Development

Tutorials

TA iOS 8 Quick Start: The Fundamental Pillars of iOS Development

Daniel Steinberg, Dim Sum Thinking, Inc.

Tue, 04/14/2015 - 8:30am

If you are an experienced developer who is new to iOS development, join Daniel Steinberg as he facilitates this hands-on workshop to teach participants how to write great iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch apps. Daniel introduces Xcode 6 and Apple's suite of freely-available developer tools. He demonstrates how to use Xcode’s visual tools and storyboards to create your app’s GUI. Learn to use Outlets and Actions to connect the visual elements to code and interact with them. Examine the Swift code that implements your application’s Model and Controller layers.

TH Building Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

Troy Miles, Kelley Blue Book

Tue, 04/14/2015 - 1:00pm

PhoneGap (aka Cordova) is a cross-platform framework for developing mobile apps using standard web development tools like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Join Troy Miles to learn how to create mobile apps with PhoneGap by building a simple but full-featured app during this hands-on class. Troy explores PhoneGap’s important capabilities, including GPS, camera, and audio recordings. Because JavaScript has a reputation as a somewhat difficult language, Troy teaches techniques for keeping your code robust and clean.

Keynotes

K1 Crazy (and Focused) Mobile App Development

Daniel Steinberg, Dim Sum Thinking, Inc.

Wed, 04/15/2015 - 8:30am

Developers mostly focus on improving their creation skills—learning about programming languages and coding techniques; attending dev conferences; downloading and analyzing code; reading blogs, and listening to podcasts. However, they often become so focused on the delivery deadline that they forget they aren't just building an app for some arbitrary faceless customer. They are trying to help real people solve real problems. So, before the coding starts, there is lots of work to do to identify THAT customer. Narrow your scope.

K2 Designing for Engagement

Jaimee Newberry, Independent Consultant

Wed, 04/15/2015 - 4:00pm

Do the products you’re creating engage users on an emotional level? Do you deliberately design in the personality and tone of your product? Are you thinking comprehensively about every touchpoint your product has with a user? Jaimee Newberry has been helping Fortune 500 companies and startups with their digital products for more than seventeen years. Through years of refinement, Jaimee knows how to create products that engage and empathize with users. Her abilities evoke client responses such as “You’ve earned our trust,” “You understand who we are,” and “Thank you.

K4 Thought: The Future of Mobile and Embedded Application Input

Jim McKeeth, Embarcadero Technologies

Thu, 04/16/2015 - 9:45am

Control of complex machines by human thought has been a mainstay of science fiction writing and films for years. In the movie Firefox, Clint Eastwood steals a highly advanced Russian fighter jet that is controlled by the pilot’s thoughts. But real devices are now appearing that purport to use our brainwaves as input. Is this technology a reality today? If not, how far away is it? What sort of thought input is possible and where could it be used?

Concurrent Sessions

W1 Real-Time Contextual and Social Relevance in Mobile

Jason Arbon, appdiff.com

Wed, 04/15/2015 - 10:00am

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.

W2 Automate Your Way to Sanity in the Chaos of Mobile App Development

Josh Anderson, Dude Solutions

Wed, 04/15/2015 - 10:00am

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.

W6 Wearing UX—When Our Clothes Become the Interface

Jason Snook, CapTech Consulting

Wed, 04/15/2015 - 11:00am

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.

W7 From Web Developer to Hybrid App Developer

Greg Avola, Untappd

Wed, 04/15/2015 - 1:00pm

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.

W9 Using Apps to Help Users Experience Wearables and IoT Devices

Chris Beauchamp, Crittercism

Wed, 04/15/2015 - 1:00pm

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.

T3 The Software Developers Guide to Prototyping Wearable Devices

Lance Gleason, Polyglot Programming Inc.

Thu, 04/16/2015 - 11:00am

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.

T5 Mobile Application Dev and QA Testing with Simulated Environments

Wayne Ariola, Parasoft

Thu, 04/16/2015 - 1:00pm

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.

T8 Tips and Tricks for Building Secure Mobile Apps

Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Thu, 04/16/2015 - 2:00pm

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.

T9 The Internet of Things and You

Jim McKeeth, Embarcadero Technologies

Thu, 04/16/2015 - 2:00pm

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.

T10 Architect a Winning Mobile Application

Shadi Saifan, FIS Mobile

Thu, 04/16/2015 - 3:15pm

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.