Tag Archives: Public speaking

#Jafac picture

#JAFAC – Don’t Miss It Next Time

I had the privilege to speak at the very first edition of #JAFAC hosted at the fantastic GRIDAKL. Many people requested that speakers share their slide decks. Since there’s nothing sensitive in mine, I’m able to post it below.

During the interactive part of the talk I mentioned a number of apps. Some these (iOS) apps were: Air NZ, Amazon, Chirp, Drafts, Emoji++, Evernote, Garageband, IMDb, Instagram, Instapaper, Kibo, MacID, Musixmatch, OmniFocus, Overcast, Slack, Starbucks, Trello, Way2Ride, Workflow, and Trade Me.

I didn’t know what to expect when I was invited to take part in this event. I have a lot of respect for the people who put it together, so I went. This tweet right after the conference pretty much sums up my experience:

I came back reassured, inspired, and motivated. Thanks Sandy, Brenda, David, Steph, Jimmy, Christine, Te Miha, Richard, Colart, and everyone else I had the pleasure to listen and to talk to.

It was also very impressive to see just how knowledgeable were all the people in the attendance. Day two, the un-conference, enabled all of them to play a more active part and turned into such a revelation.

Stephanie BySouth

“Coaching Leaders” session with Stephanie BySouth. Part of un-conference on day two

If you focus on enabling people to work together successfully, if you are all about empowering teams, if you are keen to find ways to remove needless processes, if you want to learn on how to use feedback properly, if you desire to be in the company of really smart (Agile) people, then trust me, you don’t want to miss the next edition. In the mean time, I’ll leave you with a quote from Sandy: “no pain, no Spain”.

Android Fragmentation – Just the way I like it

The 6th instalment of the Wellington Android Meetup took place today. I decided not to write about the content (I wouldn’t do justice to the presenters, and the audience contributed so much content, that I’d surely forget to mention something important), instead I wish to write about just how “fragmented” Android is … in Wellington, New Zealand.

Four talks

We had four speakers. Two men: Matt and Lucas; and two women: Jayna and Leonie. That was not planned, it just happened.

Matt talks about I/O

We had two fairly technical presentations that encouraged us to improve our technical chops and solve problems in more beautiful ways, and two that challenged us to think about what we like, what brings us joy, and what we are prepared to do from the goodness of our hearts.

People in the room

I glanced around the room and I was so happy to see how diverse it was. So many skin colours, genders, ethnicities, and ages!

Jayna impresses everyone with her knowledge and passion

In the room we had students, unemployed folks, business owners, developers, designers, testers, and even Windows Phone developers! There were people working for startups and people working for organisations with 500+ employees!

There were women. Not just sitting on chairs but engaging in the discussions. Driving them and asking the tough questions. Challenging the speakers and the audience. Recommending better ways to do things. As it should be!

I bring this up because I think back of where we started. I looked at some old photos I took and I struggle to find the women. I looked at the GDG Wellington reports I sent, and I blush seeing a mere two women attending one of the early sessions! Today, almost 20% of the audience were women!

Lucas in full swing

But we are not stopping here. Tonight Lucas announced that we are planning a GDG Dev Fest W.   The plan is to create a safe place for an evening, a day, or a weekend, where women can come and learn about technology without fearing that they may get laughed at, looked at in a condescending way, interrupted or ignored. Get in touch with Lucas or with myself if you want to help.

Fragmented

The Android community in Wellington is fragmented in the best possible way. This diversity makes the meetings more interesting, the points of view more diverse and more relevant.

I was the proud host of tonight’s gathering. It this kind of fragmentation that keeps me going, that motivates me to try harder, that makes me proud to be a small part of this incredible community. Our group now has more than 200 members, so I am hopeful that we have not seen the best of what this incredible bunch of people have to offer!

Thanks to everyone who attended.

Testing is organised skepticism

You can let all the different types of software testing scare you out of your pants or you can look at the funny side of testing.

These quotes could be a starting point… I shared them with the amazing Android folks here in Wellington as part of the fourth edition of our Android Meetup.

Thanks to the lovely people at Powershop for hosting the evening, for the food, and for making this happen.

 

Thoughts on Notifications

Last Friday I was invited by the friendly people at Springload to give a talk on Push / Interactive Notifications.

The slides are targeted at Product people who are responsible with making the decision of including Push Notifications in the roadmap of their apps.

The gist of that talk is that just because you can send Push Notifications or display alerts to the user, it doesn’t mean you should. Notifications are the number one reason why people delete apps and you should keep this in mind when building your apps.

Here’s my (current) Top 10 Notification best practices:

  1. Guided “Opt In” rather than “Opt Out”
  2. Allow user to specify the types of messages they wish to receive. Support DND. Think Time Zone
  3. High volume of Notifications? Consider providing a “Snooze” custom action
  4. Only send relevant messages. This is NOT a direct marketing channel
  5. Don’t send confidential or sensitive data through push notifications
  6. Consider promoting custom actions that do not require the app to start up
  7. Use clear language and keep the message short
  8. Choose the lowest frequency of notifications that still delivers a great user experience
  9. Be aware of context. Is the user in your app right now?
  10. Consider aggregating multiple messages into a more generic “group”