360|iDev 2017 Conference Highlights
270 attendees and 59 speakers recently descended upon Denver, Colorado to take part in the annual 360iDev conference. 360iDev 2017 had much to choose from; with seven workshops on Sunday and a whopping 58 sessions over the next three days to choose from, it was easy to find find a mix of sessions tailored to […] By Tim Mitra.
Other Interesting Talks
There are a few more other interesting thoughts that I thought you might like to hear about.
Xcode Debugging by Aijaz Ansari was an amazing talk. I was actually overwhelmed as I tried to both keep up with his talk and take notes. Aijaz demonstrated how we could explore objects with LLDB and the clever use of Python scripting. Through two demos, he explored what was captured in LLDB and used a Python script to see the contents of the values held in a object. In the second demo, he showed how to use his script jq to loop through a blob of JSON and extract the values. Using the techniques he presented, it was possible to observe the values, validate the data and extend the output into meaningful data. This talk is definitely worth a look.
In Threads Queues and Things to Come, Ben DiFrancesco covered the current state of GCD and NSOperation queues. He explained that every iOS device has multiple cores, and therefore, has the capacity to run concurrent operations. His talk also looks at what is most likely to come to Swift concurrency in the near future.
Jean MacDonald’s talk, The Art of Responding to Criticism, takes a look at dealing with customer feedback. She explains that it’s really easy to see criticism as a personal put down. She offers sage advice on reflecting on what is being said and how the customer feels, and then offers tools and advice to help us respond in a supportive and grateful way.
Do You Want a Dystopia? was the Day Two Keynote by Jay Freeman. Jay is the creator of Cydia, the app store for jailbroken devices. Like many others, he was once a user of liveJournal.com, which was eventually acquired by a Russian company. He also warned of the potential social dangers in Twitter, and noted he favors Mastodon, a distributed service for “toots” that is potentially safer due to its infrastructure. He’s puzzled by popular social networks that make it easy to create questionable accounts and content but take a long time to remove the content — if ever. Jay’s cautionary tales are interesting, because they make you think about where you put your sensitive personal information. Check it out.
Day Three Keynote – John Wilker
On Day Three, John Wilker gave a keynote about the conference and offered some insights. This is the 11th 360iDev conference in 9 years. Along with the organizers, he thanked the speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and one special angel investor. The conference started 10 years ago, right after the iPhone SDK was announced. The organizers try to have more code than “not code” talks, and average two code talks per session. You can use the insights you glean from code talks right away. The “not code” talks are evergreen concepts that you can use years from now.
The community of 360iDev extends to support Alt-Conf and App Camp For Girls. They also offer two free tickets to the various CocoaHeads around the world. Members of the military and students also benefit from half-price tickets. Grown from John’s own underwhelming experiences at various conferences, 360iDev aims to help others become who they really are. John notes there have been some declines in attendance, but the conference is set to run again in 2018 and 2019. Early bird tickets will be available soon, as well as a Patreon campaign where you buy your own tickets though patronage. I hope to see you all at 360iDev 2018!
Where to Go From Here?
I can’t recommend 360iDev highly enough! It’s a great experience for any developer, designer or anyone involved in app production.
The hosts, John Wilker, Nicole Wilker and Tom Ortega, make the conference feel like home, and the collective masses are super-friendly. No matter what obstacles come up, I feel I cannot afford to miss this conference. Every year I’ve attended I come away re-energized, enlightened, and ready to take on the next year’s work.
Check out Steve Lipton’s summary “The Best of 360iDev 2017” for another perspective on this great experience.
Ray’s said a number of times that 360iDev is one of his favorite iOS conferences — and I’d have to agree. If you’re looking for more hands-on tutorials, check out RWDevCon which runs April 5–7, 2018 in Washington D.C.; RWDevCon and 360iDev are both at the top of my own personal list of conferences.
Did you attend 360iDev this year? Will you attend next year? Will you step up and submit a talk of your own? Let us know in the forum discussion below!
Photo Credits: Fuad Kamal.