GDG Johannesburg will host two talks in October:

Talk 1: Getting Started with Polymer 3.0 (20min)

Polymer is not just a framework, it is an ambitious attempt to scry into the future and inform the present - to steward and direct the evolution of the Web Platform. It has inextricably linked itself to Web Components, with the sole ambition of making them globally native. To be clear, this is a 'framework' that is actively courting its own obsolescence, growing smaller with every subsequent release.

It is in pursuit of this that the latest version of Polymer was announced, informed by recent W3C standardisation victories as well as mainstream adoption of Web Platform features. The project is removing features, changing the ecosystem, improving cross-framework interop, all to empower the platform.

This talk will give a brief overview of Polymer 3.0, the direction of WebComponents and make a case for why you should care about Polymer and the direction of the Web Platform.

Speaker: Mike Geyser

Speaker Bio:

Mike Geyser is a programmer at BBD in the R&D team, specialising on designing and building for the web. He’s been hacking on the web since Geocities was a thing, has a long-lived love affair with JavaScript, and has (almost) come to terms with the fact that he will never have a programmer beard. While he has worked on some interesting large-scale enterprise applications, it is the challenges of the public web that really appeal to him - having earned his stripes on high volume transactional websites. He works primarily in JavaScript, C# and Java, and seldom refers to himself in the third person.

Talk 2: Mastering Android ConstraintLayout (45min)

In this talk, Rebecca will demonstrate how to use ConstraintLayout when building Android Apps and some cool tricks you can do with it. From simplifying complex layouts to creating animations, ConstraintLayout has some really great usages. 

Speaker: Rebecca Franks

Speaker Bio: 

Rebecca Franks the Android Engineering Lead at DVT. She has over 5 years experience in developing Android applications.  In March 2016, she was awarded with the status of Google Developer Expert for Android.

In her spare time, she works with Book Dash – a Non Profit Organisation – developing an Android app to showcase their free children’s books. She enjoys public speaking and frequently speaks at conferences and local meetups.

Her blog has been featured multiple times in Android Weekly . In June 2016, She was selected as part of the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans.