Charting the Conference*

Marie Cooper and I have been hard at work the last couple of weeks promoting MobDevCon, Norfolk’s first mobile development conference. We have a five minute presentation telling people about the venue, the speakers and their topics, the technologies and the sponsors. We always get a very warm welcome.

We started off at SyncNorwich’s May event, then a week later we did Hot Source’s May Talkie in Norwich and then SyncIpswich’s May event on the same night! The picture, taken by Ben Taylor, show’s Marie and I talking to Hot Source in front of the huge screens at The Forum. Chris Spalton put together a Hot Source sketch note that included us:

Later this month we’ll be speaking at SQL Relay in Norwich and then at the first Norfolk Developers event before going back to SyncIpswich to hopefully catch a bigger crowd!

* Yes, that is a Marillion reference.

MobDevCon 2013: Elite Sponsor Announced

MobDevCon is delighted to announce that Basho, the makers of the Riak database as Elite sponsor. Basho will be there on the day and will be giving the sponsors presentation just before the end note. They will also be on hand throughout the day to answer any questions you might have about Riak and how it can be used in a mobile context.

Basho's elite sponsorship comes hot on the heels of their sponsorship of the highly successful SyncConf in February, further strengthening their ties with Norfolk. We're looking forward to welcoming Basho back in July and, hopefully, many more times after that.

Agile Estimating and Planning

It’s always nice to be recognised. The highlight of the days training for me was when Mike Cohn came straight over to me at the first break, knew my name, shook my hand and thanked me for my enthusiastic tweet about the training a few days before. I was astounded and took the opportunity to have a chat and get my well thumbed copy of Agile Estimating and Planning signed by the man himself. It also turns out we both have an interest in databases.

I heard about the Agile Estimating and Planning course through SyncConf sponsors Developer Focus. Of course I immediately wanted to go. It was a long wait from February to May and I nearly didn’t make it due to man flu, but I’m glad I did.

I was very pleased to find the course was as expected and I was also pleased to find that I remembered a lot of the material from when I read the book. The last time was at least three years ago. Of course everyone else in the room was still practicing Agile and I haven’t had the opportunity for some time now.

The course consisted of well put together, informative and often amusing slides and anecdotes arranged around small interesting exercises. I was very lucky to have a very experienced and enthusiastic group to carry out the exercises with. Despite being familiar with the material I learnt a great deal.

If you get the opportunity to go and see Mike Cohn speak, take it.

MobDevCon, Norfolk's First Mobile Development Conference - 3rd July 2013 @ Hethel Engineering Centre

MobDevCon

Bringing the best in Mobile Development to Norfolk: 3 July 2013

Mobile technology is booming and the possibilities and opportunities available are endless. It is now widely accepted that the number of people accessing the internet via mobile devices will overtake those using fixed line PC connections by 2014. Companies need to decide on whether they want to implement mobile strategies. Mobile isn’t the future, mobile is now.

If you are serious about mobile development, don’t miss out on MobDevCon. This is the first Mobile Development Conference to be held in Norfolk. We are bringing together some amazing speakers for you from as far away as Spain and the Netherlands, from Bristol and London to the home grown talent we are lucky to have right here on our doorstep in East Anglia.

MobDevCon is being held at Hethel Engineering Centre, near Lotus Cars in Norfolk. Hethel Engineering is a hub for innovation in the region.

The Super Early Bird tickets for MobDevCon have sold out but there are still Early Bird tickets available for only £75 (plus fees) at:

http://mobdevcon2013.eventbrite.co.uk/ 

This price includes not only the presentations and workshops but also lunch and tea/coffee between sessions.

MobDevCon will have the following sessions on offer throughout the day. Further details on sessions and speakers can be found at www.mobdevcon.com.

• Near Field Communication
• Aviva's mobile journey and future
• A practical guide to pricing mobile apps
• Developing apps for FirefoxOS
• Why Cross-Platform Development Is The Only Way Forward
• The Android + NFC developer kick-start workshop
• Custom Components for Android
• Developing Cross Platform Apps using Xamarin and MvvmCross
• 10 tips when porting to Windows Phone
• Android security tips
• History of MonoGame
• Mobile technology developments, culminating in Worklight
• Custom Components for Android
• Building a Media Player Application with the GStreamer SDK for Android

If you have any queries or just unsure whether the conference will be suitable to your needs, please do not hesitate to contact us.

- Marie Cooper

SyncNorwich: Big Data in the AWS Cloud + More

Last night was the first SyncNorwich that I have managed to get to this year and it was fantastic. There was a real buzz and the eagerly anticipated speakers did not disappoint. It was also good to catch with a lot of people from the early days of Validus.

First up was Richard Churchill of Service Tick. They’re doing some incredible stuff in the cloud with NoSQL databases. Richard was very engaging and is clearly bey passionate about what he is doing. Service Tick also boast one of the best DBAs I have ever worked with.

Next up was Ben Taylor from Validus talking about their migration of their claims handling system to the cloud. Ben is now Technology Director at Validus. I remember interviewing and hiring him for a Java developer role about 5 years ago. Lots of things have changed since then and Ben did a superb job tonight.

Unfortunately I had to leave early and missed Robin Meehan of Smart421’s presentation on big data in the AWS cloud. However I have heard from a number of people since that it was superb.

Naked Element Ltd. presents MobDevCon, Norfolk's Mobile Development Conference

What: MobDevCon

When: 3rd July 2013, 9am to 6.30pm

Where: Hethel Engineering Centre, Chapman Way, Hethel, Norwich, NR14 8FB

Website: mobdevcon.com

Tickets: http://mobdevcon2013.eventbrite.co.uk/ (on sale 22nd April)

Naked Element Ltd. is very proud to present MobDevCon the first mobile development conference in Norfolk. MobDevCon is a one day conference  and is open to all. There will be presentations and workshops covering a broad range of mobile development topics. Do you want to go mobile? Not sure which platform to use? Want to find out about NFC? Come join us on 3 July 2013 and find answers to your mobile questions at MobDevCon.

Oblivion

At last! Proper sci-fi! Spaceships, aliens and everything!

I often think to myself when I go to see a Tom Cruise film that he’s never made a bad one. Then I remember War of the Worlds, but surely that has to be exception that proves the rule? Oblivion, despite some of the cliches and a few obvious twists, is a fantastic film once it gets going. There were a couple of places where I found myself wondering if something had been cut to get the 12A rating, which is always a shame. Having said that, the one piece of language at the end seemed totally unnecessary as it was absent from the rest of the film.

So I guessed pretty early on that the Scavs were humans. It was obvious. However, once that was revealed a new intrigue was introduced and the suspense reasonably well maintained until the end where it was almost fully described. It would have been good to understand exactly what happened to Jack and Victoria after they entered the alien ship and how the invasion happened and who the aliens really were, where they came from and why they were stealing energy from planets.

One of the highlights for me was when Jack flicked through his record collection and there was a copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Asia’s first album. You don’t see that every day!