For the 3rd year in a row, Connect Tech triumphed in the Southeast as THE Atlanta conference for software developers and designers. Known as the largest JavaScript-focused conference in the region, it offered 124 presentations from speakers all around. Five of those speakers were our very own, CEO Joe Conway and software engineers, Marcus Smith, Florian Harr, Jesse Black and Bryan Richardson. stable|kernel sponsored and attended Connect Tech 2016; hopefully, you stopped by our booth to say hello to our team and left with some of our original swag.
Joe Conway
Joe kicked off the event, as one of the first speakers out of the gate, with the launch of our server-side, open-source framework for Dart called Aqueduct. His presentation covered the following:
- Why he built Aqueduct in Google’s Dart language
- Aqueduct Structure, How to Talk to a Database, and Testing
- Documentation
“It was a good place for us to introduce people to Dart and Aqueduct, as it is such an improvement over JavaScript and NodeJS,” Joe stated.
Related: Aqueduct – A server-side web framework written in Dart
Marcus Smith
Marcus spoke to a captive audience about Swift memory management, addressing both value and reference types. His presentation covered the following:
- When to use value and reference types
- Automatic Reference Counting
- Closures
Marcus said, “I really enjoyed speaking on value and reference types at Connect Tech. It’s great to know that I’m playing a part in growing Atlanta’s mobile scene.”
Related: When to Use Value Types and Reference Types in Swift
Florian Harr
Florian delivered on all things Continuous Integration with a solid presentation, complete with an engaging slideshow. His presentation covered the following:
- Travis CI
- Fastlane and When Builds Fail
- Extensions and Alternatives to CI
Florian admits, “It’s great to have a tech conference in Atlanta!”
Jesse Black
Jesse mixed up the afternoon of discussions with an impressive presentation on enhancing your workflow with Xcode source editor extensions. His presentation covered the following:
- Mac App and Xcode Source Editor extensions
- XC Classes
- Demo: JSON formatter in action
“I have been to conferences where the focus is on full stack, but I thought it was interesting to see even more diversity of tracks at Connect Tech: web frontend, server side, native iOS, native Android, and specific language tracks,” Jesse said.
Bryan Richardson
Bryan closed out the conference with a well-rounded discussion on Android development for Arduino. His presentation covered the following:
- An explanation of the Internet of Things and Arduino
- Connecting Android and Arduino via Bluetooth and a Network
- Hardware setup and a live demo
Bryan explained, ”It was enlightening witnessing the development of hybrid frameworks, such as Ionic. Hybrid still is not comparable to Native, but it is no longer an egregiously inferior option.”
Related: Mobile Development for Arduino Part 4
stable|kernel was proud to be a part of growing Atlanta’s mobile scene and developer landscape and we look forward to attending next year. Until next time…
