theGathering - progress on making my 'hello world' app

So I've set myself as a personal goal to learn how to make an app this year.

To get the hang of it and learn, my 'hello world' app is called theGathering. It is an app that gives some bells, whistles and tools to lighten up a meeting. It is not the app I have in mind making, but as long as I'm spending my time learning, it might as well be for a 'hello world' app that's fun to make.

This exercise has reminded me that programming is like getting a new problem every step of the way that you need to overcome.

So far I've:

• Chosen a development tool: I'm working with the online platform Appery.io which offers an online editor that creates cross-platform apps. The underlying technologies are HTML5, javascript, jQuery, PhoneGap builder (or in the new release Bootstrap and Angular.js but I haven't played with those yet).
• Created a user interface for three functions: displaying a timer, playing jingles and funny noises and a poll feature.
• Included third party jQuery modules such as TimeCircles or ChartsJS. (It turns out different browsers implement javascript time functions differently, just to point to one of the many surprising things I picked up along the way...)
• Worked with a backend database (also part of Appery.io) - In 'my old days' all databases were SQL relational databases, but nowadays we have nosql databases (the name does suggest the message...) It is really like big tables of data. The app uses REST APIs to get to the data.

Next I need to get the 'join' part of theGathering working, including generating the report of poll questions. After that comes the packaging for Androis / iOS / Windows. Still a long learning curve to go. 

Here are some screenshots of theGathering at this point: