Last night was the launch party for the Palm Pre and I was lucky enough to receive an invite. Originally, I was a little perplexed; the invite touted:

• The launch of the Palm Pre
• An Interactive Farmer’s Market
• Support for the Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan
• Jason Alexander as MC, Jerry Seinfeld as entertainment

This mish mash of options seemed a little confused, but the event panned out to be highly cohesive and very enjoyable.

Lisa, Greg and I (preDevCamp organisers) went together and had the opportunity to meet Pam Deziel (Palm) face to face for the first time. We also met some of the developers who’ve been working on the Pre these past months. We also ran across precentral.net‘s very own Dieter Bohn, who was one of the lucky few to get to review the Pre.

The Farmer’s Market turned out to be a very nice way to keep everyone fed as well as raising money for the IAVA. Each stall was giving away food as well as selling wares, with money going to support the veterans of the recent conflicts. You may have seen their advertisements (in the US); they do some great work and I would encourage you to find out more and make a donation.

The reason we were there, however, was the Pre. I finally got to get my hands on one. They had demo stands, with Palm reps showing them off. They were still a little guarded about giving them out, but I was allowed to hold one and have a go on the keyboard and with the touch screen. I think the keys will take a little getting used to, of me. I have big hands, so these micro keys are a little troublesome, but the Pre keys are bigger than my Blackberry’s (in terms of area) but flatter, so less tactilely pleasing; all in all, I’m happy with the keyboard. The phone itself is a great shape and weight. I love the rounded edges and, while they wouldn’t let me put it in my pocket, I think it will fit more comfortably than my past phones.

I didn’t get a chance to really play with the software as there were many clamouring hands. I did get the chance to load up the preDevCamp website, however and it looked HOT! It also loaded up pretty swiftly too, which I found quite impressive.

All in all, a great night; met the other preDevCamp organizers face to face, met some Palm muckamucks, played with the Pre, got free food. I classify this, a WIN.

The past week has seen a lot of change at preDevCamp. It’s been a busy time, but I believe we’ve found our footing again and it’s time to move forward.

Following our challenges with Palm, whurley and gio have opted to move on to other things. We wouldn’t be where we are without them and I’ve eternally grateful to them for all they did for preDevCamp. I hope I’ll see them at their local events and hope to work with them again on future projects.

Joining the organizing team are Lisa Brewster and Greg Stevenson. I’m very grateful to them, since preDevCamp is, in no way, a one person job.

We’ve spoken to Palm a number of times now and they’re very positive about preDevCamp. They’re offering support and we’re working with them to determine the best way for that support to manifest itself.

Finally, we settled on a date for preDevCamp which balances the various pressures of SDK availability, organization time and conference conflicts. We settled on August 8th and, so far, this seems to have gone across well.

Watch this space for more updates, as they come!

Back in February, Whurley, Gio and I heard about a new product called the Palm Pre.
I was excited at the promise of a new, open mobile development platform and we decided to recreate the success of iPhoneDevCamp by creating preDevCamp.

I never expected Palm to provide assistance, but I hoped they would. Apple was flooding the market with advertisements, not for the iPhone, but for the iPhone App Store and the abundant apps.
Clearly, a thriving supply of mobile applications was the way to sell a new mobile device.

I’d developed apps for Palm OS in the past and I knew that there was a devoted community of developers out there; however, they were rather neglected developers, since Palm hadn’t really been a major player in the mobile arena for a while. With the advent of the Pre, I thought things were changing.

Time went by and there were fleeting moments of contact with Palm. We spoke to them; they seemed interested but asked us to put a disclaimer that we were not affiliated with them, before they would enter into a relationship with them. This seemed a little backwards to me, but we complied. Not much transpired after that.

Then Mitch Allen gave his web presentation on developing WebOS apps and gave us a shout out. I was really excited about this; the CTO of Software was aware of what we were doing, but there wasn’t any follow up from Palm following that.

Finally, last week, Palm sent us some NDAs in preparation for a meeting this Wednesday. We signed them and prepared ourselves for an interesting update. Gio sent out a tweet simply stating that we had a meeting and it was under an NDA, as a result Palm then cancelled the meeting and cancelled any discussions covered by an NDA. At that point, my hopes for a useful relationship with Palm died.

As a corporation, I acknowledge that Palm’s only responsibility is to its shareholders. There’s nothing self serving or evil about that; it’s how things work in big business. However there are many keen and willing developers out there, who have been waiting for the arrival of WebOS. A development platform is only a success if it is broadly adopted. Instead of embracing the grassroots upswell of interest in WebOS that preDevCamp fostered, Palm seem to be, at best, oblivious and, at worst, disdainful of the enthusiasm and good will engendered by these folk. I think they are missing a real opportunity to be involved in and to help generate the growth of a vital community.

My fellow preDevCamp founders and I may have differing views on the impact of Palm’s interactions with us. Personally, I’m left disappointed at what I view as a lack of foresight on Palm’s behalf. Palm will live or die by the success of the WebOS platform. The preDevCamp community will be a large part of this. However, my excitement remains about the WebOS platform. I couldn’t really give two hoots about Palm at this point. I *do* want preDevCamp to be a success and I *know* it will be; we have dedicated organizers all the way across the globe. We have a release date, at last. We have a date for preDevCamp. It’s all systems go. I encourage you to stay focused on the product and on the exciting possibilities that WebOS brings. My only hope, now, is that Palm runs the course with their indifference to community. If they don’t want to help us, that’s fine. I just hope they don’t try and get in our way.

If you don’t know, webOS is the new operating system that Palm have created. Instead of having to write apps in Objective C or Java, Palm have opted for having HTML, Javascript and CSS as the language of choice. I think this might be a smart move on their part; the number of applications that developers write is directly proportional to the number of developers who actually have the expertise to code for this platform. However, I think Palm have only made half of this smart move.

If you want to change the game, you sometimes need to bring in new players. Right now, the smartphone application development arena is populated by Objectve C developers and Java developers. Many of these developers have been mobile application developers for a long time. They bring great experience with them, but they also bring history. They look at applications in a ‘mobile’ way; this is not necessarily the best way. Palm seem to have opened the door, but they’re not doing anything to point the door out to people or to encourage them to walk through it.

I want to see web developers sit up and take notice of webOS and the Palm Pre. For one thing, it’s an opportunity for them to branch out and extend their repetoire. They don’t need to learn a new language; just an alteration in architecture and a new framework. With very little effort, a seasoned web developer can become a webOS developer.
Also, web developers are used to the stateless nature of web pages and have learned to work around this with cookies and HTML 5 Storage functions. In addition, they’re used to JSON and working with DOM manipulation. That means that they can concentrate on the important aspect of generating innovative ideas for apps, instead of getting to grips with a new language.

Bringing in developers without a traditional mobile mindset will, no doubt, result in some applications that really don’t perform well on a mobile platform. However, it also brings the potential for some really great ideas, unfettered by the idea of ‘what is possible’. Again, Palm do not appear to be highlighting this; instead they are highlighting the number of PalmOS developers that they have.

The thing is, the number of web developers in the world is staggering. Palm claim 30,000 developers in the Palm development community; contrast this with the over 4.5m downloads of the development version of  jQuery last year alone… that gives you some kind of indication of how many web developers are out there.

If you’re a web developer out there, looking for a new challenge, take a long hard look at the Palm Pre. If you’re interested, go over to the preDevCamp website and sign up or organizer a local event; join an evergrowing group of developers excited by this new platform. As a founder of preDevCamp, I have to admit a bias, but I’m not waiting for Palm to realise what they’ve got here

On a number of occasions this weekend, while I was at the BLI Conference, I was asked the question: “Why are you doing the preDevCamp?” I thought it would be useful to provide an answer here.

With the ever increasing complexity of mobile telephones, we’re now carrying powerful computers around with us every. Unlike modern computers, the mobile phone has remained an arcane platform for programming. iPhone development requires a knowledge of Objective C. If you want to write for the Android, you’re stuck with Java. While these languages are hardly esoteric, they’re hardly an easy environment to use for creating simple applications.

I’m a firm believer that the greatest barrier to innovation should be imagination and not technology. The opening of the iPhone App Store presented the fruits of many a fertile mind; minds that had a good idea and coupled that with a sufficient understanding of Java to turn that idea into an app.

With the release of the Palm Pre, will come a new environment for developers. This environment is the webOS and applications will be based on HTML, CSS and Javascript. The number of developers who are comfortable with this development environment is vast, much greater than the number of Objective C developers. In addition to this, HTML and CSS are inherently visual languages, making te development of graphical interfaces well within the reach of the average coder.

I’m excited at the prospect of preDevCamps, because it’ll be an opportunity to see what developers can do when they are given the chance to spend their mental efforts on innovating instead of creating; the DevCamps will be run all around the world, bringing ideas together from cities ranging from Atlanta to Zagreb. Together, we’ll be able to demonstrate that the Palm Pre is a serious platform for developers and has a real place in market. Already, ideas are flowing on the discussion forums and we’ve only been going a week.

I urge anyone who is event the slightest bit interested in web development to take a serious look at the Palm Pre and joining a local preDevCamp. It’s a real opportunity to take the skills that you honed on the web and learn a brand new way to exercise them!

On Monday, I announced the launch of preDevCamp. There has been a fantastic global response and today I’d like to announce the fanclub that we’ve set up on Facebook.

Palm are taking some real interest in this camp and a Facebook fanclub is a great way to demonstrate the level of interest. Please show some support for preDevCamp by signing up.

While you’re at it, swing over to http://predevcamp.org and sign up to one of the events. Coding the Palm Pre is going to be a dream if you have any experience with developing with AJAX, so get involved! If there isn’t an event in your city, let us know and we’ll guide you through the process of setting one up.

Today, @whurley, @giovanni and I launched the Palm preDevCamp.

For those of you not familiar with what a DevCamp is, it’s an event to develop applications (local and web based) for the Palm Pre using the Mojo development SDK. They’re open to all-comers and we’re really looking forward to getting our hands on this new platform and coding some apps.

Take a look at the preDevCamp site. If your home city is not there, just get in touch with @giovanni and, Hey Presto!, you can lead the first local camp!