App Inventor Goes to FOSDEM

Feb 7, 2025 evan's Blog

FOSDEM logo

Last week, I travelled to Europe to attend the 25th Free and Open Source Developers European Meetup (FOSDEM) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). App Inventor has participated at FOSDEM a few times now. Last year, we ran an app building workshop in the inaugural FOSDEM Junior series. Our intro to App Inventor workshop kicked off FOSDEM Junior this year, and we had children as young as seven years old building apps with MIT App Inventor. I also joined up with John Maloney and Kathy Giori of the MicroBlocks team to offer a physical computing with App Inventor workshop on Sunday.

Evan demonstrates an app for data collection using the Spreadsheet component. Photo courtsey of Peter Mathijssen.

Evan with the attendees of the Building mobile apps with MIT App Inventor workshop — Evan with the attendees of the *Building Mobile Apps with MIT App Inventor* workshop. Photo courtesy of Peter Mathijssen.

Evan instructs some students in the Physical Computing with App Inventor workshop

Evan instructs some students in the Physical Computing with App Inventor workshop. Photo courtesy of Peter Mathijssen.

In addition to the workshops, I also gave a talk on building a simple extension that builds on the Bluetooth low energy extension for the educational devroom. Devrooms at FOSDEM are opportunities for developers working on FOSS software to come together to share insights and learnings.

While in Brussels, I also met up with some of our power users: Peter, Bart, and Ghica.

App Inventor friends out for dinner. Photo Courtesy of Evan Patton.

By happenstance, about two months ago I connected with Jérôme de Thésut of the Académie de Paris. Jérôme has been working to promote App Inventor use in France. He and Pierre Huguet, an App Inventor Expert Trainer, hosted me for a day in Paris and we took the opportunity to discuss some of the potential challenges to making this happen. The hope is that in the future App Inventor will integrate directly with Capytale, a nationwide learning management system used by teachers to manage their classrooms. The meeting was very fruitful and I look forward to the growth of App Inventor in France.

App Inventor Expert Trainers and Evan after a meeting about promoting App Inventor in French schools. Photo coutesy of Jérôme de Thésut.

As always, if you would like to contribute to App Inventor, there are many ways to do so. Native language speakers can consider joining our Weblate community to help with translating App Inventor. Software developers with experience in Java, JavaScript, Swift, and Scheme can take a look at our help wanted issues to get their feet wet making technical contributions to the platform. We regularly participate in GSOC and contributors new to open source are encouraged to get involved via that program. You can also ask questions about contributing to our open source repository here.

Cheers,
Evan W. Patton, Ph.D.
Lead Software Engineer, MIT App Inventor