In his excellent book, "A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail," Bill Bryson explains that there are two approaches to hiking very long trails (the Appalachian Trail is more than 2,000 miles long). You've got your "Thru Hikers", who start at one end, and doggedly walk the entire length in one expedition of several months. And you've got your "Section Hikers" who complete the trail by hiking a series of shorter segments, often spread out over a period of years.
Bill doesn't say this, but you just know that Thru Hikers look down their noses at Section Hikers. "Section Hikers lack commitment," a Thru Hiker would say dismissively, and "they're really just Sunday strollers". This distinction came to mind when my manager asked me to go on a global tour, to help Android developers everywhere understand more about programming the XOOM tablet and the ATRIX mobile phone with the lapdock and desktop browser.
Maybe you've heard about this tour already - it headlines the MOTODEV page. The tour is a series of App Summits in nine cities around the world, from now, through to May 2011. My team-members and I will deliver a series of presentations that are rich with technical information about coding for the latest Motorola Android products. And it's all free for app developers. You can register here for the App Summit nearest you. We go on the road in just a couple of days time. First, we fly to Berlin, Germany, and hold the App Summit there on Monday April 11. Then it's on to London, England, for an App Summit on Friday April 15. If you live near Berlin or London, you should take a day off work, and come and join us.
Then... we all come home to California for a week, before starting out again for the Far East. After holding App Summits in Beijing, Shanghai (China) and Seoul, Korea, we fly back to California for another two weeks. Then it's off to Latin America, for the final set of App Summits in Sao Paulo (Brazil), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Mexico City, Mexico. We fly home after each leg, and complete our round-the-world trip in 40 days, rather than the "Around the World in 80 Days" of Phileas Fogg.
Motorola's Developer support team is based in Silicon Valley, which is an environment full of interesting stimuli. For example, there's a Zeppelin operating out of a nearby airbase. Here's a picture I took, as I walked by earlier this week. (I'm a little surprised to see three fins at the stern, rather than the more conventional cruciform tail configuration. Eureka is only a 12-passenger vessel, and I suppose 3 fins provide adequate empennage).
The Airship Ventures Zeppelin - I'm determined to get up in that thing sooner or later!
If you are an Android developer near any of the cities we are visiting, please complete a free registration to attend that App Summit, and be sure to introduce yourself to me at the event. I'm hoping to meet lots of people who can tell me about their apps, and also their favorite places to visit for people who are new to that city. What does your city have that is interesting, like a Zeppelin? It's my intention to blog about each of the cities we visit in this series of App Summits. So please help me find the unique local attractions. In Berlin, I am hoping to visit the Zoologischer Garten - the largest zoo in Europe.
I'm looking forward to this trip a lot. And I'm also feeling a little angsty about it. I suppose it's the trepidation that's normal when starting any great and important venture. We're going to travel a lot of miles, present a lot of helpful information to developers, and essentially circumnavigate the globe. But I know we won't get any respect from other globetrotters. After all, we're just "section hikers".
Cheers,
Peter van der Linden
Android Technology Evangelist
