially during 2011. As a part of their efforts to spread the word, they have created the Appcelerator Titans program, a community of Titanium developers with a mission to contribute to and help the Titanium Mobile platform grow.
“Titanium Titans are experienced contributors to the Titanium Project who are responsible for representing, promoting, and expanding the Titanium Project and its ideals to the larger mobile community and the public at large.”
From Appcelerator Developer Blog
These past months, a lot of my time has been spent developing a framework for Titanium Mobile development called Adamantium.js, more details about the project soon to be published. This framework will be open sourced, licensed as freely as possible and I encourage everyone with interest to checkout or download a copy of this project and contribute to its roadmap.
Running an open source project is completely new to me and hopefully some developers with more experience of this will join the project, but as of now I plan to move the repository to Google Code and start using their issue tracker and wiki. From there I hope the roadmap of the project will become a community interest.
I believe in following best practices and always try to keep code unquestionable, though none is perfect. In the development of Adamantium.js I see potential of promoting best practices and simplifying clean, up-to-standards code. And this philosophy is of course reflected in the way I teach, write guides and develop mobile apps on a day-to-day basis.
The amount of real-life tech meetups I’ve attended could be counted on one hand, with fingers to spare, but I still intend on planning and executing at least one event or meetup, hopefully before this summer. The format is still undecided, but as I will probably target web developers with Javascript experience, but little or no knowledge of developing mobile apps with Titanium Mobile, I am thinking of hosting an event in the style of 24hbc.
Maybe a bunch of developers with some jQuery skills, building native mobile apps using their existing knowledge, probably with Adamantium.js as framework, during a confined space of time. A couple of teams of 2-4 people, in competition, with me as the hovering tutor and problem solver. This idea will need some more work, but I’m sure I’ll get there.
In my pre-freelancer life, part of my job was teaching staff to use and administrate corporate software and going even further back, I’ve been reviewing, demonstrating and promoting software, hardware, gadgets and the way we interact with them, since computers became available to me. I am open to suggestions of projects where I teach you and maybe your staff of web developers the craft of mobile apps, with Adamantium.js.
Also of interest are speaking engagements, on events where the participants might benefit of learning the basics of Titanium Mobile. And the consulting, that one goes without saying – it’s my job.