NFC, UX, lots of coding and lots of fun

This heading doesn’t even come close to the amazing day we had at Android Aalto last Saturday. An event combining professional speakers, hacking space, outdoors games, lots of networking, prizes and much more.

The session was opened by Vili Törmänen, who gave a deep talk about Near-Field Communication (NFC), which is coming very strong from Google and its latest product Google Wallet. The presentation included both theory and working examples about NFC peer-to-peer communication, with code and even live demo with two NFC phones transferring data to one another. Elias Pietilä, from Qvik, gave a very entertaining speech about user experience in general and how it applies to the mobile software and the special aspects of Android mobile experience.

After the keynotes, some people decided to play the find Droid game we prepared: A funny challenge where different teams had to find hidden QR-codes and NFC tags around the Venture Garage and the surrounding area to get new hints and clues in order to complete the game. The teams were amazingly fast and finished the challenge quite ahead of the expected time.

For those who preferred to learn Android, there was a huge hacking space with more than 50 hackers. We divided the group in those who wanted to start from scratch and some of them who wanted to work on already existing applications (e.g. Droidkino).

The result: more than 10 HelloWord apps created in less than an hour, plenty of people installed the SDK and were reading official documentation from Google, a movie rating feature implemented for Droidkino (fetching ratings from Imdb), and a nice surprise: many girls getting their hands dirty with Android code and creating a second app after their first HelloWorld.

At the end of the evening, there were some small presents to those people who really kicked ass during the event: winners of the game, most passionate game team, almost every girl coding, the guys who implemented the movie rating feature and much more.

So far so good, we thank everybody who attended yesterday’s event and we are already working on the next event to bring many more interesting things to the community and help you learn faster on Android and also have much more fun than ever before. Thank you for a great day folks!

By the way, since the community is actually you guys that come to our events, we would really like to hear all the complaints and feedback to make the events much better. So please take 2 minutes and give us some feedback at AndroidAalto.org/survey.

 

Videos of the Android Keynote

 

 

Presentation Slides

 
NFC slides and useful resources
 
 

Android Aalto — Mobile UX
View more presentations from androidaalto

 

Photos from the Event

October 2, 2011 | | No Comments »

Android keynote on October 1st

After the summer break, it is time to get some action! Android Aalto has prepared an Android event that will open the study year with plenty of fun. The Android event will include two professional speakers from the industry, a hacking space for developers and games for non-technical people who just want to have fun with us and meet new people.

Just to give you a taste of what is coming up for October 1st, we are bringing an expert in NFC, a top designer and mobile UX speaker, a hacking corner to help you get started with Android, a hacking space for those who already know Android and want to check out real projects (check out Droidkino, a client for Finnkino movie theaters in Finland), games for people who don’t want to develop, the finest mobile and software development networking people around the Helsinki area, and an amazing evening with surprises and even prizes for the most active participants.

The event will start on Saturday at 12:00 sharp (remember: 1st of October), at the Aalto Venture Garage (Betonimiehenkuja 3, Espoo), in Otaniemi. Click here to see the map. The rough schedule for the program is as follows:

  • 12:00 Doors open, welcoming and pre-networking
  • 12:15 NFC Keynote, Vili Törmänen (VTT)
  • 13:00 Break for networking
  • 13:15 UX and mobile design keynote, Elias Pietilä (Qvik)
  • 14:00 Lunch break
  • 15:00 Hacking space opens
  • 15:15 “Rescue the droid” game begins, for non-programmers
  • 17:30 Summary and prizes

So we hope to see you all at the Aalto Venture Garage on October 1st at 12:00 sharp and, if you are fast enough there will be free food, beers and drinks for the first 100 attendants. Join us on Facebook and make sure you RSVP for the event. Let’s make robots dance!

The event is run thanks to the wonderful people managing the Aalto Venture Garage. All the food, drinks, beers and magic in our events is possible thanks to our main sponsor and Android community supporter Elisa.

Elisa     Elisa
September 14, 2011 | | No Comments »

Splendid people participating at July’s hackathon

I’m truly delighted by the environment during the last hackathon. It wouldn’t have been possible without all of you! Amazing people came to learn and share knowledge!

Everything started with an introduction to NFC by Jukka Jokelainen. Then, people was divided in teams and they had some minutes to come up with ideas and present them:

Developers immediately started to code and those more business oriented were discussing different ways to make the ideas profitable:

Elisa sponsored the different snacks, drinks and pizzas for all, so people had plenty of energy to develop the ideas further.

The attendees had a great time discussing and learning about NFC. Some of them even had some early functional prototypes. As an example, Nagasai Arun gave us the following feedback when we asked about his experience in the event:
“The Android Hackathon at Aalto Design Factory was a great experience. It was all about joy of building. People from various backgrounds showed up to get their hands dirty. Firstly, thanks to Maksim for introducing me to the awesome Android Aalto community and the members. Rovio team also got involved and encouraged everyone with their valuable suggestions, cool NFC angry birds and presentations.

This was my first hackathon event and my intentions were to learn the stuff about Android plus NFC by doing it. The event was much more than I expected. It was like a turbocharge of amazing guys working to get things done. In addition to hacking stuff, most importantly I met lot of great guys; includes Rovio team, designers, finance analyst, programmers, great thinkers.

Our theme was to create a crimson room, where a person has to use his NFC enabled phone and solve the sequence of hints to come out of the room. The idea was provided by Tomasz Mucha, and I definitely see the potential in making it big for event management firms.

All in all, the hackathon experience was amazing and looking forward to many events like these.”

Moreover, it was really interesting to learn a bit more about Angry Birds Magic platform from Rovio, which connects physical world with digital entertainment using NFC:

Later on, Hesham Omran, who came from Sweden for the event, also shared his experience and knowledge about NFC:

Thanks a lot to all of you who participated in this event. It was great to see so many people and we’re looking forward to see you again in the next Android Aalto event.

July 18, 2011 | | 1 Comment »