Developers
Jon Meyer
Jon is a Senior Android Developer at Kik Interactive Inc.. In the past he has developed enterprise and consumer facing software for a wide variety of mobile platforms, but his true love has been Android since 2008. Having lived with and developed for every generation of Android phone since the G1, he has a strong interest in proper backwards compatibility as well as an interest in the developing UI and behavioral patterns. Jon is always looking to expand his knowledge and to help passionate people make amazing things.
Topic: Better Living Through Custom Components
Description: The Android views you know and love are powerful tools, but sometimes you need a little something extra. Custom components let you have added or modified behaviors while maintaining the niceties of default views. This talk will focus on how to make custom components, and why you should. It will also discuss why it might be better sometimes to get your hands dirty and extend views rather than work around problematic behaviours.
Vishal Arora
Vishal Arora is the Product Manager responsible for Cloud Services and Enablers at Rogers Communications. Vishal has worked as a product manager , solutions architect & software engineer, in the telecom industry for over 15 years. His experience includes developing, supporting and evangelizing platform APIs to jump-start development projects and developing partner ecosystems. Vishal holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering.
Topic: Incorporating Rogers Catalyst in your Android Apps
Description: Catalyst is a Network API suite that allows your Android applications to leverage the capabilities of the Rogers Cloud. With easy to use RESTful and SOAP web-services, app developers can leverage carrier billing, retrieve location of mobile devices and send and receive SMS messages. In this session, you will see a demo of a cool Twitter App that leverages location APIs and learn everything you need to get started with Rogers Catalyst.
Christopher Saunders
Christopher Saunders is a mobile developer working for Shopify. At Shopify, he currrently buildings mobile web applications. He also organizes the Ottawa area Android Development Gorup. He has also contributed to several open source projects including, Evergreen, Jasmine, Spine.js and jhopify. In addition to Android, Chris loves to run, partake in the craft of home-brewing and photography. Christopher Saunders is returning to AndroidTO for the 2nd year as a speaker.
Topic: Just Because It's Mobile Doesn't Mean It *has* to be Native
In his talk, Christopher Saunders will cover the discussion of native vs. mobile web application development. This talk will cover the advantages and disadvantages of using web technologies. You will learn how you can use web based tools to create rich mobile web applications. The topics covered will include, jQuery, jQueryMobile, Spine.js and CoffeeScript.
Tony Wong
Tony Wong has been building for Android since the introduction of Cupcake SDK, and has since mastered the tricks of every version of the OS. As a Senior Engineer at Xtreme Labs, he has been responsible for delivering both consumer facing, and enterprise oriented apps. These apps stretch the potential of the Android UI to deliver responsive, powerful experiences. Tony will speak alongside Greg Burgoon.
Greg Burgoon
Greg Burgoon is an Agile Engineer at Xtreme Labs Inc.. In the past, he has developed on a wide range of mobile platforms, including BlackBerry, PlayBook, and iOS, but his current passion is Android. Greg loves the mobile space because of the emerging opportunities to create extremely useful and unique software. He is always looking for ways to expand his technical knowledge base and to put this knowledge to good use. Greg will be speaking alongside Tony Wong.
Topic: Hacking UI with Android 3.0
Creating visually stunning apps has just gotten easier, with the recent release of Honeycomb, and soon to be release of Ice Cream Sandwich. Tony and Greg will demonstrate how to create useful and polished UI components that will separate your Android apps from the crowd. They will also dissect some core Android apps and demonstrate how you can extend them to create a truly unique Android experience.
Greg Carron
Greg Carron has been involved with and gained expert skills with Android application development as well as firmware modding since 2007 when Android was first introduced. Greg Carron is a Senior Mobile UX Designer at MobiCartel. MobiCartel is a Toronto based application development agency focusing on Mobile application development for Android. Greg Carron is returning to AndroidTO for the 2nd year as a speaker. Greg Carron will be presenting alongside Matthew Patience.
Matthew Patience
Matthew Patience is the CTO of Mobicartel he manages an incredible team of developers who create powerful and intuitive applications. MobiCartel has clients such as Naughty By Nature and BlogTO and are among some of the most respected Android developers in North America. Matthew Patience is returning to AndroidTO for the 2nd year as a speaker. Matthew Patience will be presenting alongside Greg Carron.
Topic: NFC: Tapping into the Future
The focus of this talk will be to discuss and explore several facets of the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that are overlooked. Use cases from interactive marketing, peer to peer networking, enabling smart objects, and new apps that integrate social media and geo-location are some of the applications where NFC is becoming prevalent. The talk will demonstrate the implications of NFC and its impact on mobile technology, while showing simple and powerful code examples. Greg and Matthew will also show case an internal NFC application being developed and walk through the app’s core features.
Atley Hunter
Atley Hunter has been a developer for more than 15 years and also a mobile developer. With over 30 apps under his belt and numerous talks, blog posts and HackFests, Atley is continually working to expand his development knowledge and share it to anyone who wants to know. Atley is never far from reach and always happy to help.
Topic: Building Android Apps that Use the Windows Azure Cloud Platform
This talk will focus on helping mobile developers leverage services from the cloud in creating a differentiated application experience that will inform and delight its users. This session will focus on using Windows Azure Toolkit for Android to demonstrate how developers can quickly, create amazing, service-enabled experiences using the Windows Azure cloud platform.
Jason Tyler
Jason is passionate about technology and people. Jason teaches technology professionally to help people achieve their goals using the power of technology. He plays with technology because he loves the empowerment that technology can bring, and also because he is attracted to anything shiny. Jason is an avid and dedicated photographer, sailor, and a gamer.
Topic: Beyond the basics: App Inventor for Your Prototyping Needs
App Inventor has been utilized primarily as a learning tool for teaching people about mobile programming. Low bar easy to access programming also enables small and medium size businesses to access technology in ways they could not otherwise. Demonstrate: A business model that utilizes an app built with App Inventor. Complete app and show interaction on stage.
Prashant Somashekar
Prashant Somashekar is an IT professional who resides in New York. As a web administrator for a financial institution, Prashant is involved with various technologies from Web Servers, Application Services, Authentication Servers and the likes. Prashant is also an enthusiast who enjoys tinkering, hacking, and developing/engineering performance kernels for various mobile devices and tablets running Android.
Topic: Developing Android Kernels 101
The focus of this topic will be to discuss how Android works in general and what makes this versatile mobile OS as powerful as it is. The presentation will break down Android's architecture and explain how its Linux Kernel & Dalvik Machine work behind the scenes. Since developing custom kernels is Prashant's specialty he’ll walk through the process of compiling a generic kernel from AOSP. Also explained will be what role these advanced kernels play on Android and what modifications either improve or hinder their performance and battery life. The presentation will also take a look at the importance of hardware manufacturers continuing to make their kernels Open Source for all to modify.
Joe Lallouz
Joe Lallouz is Android Developer at Hashable. Joe has had the opportunity to work closely with the Google Android Developer team to significantly alter and improve the design of Android version of Hashable. He is also the co-creator and developer for the Android version of Cloud Assassin. He has also founded Top 5 MC’s, a gaming company, and previously worked at FactSet Research Systems.
Topic: Best Design Practices for Honeycomb/Ice Cream Sandwich: Tips and Tricks That You Won’t Find in the Official Android Docs
With the anticipated broader reach of Honeycomb tablets, and the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich OS, Joe will review ways for developers to implement the new features that enhance the usability of Android apps, for both smart phones and tablets. He will also discuss current tablet/phone apps that have executed some of these design principles. Joe will reveal the results of his unofficial poll amongst the top NYC Android app developers (Foursquare, GroupMe, Hashable). Find out what they wish they knew about Android development that wasn’t in the Android Google docs.
Matthew Fabb
Matthew Fabb is a developer at Sticker You, a Toronto based start-up which offers online image editing and sticker creation functionality through a flex-based application. Matthew has been working with Flash version 4. He is a long time regular member of FlashInTO and Toronto Flex User Groups and has presented on several occasions. Matthew has also contributed on Wrox’s Professional Adobe Flex 3 as a Technical Editor. Currently he is leading the efforts at Sticker You to develop a mobile app for Android, iPad and Playbook.
Topic: Mobile Development with the Flex Framework
The focus of this talk will be to give attendees a quick overview of Adobe AIR for Android, including what’s new with AIR 3.0. Matthew will provide a code demo and walk-through of a Flex mobile application, using Adobe Flash Builder and testing it live off an Android device. He will demonstrate how Flex uses mobile skins to help developers target different resolutions and platforms such as Android. How Flex captures and responds to device interaction, view data to handle app interruptions will also be demonstrated.
Professionals
Reade Barber
Reade Barber is the Senior Director of Data Product Management at Rogers Communications and has the overall responsibility for the Smartphone, Access, Messaging and Application portfolios. As part of his portfolio Reade is responsible for the business requirements and rollout of the LTE network. This would include pricing, marketing, and device requirements.
Prior to role in product management, Reade was the Director of New Product Launch at Rogers Wireless and was responsible for developing and launching innovative new products and services, for both the Rogers Wireless and FIDO brands.
Prior to joining Rogers in 2005, Reade was with Bell Mobility for five years where he was responsible for new product development for entertainment services for music, video and ringback tones. Prior to that, he worked in wireless internet marketing at Nortel Networks. Mr. Barber holds an MBA from the Michael G. DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, a Bachelors of Education, Lakehead University and a Bachelors of Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo.
Panel: Champions of Mobile
Grant Munro
As Director of Social and Mobile at LoyaltyOne, Grant provides strategic leadership for both LoyaltyOne and the AIR MILES® Reward Program in the digital and new media area, specifically mobile and social technologies.
He has spent over ten years in the mobile and social industry offering experience and passion for new and emerging technologies. During the last year and half Grant has worked at Syncapse, Canada’s top social media organization, as VP Product Management where he lead the product strategy and development group. A few of Grant’s notable clients include Disney, AB InBev, Pepsi, RIM, JP Morgan, and Microsoft. Prior to Syncapse, Grant was based in Vancouver working as a Product Manager for Nokia, helping develop their Smartphone strategy and product portfolio for international markets including Europe, India, China and Brazil. Grant was part of several successful device launches at Nokia including the N91, N95 and N96.
Grant holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia and an MBA from the University of Toronto.
Panel: Champions of Mobile
Paul Crowe
Paul Crowe joined BNOTIONS in early 2011 as partner and CEO. He brings with him 7 years experience in the advertising world helping some of the biggest brands in Canada and the world to achieve their objectives in the digital space. He has worked on brands such as LG Electronics, HP, CIBC, Rogers Communications, Labatt/InBev breweries, Puma and many more. From launching brands into the social media space, designing eCRM programs or overseeing overhauls of a brands digital presence, Paul's experience and strategic advice provides BNOTIONS with ability to ensure we aren't just building a website or application, but our clients business.
Adil Dhalla
In 2008, Adil was working in rural Tanzania introducing mobile technology solutions to farmers and students to improve standards of living. The experience helped shape the vision for My City Lives (www.mycitylives.com), an application Adil Co-founded in 2009, which provides a narrative to Google Streetview through geo tagging user generated video content. Today, his role at My City Lives is an extension of his passion of building meaningful connections with people and leading community development. Adil is a passionate advocate of entrepreneurship and a new player of the ukulele. His goal is to eventually intersect the two.
Panel: Building Business on Mobile
Zhen Jiwa
Zhen Jiwa is a member of the Technology Consulting team at PwC. He works with Canadian high-tech companies to develop eCommerce and enterprise mobility strategies. As a graduate of the University of Waterloo Masters in Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology program, Zhen has also worked with many start-up companies in the mobile app space, and is well versed when it comes to technology roadmaps, software development lifecycles, revenue models, and venture/angel capital procurement. Lastly, Zhen is seriously tech-obsessed, and while he may not disclose who he is rooting for in the mobile platform race, chances are he has strong opinions on all of the contenders.
Panel: Champions of Mobile
David MacPhie
David MacPhie heads up Sympatico’s mobile advertising network, where he is responsible for the distribution and strategy of Sympatico’s mobile content as well as bringing leading national & international third party publishers onto the Sympatico ad network.
David works with the sales and mobile advertiser solutions teams to continuously gauge the audience requirements of Sympatico’s media clients and evolve the network and its properties accordingly.
David’s contribution is helping Sympatico to establish itself as a leader in mobile publishing and he has also primed the development of Sympatico’s own content channels such as Celebedge.ca, Fashionism.ca and Sympatico’s general interest portal.David brings his experience in product development for Bell’s Internet and Home phone services to his Sympatico mobile work in helping to shape a positive and engaging publisher and end consumer experience.
Panel: Champions of Mobile
Matt Hartley
Matt Hartley is an award winning Toronto-based writer and journalist with The National Post newspaper where he writes about technology and the Internet for the Financial Post.
As editor of the FP Tech Desk, he is responsible for overseeing technology coverage for the Financial Post.
A product of the Queen’s Journal at Queen’s University, his stories have also appeared in the The Globe and Mail, in technology magazines and across the Postmedia Network chain of newspapers. He has made dozens of media appearances on radio and television programs across Canada, including TVO’s The Agenda, The Fan590 in Toronto and National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States .Over the years, he has interviewed some of the biggest names in the technology world, including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and RIM co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.
Panel Moderator: Champions of Mobile
Martin Drashkov
Martin has been developing for Android since its launch in 2008 and is the person behind applications such as Phonalyzr, the first ever personal phone call analytics app; OANDA fxTrade, the first Android forex trading platform. Both featured on the Android Market. Recently, Martin has taken an interest in using Android beyond it's native home in smartphones and tablets and built a prototype 23" Android "tablet" using off-the-shelf components.
Topic: Android Beyond Smartphones and Tablets
Android has become the dominant smartphone OS and is rapidly gaining share in the tablet market, but where will it go from there? Using his 23" Android Tablet as an example, Martin will discuss the possibilities of using Android on large-format touchscreens, including the types of apps and experiences that will allow businesses to take advantage of these opportunities.
Terry Ryan
Terry Ryan is a Worldwide Developer Evangelist for Adobe. The job basically entails helping developers using Adobe technologies to be successful. His focus is on web and mobile technologies including expertise in both Flash and HTML. Previous to that, he spent a decade working in various technical roles at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Terry is also the author of Driving Technical Change, a Pragmatic Bookshelf title. It's about convincing reluctant co-workers to adopt new tools and ideas.
Topic: Driving Technical Change
Ever been to a conference, get inspired, try to bring what you learned back to the office, only to be stymied by co-workers who aren't interested in rocking the status quo? It turns out that people tend to resist change in patterns, and like any pattern they can be overcome by using other people's experiences with those skeptics. This session will teach you how to identify the skeptics, how to counter them, and give you a strategic framework to convince your whole office.
This session will go into detail in the patterns and techniques of Driving Technical Change including: skeptic types, countering techniques, and master strategy using those techniques to achieve change in your organization.
Allen Lau
Allen Lau is a serial entrepreneur with a laser sharp focus on consumer Internet and mobile. He is currently the CEO and Co-founder of Toronto based Wattpad, a Union Square Ventures funded company. Prior to co-founding Wattpad, Allen was CEO and Co-founder of FeedM8, a mobile advertising company that was acquired by Upstream Systems, one of the world's largest mobile marketing companies. Before FeedM8, Allen was CTO and Co-founder of Tira Wireless. Founded in 2001. Tira Wireless was the global leader in mobile content publishing and deployment..
Topic: Android & Monetization
It is no secret that making money on Android is hard but is it mission impossible? With no truly efficient way to pay for your Android Apps, are we all doomed? Allen Lau from Wattpad will discuss the best ways to monetize on Android.
Andrew Peek
Andrew is the Kickstarter of Strategic Initiatives & Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Jet Cooper. He's also the Co-Founder of the social notetaking applicaton, Rocketr. He speaks actively on Lean Startup Principles and in his previous life, led the build of the Customer Development department at Toronto's own FreshBooks.
Panel: Building Business on Mobile
Ken Seto
Ken is an experienced mobile app and game designer, with a focus on user experience. He is also the co-founder of Endloop Studios, a leading mobile development studio building some of the most entertaining and innovative iPhone and iPad applications on the market, garnering media attention from Wired, Mashable, WSJ and others. Ken is well regarded for his passion and expertise in mobile, social media and user experience design. Most recently, he founded Massive Damage, Inc., a location-based social gaming platform, funded by Year One Labs in Montreal.
Panel: Building Business on Mobile
Salman Habib
Salman Habib is a Co-Founder @ Bizmey inc. managing the Business Development and operational growth. Bizmey is a Mobile App distribution network, with one of Canada's first cross-app exchange networks. Salman has a keen interest in learning about the mobile space and how it is evolving. Having been in the virtual currency industry prior to mobile, Salman has a good understanding of effective monetization strategies in game.
Panel: Building Business on Mobile
Ash Kheradmand
Ash is the CEO and Co-Founder of Andspot Inc. As the CEO of Andspot, Ash leads the business development, marketing and sales efforts with sights set on significantly improving monetization for Android developers while solving app discovery for users. He understands the Android app landscape well as well as the business struggles publishers face and will attempt to overview it drawing from valuable first-hand experience.
Panel: Building Business on Mobile
Gary Yentin
Gary Yentin is a senior mobile executive, with over 15 years of experience managing strategy sales, marketing, operations, and technology for established entertainment, new media and technology companies. For the last five years Gary has focused on mobile advertising, mobile application discovery and distribution having worked in executive roles with Admob (now Google), Nokia, Quattro Wireless (now Apple) and Jumptap. Currently, Gary is CEO and Founder of App-Promo, a full service mobile consultancy focusing on the strategy, discovery and distribution of mobile applications. Gary will be speaking alongside Tom Emrich.
Tom Emrich
Tom Emrich is a digital media expert with over 7 years in the industry. His knowledge and experience in consulting and realizing mobile and tablet solutions with core platforms such as SMS, QR, mCommerce, web and applications has brought success to start-ups, carriers, media companies and brands within North America. Tom's passion for mobile, tablet and emerging platforms is both professional and personal which further drives him to strive to make history as it happens within this fast changing space. Tom will be speaking alongside Gary Yentin.
Topic: Tackling the Challenge of App Discovery
The focus of this talk is to equip you with marketing tips and tactics you can employ to increase your app’s visibility to help your product succeed. In this session, Gary and Tom will provide an overview of the marketing opportunities you should be using to promote your app and then dive deeper into helping you understand how to use the app store as a marketing tool, getting the word out through PR & blogs and the best way to maximize ROI from paid media. This talk will review an actual case history to illustrate results when marketing is in place. This talk will leave you with action items you can start to use when you return to the office to start seeing improved results for your mobile application.
Andy Smith
Andy is the Production Manager at Get Set Games. He has worked as a Producer for Electronic Arts, Pogo, EA Mobile, and J2Play. Andy is experienced as a Producer and UI/UX Designer with a focus on video games for mobile and social platforms.
Topic: So You've Got an App - What Now?
Description: Mega Jump by Get Set Games, one of the top IOS games in the market, has over 16 million players. It has eye-popping cartoon graphics, beautiful multi-layered backdrops and received excellent reviews from both critics and players. Mega Jump for Android was released earlier this year and has managed to reach over 1 million players so far.
Andy will represent Get Set Games and speak about how the company is finding ways to make Mega Jump Android stand out, engage and monetize players, and the Android specific issues they have run into while trying to make Android a viable platform for a small company.
Melody Adhami
As the co-founder and COO of Plastic Mobile, an award winning mobile marketing agency based in Toronto, Melody Adhami has led many successful mobile initiatives for brands such as CBC, CityTV, Rogers, Pizza Pizza, 680 News, Team Buy Royal LePage, and many more.
Under Melody’s leadership Plastic Mobile won the Webby (an award that honors excellence on the web) for the innovative Pizza Pizza App.
In 2010 the Globe and Mail crowned her the "Queen of Apps". Today she has reached the pinnacle of her career while emphasizing the importance of consistently demonstrating excellence through her work and as a role model in the mobile community.
Topic: Do-it-Joorself with Joomo
The hurdles for getting your company going in the mobile world have never been lower. Joomo is an automated platform that enables anyone to create high-quality native mobile applications across all mobile devices. With a web-based studio you can create, edit, track and customize every aspect of your app. In the talk Melody will make an introduction of Joomo, present a problem, explore the different solution possibilities with Joomo, build the solution in the form of an application.
