Huddle Diaries — Android

By Tania Kohli

This post was originally published on Zomato Blog on May 7, 2019.

We hope that you got a chance to attend our Android Huddle we hosted recently. Huddle by Zomato is an event that is focused on building a stronger tech community in the Delhi region.

Tech is the background of every component of Zomato. As is true for all other fields, technology cannot develop if we are unable to make an effort to explore, learn from others’ experiences, and exchange ideas.

Keeping that in mind, we re-started Huddle, a tech and product focused community event. This time, we chose the theme Android; and the Android Developers Group in Delhi NCR helped us put together our fourth Huddle.

Sixty-four people from the Android community spent the day sharing delicious ideas about “cupcake” and other sweetly baked goods. ;-)

Needless to say, we hosted this event about dessert labeled versions at the Zomato HQ Cafeteria. Obviously; we are a food company after all.

A number of folks from various companies were present — Airtel, Lava, Nokia, UrbanClap, Coding Blocks, Samsung, Policy Bazaar, OYO and many more.

Now, what is a community without experts? Our speaker line-up included –

• Prashant Malik (Technical Advisor, Zomato)

The genius co-creator of Apache Cassandra shared his experiences with the group. He is a role model in the tech community, and it was great to hear what he had to say about building scalable systems — across platforms.

• Sajal Gupta (Android Developer, Zomato)

Sajal led a talk on solving a problem of human dependency for image classification using machine learning. The talk focused on a case study from a recent Zomato implementation. By reducing human dependency not only did Zomato become more efficient, but we also saw an improvement in the accuracy of our models.

• Arnav Gupta (Android Developer, Zomato)

Taking the time to perform a comparison of development tools (Kotlin, Nativescript and Flutter), and then providing an easy way to decide which one to pick, Arnav showcased we can make an informed choice, based on the type of problem/project at hand.

• Avninder Singh & Arnav Bose (Android Developers, Zomato)

The last and final talk by Avninder Singh and Arnav Bose, not only delved into what leads to the creation of complex animations but also, how these can be achieved as quickly as possible. By diving deep into the usage of Outline and Motion Layout, they showcased new ways to create custom shapes and enhance animations.

What we saw at Huddle was not merely a few like-minded folks coming together, but people who were ever-ready to help and inspire through their knowledge on the subject. Additionally, it’s always good to learn, gain different perspectives and feed off that knowledge going forward.

In an effort to constantly develop and grow our community, we will continue to host the Huddle at Gurgaon.

For any queries, do reach out to us at huddle@zomato.com and stay tuned to our social handles for more updates!

If you are an Android engineer who loves challenges and is keen on working with Zomato, do check this out.