Enda McGrath

I’m excited to be leading our developer relations effort and I want to thank you for being the best developer community in the world, bar none. It has been a privilege working with you over the past several years and I look forward to the next chapter. Time and time again I am amazed at your loyalty, the awesome apps you publish to the catalog, the new widgets being submitted to the Enyo gallery, and the contributions from the open source community (among your many other attributes).

For those of you that I haven’t worked with in a support capacity, I look forward to meeting you and getting as much feedback as my inbox can handle.

I first joined Palm at the end of 2000 when they acquired a startup I was working at, ThinAir Apps. At the time I was an application developer creating 3rd party apps for PalmOS, the most successful of which was for weightwatchers.com. Since then, I’ve filled a few different roles as the company has evolved, and I’ve enjoyed every one of them.

About 6 years ago I found my home in Developer Relations as a Developer Technical Support engineer and eventually rose to become head of DTS. Initially I worked on the Folio project and then the conception and birth of webOS. Here in Developer Relations, the people on the team are amazing; many of the engineers come from the community and are passionate about webOS (as are the marketing folks who do equally great work).

We have started hiring again, too, so check out our current openings if you’re interested in joining the team!

As you can see, I’m excited, the team is excited, and we plan to build on our vibrant and passionate community. Together we will achieve something special… here is to the future and the promise it holds!

This past weekend (April 20-21) fellow Developer Relations member Roy Sutton and I were proud to represent Enyo at the RVA Hackathon in Richmond, VA. This was a free, 24 hour event for developers of all kinds to come together and work on various projects. The event started on Friday evening and lasted throughout the night and into the next evening.

On Saturday morning, we teamed with Arthur Thornton – a name familiar in the Enyo community and creator of several popular webOS apps – to take on the task of helping him create an audio identification app. The goal for the day was to create an Enyo-based application that would successfully run on the TouchPad and could be easily packaged for multiple platforms.

Things got started as Arthur began setting up the server required to perform the back-end audio fingerprinting/matching, while Roy and I worked on the core functionality. By lunchtime we had the server responding to service calls, local databases created, and much of the core functionality working. After some chicken tacos, we powered on for a few hours: adding missing features, fixing inevitable bugs, and chugging copious amounts of Red Bull. A couple hours before the event was officially over, we had an app that could record audio, match the audio fingerprint, and save that item to your history.

The only real technical issue we experienced was with the free audio-fingerprinting service that was used, which failed to match as many songs as we expected. However, there are other paid audio-fingerprinting services available that promise more success, so this issue could be resolved without too much of a headache.

When it was all said and done, we had a working proof-of-concept that took around eight hours to complete. I’m once again surprised by how quickly an Enyo app can come together. So, what are you doing with your day?

This time, I chat with myself. Meet Fred Patton, Head of Developer Relations and Editor-in-Chief of the webOS Developer Center.

Let’s start with what you do on the Developer Relations Team.

Currently I am managing day-to-day operations of the DevRel team. I am the Editor-in-Chief of the webOS Developer Center and run the developer blog there. I also manage the @webosdev and @openwebosdev Twitter feeds in addition to my own personal feed, @MotoFredP.

What brought you to webOS in the first place?

I’ve always been a gadget guy. My first pocket computer was a Radio Shack PC-1, which I bought new in 1980-81. I used it to great effect in high school physics! 1.5k of RAM. Yippee! (Yes, I still have it and the cassette interface module.)

Once I saw webOS in action, I knew I wanted to be involved with it. I wasn’t sure where I’d fit in, but Ben and Dion (former directors of Dev Rel) got their hands on my resume and brought me in to run the developer website. I was thrilled!

What’s your background?

I started off in software, developing command and control software for Air Force and NASA satellites. I discovered that I had a knack for explaining what the Air Force guys wanted to the software folks and vice versa. This led me in to the discipline known as Systems Engineering, which has colored everything I’ve done since.

I’ve also been the Director of Quality and the Director of Engineering at a small industrial robotics company. I started out developing a quality system for them, writing test automation software, doing failure analysis, etc. I also wrote user and developer documentation, and helped customers optimize their setup to take full advantage of the robot’s capabilities. I even learned a bit of machining and fabricated the occasional part!

One of my proudest moments there was the development of a new handheld terminal to drive the robot in manual mode. I took a page from Palm’s early days and made a wood mockup and paper screens. When my relatives could easily figure out how to drive the robot, I knew I had a winner.

I like to think that this broad range of interests has given me the ability to look at problems from everybody’s perspective. I have a real appreciation for the issues facing developers picking up a new API, as well as from the standpoint of the developers creating the API.

How do you see the Developer Relations role maturing as webOS enters the Open Source era?

I’m very excited about the possibilities. We’re opening up webOS to a new group of developers, those who work on much more low-level software than was previously available. They speak a different language, and have different expectations in terms of documentation, access, engagement, etc. I’m really looking forward to getting to know this community better. It’s going to be an exciting journey!

We also start this year looking forward to the Open Sourcing of webOS. We are very excited about the promise of this new direction, and are working hard to make it a reality. No, it’s not going to happen immediately. While there are those who would like us just to post the source on Github, it’s not that simple. We need to work out issues of governance, licensing, contributions, non-open source components, etc. However, we are committed to making it happen, and to taking an active role in the future of webOS.

While we are working on these details, we are interested in your thoughts and opinions. Are you interested in or planning on contributing to webOS? What areas would you like to focus on (core OS, apps, etc.)? Let us know in the forums—we’re listening.

Again, Happy New Year. Let’s make it a good one!

Consistent user interaction is one of the keys to happy users. So, check out Tomomi’s tutorial and get coding!