Talk at CodeChix + ACM

Yesterday I was invited to speak at the Bay Area ACM meeting, co-hosted by CodeChix. I wanted to bring a topic that is interesting to the general audience, so I decided to Bust the Android Fragmentation Myth with them.

I treat my overview talks quite differently from my deep-dive talks. For deep dives, I jump into the nitty-gritty details fairly quickly, packing my slides densely with tips and tricks. But for overview talks, I go over the problem definition first. In this case, how to develop for so many different Android devices?

I then walked through a Hello World example to give some basic Android background. With all that set, I deliver the meat of the talk, the various techniques for responsive and progressive development.

Bust the Android Fragmentation Myth from Chiu-Ki Chan

After the talk I was chatting with some of the audience, one of whom had no programming experience but enjoyed my talk nonetheless. I was very happy to hear that. She asked me for advice to prepare herself before coming to tech events, to which I said, "ask questions". Ask if you don't understand something. Ask for more information if something is interesting and you want to learn more. She looked a bit disappointed since I was telling her something she already was doing, but at the end of the day there is always more to learn, so my rule of thumb is get fresh information while you are at the event. To give her something concrete, I pointed her to my Android Layout Fundamentals video course. Hopefully that'll be useful!