Mobile Dorset — March 2016
Internet of Things: Bournemouth, a smart city
Lee Mallon of Rarely Impossible
Lee gave a fantastic talk today about the work Rarely Impossible are embarking on to turn Bournemouth into a smart connected city. By hosting an antenna at their Bournemouth based office they can cover most of the area and collect data from sensors they have scatter around the town.
Sensors like sound in the town centre, UV near the beach and soon an ultrasonic sensor in a car park (to find those elusive parking spaces in the town centre!)
Our Audience asked some interesting questions such as;
Audience: Can you send data as well as receive sensor data? For example to toggle a solenoid switch.
Lee Mallon: Yes it’s Bi Directional — Mainly used to update firmware of sensors.
Audience: Won’t the network get hacked if its open?
Lee Mallon: They will try and that is why Rarely Impossible are partnering with Bournemouth university to do some vulnerability finding!
To find out more and how you can get involved with the IoT networking growing in Bournemouth checkout the blog post at Rarely Impossibles site http://www.rarelyimpossible.com/blog/2016/02/02/launching-the-bournemouth-iot-network
Speed Intro’s
Everyone got their 10 seconds of fame to talk about there name and role. If you didnt understand the picture of lego Darth Vader I present to you this gem.
Lean Coffee
Smart Phone Addiction
Jamie Cruwys educated us on what life is like without a smartphone for a week. Apparently its not terrible and gives you a fresh perspective on our reliance on smart phones. Read more about this topic here:
Apple vs FBI
A heated discussion happened when Lee Mallon dropped the thought grenade of “Are apple right to oppose the FBI”. It was a thought provoking discussion and many people didn’t want apple to set a precedent of unlocking phones for the FBI on a whim. Another point was raised that if this vulnerability was baked into the apple firmware then hackers will KNOW it exists and eventually be able to take advantage of it.
How do you do your Scheduling?
A topic addressing how people are managing their mobile development teams. A non development and design topic which is perfectly acceptable to talk about at mobile dorset!!
Different approaches that where discussed
- PM Driven and micro managed (ill favoured due to lack of empowerment for workers)
- Jira, universally held as the devils playground however having a queue of estimated stories has merit.
- Trello, a wonderful idea, to start with until you have to start scrolling to get to your many many columns. Then you need a spreadsheet AND trello.
- Target Process, is a new contender that Rarely Impossible are trialling.
- Lego man management over at 3 sided cube. Frankly this sounds like it has the highest enjoyment factor!
Something else to consider is a People centric task list where everyone has a personal backlog vs a team orientated task list which presumes equal skill level amongst the team and that anyone can do any job.
And a closing thought on this topic. Is this a tooling problem? After all agile is a mindset not a set of tools. By adhering to the tooling so strongly are we ignoring the mantra’s set out by the agile manifesto?
How do you decide on your mobile tech stack (native, xamarin, react, ionic)?
Quick note. Don’t call Xamarin Hybrid. People. Get. Mad. So they should!
How should you determine what technology to use for a project? What are your deciding factors? We came up with the following:
- Time/Lifespan of the product
- Existing skills within the team. Work with what you got, java devs = native android!
- Marketing channels. How will you distribute your application, app stores are different.
- User demographic, What is it your users use in terms of device
- Do you need offline capabilities
An excellent insight from British Software Development is that for speed to market and budget a wrapped/hybrid app using something like ionic is great. However for very intensive applications performance may suffer
Missed Conversations
There is only so much time in an evening and here are some of the things we missed (with votes in brackets):
- (7) What is so great about slack.
- (4) Where do developers look for jobs.
- (3) what is your fave Spime? (I didn't know what I spime was either, thanks for the education Ralph!)
- (2) Making a mobile app with lots of user input look pretty.
- (2) IOT Usecases
- (2) Mobile World Congress
- (2) oAuth2 for mobile talk
- (2) Has apple reached its plateau/peak
Conclusion
Thanks everyone who booked a free ticket and came along. We had a fantastic turn out of over 40 people. Hopefully you enjoyed it and if you have any feedback feel free to drop a comment on this story or email us at mobiledorset@gmail.com
We’re actively looking for speakers. A presentation can be anywhere from 2 minutes to 40 minutes long. Contact us if you’d like to come speak about mobile-something at mobile-dorset!
