Droidcon Toronto 2019: The Good and The Bad
By: Tribalscale Inc.
Tags: Technology, Events, Toronto, Android, Engineering

Three weeks ago, a few of the engineers and I were fortunate enough to attend one of Toronto’s most reputable Android development conventions, Droidcon. Having attended AndroidTO in years past, we were excited to be witnessing the rebranding of Toronto’s best Android conference into its global sibling as Droidcon Toronto. Droidcon Toronto 2019 focused on delivering insightful learnings from talks given by the best in the industry in celebration of a decade of the Android Conference. As the dust settles, I’d like to take this time to reflect on my experience, bringing to light what I was happy to see and what was missing.

What Went Well: Reflecting on a Decade of Android

Mark Reale, organizer and creator of the conference, wrapped up with “The Mobile Decade”, speaking on the history of Android development. He touched on problems we have solved and the evolution of our learnings. He mentioned the new goals we strive for in excellent unit testing and minimizing APKs, and in doing so, tied together all the tech talks that had given us well-delivered tutorials into the niches of Android development.

What Was Missing: Elevating the DroidCon Experience

When attending the largest Android convention in Toronto, there is the perceived expectation to be immersed in an elevated experience, one where your brain tunes in and you scramble for your notebook so you don’t miss a single thing. Talk topics touched on Contour, Flutter, Coroutines, and Room, but the talks, albeit well-done, didn’t provide me with new perspectives or takeaways I had been anticipating for.

So what was missing? As the only Android convention in Toronto, I was eager to gain insight on higher-level topics; speakers’ experiences with popular architectures, thoughts and inventive ideas on new architectures, and the creativity that can live within our work. I wanted to be enlightened on topics I’ve missed over the year, much like watching the news after being abroad.

Using old methodologies or jumping into newer AndroidX tools, talks could have included some fundamental principles that we take for granted. Whether it applies to our own projects or not, these fundamentals are harder to come by in a Google search or a Medium article. They can be brilliant perspectives, promising cleaner and more sustainable code, something worth writing down for future considerations.

Tech conventions have always supported a tremendous cast of acknowledged engineers who can easily speak to numerous excruciatingly small intricacies in the field. But in a convention with only two tracks, I would have loved to see these acknowledged engineers shed more light on some of their recent learnings and shifts in their philosophies.

Sanchita Agarwal is a great example of someone who hit this mark. Her talk on Kotlin sealed classes shed light on common practices we all, Java engineers included, could benefit from. And although this has been used within our projects for several months already, her talk was my personal favourite, as it was engaging and relevant to all of us.

What I’d like to see at the Next Droidcon

Innovative activations

As conferences are as much about the experience as they are about the talks, I think sponsors need to move beyond the traditional booths into innovative activations, where each step you take within the space provides a certain degree of impact such as an idea board or new technology to try.

Talks on coding itself

Although coding is technical, it is also an art form. Writing excellent code and forming excellent habits is a large part of our careers. It would have been great to see more talks that were oriented around this topic.

Conversations about the future

We celebrated the history of Android and how far we’ve come, but I’m even more intrigued by the frontiers of Android and the possibilities for the future. It’s those conversation starters of what is possible that are highly impactful.

As someone who’s passionate and eager to attend future Android conferences, I wanted to share my experience and provide insights on taking these events to the next level. Ultimately, I truly applaud the organizers for taking big strides in the rebranding of AndroidTO into Droidcon this year, and creating an event of this scale. Any conference or event can be difficult to plan, host, and execute and I’m thankful for the opportunity to attend and soak in all things Android!