So Windows Phone Week came to Indonesia, on 21st October. When I’ve read the news in twitter that some #wpdev MVP want to hold a series of events in several countries, I liked the idea so much that I wanted to participate. The event held at Microsoft Indonesia Auditorium, Stock Exchange Tower, Jakarta. It was a great event, lot of free stuffs and updates about Windows Phone ecosystem and about 30 developers sat down together in room.
There are three speakers in that day. The first was Irving Hutagalung, as representative of Microsoft Indonesia. He had a talk on Windows phone current opportunity, both globally and locally. He also mentioned about how to expand developers revenue with expand Windows Phone app to Windows Store application. A great presentation, covered all economic aspect that developers want to hear. He end presentation witn Bizspark offering from Microsoft , to a small or startup company that want to get free software from Microsoft.
After that, Narenda Wicaksono, from Nokia Indonesia had a great story about several developers from the country that had received great revenue from building mobile applications. He mentioned how to start building a product, not just an app. He asked developers to be more focused, polish their application to get more users and traction. At last, he announced that Nokia Indonesia will held MGDW, Mobile Game Developer War, a competition for company/individuals to make the best game ever in Windows Phone platform. For the last three years, this competition saw a rise of talented and young developers, one of them is Solite Studio, that also won Imagine Cup 2014 game category as runner up. He also gave all attendees 50 XP in DVLUP program so they can gained more XP to get lot of free stuff from Nokia.
After lunch, me (C# MVP) talked about 4 topics until the end of the event. First topic was New APIs available in Windows Phone 8. Since Microsoft announce Windows Phone 8 platform last year, there are so many applications developed by local developers but still few of them that used new APIs, suchs new live tiles, and lock screen. After that, I covered Azure Mobile Services and Windows Phone, how to leverage data, push and identity features easily from windows phone applications. I introduced several techniques and tricks to use Azure Mobile Services as an alternative backend technology, to get your apps faster to the market.
Then I talked about Code Sharing, Build for WIndows Phone and Windows 8. We’ve shared ideas and howtos about develop first in one platform and how to port to another. Some technique available such as use PCL to both platform, shared source code using linked sources and abtracation and adapter pattern to share implementation code in both platform.
At the end, I delivered a talk about monetization options in Windows Phone 8,also sample code how to use trial, in app purchase and advertising SDK so developers get broad knowledge about their options to get more revenue.
During the event, I held twitter contest, that will give Nokia Lumia 520 for free ( thanks to our sponsor, Radya Labs) to anyone that had the most informative tweet or series of tweets that covered topics delivered by the speakers. A student from local university, @ghiyatshanif , with 25 tweets during the event won the phone. His tweets covered most topic presented on the day so people that weren’t at the auditorium still could get the idea what was Windows Phone Week about. I also announced application contest, what will win a Lumia 920 for the best application developed by participants, since August 2013. I’ll announce the winner next month.
THANK YOU
I like to thank a bunch of people for making this great event possible. Thanks to Matteo, Joost and Radolpho for initiating the whole thing, especially Joost that introduced me to Windows Phone Division in Redmond. Thanks to Desiree and Sharon, for including us on the list and gave us supports. Thanks to Indonesia DPE team (Irving Hutagalung, and Anggi Shena) that help me to organize the event. Thanks to Narenda Wicaksono from Nokia Indonesia and Agatha that help me during the event.