The Application Developers Alliance has announced its board of directors, with representatives from publishing, app development and global platforms like Google and RIM.
The Alliance is a newly formed non-profit trade organization. Its goal, according to Jake Ward, its head of communications, is to be the voice of the global development industry, regardless of process/language and platform. The Alliance can be joined for free (for the time being), has no age restrictions, and hopes to offer more discounts for developers for products and services beyond the ones it’s currently offering, which include Rackspace hosting and developer training courses.
The board, along with the Alliance’s president and founder, Jon Potter, will convene for the first time on April 24 in San Francisco to discuss guiding the organization, to create a set of standards for developers worldwide, and to discuss other topics that will allow the Alliance to be a unified voice for the development industry. Potter founded the Applications Developers Alliance after 12 years as the executive director of the Digital Media Association. Prior to that, Potter was a senior vice president at Columbus Newport LLC, a government relations consulting and investment advisory firm. He also served as an associate attorney at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a Washington, D.C. law firm where he specialized in policy and government relations.
David Kennedy, CEO of appMobi, said that this is something the industry has needed. He said there is a need for an organization to help inform both policymakers and the public about the challenges developers face and how they’re dealing with them.
Privacy and security, said Apkudo’s CEO Josh Matthews, are two such issues that consumers need to better understand in terms of how developers are handling them when it comes to mobile devices, which never leave their side.
Matthews added that developers have a lot of responsibility now, perhaps more than ever before. The applications developers are creating these days, he said, touch consumers faster and deeper than the PC and Web applications that they used to primarily build.
Apkudo, Matthews said, believed in the need for a standard set of guiding principles for developers to help guide the creation, protection and maintenance of consumer applications.
Additionally, the Alliance provides a common place for questions and other public discussions that developers can have to share ideas, something Matthews said will definitely help further innovation.
Josh Hartwell, CEO of Mobile Deluxe, said he hopes the Alliance can help the apps industry, especially when it comes to privacy and the public policies around it. “The biggest thing is for all of us to join together to develop industry best practices, [which will] reduce regulation,” he said, adding that good, transparent guidelines are essential in order to help consumers understand the app development industry.
The full board includes:
Philippe Browning, Vice President of Advertising and Operations, CBS Interactive
Don Dodge, Developer Advocate, Google
Brad Feld, Cofounder, Foundry Group
Mike Fordyce, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Publisher Products & Partnership Management, AT&T Interactive
Josh Hartwell, CEO, Mobile Deluxe
David Kennedy, CEO, appMobi
Ed Lewis, CEO and Founder, Media Chaperone
Jim Lucchese, CEO, The Echo Nest
Andrew Maltin, CEO and Cofounder, MEDL Mobile
Josh Matthews, CEO and Cofounder, Apkudo
Todd Moore, Founder, TMSOFT
Naomi Morita, Vice President of Product Development, LocAid Technologies
Grant Neerings, CTO, DIY Media Services
Jose A. Vallés Núñez, Director, BlueVia
Alec Saunders, Vice President of Developer Relations and Ecosystem Development, RIM
Robert Scoble, Startup Liaison Officer and Developer Evangelist, Rackspace
David Simon, Managing Director, Wombat Games
Joel Spolsky, CEO and Cofounder, Stack Exchange