Sessions
WindyCityGo is a two-day mobile conference covering Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and mobile web apps. The conference is packed with twelve full-length sessions, lightning talks, and plenty of time for networking and fun. View the schedule to see how things will come together.
Lightning Talks
Get quick bursts of knowledge in our lightning talks. We'll cover a variety of topics in a short amount of time. Interested in giving a lightning talk? Submit your proposal.
After Parties
Join your fellow attendees and speakers for drinks, food, and conversation at the end of each day of the conference. Stay tuned for more details!
And Now For Something Completely Different
Get ready to think outside the box at WindyCityGo. Boost your creativity and get to know your fellow attendees through improvisational comedy. Day one starts with The Chicago Improv Commission – a team of professional improv actors who will create a fully-improvised performance using audience suggestions & participation. What’s so funny about iOS? Find out at WindyCityGo. The Chicago Improv Commission performers will use audience input to create scenes, songs, and moments immediately on-the-spot.
Regular Sessions
Each regular session will run 45-minutes in length, with breaks in between to allow for plenty of networking opportunities.
Painless Localization
Whitney Young, FadingRed
In this session we will dive into the details of a new method for localizing applications. Localization on iOS has always been a bit of a chore, and as developers, we need this to change so we can focus our energy on writing code and producing great apps. Say goodbye to the days of fiddling with command line tools — this session will tackle simplifying the process of making applications localizable both for developers and translators. In the end, your apps will be painless to localize, and you will be able to ship to more people in their native languages.
About the Speaker
Whitney Young is the co-founder and lead developer at FadingRed, a Mac and iOS software shop located in Chicago. He has been developing on the Mac platform for over 8 years, pursuing his passion for creating simple, intuitive, and useful applications. These days he spends most of his time working on Koku, a simple and elegant personal finance app. Today, Whitney leads his development team through the intricacies of Cocoa development while pursuing hobbies like cooking.
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iOS Application and Data Security
David Kinney, Redpoint Technologies
iOS provides application sandboxing, an encrypted disk, password keychain services, and SSL libraries. It uses code signing to detect altered application packages and you know none of your users run jail broken devices. So your user’s and company’s data are safe, right? Wrong. We will discuss iOS security myths, illustrate several attacks that work today, and walk through best practices to secure the sensitive data managed by your application.
About the Speaker
David L Kinney is a 13 year veteran of the software industry. He currently serves as a Software Architect at Redpoint Technologies where he develops service-driven enterprise iOS applications. David also runs the popular SecondConf conference.
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iTest my Code: OCDSpec and ocslim for the iPhone
Eric Meyer, 8th Light
Testing your applications is important! Writing good tests is just as important! This talk will be divided into two main parts. The first part will cover exactly what goes into a good test. The second part will cover the basics of two testing frameworks, OCDSpec and Objective C Slim. Objective C Slim is an acceptance testing framework, and for those of you familiar with Ruby and Rails, OCDSpec is a unit testing familiar with syntax inspired by Jasmine and Rspec. At the end of this talk, you should have no problem testing all of your future iOS applications.
About the Speaker
Eric Meyer is a software craftsman at 8th Light, where he has been programming primarily in Ruby and Objective C. Eric began his career at Object Mentor, where he was first introduced to Test Driven Development and Agile methodologies.
In the past, Eric has developed applications for the iPhone and iPad using Objective C and porting a version of Slim to Objective C, released an application to the App Store and made contributions to OCDSpec, an open source unit testing framework for the iPhone.
He has spoken about iPhone development at Agile 2009 Conference and SD West.
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Mobile Design Process
Jason VanLue, Envy Labs
Designing for mobile environments is essential in today’s world, and as such should be a high priority in your workflow. Mobile design can’t be an afterthought, it requires careful planning and an intentional approach. In this session Jason VanLue will walk through an effective mobile design process from start to finish, where you’ll learn practical tips that you can apply to your next mobile project.
About the Speaker
Jason is a designer, husband and father. He’s Design Lead at Envy Labs making things like Code School. He’s also a self-proclaimed craft beer snob and a borderline crazy UNC Tarheel fan.
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Couchbase Mobile Syncpoint
Chris Anderson, Couchbase
The IT industry is moving rapidly toward mobile computing platforms, with new applications often written for mobile first. A huge challenge when creating data-driven mobile applications is synchronizing application state between mobile devices and the cloud. Users frequently interact with your application via multiple mobile devices (tablets, smartphones, specialized hardware), so even the simplest applications require significant engineering to give users have a consistent experience across devices and connectivity differences.
Couchbase Syncpoint provides realtime data synchronization so that developers can focus on creating value for end users. Syncpoint automatically distributes application data to all of a users devices, or among multiple users. Syncpoint applications are fully operational even the mobile device is offline, freeing developers from dealing with complex network error handling tasks.
About the Speaker
Chris Anderson is a co-founder of Couchbase and an Apache CouchDB committer. At Couchbase he leads the mobile strategy, and designs and implements developer facing APIs. Outside of computing, Chris plays bass and dances “Ring Around the Rosie” with his 1 year old daughter.
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Quick iOS Development with QuickDialog
Eduardo Scoz, Redpoint Technologies
QuickDialog is a library that lets developers create HIG-compliant forms for iOS without dealing (directly) with UITableViews, delegates and data sources. You can create forms with multiple text fields or thousands of items relatively quickly.
GitHub reports more than 1,000 viewers and 80 forks for QuickDialog. For a richer experience, grab the code from the repo before WindyCityGo.
In this presentation, the creator of QuickDialog will show how to use the QuickDialog library to write iOS applications in hours, not weeks.
About the Speaker
Eduardo Scoz is a software engineer/consultant based in Chicago, IL. With over 15 years of experience developing business applications for the web and mobile platforms, he currently works for Redpoint Technologies as a Software Architect and Agile Coach. During the last 6 years, Eduardo has worked on many different platforms, like .NET, Ruby on Rails, MonoTouch and iOS.
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Improv Techniques and Excellent Software
Cody Dove
Can improv help you to build better software? Improv professional Cody Dove will explore how improvisational theater skills translate into the creative professional environment. This workshop will encourage participants to engage with their fellow colleagues through creative exercises emphasizing listening, agreement, and respecting the ideas of others.
About the Speaker
Cody Dove is excited to be a part of WindyCityGo. He can currently be seen performing in The Second City’s History of Chicago and The Second City’s Improv All Stars here in Chicago. His career has allowed him travel the world performing live comedy (Trondheim to Cairo to Venice to Dublin – and everywhere in between), and has worked with such corporate clients as Key Bank, Citigroup, and the Ford Motor Company.
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Fluid Android Layouts
Chiu-Ki Chan, Square Island LLC
Designing for Android can be super complicated due to the multitude of device sizes. But does it have to be that way? In this talk, the presenter will show the design process she used while collaborating with a freelance designer to create Monkey Write. The design goal: To produce a single-device design while keeping an eye on elements that need to be fluid.
About the Speaker
Chiu-Ki started writing mobile apps at Google, where she worked on Google Mobile Maps for Android. After a brief stint in web development at two startups, Chiu-Ki is now back to her Android roots with her own company for Android development. Their first title is Monkey Write, an app for learning Chinese writing.
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Challenges of Building Mobile Business: From Startup to Angel Investment
Uki Lucas, CyberWalkAbout.com
Is it possible to build a mobile app business while keeping a full time job? This presenter has travelled that path, and he’s ready to share war stories. Key questions covered: When does it make sense to outsource? Which tasks should be performed locally? What should an entrepreneur say to an angel investor? Challenge this presenter with questions and learn from his experience.
About the Speaker
Uki D. Lucas, founder & CEO of CyberWalkAbout.com is a technology entrepreneur, public speaker, book author and user experience expert always honing his skills as a software developer and currently specializing in mobile applications. Uki has over a decade of experience developing technology start-up companies.
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Mobile App Development Options: Which Way To Go?
J Schwan, Solstice Consulting
As the demand for deploying mobile applications increases, organizations have several technology choices to make. This talk will explore the different technologies available for developing mobile applications between mobile web, native applications, hybrid applications and cross-platform tools. You’ll get an overview of each approach and explore the relative pros and cons across areas of technology, functionality and cost.
About the Speaker
J Schwan is the Founder and President of Solstice Consulting and Bottega Sol corporations.
Solstice is Chicago’s leading enterprise mobility consulting firm. Solstice provides mobile strategy, development, security and infrastructure services. Solstice has been recognized by Consulting Magazine as one of America’s Seven Small Jewels and has made the Inc 500 list of Fastest Growing Companies for the past 2 years.
Bottega Sol is the product development arm of Solstice Consulting.
Schwan speaks about emerging technology topics at many educational institutions, technology conferences and focus groups.
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Make Me Want Your App: Designing Mobile Applications for (Reluctant) Business Users
Jonathan Ozeran, RECSOLU
Thinking about designing and building business-centric mobile applications for a particular class of user? In this session, Jonathan Ozeran will highlight key design and technical considerations that should factor into your mobile product development efforts. He’ll also share a number of tips and tricks based on his experiences designing and shipping mobile applications across a number of industries including manufacturing, energy / utility services, construction, media, professional sports and more.
About the Speaker
Jonathan is VP, Product & Mobile at RECSOLU, a custom recruiting software, solutions and services company whose clients include more than 100 major corporations and employers. In previous roles, he focused on the technical architecture, design and development of numerous widely-used consumer and enterprise mobile apps. Jonathan has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in Computer & Information Systems from Northwestern University. He also loves his Detroit Red Wings.
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Introduction to Windows Phone
Justin Munger, Berkshire Software, LLC
Been hearing the buzz about Windows Phone lately? Wondering what all this talk is about Metro and why you should be interested in it? Then this is the talk for you!
This talk is an introduction to Windows Phone for those with little or no previous exposure to the platform. We’ll give a brief history of the evolution of Microsoft’s mobile devices up to and including Windows Phone, and then dive directly into the heart of its unique Metro UI, which differentiates it from all other current mobile platforms. We’ll then explore the high-level navigation and features of Windows Phone, followed by a look at the application styles used to make the Windows Phone experience delightfully discoverable. The presentation will wrap up with a look at the anatomy of a Windows Phone application.
About the Speaker
Justin Munger is the president of Berkshire Software, LLC, which provides mobile software development consulting services. He has over 14 years of software development experience and currently develops for iOS, Android, and now Windows Phone. He’s worked on iOS and Android projects for companies such as Nationwide Insurance, American Greetings, American Eagle Outfitters, and Sears/Kmart. He is best known as “That Guy with All Those Phones” for his extensive collection of mobile devices over a wide range of platforms and form-factors. Justin holds a BS in Computer Science from Hartwick College.
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Real World Windows Phone Development
Matt Hidinger, Clarity Consulting
How do you build a polished, functioning Windows Phone app from start to finish? The app is called Realworld Stocks and it will eventually be submitted to the marketplace. The full source code will be available to the WindyCityGo audience. Note: This is not a 100-level talk. It would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the Windows Phone SDK before the presentation.
About the Speaker
Matt is based in Chicago and works at Clarity Consulting, focusing on ASP.NET MVC, Windows Phone, and Windows 8. He can be found on twitter @MattHidinger, blogging at http://matthidinger.com, working on various open source projects, and participating in the local community.
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