We've had a change in the mobile sessions at NCDevCon. While we regret last minute schedule and session changes, it was necessary. Plus, we think you will like these changes and we are quite happy to make the announcement.
Both of the sessions by Faraz Syed of Keynote Device Anywhere have been cancelled:
- Native Apps Vs. HTML5 Web Apps: Which App Dev Environment Best Suits You?
- Lessons Learned From Multiple Platform Deployments
We are very sorry to those attendees who were looking forward to these two sessions.
Why The Change?
While we were looking forward to these sessions, due to circumstances beyond our control, we were unable to finalize the details with Mr. Syed. Our worst fear is in booking a speaker and later having that speaker not be able to attend. We want to make the best decisions for the attendees, who want the best value for their admission fee. Thus, we replaced these two sessions with different sessions from other speakers who were kind enough to step in and fill those slots on short notice.
Our 2 New Sessions
The fine folks at TwoToasters have been fantastically responsive and offered up two excellent speakers. You may recognize TwoToasters as critically acclaimed mobile product development firm, which designs and develops iOS and Android applications for partner companies. Their Clients range in size from established tech giants (AirBnB) and national brands (Dicks’ Sporting Goods, Lexus and Acura) to early stage, venture-backed startups (Yipit, Go Try It On).
We are grateful for their flexibility, ability to fill in on short notice. We also really appreciate the depth of experience they are bringing to NCDevCon in the Mobile development space.
Introducing: Daniel Hammond
- Title: Techniques for A/B Testing and Iterating Fast on Mobile Apps
- Description: Mobile app development is currently dominated by development governed by long development and release cycles. A/B and user testing are the established gold standard for the web but until now have been absent from mobile, due to a lack of tools and obstacles such as app store deployment processes. The costs of this are design rooted in assumption rather than experimentation, and higher risk of product failure since it takes longer and is more expensive to adapt to market feedback. This talk will show how to use new tools and techniques to augment your HTML5 or native mobile applications. The tools and techniques discussed and demo'ed will allow you to iterate quick and A/B test your decisions resulting in a better mobile product faster.
- Bio: Daniel Hammond is the Director of Strategy at Two Toasters, where he oversees the execution of client projects from concept to launch. A coder at heart, Daniel has been programming for over 15 years and when not developing mobile strategies for clients he is almost certainly hacking on a side project. He founded Two Toasters in 2008 and has built it into a leading mobile product design firm with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies such as Lexus and Acura to leading Startups such as Airbnb and Yipit. Two Toasters' work has been featured in an Apple commercial, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Fast Company. Daniel was a Kenan Scholar and graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a proud Tar Heel.
Introducing: Kevin Conner
- Title: Touch Software Is Not Like Mouse Software
- Description: When you first saw a handheld device with a touch interface, it resembled our familiar desktop displays and mouse-driven GUIs. But when you bought your first such device, you noticed how frustrating it is to use a desktop-sized, mouse-assuming website on a touchscreen phone. A native app can be just as bad, for example if it requires a lot of typing. This is not because touch is inferior technology, but because developers are not building with a good understanding of handheld devices and touch UI. Often the developer of a mobile website will not even have owned a personal smartphone. Given the trends in device sales, this is bananas. In just the past five years, users have begun to hold our software in their hands. They poke at it and move it like any other real-world object. A smartphone is a more personal computer than they ever had before. What users expect has completely changed, and when an interface is jarring or unresponsive, it's a worse experience than ever. As creators of software, we must understand how handheld touch devices are qualitatively different in the mind of our users. It's our responsibility to create apps and sites that are appropriate to modern devices and not to keep our assumptions from the previous platform.
- Bio: Kevin Conner is an iOS developer at Two Toasters in Durham and an independent game developer. He has been building web apps and native touch apps in the Triangle since 2005.