Pebble Developer Retreat
If you were there, you’re probably still talking about it, right? If not, you missed a great opportunity, which you’ll want to take advantage of next time. Create a great Pebble app and be there!
I’m talking about the recent Pebble Developer Retreat, which took place at Pebble HQ in Palo Alto, California, during the waning days of summer on the eve of Labor Day weekend, August 29th to September 2nd. What an amazing event! Way cool, truly awesome -- all that and more!
More than one hundred Pebble software developers, many of whom had already created really cool Pebble watchface and watchapps, converged in a series of presentations, hands-on coding workshops, discussions, and lots of fun, food and fellowship at the Retreat.
The event was hardly a “retreat” by any stretch of the imagination or in the conventional sense of the word, but rather, a giant leap forward for Pebble developers moving their code in preparation for the next release of the Pebble SDK.
Ultimately, of course, Pebble users will get to enjoy the benefits and rewards of this event, as Pebble developers from all over the world create and build the next generation of great Pebble software.
Eric Migicovsky, Pebble CEO and Founder, kicked off the event on Thursday morning, welcoming developers who crossed oceans to come for the event. Eric emphasized how important developers were to building and expanding the Pebble ecosystem with the next generation of Pebble apps and how dedicated Pebble is to supporting this community in every way possible.
Some of Eric's key points:
- Pebble sees value in being a platform
- We're laser-focused on wearables, without legacy products to support
- That means we can create great products, like hardware, firmware, apps and SDKs, that are extremely useful in a wearable context
- While other devices will most likely be closed, Pebble is focused on creating an open, cross-platform ecosystem of watchapps
In other sessions, between hacking on apps and getting code reviewed by Team Pebble, developers got to hear about the new tools, frameworks, and APIs that Team Pebble is currently working on and to which Pebble, as a leading software company in the wearable space, is devoting valuable engineering and developer resources, by Thomas Sarlandie, Pebble’s software evangelist who masterfully organized and set up the event.
Later, developers were treated to a session on “Tips on Designing Apps” from Pebble's UX lead by Omar Younis, and “How to Optimize Energy Consumption on your Pebble App”, as well as an eye-opening guided tour inside the Pebble watch hardware by Andrew Witte, Pebble’s Chief Technology Officer.
Meanwhile, Pebble developers had a chance to work hands-on with members of Team Pebble, side by side, at Pebble HQ in conference rooms, workshops, and even outside while enjoying great food, camaraderie and delicious BBQ’s in the California sun.
The beauty of the event, IMHO, was that it worked both ways.
Team Pebble got to listen, up close and personal, to the needs and concerns of this most important class of Pebble developers, software architects and designers -- the great folks who make up the Pebble developer community around the world. We got to learn from their coding experiences, collect feedback, log bugs, and post feature requests on a dozen different whiteboards at Pebble HQ.
Hacking away over the weekend, I can tell you that these folks inspired Team Pebble to meet the programming gods head on and produce a next generation Pebble SDK that truly rocks the wearable software world out there. Onward and upward!
Photos tell the story. Check them out, and if you’ve got any that you want to share, contact us. I’ll do another posting and add your quotes and comments.
As Luke Korth wrote in his blog: http://lukekorth.com/blog/pebble-developer-retreat/
I've spent 5 days hanging out and hacking with the guys at Pebble and many of the active community members and it's been nothing short of spectacular. Everyone at Pebble is extremely dedicated to what they're building and more than happy to help developers and integrate requests into the Pebble SDK. It was also an awesome opportunity to meet a bunch of developers in the Pebble community and hear some of their ideas and thoughts about Pebble.... I really enjoyed spending time with the Pebble devs and I can't wait to see where they take things in the future.
Paul Rode, the author of Watchface Generator app, said:
The Pebble Developer Retreat was a lot of fun and I'm happy with what's coming up in the near future. Also while being on my way back home, the generator exceeded 50.000 generated watchfaces. That rocks!
https://www.facebook.com/WatchfaceGenerator
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