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Droidcon Berlin 2015: how it was



Among the largest conferences on Android-development in Europe, one can especially note the Droidcon in Berlin and in London. This year the conference is still being planned in the capital of Great Britain, and I have already attended the one that recently took place in Germany. Next is a small report on what was interesting to hear and see at the Droidcon in Berlin.

Actually, the objectives of the trip were:

City


Undoubtedly, Berlin is one of the most interesting cities in Europe, which you should definitely visit just as a tourist. Nothing like the atmosphere, convenient public transport, great sea 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 everywhere along with German.


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

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Format


The first Droidcon was held in Berlin in 2008. Since then, the conference has expanded considerably and is currently taking place in almost all European countries, as well as in some countries of other continents. The main part takes 2–3 days plus a day to the hackathon. As a rule, the conference has many famous 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 introductory, then - the presentations themselves. On the ground floor there was something like an exhibition space for different technology companies, even Microsoft was hustling with its Microsoft Truck. However, most of 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. You could also participate in various lotteries and win small gifts.


Free Wi-Fi worked steadily throughout the territory, which was useful (at least for viewing the conference calendar). Some statistics:

Food and Drink


During lunch, everyone was fed vegetarian food (apparently, to cover all 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 the stands of the companies. In general, not hungry.

Registration and Seminars


The first day was organizational - in the evening it was possible to 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 make an appointment in advance, and the time slot was allocated to the narrator. In general, there were not too many interesting things, since many people used this format to advertise their products and companies.

In parallel, on the first floor, seminars were held on various topics. 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 C-base hacker space — a very atmospheric geek space, made like a space station.

Sessions




The next two days were devoted to sessions on various topics. Representatives of Google, Intel, Dropbox, Facebook, JetBrains and other companies spoke. There was a lot of interesting, for myself I made a list of the most interesting sessions:

You can also see:

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

Communication


Such conferences offer a rare opportunity to interact with the global community of developers, so it was even a bit surprising to see how some walk apart. Excessive embarrassment 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, it is possible first of all to single out reactive and functionally programming, MVVM and everything related to the build and testing process (but this will probably always be relevant). As for last year's Material Design, everything seems to have calmed down, and the talk was more about general concepts in design.


The organization of Droidcon was on top (however, one could hardly expect anything else from the Germans :). Should I go next year? Information and video from the conference appear on the network quickly enough, so you can find out something 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 is like a living organism, and such activities are a way to integrate into it and make it even more cohesive.

PS Some of the photos are mine, some are made by Gregor Fischer, or taken from other sources and are distributed under the cc-by-sa 2.0 license. More photos can be seen in the album .

See also:
We put controllers on a diet: Android
Architectural design of mobile applications
Architectural design of mobile applications: part 2

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/260967/

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