You might have noticed that it has been very quiet on my blog the last year. During this period quite a lot has changed for me both on personal as on professional level. First of all there was (and still is) a lot of planning going on: I traded my apartment for a piece of land, where a house should arise next year. Next to that, my girlfriend and I made an amazing road trip through the Southwest and California, where we also got engaged. More on that road trip can be found on our travel blog (in Dutch).
During last summer I did spend most of my spare time on Windows 8 development, after having spent quite some nights on Windows Phone. Microsoft Belgium organized quite a few hackatons (even an international one for students only) which I joined to help as a MEET member, but also to have fun and code myself. I even managed to grab a first prize with one of the apps we created, some of these apps are in the store, some were just concepts and one is still being worked on during spare time. But next to the fun, prizes and apps, it also brought a new opportunity.
With the experience gathered, Glenn and I decided to work together under the name AppCreativity as our secondary occupation (something quite a lot of us Belgians do). Our target is to bring missing apps (mainly local in a first phase) to Windows Phone and Windows 8, as companies/app publishers still tend to “forget” these platforms. Our first real assignment was to create a series of Windows 8 proof-of-concept apps. We’ve published several apps already and as much as we’d like to show you our portfolio, we’re too busy writing apps to finish our site right now. Just ask us some references and meanwhile we’ll do our best to get the site online as soon as possible.
During that time I was a .NET consultant assigned on a WinForms project. I discussed the position of Windows 8 within the company and its clients with my managers, but as most of you know: consultancy for large clients rarely brings cutting edge environments. So when I was offered an opportunity to start up and lead the development of a Windows 8 project for the upcoming year, our roads separated and I went for the challenge. And what a challenge it has been: learning a lot, but also cursing a lot on the ins and outs of developing a LOB application for Windows 8 (and already Windows 8.1 as we speak). A few of my findings during many days (and nights) of coding will certainly be shared on my blog in the upcoming months.
And finally, this blog needed a fresh start as it was stuck on some shared hosting with the database filling up with (hidden) spam comments and being unable to make any tweaks (installing and enabling features) without opening up an FTP-connection and contacting support. The downside of ‘cheap shared hosting’ I suppose. But more on that fresh start in a following post.