Twice a year, in spring and fall, inRESONANCE hosts a three-day meeting for FileMaker developers to work in collaboration on open source projects to benefit independent schools. These face-to-face conferences, termed "iR DevCamp," complement the ongoing work produced online through the iR Developer Community. Our next iR DevCamp will take place from April 21–23, 2010, in Northampton, Massachusetts, USA. As always, there will be opportunities for virtual participation, but all agree that nothing compares to three days' creative enterprise on-site with colleagues.

Click here for more information about iR DevCamp.

Last October, the iR Developer Community sprinted ahead on three open source projects during iR DevCamp. After collectively considering numerous possible challenges, FileMaker developers from independent schools and inRESONANCE developers focused on delivering:

 

  • Web Grades: Teacher data entry of grades and comments on the web

  • Mobile Attendance: Teacher data entry of attendance on a mobile device 

  • Student Access Module: Student interface to KEYSTONE

 

These projects and more can be accessed through the iR Developer Community.

 

“Our goal was to identify projects that would be of interest to a range of schools, and which we could move to a proof-of-concept stage within our three-day conference,” explained Charlie Bailey, leader of the conference and CTO/EVP Product Development for inRESONANCE. “The projects were selected by the group on the first day. We had one group that wanted to explore writing code for mobile devices, another that challenged itself to consider web-based interfaces, and the third chose to develop a user interface from a student perspective. The projects went through stages of progress and departure; we assessed our choices as we worked. Each of us benefitted from the opportunity to collaborate.”

 

Tessy Smith, of Noble and Greenough School, wrote afterward of the value of iR DevCamp: “iR DevCamp gave me the opportunity to spend valuable time with other Filemaker developers. I had so much fun and everyone was so willing to share the things they had done. It was extremely useful to me as I was able to learn everything necessary to be able to go back to school and within a week develop what I need to allow teachers to take attendance in their classrooms on an iPod touch. There were also many references to things people are using that I am hoping to look into and use in our version of PORTAL. I also learned about a number of things that iR is working on that we may be able to purchase and integrate into our solutions.”

 

The October iR DevCamp meeting was the second face-to-face conference of the iR Developer Community, which is coming together as a service to the industry. The iR Developer Community is an open group of developers, connected virtually; those who can, come together for face-to-face discussions at iR DevCamp. The Developer Community is open to all who may be interested in helping independent schools and non-profits meet their missions, while building useful connections.

 

The growing list of projects under development can be found in the iR Developer Community site. Anyone who wishes to join the iR Developer Community is encouraged to email Charlie Bailey (charlie@inresonance.com) or go directly to the iR Developer Community website.