The sails have been lowered, the laptops packed away, and the creative buzz of Sailathon 2024 has just begun to settle. From Friday, September 27 to Monday, September 30th in Prague developers, Jolla employees and passionate users contributed their skills, ideas and enthusiasm. This resulted in advancements and improvements across various aspects of the platform and community.
Strengthening and Building Community Bonds
This year’s Sailathon wasn’t just about coding — it was about exploring new opportunities, strengthening community ties, and discussing current challenges of the Sailfish OS ecosystem. With a diverse group of participants tackling both technical and non-technical challenges, the event was a powerful reminder of the strength, passion and commitment that make the Sailfish OS community so special.
First Jolla C2 and Sailfish OS 5.0 showcase
At the heart of the hackathon buzz, Jolla unveiled a prototype of the upcoming Jolla C2, Jolla’s newest smartphone. The C2 was made available for hands-on testing, allowing the participants to explore its usage experience firsthand. The hackathon unveiled not only the new hardware but also demonstrated Jolla’s coming version 5.0 of Sailfish OS, which brings support for the device Jolla C2 and various improvements.
Chum: Best-Practice Examples for Developers
The hackathon also saw a strong focus on providing more best-practice examples for apps in Chum, the Sailfish community repository. Experienced developers shared their expertise, working together to create templates and examples that will help new developers get started more easily and build higher-quality apps. This effort is a crucial step toward growing the app ecosystem and making it easier for new contributors to get involved.
As a result, participants contributed various improvements to the documentation for app development and submitted new apps to Chum.
Major Steps in App Development
The participants corrected various deficiencies, implemented important improvements to the packaging and development cycle, easing the app development.
As an outstanding example, the Whisperfish app, a native client for the widely popular and secure messaging protocol Signal, saw the addition of Voice calls, a feature that will soon arrive to the users.
Other improved apps include Tooter (a Mastodon client), Amazfish (smartwatch integration), Bugger (an enhanced bug reporting tool), Taak (a todo list manager), the native browser (first steps for browser notifications) and the Camera 2 API.
Forum Moderation and Community Engagement
Beyond the technical aspects, the hackathon also touched on the challenges of forum moderation and community engagement. As the Sailfish community grows, so too does the complexity of maintaining a positive, inclusive and productive environment. Hackathon participants discussed strategies for improving moderation practices, ensuring that new users feel welcomed and supported. These conversations were a reminder that building great software is only part of the equation — building a great community is equally important.
Looking to the Horizon: What’s Next?
As the sails come down and we reflect on the success of Sailathon 2024, it’s clear that the event has set the stage for exciting new developments in the Sailfish OS ecosystem, most notably various apps. Stay tuned for exciting updates. The ideas generated and the connections made will continue to fuel innovation long after we’ve left Prague.
As we look toward the future, we’re excited to continue working together to build a mobile ecosystem that the upholds the values of openness and privacy and is powered by the community.
To everyone who participated in Sailathon 2024 — thank you for your passion, your creativity and your dedication! Together, we’re steering Sailfish OS into a bright and exciting future.
Until we meet again — fair winds and following seas!
Post authored by Sailathon participant Sebastian Wagner
Pictures by Ruben De Smet and Lukáš Karas licensed under CC-BY-SA
