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Concurrent Sessions

Sessions are offered on Wednesday and Thursday at the conference and do not require a pre-selection. Build your own custom learning schedule, or choose to follow one of our tracks by topic area.

Concurrent Sessions
W1 Real-Time Contextual and Social Relevance in Mobile
Jason Arbon, appdiff.com
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 10:00am - 10:45am

Personalized mobile user experience is a hot topic today because a smarter app will delight users, keep them coming back, and make your business stand out from the crowd. The extreme version of personalization is real-time contextual and social relevance. According to Jason Arbon, the contextual brain for your app is only a few API calls away. Based on lessons learned working on search relevance and personalization at Google, Bing, and a stealth mobile app startup, Jason describes the value, limitations, performance, and data-privacy of local and web services available today. He demonstrates practical examples of leveraging APIs such as Foursquare, Yelp, Google Places, Facebook, Location APIs (latlong + velocity), and Twitter. Then, Jason describes available natural language processing APIs such as NSLinguisticTagger and illustrates ways to use in-app usage data to improve an application’s contextual experience. Take away ideas for making your users happier—and you and your app look smarter.

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Learn more about Jason Arbon.
W2 Automate Your Way to Sanity in the Chaos of Mobile App Development
Josh Anderson, Dude Solutions
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 10:00am - 10:45am

Mobile app development and testing are hard. Mobile at scale is even harder. As you scale to the enterprise, automation is the only option. However, many organizations have barely started automating their mobile dev/test efforts. So, how do you actually automate the building, testing, and deploying of hundreds of mobile apps across multiple operating systems and different app stores? Josh Anderson explains that the mobile ecosystem is in its infancy compared to the tools supporting web application development, testing, and deployment. This means that you must get comfortable with alpha versions of open source projects, constantly changing APIs, and some good, old-fashioned software engineering duct tape. Josh takes you through the challenges he and his teams have encountered along the path to automation and explores the direction for those that remain. Take home the lessons Josh and his teams learned so you can more easily pave your own path to mobile automation

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Learn more about Josh Anderson.
W3 Embed Yourself in Our Wearable Future
Noble Ackerson, Byte an Atom Research
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 10:00am - 10:45am

It could be on your wrist or your ankle. It may be embedded in your jacket, your shoe, your vest, or your hat. It may eventually be under your skin. It may help you walk or talk; find your way; or communicate with a friend, with your doctor, or your coach. It monitors your heart rate, the moisture on your skin, every breath you take, and every move you make. And it’s connected. And networked. Wearable devices are here to stay and are projected to be a $30 billion market by 2018. Designing and developing applications for wearable technologies require a special mindset and understanding of the needs of users on the go. Simply porting an app from mobile to wearable is not enough. Join Noble Ackerson to embed yourself in the world of wearables—the philosophy behind them, their challenges, and opportunities—from heads up displays like Google Glass, to the Android Wear smart watches, and many others that will come along. Drop in to explore where this emergent technology is taking us.

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Learn more about Noble Ackerson.
W4 Mastering Android Development Tools
Luke Wallace, Bottle Rocket
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 11:00am - 11:45am

There are so many tools and tricks for developing Android apps, but which ones actually help when you're building apps day in and day out? Luke Wallace introduces the critical development tools you need and demonstrates how to use them to build real apps. Learn about the six critical tools every developer must have, find out about the key techniques that will help you build masterful Android apps, and discover at least one weird trick to speed up your app development. Luke unearths third party libraries that you may not know about and shows you a simple, powerful guide to continuous integration. Discover new ways to connect with other Android developers in the industry and join this growing community. Explore the future of Android Studio and Eclipse and new tools coming from Google that will make your apps faster, more reliable, more beautiful, and easier to maintain.

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Learn more about Luke Wallace.
W5 Continuous Mobile Testing for Critical Business Apps
Steven Winter, FIS Mobile
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 11:00am - 11:45am

Mobile testing presents a daunting challenge to software development shops and testers. QA/test teams must design test plans to account for multiple platforms, an enormous and ever-increasing number of devices, and frequent OS updates that often introduce dramatic changes. To add complexity, the increasingly consumer-centric demands of the field require new features and fixes—almost daily. Although test automation is often cited as the best—if not the only—possible solution for mobile, it has presented some big challenges. Tasked with compressing the testing process for FIS Mobile, the leading mobile financial transaction platform, Steven Winter and his team revamped their approach to quality by implementing precision mobile test automation, continuous integration, and on-site mobile labs. This discussion will overview how the team reduced potentially months of manual mobile testing to an overnight automation task. The objective of the discussion is to take back new ideas to identify the core requirements of continuous mobile testing and overcome hurdles to mobile quality.

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Learn more about Steven Winter.
W6 Wearing UX—When Our Clothes Become the Interface
Jason Snook, CapTech Consulting
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 11:00am - 11:45am

With the interest in wearable technology exploding, UX practitioners and development teams need to focus on creating experiences that intuitively fit the rhythm and ecosystem of a user’s daily life. Unfortunately, much like what happened early on with mobile design, wearable UX designers seem to have unlearned many of the best practices and heuristics they employ on, for example, desktop design. Starting with a historical perspective on technology adoption and an assessment of where we are today, Jason Snook discusses challenges designers face with the varied interfaces and interactions associated with wearables. Join this session to explore key UX considerations, including interaction design, adoption theory, and the social aspects and stigmas that are important to realizing the full potential of wearable experiences.

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Learn more about Jason Snook.
W7 From Web Developer to Hybrid App Developer
Greg Avola, Untappd
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 1:00pm - 1:45pm

You or your company have a great idea for an app—and now you need to build it. So, what architecture do you use to support iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, and future operating systems? How can you deal with all these platforms and still re-use your skills as web developer? The answer is a hybrid app, which allows developers to use part native code and part web code to create cross-platform apps. Greg Avola, a web developer who built a cross-platform app called Untappd, describes his experiences, demonstrates the tools he employed, shares lessons learned, and discusses the best practices he uses today. Learn how to take your mobile web application and turn it into native smartphone and tablet apps. Save time and resources while avoiding the extra effort of developing a feature for iOS and then having to write the same code for Android, Windows Phone, etc.

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Learn more about Greg Avola.
W8 Mobile Test Automation with Big Data Analytics
Tarun Bhatia, Microsoft
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 1:00pm - 1:45pm

Development and test organizations face major challenges when building robust automated tests around their mobile applications. With limited testing resources and increasingly more complex projects, stakeholders worry about the risk and quality of mobile products. So how do you plan a mobile test automation project to prioritize testing resources and efforts? Tarun Bhatia used big data analytics to understand where customers spend most of their time on their apps out in the wild. See how you can analyze massive amounts of mobile usage data to create an operational model of carriers, devices, networks, countries, and OS versions. Based on real-user data, they developed automation strategies to create better tests and focus on the right priorities. Learn how you can use big data analytics to apply mobile automation in areas of continuous integration, performance, benchmarking, compatibility, stress, and performance testing.

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Learn more about Tarun Bhatia.
W9 Using Apps to Help Users Experience Wearables and IoT Devices
Chris Beauchamp, Crittercism
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 1:00pm - 1:45pm

Wearables and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices are optimized for gathering data about a user and their environment. According to Cisco, this emerging industry will produce and deliver over 20 billion devices worldwide by 2020. Join Chris Beauchamp to learn about how to leverage mobile apps to develop a compelling user experience with one or several connected wearable or IoT devices. He’ll discuss the options for transmitting data from and to devices and how to ensure these connections are happening in real time once the app is live. Explore the options for displaying data on mobile apps with clear and understandable visual elements. Chris shows several use cases to highlight the patterns and anti-patterns on how to provide a great mobile experience across different devices. After all, in the end it’s up to developers to create a complete experience for users and do something interesting with these devices and their data.

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Learn more about Chris Beauchamp.
W10 A DevOps Approach for Building 100 iOS Apps
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 2:00pm - 2:45pm

Apple and IBM forged a global partnership to transform enterprise mobility, which includes delivering 100 applications built exclusively for iOS devices. There are myriad challenges involved in producing that many mobile apps quickly—and with excellent user experience and quality. The team had to work smarter rather than simply throw more people at the project. Join Leigh Williamson as he discusses the DevOps techniques they implemented to accelerate their huge mobile development project: cloud hosted services for Xcode-driven continuous integration; an extended quality cycle for the mobile app once in production; and linked front-end/back-end deployments. Because integrating multiple tools from multiple vendors was unavoidable, they employed an automated pipeline for testing and integrating the code for 100 mobile apps. As the mobile landscape continues to evolve, the importance of continuously delivering engaging mobile apps integrated with your enterprise remains critical to everyone's success. Hear how one team met the challenge at scale.

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Learn more about Leigh Williamson.
W11 Mobile Testing Trends and Innovations
Melissa Tondi, Denver Automation and Quality Engineering
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 2:00pm - 2:45pm

As organizations implement their mobile strategy, testing teams must support new technologies—while still maintaining existing systems. Melissa Tondi describes the major trends and innovations in mobile technology, usage patterns, tools, and test equipment that you should consider when transitioning existing test teams or starting new ones. Based on more than two years of research with a lab-based consultant team, Melissa focuses on areas that balance efficiency and productivity, including use of a Device Matrix technique to select devices to test against and when to use emulators and simulators rather than physical devices. She offers solutions to ensure you have a comprehensive mobile test strategy and focuses on challenges—including understanding mobile-specific integration testing and which automation tools to use—that have inundated traditional test teams. Melissa describes how to build a well-organized device lab and incorporate testing scenarios—such as gesture and interruption testing—that are unique to mobile.

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Learn more about Melissa Tondi.
W12 The Coming Avalanche of Wearable Mobile Apps
Philip Lew, XBOSoft
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 2:00pm - 2:45pm

For better or for worse—like it or not—mobile wearables are already changing our lives. Mobile wearable devices form a new generation of personalized technology that knows us better than our closest friends do. How many of your friends know how far you walked or what you ate? The challenge for developing wearable applications is incorporating the proper context to add value potential users haven’t considered—while being sensitive to their privacy. In our future, devices will wake us up earlier because of the ice storm last night and contact the people we are meeting to warn them we could be late. Philip Lew explores the most important element of mobile/wearable user experience and customer experience―context. Using real-world examples, Phil breaks down context into the elements you can incorporate into your design and development projects. Learn the contextual elements you need to incorporate right now and identify key factors for future generations’ products.

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Learn more about Philip Lew.
T1 Today and Tomorrow: Mobile's Impact on Development and Testing
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 11:00am - 11:45am

There are more than 1.4 billion smartphones in the world—one for every 4.5 people on earth. Over the next decade wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) will make those numbers look puny. In fact, mobile is transforming how people and things connect and dramatically changing software development, as we know it. With more than 189 million apps downloaded daily from app stores and new IoT devices being released daily to the public, developers and testers are already behind the curve. James Montemagno takes a look at the problems and challenges we face today and what we can look forward to in the future. Explore how the ever-growing number of devices and connections will force companies to produce efficient mobile-first products to move ahead in the market. Take back ideas and action items to start tackling the immense fragmentation of devices in the marketplace and identify the steps necessary to transform your development/test teams, environment, and processes to survive and prosper in this brave new world.

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Learn more about James Montemagno.
T2 A Look into the Future: App Testing and Quality in 2025
Jason Arbon, appdiff.com
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 11:00am - 11:45am

In ten years, the applications we develop—mobile, embedded, wearable, and more—will be radically different from today’s apps. And so will be the testing and quality tools, methods, and solutions we employ. Extrapolated from his experiences at Google, Microsoft, and Applause (formerly uTest), Jason Arbon leads a thought-provoking look into the future. Our new world will be powered by nearly infinite—and almost free—computing power, storage, and networking. Standardized software stacks and centralized testing as a service will enable machine learning not possible today. The software itself will generate far smarter test plans, automatically execute tests, explore app functions, and produce quantitative measures of quality. In Jason’s future world, the end game is software-controlled test and release systems with feature-gating and feature-flighting—based on sophisticated, real-time analysis—in which real users safely become your manual testers. Join Jason and your peers to explore the future of testing in 2025, and figure out what we can to do now to prepare the way.

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Learn more about Jason Arbon.
T3 The Software Developers Guide to Prototyping Wearable Devices
Lance Gleason, Polyglot Programming Inc.
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 11:00am - 11:45am

Prototyping wearable devices used to be something that required specialized skills in electrical engineering, embedded development, and mechanical engineering. Today, thanks to the maker revolution, we can combine our deep knowledge of programming with basic electronics, soldering skills, and access to a 3D printer to create useful devices. In this session, we’ll take a quick tour of some of the options and then do a deep dive into creating a wearable prototype using off the shelf boards. Through live demos and coding examples, we will take an idea and turn it into a working prototype that can communicate with a Android device over bluetooth.

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Learn more about Lance Gleason.
T4 Plotting a Better Beer with Geolocation: An Untappd Case Study
Greg Avola, Untappd
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 1:00pm - 1:45pm

Geolocation enhances the experience of many services and provides users with customized results based on their current location. Many people don’t realize what an important role geolocation can play in locating their favorite beer—and Untappd, a mobile application around beer discovery, can help! Greg Avola offers a case study on how Untappd is employing geolocation to enhance the experience for its users and how geolocation has helped Untappd grow its business. Adding location to Untapped personalized the app and provided data that shows users what is being consumed locally. Because most microbrewery beer is distributed only in specific regions, users can find their favorite pint with Untapped. When visiting an area for the first time, Untappd users can discover what's popular. Greg discusses why geolocation is important to social and nonsocial applications and services, and how geolocation can help with your application feature decisions to improve your service and delight your customers.

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Learn more about Greg Avola.
T5 Mobile Application Dev and QA Testing with Simulated Environments
Wayne Ariola, Parasoft
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 1:00pm - 1:45pm

Do you know that 63 percent of your users would be less likely to do business with you if they experience problems with your mobile application? To ensure top-notch user experience, you need to conduct thorough testing on unpredictable network conditions—even if testing components are unavailable. Wayne Ariola describes an innovative strategy of using simulated test environments to bring the behavior of system dependencies and network conditions under your direct control. Simulated test environments draw on two key technologies for anywhere access to a complete and realistic test environment. FIrst, service virtualization enables teams to emulate the behavior of myriad dependencies involved in end-to-end mobile application transactions. Second, mobile network virtualization adds the ability to emulate the performance of network bandwidth, latency, and jitter. With these tools in place, developers and testers can ensure that applications are validated extensively and accurately so your customers will experience great performance.

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Learn more about Wayne Ariola.
T6 Wearables and Contactless Technology—for Payment Processing and Much More
David Meyer, FIS Mobile
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 1:00pm - 1:45pm

The emergence of wearable devices like Google Glass, Apple Watch, and many others—combined with contactless technology such as near field communications—are being combined in new applications for payment processing, banking, and much more. Adopting wearables for contactless transactions will require technology shifts by both merchants and consumers. Using Google Glass as the wearable example, David Meyer demonstrates how users can see their account balance inside Google Glass to make purchase decisions, transmit the purchase authorizations, and transfer funds between their bank accounts. David discusses new security challenges and authentication issues with these technologies. He explores ways to improve adoption rates, including demographics to focus on, security standards to follow, UI limitations, considerations for application design, and API development. Take back a list of requirements for developing useful and compelling applications that combine wearables and contactless technology.

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Learn more about David Meyer.
T7 Windows Azure: Connecting the Dots for a Mobile Workforce
Mike Benkovich, Imagine Technologies, Inc.
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 2:00pm - 2:45pm

We live in a mobile bring-your-own-device kind of world with a proliferation of devices—smart phones, tablets, and UltraBooks running iOS, Android, and Windows. People are working in online and offline modes, and moving from device to device. How do you build applications that provide a consistent view of identity, data, and services so that your workforce can be productive wherever they are? Mike Benkovich explores the latest features in Windows Azure and its Mobile Services to show you how to build connected applications that take advantage of the latest technologies, including data, identity, and push notifications. Mike describes the host of Windows Azure features and capabilities—dynamic schema, OAuth, and scripting technologies—that allow you to build secure applications quickly. In this fast-paced and demo-rich session, Mike will build and demonstrate client-side apps on Android devices, Windows Phones, and iOS to show you what is the possible today.

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Learn more about Mike Benkovich.
T8 Tips and Tricks for Building Secure Mobile Apps
Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 2:00pm - 2:45pm

Mobile application development is now a mission-critical component of IT organizations and a big part of software industry’s landscape. Due to the security threats associated with mobile devices, it is critical we build our apps—from the ground up—to be secure and trustworthy. However, many application developers and testers do not understand how to build and test secure mobile applications. Jeffery Payne discusses the risks associated with mobile platforms/applications and describes proven practices for ensuring the safety of your mobile applications. Jeffery delves into the unique nuances of mobile platforms and how these differences impact the security approach when you are developing and testing mobile applications. Topics include session management, data encryption, securing legacy code, and platform security models. Learn what to watch out for when you start developing your next mobile app and take away tips and tricks for effectively securing and testing existing apps.

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Learn more about Jeffery Payne.
T9 The Internet of Things and You
Jim McKeeth, Embarcadero Technologies
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 2:00pm - 2:45pm

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)? What are the technologies that make it happen? Where do we see it today? Where will we see it tomorrow? What capabilities will it provide, and what do we need to know to take part in it? Jim McKeeth considers where IoT is taking us and discusses the hurdles we face today and in the future. With a focus on applications, Jim offers examples of IoT technology from the perspective of developers. Join Jim to learn about cross-platform development, cloud synchronization, app-to-app communication, Bluetooth, WiFi, security concerns, privacy issues, and more. Look at specific IoT devices now available that are changing the landscape for businesses and the consumer. Is the Internet of Things the dawn of a new age or just another way for “Big Brother” to watch our every move? Come find the answers to this and other thought-provoking questions.

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Learn more about Jim McKeeth.
T10 Architect a Winning Mobile Application
Shadi Saifan, FIS Mobile
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 3:15pm - 4:00pm

Building mobile apps in today’s highly dynamic environment comes with great uncertainty and risk. It’s imperative to make the right design choices early on. Poor architectural decisions can make or break an app. In this technical session, Shadi Saifan focuses on the architecture and design considerations critical for building a winning mobile application—regardless of the device, operating system, or language. Shadi compares and contrasts the fundamental technology choice of developing mobile browser-based apps, developing native apps, or employing cross-platform tools and hybrid frameworks. Then, he goes into depth on the most critical mobile architectural issues with a focus on performance, data access, security, and connectivity. Shadi discusses considerations for designing applications that are easy to maintain and upgrade—design factors that are often brushed over. Leave with a new understanding of the up-front mobile development decisions required for success in today’s environment.

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Learn more about Shadi Saifan.
T11 Mobile Performance Testing Crash Course
Dustin Whittle, AppDynamics
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 3:15pm - 4:00pm

With more and more web traffic coming from mobile devices, performance on tablets and smartphones has a profound impact on user experience and, ultimately, your company’s bottom line. Dustin Whittle shares the latest performance testing tools and insights for web developers. Dustin explores performance considerations for backend APIs and helps you better understand mobile performance on devices. Learn how to evaluate performance and scalability on both the server- and the client-side with tools such as Siege, Bees with Machine Guns, Google PageSpeed, WBench, and more. Find out why and how to add or improve performance testing within your development and test processes. Bring your toughest mobile performance questions and join in the discussion. Take back key tips on how to automate performance and load testing, and evaluate the impact that pre-launch and ongoing performance testing will have on your business.

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Learn more about Dustin Whittle.
T12 Software Attacks for Embedded, Mobile, and Internet of Things
Jon Hagar, Independent Consultant
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 3:15pm - 4:00pm

In the world of embedded systems, mission-critical mobile apps, and the Internet of Things (IoT), developers and testers must do more than just look for feature bugs. To find potential failures and serious security errors, their arsenal should include attack-based exploratory testing. In the tradition of James Whittaker’s How to Break Software books, Jon Hagar applies the “attack” concept to embedded, mobile, and IoT software. Jon examines common industry patterns of product failures and shares a set of his favorite software test attacks for native, web-based, and hybrid apps. He explains when and how to conduct the attacks, including the pros and cons of some attacks. Take back an arsenal of at least three basic tester attacks, three developer attacks, and three security attacks that you can employ on your current or next project.

This session is based on Jon’s book Software Test Attacks to Break Mobile and Embedded Devices.

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Learn more about Jon Hagar.