YorkTechFest 2019

A Showcase Of Tech Non-Profit Communities

Monday 28th October 2019 6pm-9pm York Explore

What is YorkTechFest?

A Showcase Of Tech Non-Profit Communities

YorkTechFest is a community event in the City of York in celebration of and through collaboration of the volunteer tech community. In true spirit of the volunteer tech scene, we bring together communities on 1 evening showcasing a programme of speakers and interactive workshops.

Aimed at members of existing communities and also to those who would like to have a taster of what we do - come along and listen to sessions from a selection of non-profit tech communities on the evening.

To be delivered in a festival format - we represent technical communities including:

Festival Programme

Main Stage

18:55 - Working Through The Problem - Chad Gowler

We talk a lot about user research being a “team sport” but this doesn’t always work out in reality. It can be tricky for non-researchers to make time in their schedules on something not seen as their “day job”. This talk is about why taking part in user research is a vital task for developers, ways you can start talking to dev teams and managers about making space in sprints for research, and how analysis can create a better product. We will also look at how to do research without a researcher effectively and where even small amounts of research can yield important insights.

Front End York

19:10 - What can you build with .NET? - Kevin Smith

The first version of .NET framework was released in 2002, a lot has chanced since then. .NET now goes beyond building "Windows Applications", and has opened the door to Web, Mobile, IoT and more. We'll look at the platforms, languages and enviroments that are now supported.

DotNet York

19:30 - How to Start Coding - Irene Sarigu

Want to learn how to code but don’t know where to start? Learning to code but need more resources? Coding but wanting to improve? In this talk you’ll discover a range of resources that you can use to get started or improve your coding skills.

York Code Dojo

19:40 - Explore Labs - Dave Fleming

“You don’t know what exciting ideas are inside your head until you go there: your dreams start here”, this award winning Arts Council England-funded community arts project runs activities at York Explore and in the network of libraries across the city of York. It’s an experimental place where absolutely everyone is welcome - to team up with professional artists, digital makers, techies, coders, researchers and more.

It’s positively playful - mixing up art with DIY tech to celebrate the creative diversity of York’s people, places and communities.

Dave will share his experiences of coordinating this ground breaking and innovative community arts project where stories, tech, history and creativity collide.

Explore York

Interval 19:50 - 20:15

20:15 - Building user interfaces declaratively with SwiftUI - Part 1 - Henry Allsuch

What is SwiftUI?

We will be doing a live coding demo looking through the organisation of a SwiftUI app, how to get started beyond a hello world.

YorkSwift

20:20 - Building user interfaces declaratively with SwiftUI - Part 2 - Alex Logan

SwiftUI everywhere...

We’ll be taking a look at how you can take your SwiftUI app and with little or no changes run it on every device, from the 38mm Apple watch to 65” TV’s.

YorkSwift

20:25 - Building user interfaces declaratively with SwiftUI - Part 3 - Dan Wartnaby

SwiftUI for everyone...

Accessibility is difficult and is rarely part of anyone’s MVP. We’ll take a look at what SwiftUI offersout-of-the-box.

YorkSwift

20:30 - Everything you need to know about Unity in 15 mins - Olly Nicholson

A 15 minute catchup with where the Unity engine is right now (New stuff from Unite) how to get it, use it and where to find the best resources

York Games Developer

20:45 - Understanding your processor - Gareth Lloyd

Writing performant code is hard, particularly when what is performant completely depends on context.

In this talk I'll cover some of the smart things your processor is doing to make your code run fast. I'll demonstrate that understanding what is going on in your processor can help you write better fast code.

ACCU York

21:00 - Tech Community Shout outs - Community Leaders

A chance to hear about What the Tech communities do, why and where :-)

Sponsors

ETAS

ETAS provides innovative solutions, engineering services, consulting, training, and support for the development of embedded systems for the automotive industry and other sectors of the embedded industry. Security solutions in the area of embedded systems are offered by the ETAS subsidiary ESCRYPT. ETAS is represented with international subsidiaries and sales offices in 12 countries in Europe, North and South America, and Asia.

RCMG Consulting

RCMG CONSULTING specialise in Microsoft Data Platform, SQL Server Administration, Development, Disaster Recovery, Cloud Solutions and Project Management. We have successfully managed and delivered projects worth over £100 million for FTSE 100 companies in the UK. We can help you with Governance and Compliance, Design and Development, Continuous integration, Business Intelligence, Performance Tuning and Project Management. We can supplement your existing DBA with on-site or remote help with security, backups, governance, DPA/GDPR compliance, configuration, installations and upgrades, virtualisation and infrastructure as well as end to end design, development and implementation and performance testing and tuning of your SQL Server Solution.

Legend Club Management Systems

Legend Club Management Systems, based in York, is a specialist provider of a complete Leisure Management Software Solution for health clubs, leisure centres, universities, sports parks and other leisure and recreation outlets. Today, Legend employs over 100 staff in a growing, vibrant organisation that is dedicated to serving its customers.

Pierbridge WiseTech Global Group

Pierbridge started with a vision that we could fundamentally transform the way businesses deliver goods to their clients. Our innovations have made that vision a reality. Pierbridge is now a global software company and a recognized leader in the industry and a part of the WiseTech Global group. We are a leading developer and provider of software solutions to the logistics industry globally. Our customers include more than 12,000 of the world’s logistics companies across 130 countries.

Inter-vention IT

Inter-vention is Yorkshire based Tech recruitment consultancy with a difference. We match our candidates with companies that not only appreciate their technical skills but also their personalities and work/life requirements. We make sure everyone understands the process of nailing that new role by being prepared and confident. It’s a two way street. We understand that it’s just as important that the candidate ‘chooses’ their new employer, as it is for the client to ‘choose’ their new employee. If you are looking for a new IT/Technical role in the Yorkshire area, contact us at a time that is convenient for you and see how we can help you.

ACCU

ACCU is an organisation for anyone interested in developing and improving programming skills. ACCU welcomes everyone who is interested in any programming language. ACCU supports its members by hosting mailing lists, running a yearly conference, publishing journals and organising online study groups.

Tickets

Speaker Bios

Chad Gowler

@kitation

Chad is a developer turned user researcher based in Sheffield. They have also dipped their toe into project management, interaction design and event organising. They are a firm believer in inclusive software and digital inclusion. In their spare time, they can be found in various usergroups talking about gender, mental health and web accessibility.

Kevin Smith

@kev_bite

Kevin is an enthusiastic software engineer who is actively involved with community events. He runs Dot Net York and dotnetsheff, and casually speaks at user groups. He is always keen to contributed open source project, one of the main ones being MassTransit.

He has worked across a broad range of domains including: law, travel, finance and analytics. He is a keen contributor to open source projects.

Irene Sarigu

@winnieire

Irene is a self-taught web developer and computer science student in York. She enjoys learning about all kinds of technologies and she’s passionate about design and user-driven development.

Olly Nicholson

@Olly_3D

Working as a Solutions Engineer at Unity, Olly Nicholson covers wide ground, presenting talks and training at events across EMEA and further afield such as GDC and Unite, troubleshooting issues for artists and developers using Unity.

Specialist areas of expertise include VR, lighting, animation, effects, optimisation & art pipelines. Previously Olly has worked on a number of AAA console titles over his 12 years in Games Development, including Technical Art on Split-Second at Disney's Black Rock Studios. Across development he undertook troubleshooting, tools development and training as well as modelling, rigging, animation and infrastructure for animated assets and environments. Prior to that he worked on many other published titles from PS1 to Xbox360 including Moto GP ’06 and ’07.

Henry Allsuch

@henryallsuch

Henry gets excited about all things mobile and enjoys building native mobile apps which have great UX and design. He is YorkSwift meetup organiser and loves helping others learn more about Swift.

Alex Logan

@swiftyalex

Alex is an iOS developer and Apple fanatic that enjoys pushing the boundaries of what Swift can do.

Dan Wartnaby

@danwartnaby

Dan is an iOS developer that loves building apps todo goodand can often be found coding at 3am despite now being old enough to know better.

Gareth Lloyd

@IgnitionWeb

: IBMer Gareth is a C++ super geek, on cold winter nights he stares into the sun-setting horizon wondering if tomorrow he will turn to Rust. (Also organises ACCU York)

Tech Meetups

Donations

You can still donate to our to our crowdfunding call

Event Partners