Tampere MeeGo Network started with strong interest both from network members and companies. First 4-5 meetups gathered 40 to 50 participants. However, TMN has lost some of it’s attraction lately. Partly that is due to MeeGo Summit FI which took a lot of energy from other activities, since most members were involved as volunteer organizers. Furthermore, Summit might have ‘consumed’ some of the need to have social gatherings at least for a moment. That does not explain all though. TMN meetups have been mostly about talking and discussions. There has not been much doing.

Perhaps we should change our focus to gain more attention and regenerate enthusiasm which we had in the beginning. Some of TMN members have expressed need for more hands-on related activity. This is visible in TMN meetup web discussions:

Something more coding oriented. I personally would be interested in something like “come with your tablet and we’ll help you get started”, other guys could be interested in coding camps focused on the other areas.

[M]aybe we could do a two week cadence, i.e. keep the current timeline for the presentations and news oriented meetups, and have a “enter only if you’re willing to code” type event also once a month but with a 2 week offset.

Perhaps the answer is in focusing on projects, which are run by the community. Projects are hands-on, at least application development projects should be, and software development raises new topics, issues, skills to learn and discuss. There are multiple projects going on inside our community. Current projects can best be described as ‘one man shows’. People are scattered in own projects. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it leads to situation that skills, talent, time and resources are wasted. Perhaps it’s time to find a few ideas for joint development project and participate in that even if it is not exactly what one initially wants to do. Some ideas for joint project has already been tossed in the air. One of those is to implement sort of ‘meetup app’, which would be used for making notes about meetups.

Projects are great, but what’s the big picture?

Again I had to make another drawing about the ‘big picture’ behind the projects discussed above. And again, I failed to make a simple model (skill that I lack, but I’m working on it). After a few moments thinking I found out that we have all the pieces to build/start a joint development ecosystem. Oh yes, the current buzz word ecosystem :) Anyway, what we have in Tampere:

• individual small projects (’itch’ is there, but one hand can’t make it go away)
• lots of skills and tacit knowledge
• people have interest to hands-on doing
• two universities (one is tech) and several other high education institutions.
• lots of companies, which have business interests in open source application development
• ideas, both business origin and from community.
• facilities to use as base (New Factory) and platform for projects.
• Virtual tools to enable communication: MNFI portal, mailing lists, IRC channel (#meego-fi)
• large local app development community (TMN: over 110 members)
• connections to other open source communities (hackerspaces, LUG, vapaakoodi, Ubuntu LoCo) and organizations (such as COSS)

All that needs to be done, is to make all pieces work together. In other words, someone to function as glue-gun and shoot! Below is rather complex looking illustration how things could go.

Illustration 1: Local ecosystem to feed app development

Benefits for companies

For companies supporting the above model based development are evident (and nothing new). They can test their ideas in volunteer based projects. They can use the community to implement solutions to practical needs or at least feed the community with ideas. During the projects, people generate more skills and knowledge (tacit knowledge might turn into visible form) which can be used in own product development. Needless to say that new talented employees can be found through projects and networks. New people come in from joint networks such as local hackerspaces, Linux Users Groups and other communities.

General benefits for business

Projects create applications and skills, which can benefit open source community.  New applications can create new startups for new companies and enhance entrepreneurship in Tampere region. Some of the apps would most likely be ready for end-users and could be uploaded directly to existing (and future) app stores.

What is needed

Plan to set up ‘developer lounge’, which would have devices for development and education use has been on ice for some time now. This lounge would be located to Demola, New factory. Need for devices is evident. I stumble upon the need almost daily;  many application developers (pure volunteers and people from startups) face sudden need for different devices. Developer lounge would not be limited to include just MeeGo devices. The support would include also devices suitable for iOS, Android and others. What is needed, is some support from local companies. Someone has to maintain the facilities and lounge. Of course hardware is needed too. Devices can be bought or companies could donate those for development and educational purposes.

To sum up, we have all the pieces to boost local application development and create ecosystem that benefits all participants. We just need to sit around the round table and discuss details. I’m willing to take the challenge, what about you? :)