I'll share my story, though I haven't been a very "community facing" maemo-ist. It's long and rambling, but this seems like an appropriate place to share it.

I was a Linux enthusiast from my mid-teens, and bought (and later won another in a programming contest) a Sharp Zaurus SL5000D to try my hand at mobile programming. I wrote a couple of small Qtopia apps, released my very first open source application, and installed a LAMP stack that allowed me to locally serve php/mysql pages to keep track of my bird list.

I upgraded to a Zaurus C1000 and continued php/mysql programming on device. Right around the time the N810 was announced I was interested in a more connected device (the Compact Flash wifi card in my Zaurus died). I followed the forums here trying to decide whether to pull the trigger on an N800 or wait for an N810.

Since all my previous mobile devices had hardware keyboards, I decided to wait for the N810 and bought it when it first came out. I was disappointed that there was no working LAMP stack off-the-bat, so I delved into GTK programming and wrote my bird list app using that.

While I learned GTK I decided to write some small applications I could release, and if memory serves "Large Statusbar Clock" was my first effort, borrowing the idea from wazd's blog. I was very encouraged by the reception I got from the community and listened to some of the suggestions for a better tablet experience. "Personal Menu" and "Personal Launcher" were born to fill some of the gaps the community noted. "Countdown Home Plugin" was a scratch-my-own-itch program to keep track of an upcoming vacation.

This was all OS2008 development, and I was pleased with the response theses programs received. After being admonished by my wife for not applying to go to the Summit (I think in '08) I applied for sponsorship to the '09 Summit with low expectations. I was surprised that I was considered important enough to attend, so made my first ever trip overseas and met my first ever community members in person. I was blown away by the friendly engaging nature of the community members

After (and before) getting an N900 I developed "Personal Dataplan Monitor," "Personal IP Address," "Personal Photo Frame," and ported "Countdown Home Plugin" to maemo5. I also ported Birdlist to maemo5, and got involved in Qt programming - both at the library level and application level. Of course, this involved porting Birdlist to Qt.

I look forward to writing my first Qt program for Meego, and hopefully a chance to attend the Meego Conference in Dublin. I have a lot less free time now compared to when I started - two young sons will do that.

I know I am not the most vocal member of the community, and I know my contributions can't match what I have gotten out of this community, but hopefully I can continue to make things people find useful. I hope to eventually increase my activity back to former levels, assuming my free time ever recovers.