First listed event for GDG & Freecodecamp study group of 2019. Once again at the fantastic Spaces offices in the centre of Reading. It's within easy walking range of the station and all of the town centre car parks.

It's a double header with Joe Fazzino and Rob Sutcliffe.

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Title: Building true native mobile applications with JavaScript

Synopsis: The web is accelerating at a great pace with things like Progressive Web Applications, Service Workers, et al. Despite this, users just aren't used to treating websites like normal applications on their phone so more often than not they turn to the App Store or the Google Play Store.

Wouldn't it be great if there were a way that you could make a real native application for Android and iOS (maybe more?) without having to deal with, the "should I learn Swift or Objective C" or "do I really have to write Java" debates.

Enter React Native, an open source framework for building native applications in JavaScript/React, created by Facebook.

In this session I'm going to introduce you to React Native, show you why it's a bit more special than some other similar technologies you may also have heard of. After some slides I'll show some cool examples and talk through the code so by the end of it you can come away with an understanding of why React Native is becoming such a sought after skill for developers (especially within start up culture). How it can possibly work, and how you can start creating awesome applications that you can publish on the App Store and Google Play Store.

Bio: Joe is a final year student at the University of Reading studying Computer Science. He has worked with React Native for 2 years and has taken an app from start to publication to help students find people to live with. Joe has experience with GraphQL, NodeJS and a cornucopia of front end tools. Find his blog at https://joefazzino.me and his twitter at https://twitter.com/purefazz.

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Confused About User Experience Design?
Don't know your Design Thinking from your Human Centred Design? You're not alone! This will be a safe space where you can admit that you don't think writing something on a post-it note makes it any more innovative. Designing an application is a relatively new challenge and the processes we use to solve our problems have evolved like crazy. Some have genuinely changed the world and other may have even ruined it. This session will introduce you to these processes and their outcomes, to the people who found new ways of working and the current struggles we still have today. The goal is to give you a curiosity to find out more about using design process to solve problems in your life or work and to give you a vocabulary to communicate design better with others.

Rob Sutcliffe
Rob is a designer and front-end developer with over 10 years experience. Over those years he has worked in startups, multinationals, managed design teams and consulted fortune 500 companies. He got his degree in Graphical Communications from The University College of The Creative Arts. And more recently Rob has started writing about and teaching design skills. He believes that it's best to be exposed to a range of environments and people to improve his craft. In fact the only thing in common in each of the places he has worked is... no one seemed to know what they were saying, when they said "UX"!

Agenda:

18:30 Food and networking
19:00 - 19:55 : Joe Fazzino - Building true native mobile applications with JavaScript
20:00 - 21:00 : Rob Sutcliffe - Confused About User Experience Design?