From 28 to 29 August this year's Swift Conf took place in Cologne. It was my first conference I attended to and it was a very great experience!
At my current workplace we can sign up for one external workshop/conference per year which expenses are then covered by the company. I had a look at multiple conferences, but Swift Conf caught my attention. It's a rather small conference but still had a nice speaker line up. What convinced me the most to attend the conference, was that they offered multiple half-day workshops on the first day of the conference. Since the number of attendees is rather small we only had one track of talks per day.
In the following I will link every talk and can recommend to watch all of them.
The first day
The first day started with a small breakfast and the welcome talk. After that the first three talks were held.
| Title | Speaker | Video |
|---|---|---|
| Why We Should All Tell Stories | Maxim Cramer | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiw7HFTC6_w |
| Best Practices | Roy Marmelstein | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIHfhPozB3k |
| Crisis of #Iamdeveloper | Kateryna Gridina | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJWyx1CYFx4 |
Being filled up with a lot of new impressions and information we needed to gain new energy by having a tremendously tasty lunch.
Workshop
The second half of the first day attendees had the chance to take part in one of the aforementioned workshops. I chose to take part in An introduction to Accessibility on iOS: Better Apps For Everyone by Bas Broek(@basthomas). He showed us how to use the accessibility features in the iOS SDK to make apps available for a lot more people. We had a look at Voice Over, a feature which I never gave much attention. We tried out how blind people use apps and how app developers can support them by making their apps accessible. Even further we had the opportunity to enhance our own apps by applying the techniques learned. Bas supported us by answering questions and giving some best practices of applying those accessibility features.
Overall I can say that accessibility is such an important topic. Every app should utilize the features that are available in the iOS SDK to provide a better app experience to everyone.
The second day
The second day was again filled with a lot of interesting talks that brought up interesting discussions and gave a lot of best practices and insides of how issues and problems can be tackled.
| Title | Speaker | Video |
|---|---|---|
| A Functional look at Combine | Daniel Steinberg | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z72w5NtmyjM |
| UI Code That Sparks Joy | Nataliya Patsovska | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grFo3cO0Htw |
| Solving the 15-puzzle in Swift: A Look At Algorithms And Speed | Bas Broek | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgZ3afnuVa4 |
| Psychology at Play | Dori Adar | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjZuKLf4m5E |
| Implementing pseudo-keywords through functional programming | Vincent Pradeilles | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWGzK-0l3w4 |
Conclusion
I enjoyed two fantastic days being part of a nice community and can very much recommend Swift Conf to every Swift developer that loves being part of a very friendly and familiar setting. Hope to be part of it again next year!