Social Event Tickets and UIKonf Charity Donation Drive

It is one of the main principles behind UIKonf that it should not only be a conference with amazing talks but also a place to make new friends thereby fostering the iOS developer community. With this goal in mind, last year we introduced free social events in order to have some good time with fellow conference attendees and break the ice before the conference properly starts. These events have been a great success: about two thirds of our attendees took part. Bikes were ridden, museums were visited, boat tours were taken, ice was broken.

This year UIKonf social events are stronger than ever and include not only our traditional bike tour but also some new events like a visit to the Stasi Museum. You can find out about the social events here

Furthermore, we want our events this year to serve a special purpose: We would like to use them as a means to raise donations for charity - Given the situation with the Syrian refugee crisis, we decided to help the people who have been driven from their homes by the war in Syria. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who manage to reach the relative safety of Europe, there are millions of people who are suffering in Syria and its neighbouring countries.

You can register your social event ticket through the confirmation email you received after registering your main conference ticket (if you registered before February the 28th you should have received a separate email from us). There is no minimum price for the social event tickets, but we suggest a donation of 5€. Feel free to chip in more because 100% of the revenue from the social event ticket sales go to Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe (in German with a link to English) which is doing great work helping people who are on the run from the war in Syria.

Facebook workshop - Hackathon prizes - UIKonf App

Register for the Hackathon!

If you are attending the conference, you will have received an email to the register for the hackathon. Registration is currently limited to attendees only. If we have any of the 120 spots left by Friday night, we will open registration to the public.

We are happy to already announce some of the prices we will give away during the hackathon.

Hackathon Prizes

• AppCode licences by Jetbrains for 2 teams
• 3 Estimote developer packs (iBeacons)
• 1 Hipster Bike Package (Singlespeed Bike, Kryptonite Schloss, Ass Saver, Knogs Lampen) sponsored by TapGlue

React Native Workshop by Facebook

We are happy to also host two workshops by Facebook Engineer Nick Lockwood. The workshop will be an introduction to React Native from a native iOS developer's perspective. Nick will cover:

• What React Native is, and why you would use it
• Building and debugging a React Native application
• Integrating React Native views into an existing app
• Creating native iOS modules and views for use in a React application

Each workshop will include a presentation and live coding demonstration.

The workshops are free to attend and take place on Monday and Tuesday from 11:30am to 1pm in the small room upstairs in Heimathafen. If you want to attend, be sure to be on time to get a seat.

UIKonf App

We've seen some of you creating and sharing Berlin guides and schedule PDFs for UIKonf. Thank you for that!

We've been busy as well. Maxim created the UIKonf App that contains the schedule and additional information about locations.

UICollectionView workshop by Paweł Dudek

UICollectionView is a very powerful component in UIKit. Every iOS developer has heard about it, at least he should. It seems to be pretty straight forward and easy to use and manipulate. That is true, however… not entirely. UIColletionView has a lot of potential, which can be overwhelming and dangerous to careless programmer.

We provide great overview of the UICollectionView and related classes! In our workshop we cover following topics:

1. Introduction to UICollectionView: You’ll learn what it really is and what are its core components. You’ll write your first collection view code (if you haven’t done it before earlier).
2. Custom Collection View Layouts: This is more advanced. It will bring you to the world of custom layouts which is really fun. This part very carefully walks through the process of creating and configuring your own layout and shares lots of useful tips.
3. Layout Transitions: In this part you’ll explore the power of collection view and probably the coolest feature - automatic and interactive layout transitions. During the series of exercises you’ll learn how to design and create your own animations and transitions.
4. Dynamics & Collection Views: You’ll learn that binding UIKit Dynamics with UICollectionView isn’t that hard and enables you to create beautiful visual effects.

Prerequisites for attendance:

• Mac with latest developer tools installed
• Knowledge of Objective-C and generic iOS knowledge — you don’t have to be an iOS ninja, but we do require basic knowledge and understanding of how the OS works
• Humor and hunger for knowledge!

Time and Location:

The workshop runs from 10:00 to 18:00 and will take place on Saturday April 11, 2015 in the Wooga office.

Schedule

• 10:00 - 10:30 Introduction
• 10:30 - 12:00 Introduction to UICollectionView
• 12:00 - 12:15 Break
• 12:15 - 13:45 Custom Collection View Layouts
• 13:45 - 14:30 Lunch Break
• 14:30 - 16:00 Layout Transitions
• 16:15 - 16:30 Break
• 16:30 - 18:00 Dynamics & Collection Views

UIKonf Scholarships

Since UIKonf started, we offered student tickets at a greatly reduced price to make it easier for the members of our community to attend who are just starting out and can't afford the full price, yet.

This year we are happy to introduce UIKonf scholarships!

The scholarships are different from the student tickets in two ways:

1. They are free! Normal scholarships fully cover the conference ticket. We will try to help with travel costs if we can but due to our limited budget we are not promising anything.
2. They are merit and need based: we are looking creative and talented developers who really need our help to be able to attend the conference.

Our goal with the scholarships is to award budding developers with limited means. So please don't apply if you are already some years into your career and have job or a stable income as a freelancer.

We are looking forward to reviewing your applications!

Calling for Papers for UIKonf 2015

Happy New Year everyone! We are very happy to announce Natasha (the Robot) Murashev and Maxim Cramer as confirmed speakers for UIKonf 2015 as well as the opening the call for paper for UIKonf 2015.

Submit your proposal for UIKonf 2015
Everyone can participate in the process of selecting the talks for this year's UIKonf by either proposing a talk or commenting on proposals. The idea is simple. You propose a presentation until February 15th. Others will help refine and focus it by making suggestions. You keep updating your proposal bearing those suggestions in mind. We will then collectively whittle down the set of proposals to those that have been selected for the day.

Deadline for submittal: February 15th
Deadline for final changes: February 22nd
Voting period: February 23rd - March 1st

Talks should be no longer than 30 minutes plus discussion time. To get an idea which topics are most sought after, read what people told us in our survey. We are looking forward to your proposals!