September update

content/2021-september-update.md

+Title: September Update
+Date: 2021-09-03
+Author: Funkwhale
+Category: Announcement
+Slug: 2021-september-update
+
+# September Update
+
+Hi everyone!
+
+For quite some time I've wanted to create regular blog posts to let you know what's cooking at Funkwhale. It's really quite a lot, so let's get started!
+
+## General Assembly
+
+We planned our General Assembly. All members are invited to vote for our Committees and discuss some important topics. It's happening on September 17th, 19:30 CEST on a special Matrix channel. If you're a member, you should have received an invitation. If not, get in touch!
+
+I'm really excited about this General Assembly, since it will be my first and we will end this intermediate phase in leading the development.
+
+If you want to follow the news or get involved, check out our forum! https://forum.funkwhale.audio/d/36-general-assembly-organization/11
+
+## Coming up release
+
+Our last minor version (1.1.0) was released on March 10th, so almost 6 months ago. That's a long time and we've got a lot of things done since then. Some more changes are currently in the works and should be done soon. This release will be mostly a maintenance release, though. We have a lot of dependency updates, we've removed some deprecated code, and we've improved our workflows. There are some interesting improvements, though, so stay tuned! I am confident that we will have a version 1.2 this year, no promises, though!
+
+## Discuss future developments
+
+We have some topics which pop up again and again and hopefully we can start working on these things as soon as possible. Not all of them are fully clear yet, so if you have ideas we are looking forward to getting your input! Some great mockups for future features can be found in our design repository: https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale-design
+
+## Android App
+
+**TL;DR**
+It's time to party! We have released a first version of Funkwhale for Android (FFA) – the new official Android application.
+To get a copy, please add [our self-hosted F-Droid repository](https://fdroid.funkwhale.audio/) to your F-Droid client application. Our repository hosts a preview version that gets updated frequently and a stable release version.
+
+**The story**
+You might know that a bit more than two months ago we forked [Otter](https://github.com/apognu/otter) - an open source client that you can use to connect to Funkwhale pods. Even though FFA still resembles Otter a lot, there are some important enhancements and a few bugfixes in our first release. The most important feature is the implementation of a new authentication system. This will be necessary to use upcoming versions of the Funkwhale server. We have also fixed a number of issues that had been reported in the Otter repository. Please have a look at the [complete change log](https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale-android/-/raw/0.1.1/CHANGELOG) for more details.
+
+**So what's the plan for the future?**
+In the short term, we want to make FFA available both through the official F-Droid repository and the Google Play Store, so that users can get the app more easily.
+We also have dozens of issues [in our backlog](https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale-android/-/issues) already. We know of a number of bugs that we want to address going forward but we also have ideas for further enhancements.
+
+**Get involved!**
+Right now, our team is quite small and, as a community project, we appreciate not only your ideas but also your contributions to the ongoing development.
+And there are many different ways to help: you can chip in with development, you can report bugs, you can also help by [translating the app](https://translate.funkwhale.audio/).
+We have created a basic [developer setup documentation](https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale-android/-/wikis/Development-Documentation/Developer-setup), that can help if you want to get involved. Although we are looking for people that like to get involved on a regular basis we certainly welcome individual contributions as well. If you want to talk to us, you can reach us in our [Matrix channel](https://matrix.to/#/#funkwhale-android:matrix.org).
+
+**Thanks Antoine**
+We want to take the opportunity to thank Antoine for all the work that went into Otter in the past. Without him, Funkwhale for Android would not have been possible.
+
+## Our Blog
+
+We've had some issues with our blogging software. We have been using Plume for a long time now. It's a fediverse project, which has served us quite well up until now. Sadly we have been experiencing some annoying bugs lately. In the last few days we worked hard to move all our posts to a static page generator with keeping all URLs valid. This should now work, but let us know if you encounter any issues! One nice improvement is that we are in full control of the theme now and we will work on improving it.
+
+Thanks for reading!