Meetup

Kickoff Meeting: Making the Android UI Fast and Efficient by Romain Guy

Selected By: Aleksandar Gargenta

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101 Android Developers went
Aleksandar Gargenta (Organizer) added this Meetup on May 13, 2009

This is our first kick-off event! Come and learn about Android and meet other folks that live in the SF Bay Area and are interested in this exciting new platform!

We are extremely fortunate that Romain Guy from Google's Android UI team offered to do a presentation at our first event. For those that don't know, Romain is also the brains behind Android's home screen.

We'll start off the evening with a short introduction to Android, to make sure everyone is on board.

Then, Romain will deliver his Turbo-charge your UI: How to Make your Android UI Fast and Efficient talk from this year's Google I/O.
We will learn practical tips, techniques and tricks for making your Android applications fast and responsive. The talk will focus on optimizations recommended by the Android framework team to make the best use of the UI toolkit.

And unlike at Google I/O, Romain will have plenty of time to answer any and all questions you may have! Come prepared!

Pizzas will be sponsored by Diana Henninger from TEKsystems and refreshments will be brought in by Thao-Linh Bui from Vircon!

We'll be giving away five copies of Android Application Development book published (and donated to our group) by O'Reilly.

Note that if you plan to attend, you absolutely need to RSVP before the cut-off date, or you risk not being able to get past the security guard.

Also, this event is co-hosted by the San Francisco Java User Group, and if you belong to both groups please do not double-RSVP as the space is limited.

See you on July 14th at 6:30pm!


About Romain Guy
Romain Guy is a software engineer at Google. After spending years having fun with large UIs on the desktop and talking about them at conferences, in blogs, magazines and books, Romain decided to go for the small screen and joined the Android project, an Open Source operating system for mobile phones. He's now trying to make mobile phone UIs as fun and exciting as desktop ones.

Talk about this Meetup

  • Matthias Wieland
    Matthias Wieland

    the date is so far away ;) ... anyone interested in a Pre-"Kick-Off"-Come-Together - without programm - just meeting?

    Posted May 28, 2009 at 1:58 PM
  • Aleksandar Gargenta
    Aleksandar Gargenta

    sure, what did you have in mind? :-)

    Posted May 28, 2009 at 9:04 PM
  • Matthias Wieland
    Matthias Wieland

    Just too meet some people and talk about android. Time: Maybe in 2 to 3 Weeks? Location: Depends on the amount of people - If we are less then 10 people maybe a bar/cafe with good tables works. If we are more - I don't know how open the kickoff-location from google is.

    Posted May 30, 2009 at 3:53 PM
  • Aleksandar Gargenta
    Aleksandar Gargenta

    We won't be able to use the Google location any sooner than planned. But, I don't mind meeting at a bar/cafe...
    Who else is interested?

    Posted May 30, 2009 at 7:43 PM
  • Danny R
    Danny R

    I'm interested in meeting up in a cafe within the next week or so.

    Posted June 8, 2009 at 11:39 AM
  • Marko Gargenta
    Marko Gargenta

    I'm totally interested in this. UI is a huge part of developing for Android and has some new conceptual stuff to think of (such as XML UI). The speed of UI is paramount, so I'm excited to learn any tips & tricks from the source.

    Posted June 17, 2009 at 12:32 PM
  • russ
    russ

    I'd be down as long as the drinks are strong and the jukebox doesn't suck, hehe.

    Posted June 23, 2009 at 10:53 AM
  • Alan Musselman
    Alan Musselman

    Can that cafe contain beer?

    What about Annie's Social Club (pub) on Folsom/5th at 5pm on Thursday? Zeitgeist is a cool place too and they have an outside hang out area.

    http://www.anniessocialclub.com/
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/zeitgeist-san-francisco

    Annie's has a photo booth if you really want to get crazy. :P

    Posted July 7, 2009 at 1:50 PM
  • Aleksandar Gargenta
    Aleksandar Gargenta

    I'd prefer meeting before 5pm or after 7:30p, but if there's enough interest for Alan's proposal, I'm in!

    Posted July 7, 2009 at 2:41 PM
  • Travis Wellman
    Travis Wellman

    Great kickoff! For an individual such as I just getting started with the Android platform this was just what I needed.

    Posted July 14, 2009 at 9:13 PM

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4.50 4.5016 (16 ratings)
  • Who went
  • Aleksandar Gargenta
    Organizer
    Romain was fantastic! Though his presentation was a repeat of what I had previously seen at Google I/O, I really enjoyed the more intimate surroundings with some tougher questions from the audience. Romain is not just a great developer (though he often says "that's my fault" while pointing to some of Android's shortcomings), but he is also a great speaker! He is a great guy :-)
  • FeliciaB
    I was pleased to see that Romain Guy was not only knowledgeable (which I expected), but also friendly towards neophytes like myself. His talk was accessible to anyone familiar with Java. As an introductory talk, it was great, hitting general concepts without hiding behind jargon, plus exploring how to solve specific problems in programming for the Android. I actually left MORE enthusiastic about becoming an Android developer than when walked in!
  • Sampath Manda
    This presentation was a gem from Romain on performance optimizations.
  • Marko Gargenta
    Assistant Organizer
    The room was full. Hard to say exactly how many people but all the chars were taken and people were standing in the back. While I have already seen this talk before, the audience was great and engaging. I'm happy to see the community forming around Android! Marko
  • Dennis Mojado
    Good topic, albeit a bit introductory at first. I was hoping, since it was about making Android fast and efficient, that it would be a bit more "leet" from the get-go with deeper code examples. But I guess you have to accommodate the interested new attendees. Let's quit recycling the Google I/O preso's and get to the meat of *current* development. Also, the technology is never going to compete with the likes of iPhone's rabid developer community if there's always "sorry, we're working on it" or "we need you to implement that". Android is slick, but it really needs to pull another rabbit out of the hat like it did with giving everyone dev phones at I/O (which T-Mobile totally screwed up btw). Design should not be overlooked. Overall, good kickoff, but these meetups need to get more code/design-focused or cover new stuff from the source (Google).
  • Alan Weiler
    Well, I was primed to hear some great things about Android and why I should get up to speed on the platform. Instead, I heard about the problems and how to work around them. I know it is important to communicate the work-arounds-- and the speaker did a good job of presenting them--but I wouldn't have used the time that way for this audience. I don't want to be too critical because I know bringing in speakers and running user groups is a lot of work (thanks!). But, unfortunately, I came away from the talk thinking that Android isn't ready for the marketplace and I'm sure that's not what the speaker hoped to communicate. Thank you again for putting on the program.
  • Yi Qiang
  • Danny R
  • Vaughn Spurlin
  • Richard Bettelheim
  • XUE
  • Alan Musselman
  • Sid Gabriel
  • Stuart Schmukler
  • Helen Chan
  • Stephan Branczyk
  • Aaron Steele
  • veronica van gogh design
  • Andreas Schobel
  • Paul F : - )
  • Joseph Mulvaney
  • Guy Cole
  • UpFromTheGut
  • puran
  • Kimo, PMP, ScrumMaster
  • Joachim Pfeiffer
  • Alex Lee
  • Jack Ha
  • Eugene Markman
  • Hau Man Chow
  • Azad Bolour
  • Chetan Meshram
  • Travis Wellman
  • matthew yeseta
  • Daniel Kopyc
  • tompark
  • Seni Sangrujee
  • russ
  • Nana Gilbert-Baffoe
  • Julian Gay
  • Stephen Vogel
  • Marc
  • Jessica
  • Patrice
  • Serete
  • Dennis Keller
  • Eric Crook
  • Assaf
  • rich
  • Amit Nithian

Sponsors and Perks

Marakana - Android Training

The organizer of this group.

SUPINFO

Provides venue for our meetings

Apex Systems

Providing food and drinks for our meetings.

Technology Credit Union

Sponsors food/drinks for our meetings

Motorola

Providing pizza and drinks to keep us fed and hydrated!

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