On Saturday, December 7th, 2013, I attended an all day workshop to learn about creating Windows Phone apps. The workshop was held by Nokia and Microsoft at the downtown BCIT campus, to promote the DVLUP Windows developer awards program. Developers can sign up at DVLUP.com and be rewarded for creating apps that fulfill the requirements of the posted challenges.


Those that attended the workshop were given two weeks to submit or update an app, get it approved and published on the Windows Phone 8 Store in order to receive a Nokia Windows 8 Development Phone. Not a lot of time but thankfully, Microsoft came up with a easy way to create apps - even for those who don't know how to code!



Windows Phone App Studio - http://apps.windowsstore.com - is a free online tool to create Windows Phone apps in minutes! They have templates that anyone can use to generate their first app. All you need is to provide the content. You can even download the source code and tinker around with it to make it more to your liking. Haha, having been obsessed with the movie Frozen, I created a Frozen movie guide app after a tried making an app for this blog kinda failed. I'm sure if I dig through some of the code, I'd be able to fix the problems but for the challenge, I had to be quick and submit it immediately, since the approval process can take up to a week and if the app doesn't pass the approval process, I'll have to fix it and resubmit which will take another week - time that I may not have. 

Since this was an all day workshop, Nokia was nice enough to provide us breakfast, lunch, dinner AND snacks in between to fuel brain and our fingers. Developers love to snack, you know.




I learned a whole lot about Windows 8 development, the Windows App Store and how to monetize your app. Apparently, there is a large market for the Windows phone. It's not as popular here in North America but it is popular overseas or in South America. So there is a market for apps there; it is probably is easier to produce a money making app on the Windows app store than in the saturated iOS or Android store!

I'm pleased to report that my app did get approved but...I should update it because it is not very nice as it is now.