Interview with Palm’s Chuq Von Rospach

For those of you who are developing applications for Palm’s webOS the name Chuq Von Rospach should be familiar.  For those who aren’t, Chuq is Palm’s Developer Community Manager.  Chuq is an inordinately busy person and tracking him down is a bit like trying to track down an elusive bird, I imagine.  If the previous sentence seems a bit confusing, read on to find out more about one of Palm’s active developer advocates.

Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to Palm. Who is Chuq?

I’ve been with Palm since February 2009. Prior to that I was a web developer and community manager for Laszlo Systems. Prior jobs included Strongmail, 17 years at Apple doing lots of different things, four years at Sun Microsystems, and jobs at a number of startups that no longer exist. I took my first computer job around 1978 and I’ve never regretted it.

I came to Palm because I really felt webOS and the Pre had a lot of potential and I was really interested in getting involved in mobile computing. I owned one of the first Palm Pilots and over the years I’ve tried pretty much every phone platform and never felt any of them did everything I wanted them to do. I have a chance here to influence some of that.

Your title is Developer Community Manager. What exactly does a Developer Community Manager do?

I view my job as having three three major components:

First, I manage the technical pieces of the developer portal and administer the forums. The goal is to have a good environment for developers to get the information they need to develop their applications and learn from each other. I also spend time trying to see what works in other communities and looking for new tools and new techniques to improve the developer portal and the community.

Second, I am one of the conduits of information from Palm out into the developer community. Part of that is to try to identify information that the developers should have and convince people to release it or otherwise get it where they can access it.

Finally, I’m a contact point for developers and part of my role is watching what is being said and written about Palm and identifying issues that need to be communicated to people within the company. Sometimes that’s helping someone find the right person to talk to, sometimes that’s filing a bug that’s been reported, sometimes that’s seeing a discussion start and making people aware of it. It’s part listener, part filter, part editor and sometimes part amplifier. A big part of my job is listening and putting the pieces together and then passing them around.

Why is it important for the average user that Palm has a Developer Community Manager?

An important aspect of the success of a smartphone like the Pre and the webOS platform is the applications available for it. You need a platform developers want to write applications for and create a platform that allows them to write the best applications they can. Part of my role is to make that happen (and the rest of my role is to help everyone else at Palm make it happen).

Recently Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer joined Palm as co-leads of Developer Relations. How does their position relate to yours?

They are my co-bosses. I’m in the marketing side of the company, reporting through them up to Katie Mitic.

Palm recently announced some major changes to the way the App Catalog and app distribution will work. Would you say these changes were directly the result of Ben and Dion or that these changes reflect Palm’s original goal?

Yes and no. Much of what’s been announced with the App Catalog and our distribution plan has been in the works for a while; a number of people in engineering have put in a lot of time and energy in figuring this out. Ben and Dion coming on board has given us access to their experience as well, and they have a vision for how this can all work that is helping us refine our plans and expand what we want to offer to developers down the road.

Will Palm’s embracing of open source extend to open sourcing the Mojo framework?

At this point, we haven’t announced anything on this.

There was some criticism of the state of the documentation when the SDK was first opened to beta testing. What plans have been put into place to improve developer resources?

It’s still a work in progress, but we’re looking to improve this in a number of ways. We’ve been talking over ways to allow the community to help us expand and improve the documentation. We’re looking at how best to make the documentation available and in what formats. We’re working to add resources to the writing team and make sure the engineering teams help us document what they’re building well, and we want to find the best way to make beta versions of the docs available to developers as part of the early access program. We still have work to do here.

How different is the experience for a developer joining the program today versus the experience for those who were part of the Early Access Program?

Early on, webOS was a brand new platform, and I don’t think anyone really understood well what made a “good app” or a “great app”; now I think everyone is learning how to take advantage of the platform and the apps are getting better and more complex. Sharing knowledge on technique is an important aspect of this, which is why I love how our communities have come together to help each other learn. Initially we tended to see everything as a “webOS app”, but we’ve realized different types of apps have different needs, which is why documents like our Immersive Apps Guidelines are helping us adopt and share techniques as we understand how developers are taking the platform in directions we weren’t expecting.

The SDK is maturing and the software is getting needed functionality, and so now developers coming to the platform have a more stable and functional base to develop on, and more knowledge to help avoid the pitfalls that exist on any platform. The earliest developers were real trailblazers, and I don’t think most people realize just how far the platform has grown and matured in the last few months.

What role can Palm play, outside of http://developer.palm.com, to encourage and participate in the development of an active user and developer community?

One of the things I love about what I do is our relationship with the homebrewers. Even the fact that they define themselves as “homebrewers” instead of “jailbreakers” says a lot about how both sides view this. My management has allowed me to get some of the homebrew developers into our early access program and the homebrew community has been very supportive of us, and I want to do everything I can to see Palm and these developers continue to work together to make the platform better.

I’ve also tried to encourage people to get involved with non-Palm-managed communities where I think it makes sense to work with a group rather than have Palm try to duplicate what is already being done elsewhere. Many companies feel they have to “own” everything; I’m trying to encourage a mindset that it’s more important to make sure it happens and that it’s well done, and as long as we all work together, we’re working for the common good.

Anyone who’s followed you on Twitter knows that you’re very interested in birding and photography. How did you get interested in them?

I’ve lived with a bird for a couple of decades now, currently sharing a house with an umbrella cockatoo named Tatiana. I was a photographer in high school and earlier in life, but gave it up to focus on other things, but the digital camera revived my interest and my interest in nature photography, my current passion — the two came together, and I’ve really gotten interested in birds in the wild and their habitat and behavior and documenting that through the lens.

What do you want Pre101′s readers to know?

A big part of my job is listening — listening to developers and finding out what they need, listening to users so I can help developers write apps that users want and will use. I love having developers bounce possible project ideas off me. If they have questions, the developer forums are the place to put them, both because it allows the community to get involved in answering them and it helps create a knowledge base that others can benefit from later when they have similar questions. Developers who have questions or issues they can’t seem to resolve should track me down and talk to me about them — I’ll see what I can do to help.

Last question:  What’s your favorite pizza topping?

These days, I’m trying to eat healthier, so I’m eating more Canadian bacon (Hawaiian style with pineapple). In the bad old days, it was sausage or pepperoni.   But my REAL favorite… which is a bit bizarre, is smoked salmon. Do a pizza with a sauce based on creme fraiche and a bit of tartar sauce, and top with smoked salmon and capers.

Sounds good to me!  And with that, thank you, Chuq.

Chuq Von Rospach can be reached at [email protected], you can follow his official Twitter feed: @webOSdev.