I spent last week in Aberystwyth, in the company of other iOS developers, for the second annual iOSDevUK meetup. I had a great time, meeting up with some old friends, making some new contacts, and attending some fascinating talks. A few quick thoughts:
- I understand that it's difficult to gauge the collective abilities of such a large group of attendees, but I found the technical level of most of the presentations pitched lower this year than last. The exceptions from the talks I attended included Chris Ross on 3D/OpenGL — which was probably just a basic introduction to a very difficult subject — and Chris Greening on multi-player games with GamesKit. Which isn't to say that the overall quality of speakers wasn't incredibly high.
- The lack of a barcamp this year was a pity. The meal on the first night could have used something to get everyone up and mixing about more.
- The game hack was a great idea, and I hope they run it again next year. I think I've learnt enough about team sizes to make it more fun next time, too.
- Offering an introduction to Android programming was a nice idea, and I think I learnt enough from it to get me over the initial conceptual barrier. It would have been nice if the instructors had known a little more about iOS development, since in this case that was where their students were coming from. A lot of confusion could have been cleared up by providing direct comparisons between platforms (eg. contrasting Activities with View Controllers).
- The stand-out surprise speaker (or at least surprise to me, but then I really should read the programme before attending next year) was Oscar winner Jan Pinkava, writer and co-director of "Ratatouille". He had apparently studied computer graphics and robotics as a postgrad student at the university with conference organiser Chris Price. A natural storyteller, Jan is a captivating speaker, and I'm sure that no one minded that he overran his allotted time slot by about an hour.
I look forward to attending again next year.
