Official launch of the Google Apps Developer Challenge

Greetings All,

We are happy to announce  the launch of the Google Apps Developer Challenge it's a  call for all you talented and creative developers  to design and build original applications for Google Apps and Google Drive.

All you have to do is build and submit an amazing application in one of these categories:

• Enterprise / Small Business Solutions
• Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun
• Not-for-Profit: Education / Water / Food & Hunger / Health

A winner will be chosen for each category, for each of the 6  regions around the world taking part in the challenge -- 18 prizes in total.

Prizes will be distributed as follows; all prizes are in USD:

Round One: All teams that make it to the semi-finals in each category in each region will be awarded Chrome books.

Semi-Finals: 1st prize in each category in each region will receive $20,000.

This means that there will be a total of 18 grand prize winners

Key Dates

 August 24th: First round submissions due

 September 13th: Semi-Finalists announced

 October 25th: Updated Semi-Final Apps re-submitted

  November 12th: Winners announced

An official launch  organized by Google Developer Group Dar es Salaam (GDG/GTUG Dar es Salaam) will be held on Saturday, 28th July, 2012  from 10am to 12 noon at the  KINU Co-Creation Hub , located on the 1st Floor ,245 Conservation House, Morocco Junction close  to Airtel HQ. Please  checkout the following   Google maps link showing the location of  KINU,   http://goo.gl/4WJDD

Let us know that you are attending by filling in this form  GADC registration form

Learning resources

  Here are some links to learning resources, to help you get prepared

https://developers.google.com/google-apps/
https://developers.google.com/drive/

 Google Apps Provisioning API
 Apps Script , Introduction  video

Google Drive SDK. Video from Google I/O.

A playlist of other videos,  http://goo.gl/LwqR8

Visit  http://www.google.com/events/gadc2012 for more information on this.

Google+ APIs hackathon in Dar

Title: 9th of June, 2012 - Google+ APIs  Hackathon: Dar es Salaam

Hello Tanzanian developers! After the successful Hackathons around Africa which saw some amazing applications built, there will be one in Dar Es Salaam too! It’s being organized by the Dar Google Developer Group (Dar GTUGs).

• Learning resources and tutorials on Google+ APIs
• Here are some links to learning resources, and tutorials to help you prepare for the hackathon and beyond. link to G+ API resources
• Getting started on Google api blog
• AppConsole
• AppEngine
• Video session on Google+ API

• Build with Us or Build Your Own
• Throughout the day, we will be building complete Google+ applications and aiding each other. You can start building your application beforehand.
• We will have some of the applications demoed at the end of the event and there will be giveaways for the best ones.

• What Do I Need?
• We will provide facilities, internet, power, food, refreshments, and experts to help you learn to use Google+ APIs and write your application. Just bring your laptop, ideas, and enthusiasm to complete the mix.

• When and Where?
• The Google+ hackathon will take place Saturday, 9th from
• 9am to 6pm. It will be held in KINU space location KINU location

Space is limited so sign up now by filling this form: Google+ Hackathon

Beautiful Code Design Best Practices Recap

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”
-Martin Fowler et al, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, 1999

This  quote from MartinFowler  captures very well  the main theme  of Dar es Salam GTUG latest event  dubbed  “beautiful code design best practices”. We to were trying to dive deep into  what does it take to write code that not only  a  machine understand and execute but more so fellow humans  so as to ensure the sustainability of the code in terms  of  scalability and maintainability of it.

But before we dived in the best practices, Tony Severine, warmed up audiences with how to use G oogle  map maker to    do mapping.For  most upcoming  meetings we  will take few  minutes  to promote  the idea of mapping  in our effort to  try to put Tanzania on the world map.

Next up  was MbwanaMbura who kicked things off  with  his presentation titled,”Beautiful code”,   talking about best practices for writing  beautiful working code such as  , how to break long methods, proper naming  of methods and  proper documentation  of your code.  And  then finally  he  talked about the question of  programming languages,  and   how  different problems can be tackled  in ways more than one  if  you are knowledgeable in  more than just one programming language.

The  last presentation came  from  Alex Makumuli,  in  a form of  a Google  hangout  from Finland, titled “Better  Software”.  Alex ‘s   presentation  emphasis was on using  test driven  approach to developing software. It was accompanied by live demo sessions in  writing test  before you start to write actual code  for your application and  how to do  refactoring of the existing code.

Many  thanks to our  wonderful  presenters   and  to all of  t hose who showed  up  for this event .

Various resources from this meeting  can be found through  the following  links.

Photos,    http://bit.ly/H3fQT5  ,  ( more photos will be posted soon)

Presentations,   http://dar.gtugs.org/previous-events-resources-2

Highlights from the first G-Tanzania (Google Developer event)

It all started with an email sent in November 2011 from one of the Googlers wanting to meet up with the Dar GTUG leads to start preparing for a potential G event in Tanzania. The GTUG team was excited because this event was on our wish list as we were also lobbying behind the scenes for this event to take place in Tanzania.This was the very first ever Google developer day event in form of a conference dubbed g|Tanzania. Being the first G event in Tanzania this was an opportunity for Google to engage with a community of local developers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs who are passionate about technology.This engagement started a day before in the form of a pre -event hangout session between Googlers , members of Dar es Salaam GTUG and tech enthusiasts in the country at the Innovation space within the Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) . This was a combination of one on one sessions between attendees and Googlers and a Google Plus Hangout with other Googlers from all over the world about the tech scene in Tanzania.This was a nice way to kick things off and get people even more excited for the official opening of G-tanzania a day after I.e 2^nd and 3^rd of Feb, 2012 at the Mlimani City conference Center.

The conference was split into two days , Day 1 had more hands on sessions for developers to understand Google Platforms such as Google App Engine , Android and Google web toolkit. they were introduced to these tools so that they could develop applications and sites that are locally meaningful in the Tanzanian context. Day 2 was more geared towards businesses and entrepreneurs with a quest to learn how to use advanced Google products such as Google Analytics, Adwords and Adsense to enable and grow their businesses in the web and mobile arena.

Attendees had the chance to explore Google’s open source technologies through a combination of tech talks, breakout sessions and codelabs run by engineers and business teams from across Google offices around the Globe such as Nairobi, Accra and Zurich. The event featured a lineup of high caliber Google speakers who offered key insights in understanding the important role innovation plays in business.Some of the highlights from this event were various efforts that were shown by Google such as trying to make the internet relevant and useful to local people by various Swahili localization and content creation efforts as explained by a Googler from the localization team , Salome Nduku, some of these efforts included localization of Gmail into Swahili , Swahili Wikipedia challenge and Google books partnerships.

The last event was the mapping party that took place at COSTECH on Saturday 4^th Feb, this was another opportunity to put Tanzania on the map , through crowdsourcing of knowledge of various individuals and putting it to good use through mapping of various places in Tanzania.

Overall G-tanzania and all pre and after events was a wonderful platform to bring together Tanzanian tech enthusiasts together ,to network and get to know others in the community hopefully for major collaborations in the future. In Tanzania, there are very few events of this nature and this one from the feedback that has been given out by attendees seems to have had a major impact in how the tech community interacts moving forward from now onwards.