Our Friends - The Software Entrepreneurs Club
The Software Entrepreneurs Club (aka the SEC) is an after school software development club
which meets at Century High School, in Hillsboro, OR. We are focused on helping our
team members to learn about the business of mobile software development. We have developed and
published a Volunteer Management system, called Our Finest Hour, to the Windows 8 Store.
This app was created for schools anywhere to use for free to manage volunteerism
and donations within their schools.
We are also developing a School District News and a Music Grading app for paying customers, which provides
us funding for scholarship awards to our team members. So far, we have been able to fund 9 scholarships
for our most active and productive team members and we hope to reproduce this achievement this school year too!
Please click on the following links to check out the current products of the
SEC:
- GradeMus - a product of the Software Entrepreneurs Club
- School News - a product of the Software Entrepreneurs Club
- Our Finest Hour - a product of the Software Entrepreneurs Club
Please click on the following link to check out a cool video about how our club
developed our first Windows 8 app:
Epipheo's Story of Our Finest Hour and the Software Entrepreneurs Club
Creating Android Apps - A new venture for the SEC
For the first 2-3 years of the SEC, we focused on Windows 8 and Windows Phone
app development, as we partnered with Microsoft, contracting with Microsoft to
develop apps for other educational institutions. However, this funding has
failed to continue, so we are switching to technologies that do not require new,
fast, touchscreen PCs for our development. We don't have the budget to
support this type of future development. So, for the foreseeable future, we will be focusing on the design and development of Android apps.
For Android app development, our initial design
work is performed using App Inventor, a nice drag and drop development tool, created by Google and
currently maintained by MIT. Once our designs are solid, then we re-code the apps in Java using
Android Studio, a pretty cool IDE that Google seems to have paid the good folks at JetBRAINS to create.
Android Studio is an update/port of the IntelliJ IDEA Java IDE. We like it a little bit better than
Eclipse as a Java IDE, but they are both pretty good tools for Android development.
Our presentation at Google Apps Summit 2013 in Beaverton, Oregon
The SEC participated in the Google Apps Summit 2013, giving a short workshop on how to create Android
apps using the App Inventor tool from Google/MIT. Workshop participants were required to bring their laptop
computer, configured to run App Inventor and Java. We had fun trying to teach this workshop, using a
networked application development tool in a building with a totally overwhelmed wireless network. Fun stuff, and yes,
we did have fun too!
To be able to use the App Inventor tool, here are a couple of links that you may need:
How to Setup App Inventor "Classic" from MIT
How to Setup App Inventor Version 2 from MIT
Java JRE from Oracle
Our 2013 Android App Creation Workshop for middle-schoolers and their parents
In our Summer 2013 Android App Workshop, we used a middle school curriculum refined by Richard Incorvia, a
very energetic middle school teacher in Fairfield, Iowa. He has very graciously made his curriculum available at:
App Inventor Middle-School Tutorials
If you want to have some additional fun with App Inventor, you can find a set of well-defined tutorial projects at the following websites:
Getting Started with App Inventor
MIT's App Inventor Tutorials
MIT's Teaching With App Inventor
Please take into account that these websites present projects that have been developed for non-techy college students. We have
talked with Dave Wolber, the author of the AppInventor.Org based projects and he feels
that middle school and high school students should have few problems understanding the programming concepts being expressed in these projects.
Dave is a great guy who has put the last several years of his life into helping to make App Inventor the success that it is quickly becoming.
Also, here is a link to example App Inventor projects that have full source code available:
The App Inventor Gallery - Great Stuff Here!
Want to join the Software Entrepreneurs Club?
We meet at 3:45pm every Monday afternoon at Century High School. We welcome students who
want to learn how to develop software for mobile and touchscreen devices and students who want to learn how to create a business around creating and selling mobile software.
We also eagerly seek interesting speakers who have experience in software startups, funding startups, marketing software, performing quality assurance of mobile software, etc.
To request a meeting with the Software Entrepreneurs Club, to offer to be an SEC club sponsor, or just to get more complete directions to
our next meeting, please contact us at
secadmin@friller.com
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Current and Past SEC Sponsors:
Microsoft
- Microsoft sponsored Our Finest Hour by providing partial funding to create Epipheo's Story of Our Finest Hour.
- Microsoft has also sponsored us in the BizSpark program, which gives us:
- free access to almost every Microsoft software product for a period of 3 years.
- free usage of Microsoft Azure's cloud services to host our database and web services for 3 years.
- Microsoft provided us with some Windows 8 tablet computers and Windows Phone smartphones which helps us to create Windows 8 and Windows Phone apps.
We are blessed in having been awarded two software development contracts from Microsoft:
- to develop a Windows 8.x Music Grading app for the Spokane School District (Spokane, WA)
- to create a Windows 8.x District News Reader for the Kent School District (Kent, WA).
We ended up not delivering this product to the Kent School District due to some
contractual glitch between the Kent School District and Microsoft, so we ended
up creating "School News" instead, which we published in the Windows Store as an
example app for others to gauge our capabilities as a development machine.
- And, we are continually being introduced to other school districts that Microsoft is looking into sponsoring for custom educational Windows 8 apps.
These Microsoft contracts are how we have funded our student scholarship program...and how we provide pizza and snacks at some of our meetings.
Thanks to Ben, Jerry, (haha, Ben and Jerry) Juliana, and all of the other great folks at Microsoft who have helped us
during our formative years!
Pluralsight
As mentioned earlier, in the Summer of 2013, we held an Mobile Software Development Workshop using App Inventor. We offered
this workshop to teams of current Hillsboro students and their parents or guardians. During this period of time, we also
approached Pluralsight to see if there was any way that they would consider offering free Pluralsight training to our club
members for the 2013-2014 school year. Luckily, Pluralsight was going thru the process of starting up an educational grant
program and Daniel Bird was able to come to one of our workshops and see first hand how the workshop attendees were learning
to develop mobile software, and to have fun doing so! Daniel's response? "It only makes sense to offer a grant to the club!
You guys are doing great work!" Guess what Daniel? By offering us 50 free seats of Pluralsight training for this school year, YOU ARE DOING GREAT WORK TOO!
Here is a link to a Pluralsight lesson on App Inventor!
Epipheo
Epipheo did our SEC video on Our Finest Hour, usually priced at $25K per minute, for $10K, which was provided by
Microsoft. Epipheo!
We love our video!!!
You guys rock!!!
Not only that, you guys are really fun to work with! We highly recommend Epipheo to anyone who wants to get a message
out to non-technical folks, even when you have a pretty darn technical subject about which you need to communicate. Go Epipheo!