Droidcon London 2022 | Recap

Following the success in Berlin and Turin, last week we had the privilege to represent Zebra for another edition of Droidcon London. 

We had two days fully packed event with over 1400 attendees including companies,  gathering together to share, discuss and present the latest goodies from the Android Development World which included over 100 unique sessions from which to attend.

As always, we had our team, ready to attend all the people coming across to our booth interested to know what our company is all about and what we’re doing for our communities.

Our infamous Zippy the Zebra and socks were sought after swag by attendees. They’re always considered one of the main attractions for the people seeing our booth, but the highlight is showcase of our Zebra devices. Being able to interact with our mobile devices, printers and other solutions is important for the developer community. 

Being a first for me at Droidcon London, it was a wonderful experience, especially at the awesome venue, taking in the UK Vibes, and for the speaking opportunity.

Session

On the first day of the event, I presented at a lightening session about some of the key points and considerations to keep in mind when developing a first time application for our wearable devices. This included WearOS based SmartWatches plus any wearable device and these principles are applicable to other devices as well.

It was an amazing opportunity to present this talk after the recent success of this back in Droidcon Turin. Most important it provided developers,  whom may know very little about the Wearable Development World, what to expect when developing an application.

Showing how Wearables can be used not just in end user situations, but also in many enterprise related use cases, we used the WS50 as a reference for its versatility and numerous possibilities.

I really appreciated people coming to talk to me about the different challenges they’re facing with development of applications on the wearable devices, and how to find some resolution or answers for those situations, all of which was presented during the session. It’s still an unknown world for many, but as the Wearables Industry grows,  developers can expect major support moving onwards.

Opportunities

Many have asked us the reason why we’re here, especially if we’re a manufacturing company and not a software-focused one, and the answer to that is pretty simple.  Without software the hardware is useless and without hardware we cannot have the software performing its operations. Educating the attendees on Zebra's offerings, both hardware and software, is part of the process of building awareness at developer events like Droidcon. 

So, because of that, we share who Zebra is and what our company does in terms of manufacturing. More importantly we share what we do for our developers.

This includes:

• Sharing our offerings to developers including Libraries and SDKs
• What Open Source initiatives on GitHub From ZebraDevs
• Events we’re sponsoring/supporting for developers

We also had the chance to seek feedback for our TechDocs/Documentation portal as part of our ruffle contest, to try and understand what they didn’t like, their pain points, learn what we can improve and what they appreciate by casually browsing the pages from the portal.

Thank you again to everyone who stopped by for a couple of minutes for sharing your thoughts on this, it is much appreciated!

Closure

To sum it up, I would like to thank our Zebra Team for the fantastic support they have given: James, Alison, Kike, Emilia, Omar and Lawrence. Of course this goes also to the Droidcon Team who managed to deliver once again a well organized, amazing event.

As a former attendee from one of the Droidcon editions I attended a couple of years ago, it was an wonderful experience to see with different eyes how it has been, being on other side of the table, speaking with everyone who came across to our booth, asking questions about our company, about our devices and especially about what we're offering to the developers.

On top of that I also had the privilege to speak with two of the three editions we’ve supported this year, and I have to say, being on the stage speaking in front of these experienced developers wasn’t easy at all, especially the first time! But they were receptive to the talk and ideas presented.

This was our last Droidcon for this year, and we look forward to supporting this major event as it's important for the Android Community to show the latest innovations and changes for our Zebra Developer community.  #ZebraDevelopers #AndroidHeroes