Android Alliance October meetup features Green Life Software, Squiggles and others

The Android developer scene in Philadelphia may be smaller than others, but it’s a community willing to share ideas and tips with one another.
This was the case with Android Alliance’s latest event at the Comcast Center last week. The Android Alliance, led in part by Corey Leigh Latislaw, is a group that focuses on convening local Android developers, who see it as a platform to compete with Apple’s iOS, organizers say.

“People went with Apple for a while because that was the only viable routes to make money, but now people are starting to look at Android because the sales of those devices are outpacing the market share of Apple, so people are like ‘oh, we should pay attention to this platform,'” said Latislaw, who is a mobile software engineer at Comcast Interactive Media. “There’s a lot of iOS people that are defecting or turning into cross platform engineers for both iOS and Android and then there’s people like me that do Android full time as my day job.”
The Alliance is meant to be a place where developers of varying levels of experience can come to learn and share in the movement, she added.
At the latest event, which drew 20 to 25 people, developers had a chance to present their apps, hear feedback and take advice on how to improve or add to their existing app in order to make it more functional or find ways to generate revenue.
Latislaw and her husband, Jason Cox, who both run Green Life Software Development, presented their latest app, which was one that helps users create a more healthy diet by setting a meal plan, providing recipes and a diet wizard that eliminates foods based on allergies and other restrictions. Other apps included Squiggles, a game that resembles Boggle and the A View from My Seat app for seating charts in stadiums that provides pricing and pictures from the respective section. All presenters received feedback from the audience.
The next Android Alliance meetup will be on Nov. 16.
“It’s one thing to just read a blog post [about Android development] but it’s another thing to actually see someone show it to you and you’re like ‘yeah, that works, I can try it.'” Kevin Lee, an Android developer in attendance said.