Wanted!! Great Windows 8 Metro style apps

Tuesday, the Windows Store blog announced that in the next significant Windows 8 preview release they will be expanding
their global coverage with 33 additional app submission locales for developers. 

As Antoine Leblond alluded to in the post, our store services are ramping up as planned--and of course the plan includes ramping up developer registrations to enable app submissions to the Windows store. Today, you need an invite “token” to register. This begs the question  - How can YOU get a token?

It’s easy! If your app is ready and you want to be among those developers who get to submit to the store early, simply attend one of the 100s of free Application Excellence Labs that DPE and Windows are holding around the world.

Follow these steps to get invited to an App Excellence lab:

1. Create a really great Windows 8 Metro style app (or game) immediately.  Get it as ready as if you were submitting to the store.
2. If you know your local DPE evangelists (maybe because you attended a Windows camp training), get in touch with them and ask them to nominate your app for a lab.
3. If you don’t know your local evangelist, then email the following information to win8aefb@microsoft.com:
   1. Your name
   2. City & country where you are located
   3. Brief description for your app (no binary,  screenshot is optional, but only send if the screenshot is public, non-confidential stuff )
   4. Your pledge that you’ve spent at least 8 hours devouring all the great UX guidelines we have at the design section in the Windows Dev Center¹ 
   5. Wait for our response letting you know where the closest app excellence lab will be and how to get in touch with the right evangelist to nominate you.

Hopefully, there will be a lab near you.  Right now, we have labs in 40+ countries and we may be adding more.

Of course, coming to the lab is not all you have to do.  I have to go back to step #1: You need to have a compelling, functional app that follows our UX guidelines, our performance best practices, and our store certification requirements²

The lab is a 4-hour engagement with a trained Microsoft Services Engineer.  This person will run your app through a series of tests based on a quality checklist to ensure your app is (or will be) in top-notch shape when you submit. You will also get a chance discuss ways to make your app even better and you will get answers to any questions you might have.
If your app meets the criteria, then booyah! You get a token to register your developer account and (once you have been verified and all that) you will be able to submit your app to the Windows store.
If your app does not meet the criteria, nothing is lost. You will still end up with a much better app³ and you will be able to submit it when registration opens for all developers.

Good luck. We are looking forward to seeing your apps and helping you to make them great!
Happy Windows 8 coding!!

 

¹ Kidding about the pledge but not kidding about highly recommending you review the guidelines and get your app very polished.
² Note: The lab is not a replacement for certification process; that still happens when you submit to the store.
³ Really, the lab preparation will be worth it, you will have a survey with questions, useful advice, links to guidelines, etc. The survey is (by far) not the only criteria we will use at the labs, but if you follow the preparation from the survey, you will likely have a great app.

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 23, 2012
  Great Oppurtunity for Developers to create creative and Innovative Apps. I've recently attended for Sydney win8 Consumer Preview and it is awesome session to know about future apps. Thank you Microsoft Rama

• Anonymous
  May 04, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 06, 2012
  My WP7 experience was quite the opposite. I won a free Samsung Focus and apps are approved quickly and with plenty of details when they are rejected. Now, the fact that nobody buys my apps is entirely different :p