Adding more green to the Garden City #droidconin2016

To all green droids out there who were scratching their heads whether to attend the annual android conference “droidconin” (a 2-day event) conducted by Hasgeek at Bangalore, here is my 3 days away from Chennai attending this very well organized event.

This is more of a 3-day experience based writeup covering the event. If you are here looking for the techie stuff that happened at the event, here is a brilliant write up from my colleague Vivek covering up all topics from the event.

The Currency Drama

With Modiji blessing us by banning all our 500 rupee notes we, a group of five Zoho employees started our daring path to Bangalore on the 9th of November 2016. Booking the bus tickets and hotel online got us covered for the three days despite the unexpected ban of currency. We also got ourselves equipped with every single 10 and 100 rupee notes that we found in our homes. The event ticket cost us 5200rs per head which we booked on 8th of November (2 days prior to the event). It was around 4500rs per head on 4th of November. So if you are planning to buy tickets next year, be the early bird. We also added 5 droid con hoodies to our carts. We thought of buying the tee’s too, but we couldn’t find a proper picture of it anywhere online unlike the hoods. After taking care of the event tickets and merchandises, we booked 5 seats on a semi sleeper bus using Goibibo. With GoCash offers from MyGalaxy app, we saved almost 50rs on each ticket. Next, we booked a hotel using the OYO rooms app keeping in mind the distance between our room and MLR Convention Center, J.P Nagar where the event was about to happen. The room we booked was 2.9km away from MLR. Since Goibibo restricted us from opting the offer multiple times on a single day, we had to book our return tickets the next day on 9th of November. Our return tickets were for 4 people in a full sleeper from Jabbar travels.

Chennai to Bangalore: The Journey

With 3 sets of dresses, we started off our journey on 9th of November from our office at Guduvancherry. As expected, traffic from Estancia to Guduvancherry was so intense that we had to catch our office cab to Potheri. We boarded the 9.10pm train from Potheri and got down at Perungulathur, from where we boarded an SETC bus to Koyambedu Majestic Complex. We boarded the Asian Xpress bus to Bangalore at 11pm. The bus we boarded had a very little luggage space inside. Besides this, the front seat(the one near the driver) had very less leg room. With a bag kept near my leg, it was not an ultra comfort ride for me to Bangalore. We reached the Majestic Bus Terminal, Bangalore at around 6.30 am in the morning. We looked up google map for bus details and came to the local bus stand searching for 364 c bus to Vijaya bank layout where our hotel room was. More of like how the auto drivers in a bus stand persuade us to board their auto, the KSRTC bus drivers were competing among others to make us board their bus. In fact, it was so intense that we boarded a bus numbered 365 which took us to a nearby place from where we had to board another bus. Fortunately, after getting down at Bilekahalli Bus Stop, 364c bus came in within few minutes. Have to admit that the government buses were so good in Bangalore. Especially the speaker inside the bus announcing the place name in Kanada and English helped us figure out where we were without having to ask local people since none of us knew Kanada.

Bangalore, Upon Arrival.

We got down at Bannerghetta, Vijaya Bank Layout stop and walked past few silent and calm streets while google map guided us to our room. The hotel was like more of a flat, and did not have the traditional OYO board anywhere. With sense of doubt we went in and kept searching frantically for sign of people inside the flat. From a dark room came a guy who asked us what we wanted. After showing him the OYO room bookings, without thinking even for a second he said there is no room. He said our bookings doesn’t matter and there is just no room here. We got shell shocked and were about to leave with anger. The same guy called us back in as he was going through few papers. He said our rooms are available and asked us to give our ID’s for a scan copy. Probably out of sleep he might have acted insane. He asked us 1000rs as security deposit and we asked if we can give him a two 500 hundred rupee notes (Yes the banned ones!). He thought for a second and told us that he will return the same notes back when we leave. We agreed with a devilish smile (We were still being able to use the old notes despite the ban). We booked one 3 bed and one 2 bedrooms for 5 of us. Both rooms looked the same and upon asking we were given a extra bed in one of the room. Everything in this hotel was given only upon demanding.

1st day at Bangalore: Droidconin 2016

Next day morning (10th of November 2016), we got ourselves ready and booked a cab in Uber to reach MLR for just 5rs (Uber Offer. Wink). MLR convention center, the venue by itself was very good, in fact it was so perfect for hosting such an event. Upon arriving, the venue greeted us with few banners shouting droidconin 2016 and its sponsors, as we walked inside the main lobby a event coordinator guided us to the place where ID cards were issued. ID cards were actually printed beforehand and were kept on a table in alphabetical order. We collected ours without any hassle and upon registering our arrival, we were provided with 350rs worth food coupon. “Are you from Zoho? You moved to a new location in Chennai right?” was the first question that a coordinator asked me while registering my name. “Yeah. It’s in Guduvancherry now” was my answer with a proud smile on my face. Back in Chennai most of them never recognize Zoho, despite its rapid growth. As our event tickets included 700rs for food, On day 1 we were given 350rs with which we had to plan our breakfast and lunch. Hasgeek also had an android app that showed us upcoming events, food available and also provided contact sharing feature (As every ID card had a QR code, sharing contacts became so easy). There were five stalls from Meal Diaries, Bhukad, Inner Chef, Chai Point and Chef Kraft. The food was good but was on the costlier side. Me and my non-veg colleague had Chicken Panini and the other three had Veg Panini and Poha rice. Quantity was way too less for its price, yet we had no other option for food. There weren’t tables in the lobby, the food itself was packed in such a way it can be consumed sitting on a chair. We kind of moved out of the building near the car parking to have our breakfast as the climate was so warm and pleasant in the morning. The event kicked off at the main auditorium which was pretty big to house all the attendees. Just before entering the auditorium we saw stalls from Go-Jek, Digital Ocean, PayU, Facebook, Flock, Udacity and Microsoft lined up. Since the event was about to start, we entered the auditorium without catching up with the stalls. The event kicked off at 9.45 am with a talk from Soham Mondal, Triveous on Firebase for android. Every talk was given a time limit and a bell rang for reminding the speaker when his allotted time was about to elapse. Q & A sessions too happened within this time limit. This ensured that the talks happened as planned. The overall quality of the talks were of top-notch. Every single talk was so informative that we had loads of new ideas that we could relate to our everyday work at Zoho. We had two 15 minutes tea breaks at 10 am and 4 pm between the talks. That is when we visited several stalls and learned what was happening. Each stall gave us something or the other as complimentary gifts. We bagged lots of T-Shirts, pens and notepads. Hasgeek itself gave us a folder which when unfolded gave us a big poster saying, “KEEP CALM AND WRITE TEST” with a huge android logo on it. Udacity was conducting a quiz which had 6 android related questions. Sadly, our first try gave us 4 points which was not enough to win merchandises from Udacity. Go-Jek, an Indonesian company showcased their app and were also recruiting developers. On the day one, we covered Udacity, Go-Jek, Flock and Microsoft stalls. Microsoft was so generous providing cupcakes to all the attendees. Our lunch was between, 1.05 pm to 2.00 pm. The same stalls down in the lobby were selling lunch. We were a bit late to lunch as we were busy collecting our hoodies and upon reaching the stalls we had very few food options left. We had rice items which were again on the pricier side. After Lunch we had two short sessions. Flash talks and app demos ended day 1. Tech magician Tarik gave us all a great finish for day 1 showcasing his AR magic tricks on stage (He in fact bought his pet dinosaur on stage). On the whole, day 1 was so informative and raised our expectation for the day 2. We walked our way back to the room, talking about various points that were running in our minds. We actually learned so much in a single day on wide range of topics about Android. Upon reaching home, we became busy checking the size of our t-shirts that we got from the several stalls. After an hour at the room, we went out searching for a decent hotel that would accept card for dinner. Within few meters we found a small hotel, which was more like a fast food that accepts cards. We did not avail the AC option as the climate was itself very cool outside. Food tasted very good and cost us around 500rs. With this fine dinner, our day 1 ended.

2nd day at Bangalore: Droidconin 2016

Next day (11th of November 2016), we woke up bit late and got ourselves ready pretty quick. We booked a cab from Uber which quoted 18mins as arrival time. Traffic in Bangalore was way more worse than what we see in Chennai. Eventually the driver cancelled the ride and we had to book another cab which was quite near us. We reached MLR convention center at around 9am on day 2. There was less buzz on day 2 and though we were late we had many food options available for our morning breakfast. We checked Facebook stall in the morning after our breakfast. We thought they were developers and approached them with few technical questions in mind. Upon asking them, they informed us that they were from recruitment team. One of the them asked us, “You are all from Zoho?”. “Yeah” we said with a brimming smile. He said “We use your product man!”. I asked him which specific product that he was using, for which replied by showing Zoho Sheets in his laptop. We shared contacts and got a Facebook pen as a compliment. The Microsoft stall offered us pen-drives for signing up for an app contest. Day 2 was even more informative with speakers from Myntra and Dropbox highlighting how they operate, sharing their own style of approaches for building a good product. We went to lunch a bit early on day 2 and had rice items. Since it was the last day of the event, we were trying to use up all the coupons we had in our hand. Post lunch there was two more sessions and the regular flash talk and app demos happened. Again our tech magician elated us with his Leap motion device. He asked the Hasgeek team to come up stage for a group photo and it was so nice to see everyone behind this great event. We found few other android developers from Chennai and exchanged contacts after the event on day 2. Again we walked all the way back to our rooms. We had Pani Poori on our way, which tasted awesome. We had Pani Poori again before dinner at the same hotel.

3rd day at Bangalore: Being Nomads

We used up our 3rd day at Bangalore for sight seeing. What could be a Bangalore trip without visiting the famous Lalbagh? We booked a cab to Lal Bagh after checking out from our rooms (We had complimentary breakfast at the room we stayed which good actually). From Lalbagh, we walked all the way to Tipu Sultan palace which was another great place to visit in Bangalore. We had lunch on our way to the palace. From there we went UB city mall and spent rest of our time window shopping. Before departing to board our bus at majestic, we had our dinner at Mc Donalds near UB city. With traffic in mind, we started at around 8pm to majestic to catch our 9.50pm bus to Chennai. Return journey was great, though we reached little late than the expected time. It was morning 5.30am when we got down at Koyambedu and Chennai welcomed us back with slight drizzle providing us a perfect end to this awesome trip to Bangalore for the droidconin 2016 conference.

3 days stay at Bangalore

• Climate in Bangalore was awesome. We covered almost 12km by walk at Bangalore without any sweat. Even at noon, the place was warm and soothing.
• Language is not a problem. Many spoke or at least understood Tamil, Hindi and English. In fact, we met a cab driver being a born Kannadiga who spoke Madras Tamil fluently.
• Google is the best travel guide mankind could have. Right from reminding us our boarding times, google has helped us in every way possible to have an enjoyable journey. We reached places without any hassle and booked cabs wherever it was necessary.
• Traffic can get worse in Bangalore and can totally screw up your schedules. If you are planning for something in Bangalore do keep the traffic in mind.
• We android developers at Chennai have to meet and collaborate more. When was the last meet conducted in Chennai that was specific for android developers?
• Live crash fixes, RxJava, MVVM architecture, Firebase as backend etc.. being the latest trends in android, have to be explored and if possible be implemented in our from the scratch projects.

We will definitely attend all the upcoming droidconin events and would recommend it to other android developers too. The event was very well organized, the venue was splendid and overall the event took knowledge sharing to a whole new level. Huge credits to the Hasgeek team for giving us 2 awesome days and helping us stay up with the current trends in Android. Thank you Bangalore, for soothing us with its climate and bidding us a warm goodbye on the departure day.