360|iDev 2018 Conference Highlights

You Are Whatever You Tell People You Are – Joe Cieplinski

Everyone who knows Joe Cieplinksi, knows him as an app designer. Otherwise, they might know him as a podcaster who talks about the business of apps and web sites. That makes him an entrepreneur right? He’s also the bass player in the iOS-centric band Airplane Mode. Even though Joe himself had his doubts after nearly ten years in app development, he’s ready to embrace the title of “developer”.

Maybe people even know Joe as fitting into other roles beyond this, but they just don’t know where to categorize him. In this session, Joe covered the various roles a person can assume, how a person can be capable in multiple roles, and that people’s impressions of you will be based on you think of and represent yourself.

Joe tells the story of a young child encountering a dog for the first time. The child creates a mental box to classify what a dog is. When the child encounters a slightly different dog, and receiving positive affirmation that this is in fact a dog, the types of dogs in this mental box grows. One day, the child encounters a cat and learns that he needs another box for the “cat” category. The trouble with using this analogy to categorize people is that many of us may not fit in one box — we may be multipotentialites, or renaissance people, who, like Joe, are skilled in many disciplines.

Joe presents plenty of examples where people can be fooled when trying to classify things. One example is the classic meme of knees vs hotdogs. It’s hard to tell which is which in the image. Another is the musician Sting, who became famous playing reggae and ska. He eventually created a second career for himself playing R&B and jazz-influenced music, but many fans just couldn’t accept the fact that Sting crossed multiple genres. As yet another example, Cynthia Nixon is running for New York senator, but most people still only see the actress who played a lawyer on Sex and the City.

The gist of the talk is that it’s important to discover who you are. How you present yourself will help others see your true value. They may have you in the wrong mental box, or worse, you may be putting yourself in a crappy category of box. Who wants to hire a developer or designer who is unsure what box they belong in? Instead, you should want your box to be bigger. Check out Joe’s talk for more insight into finding your way and presenting yourself.

App Camp For Girls – Jean MacDonald & Sarah Cloud

App Camp for Girls’ mission is to achieve gender equality in software development. Their focus is on middle school-aged girls and those who identify as such. The aim is to demystify the process of app building; design, architecture and development. The camp aims to demonstrate that there are no special incantations required produce and deliver an app to the App Store. They break down app building into easy to understand steps.

The camp initially started with three girls, in 2013. The first app created at the camp was a dictionary, as the girls felt there wasn’t one that suited their needs. It was a simple, one-button app, with a text field for adding new words. Naturally, it had a turquoise background and purple header, and was published to the App Store as well. It was followed by six years’ worth of camps in Portland and five years of camps in Seattle. There have been various camps in cities such as Phoenix, Chicago, Minneapolis and Vancouver, British Columbia.

The camp begins with brainstorming, wireframing and “pinning the tail on the whiteboard”. Each camper gets to build their apps on an iPod Touch so they can quickly show others what they are building. The camp provides basic Xcode templates to get the developers started quickly, and apps are built with just enough Swift to get things working. All of the app art is produced in the camp as well. To break up the development grind, there are breakout sessions of hula-hooping and yoga. One particular highlight is a field trip to an app development shop like the favorite Panic Software. On the last day of camp, there’s a pitch session to women investors and engineers.

Executive Director Sarah Cloud presented us with information on how to create ouw own developers camp. Initially, the organization needs volunteers to prep for about a year. Recruiting more volunteers and sourcing a location for the camp is the next step. A lead developer as well as other volunteer tech positions are required. There’s a local camp budget, which provides a stipend to volunteers. MacBook Pros for campers and lunches are provided by the camp.

To date, 257 campers have attended the camps. The first cohort of students are now just entering college, and reunions are planned to showcase the impact the camp has had on attendees. The unique part of the camp is that all attendees can boast about having published apps on the App Store — which is more than most of their classmates can say.

Fun & Games

The conference was more than just talks. There was some fun & games too!

Stump 360 V: Number 5 Is Alive – Hosted by Tom Harrington

The fifth annual “Stump 360” picked up where the WWDC favorite side show “Stump the Experts” left off. A rag-tag collection of “experts” took on the gathered audience in a game-show style battle of inane Apple trivia. The hosts presented questions to challenge the audience, who in turn wrote trivia questions on 3×5 index cards. Questions were answered by the audience or expert panel, as well as during several speed rounds.

The event was rife with comedic moments, and most often useless trivia, with points awarded to each side. Inspired by the workout Apple Watch lady in the WWDC’18 keynote, five bonus points were awarded to contests who could answer questions wearing an Apple Watch while using a Shake Weight or juggling items. This session is a true highlight, and I look forward to many more years of the Stump 360: The Sixth Sense, or whatever they choose to call it.

Full disclosure: We did manage to stump some of the audience. The experts had the lead early, but were defeated in the end by the audience members!