Robotics and AI Chatbots

What happens when you give a robot an LLM to operate with? That has been a question that many have been asking, but few have built outside of large R&D departments at secretive companies. In this session Luke will present his multi-year project of building a 3D printed robot, and the journey of adding AI to it to provide an interface that turns it into another employee of your company.

5 Tips to Improve your Mobile Experience

After working with dozens of companies over the past decade, some major trends have appeared that can improve your entire mobile business. Too many times businesses waste time building features no one will use, and miss out on taking their business forward. In this talk, Luke Wallace, VP of Application Engineering at Bottle Rocket, will discuss 5 of the biggest ways you can improve the velocity, quality, and satisfaction with the mobile experiences you build. These can be applied to mobile apps, websites, wearables, or AR/VR, and come from over a decade of experience with consumer-facing companies like Southwest Airlines, Chick-fil-A, Caesars Hotels, and many more.

Building your Android Career

Whether you're just starting out, or have been doing Android for years, you may be wondering where you can go from here? There are a lot of options and factors to consider, but the opportunities are virtually endless, especially with remote work becoming so common.

This talk will cover various types of career paths, some qualities of people that are successful in each, and give insight into many of the Android opportunities that are available. There's a huge difference between an Android lead at an agency, an Android lead at a mobile product company, and an Android lead at a Fortune 100 company.

Aspects covered:
* General Career paths
* Self improvement tips
* Management vs. Technical paths
* Networking methods
* Personal Brand
* Pay scale at all levels
* Company cultures

Putting Android in your Android

Android has been embedded in all sorts of devices, but what happens when you use it to control a humanoid robot like InMoov? By integrating 3D printing, Arduino, and Android, Luke Wallace has built a robot that can not only move and speak, but also see and react to its environment. Using MLKit for facial recognition, Firebase for data storage, and AutoML for building a TensorFlow lite model, all the pieces come together to make something greater than the sum of the parts. Have you considered a future where your smart devices not only react to your commands, but also move around your world, and understand what they’re seeing?

This talk will explore how to combine several tools into one larger project, and show some examples of what's possible with MLKit running on a low end Android device.

Pro Tips for getting hired from a grizzled old Hiring Manager

Whether you're new to the platform, or have been doing Android for years, you've probably thought about the job opportunities, and how you go about interviewing.

We'll start with some tips on crafting a good resume, what to include, and what to avoid. Then cover some of the key topics to brush up on before an interview, and what hiring managers generally look for. It will also include some tips on what to look for in a job, and what kinds of industries are looking for Android developers at the moment.

This will also include tips on what NOT to do, like asking these questions in a technical interview, which I've had to awkwardly answer:
* You guys get paid on time, right?
* If it's an unlimited vacation policy, what's the maximum I can take? And how soon?
* Do I need to get a smartphone?

As a bonus, this session will also include some tips for negotiating a good salary, and an overview of what kind of benefits you should be thinking about, and what is offered.

Crafting a Learning Culture

As developers, we love to learn, but oftentimes the projects we work on limit the technologies we're exposed to. How do you make sure your team is learning new things, without getting sidetracked? Come hear how one organization has built a learning culture that helps dozens of developers working on multiple projects build each other up. It's not about a single method, it's about a combination of techniques that keep everyone engaged and growing, without feeling overburdened. We'll discuss monthly, weekly, and even daily methods to get your team talking, and ways to keep learning while still building great apps!

The Life of a Developer

This introductory talk can be customized for students of all ages, including elementary age, college age, or evening adults working in other fields. It covers all aspects of working in a Software Development company including:
* Working in Teams
* Working with Clients
* Daily Life as a Developer
* Exciting Opportunities
* Working Remote

Variations of this talk have been given at local public school, private schools, multiple Universities, and even tech conferences.