Jolla and Sailfish Hack Day 2014-03-29

Due to popular demand we are organizing a second event!

Would you like to learn how to write a Sailfish OS app and get it into the Jolla store? Or are you already working on a Sailfish app but need help with it? Join us on Jolla and Sailfish Hack Day to code and learn from other SailfishOS and QML enthusiasts. And if you already have an app in the Jolla store, please come and share your expertise!

The day will start at 11:00 with Artem Marchenko’s presentation “How to make a Sailfish app that passes Harbour QA (and would be good enough for the Jolla store)” where he presents his Hello World Pro example.

After this tutorial everybody can open SailfishOS SDK on their laptop and start coding. During the day experts will walk around and help out. You are also encouraged to help your peers with what you can! Together we will make great apps.

Requirements:

• some prior coding experience and courage to dive into SailfishOS SDK
• an idea for an app
• your own laptop to code on

Not required:

• Jolla phone – you can write and run your app with the SailfishOS SDK and get your Jolla device later
• food or drink – there will be pizza, beer and other refreshments sponsored by Seravo

Registration is required so that we can be prepared with plenty of pizza, beer and a large enough venue.

Organized by Devaamo ry and Seravo Oy

What was the first one like?

On February 22th Seravo in cooperation with Devaamo and Arch Red organized the first ever Jolla and Sailfish Hack Day. The event was a success with a full room of about 30 people (and more than ten people signed up for the waiting list). Next event will be at a venue that can take up to 100 participants, so now everybody who wants should be able to attend.

Our previous Jolla Hack Day started with some introduction words from Otto Kekäläinen of Seravo and other organizers, and then followed the presentation by Artem Marchenko on how to make a Jolla (Sailfish) app. This was a good hands-on presentation on how to install the SDK, how to open, build and run the Hello World Pro app, and how to continue from there to make your own Sailfish app and send it for quality review to the Jolla store.

After Artem’s talk on how to code a Jolla app we had an extra surprise presentation by senior designer Jaakko Roppola from Jolla on how to design a good user interface. At the event was also community manager Carol Chen and a few other sailors from Jolla.

After the presentation we had a general round where everybody expressed their ideas on what kind of app they want to do, or what kind of Other Half hardware hacking they where interested. People with similar interests where paired up and the people split up into the different hacking rooms at the venue.

There was a surprisingly large amount of people interested in hardware hacking and there where indeed some really hard core people who had already 3D printed their own Other Halfs and build OLED screens, clocks and other devices. Kimmo Lindholm, who works at a hardware company, had produced Jolla Other Half compatible boards which people could by for a low cost and solder on the components to make a functional Other Half that communicated via I2C to the main device.

Most people however where hacking on the software side and people had a great opportunity to learn from each other and work together. Multiple initial projects where pushed to Github and we believe that at least two apps got finished and sent to the Jolla store within a few days of the event.

During the event there where of course also coffee, beverages, pizza and the usual coding fuel available. After multiple hours of coding time in the afternoon we had a round-up at 18:30 where everybody got a chance to present what they’ve done during the day so far. After the round-up some people continued still for a few hours and then many of use ended up in the local bar enjoying our achievements for the day.

All in all it was a great event and we of course plan to top it the next time.

If you want to be among the first developers on a new revolutionizing mobile platform or in any other way a part of the movement, sign up now for our next Jolla and Sailfish Hacking day on 29th of March in Tampere, Finland.