The 1st BlackBerry Casual Meetup 2012 was held in Bandung, on Saturday, March 3rd, 2012. The event was held at the cafe – according to the show concept show, this event was able to collect more than 50 participants, from students, public general and developers.
Bandung event has also become the opening act for casual meetup road-shows to be held in various cities in Indonesia such as Malang, Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Bali.
This event was held in Vanilla Kitchen & Wine from morning until late afternoon. This event was presenting three speakers and two demo products or showcase. The event was also attended by RIM representatives who opened the event with his speech.
Jason Sounderson – Director of Government Relations in a brief speech emphasizing some things, especially those related to application development environment and the role of developer. Still in touch with the developer, Jason also gave information that at the same day (late afternoon), ITB and RIM would announce a cooperation for the centre research and development applications; they also plans to collaborate with other universities.
After that event continued with a presentation from A’la Almaujudy (Cak uding). The presentation is about the experience in application development for mobile devices. Cak Uding shared his experience for managing Better-B company, they are often working on various applications for various companies.
There are also many tips about running a business or mobile application development; among others is the importance of the development plan, such as mockup to monetization. Collaboration is also important, according to Cak uding. Collaboration isn’t only among developers but also designers, marketing and even with the user.
Another important thing is to have fun in doing development/business; to have an evaluation of what was done, successes and failures as well as things that could be the most important thing, doing an execution. All plans won’t run without execution. Cak Uding also gave tips about his experience working with various companies (with contract). Agreement should be clear at the beginning of the contract, it is important for those who already have a company or freelance.
Presentation is continued by Deddy Avianto from (IDBerry). He shared his experience in business development themes for BlackBerry devices. Although he’s not a developer, Deddy can expand his business to develop variety themes for BB users.
He also explained some events or the monetization way such as premium download, ads or develop themes for brand owners. Themes can also be made to collaborate with developers, such as applications and themes of a particular product or promo joined in a related program. Themes development isn’t merely just an image but can also add some other gimmick.
Some suggestions from Deddy for developer who wants to enter their apps to App World is, icons and descriptions as well as the name of the application must be made attractive. I myself have discussed this in regard of this article.
Later on, there were two more others speakers. Asep Bagja presented his startup, “Travel in Seven” that have been discussed in DailySocial. He also described the development of this application for PlayBoook. Another one is a demo application by Arie M. Prasetyo with Gamelan, a music player that has also been discussed in DailySocial. Arie also described the Gamelan development for mobile devices, including a Playbook plan applications. There was also a presentation relating with technical terms which is also included into the material at the meetup this time, the presentation presented by Ziyad Bazed.
There was also an announcement from BBDevID about BBDevID Challenge contest. The prize is cash-money, BB device and Playbook. There are two categories for this competition, WebWorks and Android can check at this link. Further information can be accessed here. There will be a separate meetup to support this competition.
Some suggestions for application development given by Om DED for developers who want to submit their application into the App World are icons and descriptions as well as the application name must be attractive. I have discussed it in this article.
This casual Meetup event is the first event set off from the community, not from RIM itself. In casual conversation, Deddy of IDBerry (one of the organizers of this event) explained that the casual meetup was originally a prototype for casual activities related to BB or RIM because usually formal events held, such as BB DevCon in Bali previously, Singapore event yesterday and the day developer event in ITB. This event has also received approval from RIM and it would be a routine event.
Casual Meeetup event tried to explain about variety of development that can be done in the BB application development ecosystem including flash and the other in accordance with BB application development. One of it is Arisetyo who developed Flash-based application in Bandung.
The event was a kind of scouting to find a good developer who can develop an application, because RIM itself has a fnding program of funding for applications that are considered funding-worthy.
This meetup casual event departs from the community and the approach also invites the local community supported by IDBerrry. The event also invited local communities like FOWAB in Bandung and of course GameDevID and BBDevID as the BlackBerry developer community gathering place.
The next casual events meetup will be held in Malang on March 10th, then Yogyakarta (March 17th), Jakarta (March 24) and the last Bali (7th April). So, please wait for the information in the local area. For who are interested to join, you may check BBdevid.com for registration information and the announcement of the next meetup.
Disclosure: I am active in FOWAB.
