Droidcon Berlin 2015: how it was



    Among the largest conferences on Android-development in Europe, Droidcon in Berlin and London can be especially noted. In the capital of Great Britain, a conference is still being planned this year, and I have already visited the one that was recently held in Germany. Next - a small report on what was interesting to hear and see on the Berlin Droidcon.

    Actually, the objectives of the trip were:
    • to listen about current trends in development is the main goal;
    • chat with other developers from the global Android community;
    • evaluate the organizational part of the conference in order to use this experience in Redmadrobot's own events .

    Town


    Undoubtedly, Berlin is one of the most interesting cities in Europe, which is definitely worth a visit just as a tourist. The atmosphere is like nothing, convenient public transport, a sea of ​​excellent street food and bicycles. The city of constant communication is so multicultural that you can talk with people from a dozen countries in one evening, and English can be heard here everywhere along with German.


    Surprisingly: despite the fact that during the war most of Berlin was practically razed to the ground, in 2015 the city had enough interesting architecture - both old and new. Berlin is being actively reconstructed, old buildings are being renovated and adapted to current tasks. Just in one of these places - POSTBAHNHOF - and passed Droidcon.


    Format


    The first Droidcon was held in Berlin in 2008. Since then, the conference has expanded significantly and is currently being held in almost all countries of Europe, as well as in some countries of other continents. The main part takes place in 2-3 days, plus a day on the hackathon. As a rule, the conference has many eminent sponsors, but you still have to pay for the ticket - this time it cost € 199.

    This year, more than 800 people came to Berlin. Sessions went in parallel on four stages, so I had to choose what to visit. Each day began with a small introduction, then the presentations themselves. On the ground floor there was a kind of exhibition space for various technology companies, even Microsoft made a fuss with its Microsoft Truck. However, mainly the stands were presented by European companies that either sold their products or were looking for new employees. But there was a lot of free stuff - stickers, sweets, drinks and even Google Cardboard. It was also possible to participate in various lotteries and win small gifts.


    Free Wi-Fi worked stably throughout the territory, which was useful (at least for viewing the calendar of the conference). Some statistics:
    • 1,500 devices were connected to the network during the conference;
    • 729 - the maximum number of simultaneously connected devices;
    • 80% of devices were connected via a 5 GHz channel;
    • Total traffic for the entire conference - 463 GB;
    • Devices with the mention of the word “android” - 50.6% of the total, “apple” - 32.8% (including the MacBook).

    Food and drink


    During lunch, everyone was fed vegetarian food (apparently to cover all the requirements at once), all day there was access to coffee and cookies.


    Plus there was a coffee break with cupcakes and, as I said, sweets and drinks at company stands. In general, do not get hungry.

    Registration and workshops


    The first day was organizational - in the evening you could register and at the same time get to the party dedicated to the end of the Berlin Buzzwords Conference . The second day was completely devoted to barcamps and seminars. For a presentation in the barcamp format, it was enough to pre-register, and a time slot was allocated to the narrator. In general, there was not too much interesting, since many used this format to advertise their products and companies.

    In parallel, seminars on various topics were held on the ground floor. Perhaps the most curious was the Getting Started in VR workshop, where the guys from Carbon Five talked about the basics of building applications for virtual glasses and creating simple demo applications for Google Cardboard.


    At the end of the first day, all visitors to Droidcon were invited to sit in the hacker space C-base - a very atmospheric geeky place, made in the likeness of a space station.

    Sessions




    The next two days were devoted to sessions on different topics. Representatives of Google, Intel, Dropbox, Facebook, JetBrains and other companies spoke. There were a lot of interesting things, for myself I made a list of the most interesting sessions:
    • The Cognitive Abilities of the Human Mind is one of the most useful lectures of the conference. Interaction design specialist Janne Jul Jensen, based on gestalt psychology, explained what is behind the design and guidelines and how to better design the application. It is worth a look for both designers to supplement knowledge of interface design, and developers for a better understanding of application design.
    • Then the new EventBus v3 was introduced . While in beta, developers have shown convenience with new annotations and its speed, comparing with the previous version and the Otto solution from Square. What Jake Wharton (Jake Wharton) has already managed to joke on Twitter . But in general, the new version looks promising, so it’s worth upgrading when it leaves the beta stage.
    • Developing a SDK for Android apps - a small presentation about developing your own SDK. Like the usual “think twice before doing something” tips, the specific ones are the use of fatarr, demo applications and mock servers for testing, etc. Unfortunately, there is no video for this session, so you can get acquainted with pdf- option (and clarify something with me, if necessary).
    • Flexing the rules of Material Design - it's interesting to listen in terms of applying guidelines to your applications. One of the thoughts of the presentation is “Don’t be a copycat”, i.e. it is not necessary to copy Material Design one to one. As evidence, the applications from the list of Material Design Awards were given , in which some details did not look like in the guidelines. However, these applications have received awards.
    • Kotlin - The Swift of Android . If you still did not know about the existence of this language or would like to know its advantages better, then this presentation will be useful. Unfortunately, the language is still under development, but JetBrains hope to finish it soon.
    • Whats new in Android? - the presentation took place a week after Google I / O, so it was interesting to listen to Google developer about innovations in the system. What's new?
      • Android M - the newest new version of the OS.
      • The permissions system has been redesigned (on devices up to Android M version everything will work as before, on M devices and higher, the work will depend on targetSdkVersion.), New methods for checking them, RequirePermission annotation.
      • More new annotations - FloatRange, CallSuper, CheckResult, Size.
      • New power saving mode Doze mode.
      • Voice integration in applications.
      • Data binding - already available while beta.
      • Design Library - new components that make life easier for developers in the world of Material Design.
      • Different new buns in Android Studio.
      • AutoBackup for applications - you can specify what to save.

      Innovations are slowly being shared with the public, so it's worth following the Android Developers Blog .
    • Layout traversals on android - what happens after the requestLayout () method is called? How is layout output optimized in Android? This presentation talks about the key steps that the Android UI framework takes to display your interface on the screen.
    • RecyclerView to the rescue is all about RecyclerView. In fact, there are many examples on the Internet, but it was interesting to hear about using the MVVM pattern together with RecyclerView, which to some extent facilitates the display of elements in the list.
    • Android reactive programming with RxJava - I think this lecture is enough to understand the principle of reactive programming and its application in Android using RxJava.

    You can also see:
    • Strip-tease of Android permission system - a lecture from Genymobile, the basics of the permission system in Android and Linux. Nothing new, but the presentation is good.
    • Level up your Android build - all about setting up gradle and CI. Useful information if you still do not have CI processes in development.
    • An alternative to fragments: Say Hello to Mortar & Flow - using Square solutions instead of fragments. Mortar is an add-on over the Activity lifecycle for using View as a separate part of the application. Flow, however, describes the screens and their states, as well as the navigation between them. Using these two libraries, you get a solution that can replace fragments. Interesting, but little documented and still under development.
    • Fitness motion recognition with Android Wear - how to use your watch to identify specific movements. Starting with which sensors are better to use, ending with an algorithm for determining motion. A good lecture to deal with sensors in the Android system.
    • Let's go functional - the name speaks for itself, basic things and the current state of functional programming in Android.

    Again, I made this list for myself, I advise you to see the conference schedule , maybe there will be something interesting for you personally.

    Communication


    Such conferences provide a rare opportunity to communicate with the global community of developers, so it was even a little surprising to see how some people go apart. Excessive constraint in such situations is inappropriate, as it becomes an obstacle to obtaining new information. During the conversation, you can clarify the details, ask for implementation or advice. All developers, even if they work in Google or Facebook, are the same people as all of us :)


    Conclusion


    Speaking about current trends, in my opinion, we can primarily single out reactive and functional programming, MVVM and everything related to the assembly and testing process (but this, perhaps, will always be relevant). Regarding last year's Material Design, it seemed that everyone had calmed down, and the conversation went more about general concepts in design.


    The Droidcon organization was at its best (however, one could hardly have expected anything else from the Germans :). Should I go next year? Information and video from the conference appear on the network quite quickly, so something can be learned from home. But the conference, first of all, is communication with colleagues. Will I go again? If there is such an opportunity, then, of course, yes. The community as a living organism, and such events are a way to integrate into it and make it even more united.

    PS Some of the photos - mine, a part made by Gregor Fisher ( by Gregor Fischer ), or taken from other sources and distributed cc-by-sa 2.0 license. More photos can be seen in the album .

    Read also:
    Planting controllers on a diet: Android
    Architectural design of mobile applications
    Architectural design of mobile applications: part 2

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