DroidCon London
For those who don't know, DroidCon London (the biggest Android convention in the UK) happened this past weekend at the Angel Business Centre.
The event was organised by Novoda and Skills Matter, the same companies that organised the londroid meet ups, and they did a hell of a job getting some excellent speakers tackling good topics.
So what is it?
Short answer:
It may not be Google I/O, but it is a proper developer's conference!
Long answer:
It was a brilliant event to meet up with fellow developers, learn from interesting presentations and to share knowledge within the Android ecosphere.
There was no official news or hardware showcase (except from the sponsors) and not even a visible endorsement from Google.
Nonetheless there was a keynote, a couple of presentations from Chet Haase showing what's new in Android Lollipop and the delightful presentation, Practicing Practical Best Practices for Software Development Practitioners.
Highs and Lows
I don't think there was a low point in droidCon but if I had to pick the best and the worst (although there's nothing that black and white) I would just put two companies in there: Microsoft and Genymotion.
Genymotion
If you don't know this name by now, well, you should. In my opinion, it's currently the best Android emulator for desktop OSes in the market and soon it's going to get even better. New features like sending text messages to devices, making phone calls, and the CLI, which is the one I'm most keen on trying. It would make it much easier to create and delete different phones instances to test different builds.
Microsoft
It's not news that the current leading Operating System of the mobile market is everywhere, and that's why that providing services for such a huge client base is very appealing for top companies. One of those was Microsoft, and they did a small showcase of how their cloud storage works and how it can connect to the Android platform. It showed potential, but lacked depth and to compete with powerful companies in this space, like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud they will need to push forward a bit more. Although they reiterate that their solution could suit both clients and companies, the spotlight was very much on the enterprise.
Talk the Talk
There were many presentations – sixty-five if I'm not mistaken. Most of them stuck to this formula:
(New Features + Design Patterns + CI) - excuses = win
Thus, where's a quick list of some tools and presentations that caught my eye:
- Using and abusing the new Android Lollipop
- Questioning navigation from Juhani Lehtimaki
- Recycling custom view layouts from Lucas Rocha - Two Way View
- Security - Consulthink
- Watching files with Watchman
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