Past Talks

July 2025 @ Accenture

Join us as we walk through our challenging yet rewarding journey of launching our first app.

We'll explore the initial hurdles, the pivotal rebuild, and the strategies that led to our apps's current success and future enhancements.

Witness our transformation from doubt to delight and discover what's next on our roadmap.

Mike Dwyer is Senior Product Manager at Planet Sport, where he leads the development of mobile apps for the UK’s largest independent sports media publisher.

Since joining in 2023, he has established and grown the mobile app team, launched new features, and driven user research and design for upcoming apps. Mike’s expertise spans cross-functional team leadership, agile delivery, and championing user-centric mobile experiences.

Gabrielle Earnshaw has been in tech and engineering for years, and for the last 12 has focused entirely on mobile. She has built apps, led mobile teams, led a mobile practice and been the CTO of a successful mobile app startup.

She observed that the leaders who sat above those mobile apps often made bad decisions, with expensive consequences, because they didn’t have the insight that ‘mobile’ is different to web and backend.

So she founded Making Mobile Simple, and today she helps technology leaders - who aren’t mobile specialists - build successful mobile apps and run effective mobile teams.

She has been working with the team at Planet Sport for the last year.

June 2025 @ Sky

It’s widely reported that Apple are late to the AI party. But are they really? And does it even matter? Let’s dive into what we can achieve with the new Foundation Models API, what’s still missing and most importantly how we can best draw on it to really help our users.

Oliver Binns is an experienced software engineer based in London, but originally from West Yorkshire. After attaining an IET accredited master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of York, he started his career building websites in PHP and JavaScript, before pivoting into native iOS development. He has worked on highly-rated mobile apps for airlines, healthcare organisations and even government departments. Oliver was shortlisted for British Computer Society’s Engineer of the Year 2024.

May 2025 @ AND Digital

Presented as part Google I/O: Extended 2025

The Android landscape is evolving rapidly with AI-driven UIs, Kotlin and Compose Multiplatform, server-driven UIs, and the rise of low-code development. This talk explores key trends shaping Android in 2025, from smarter UI personalization to cross-platform efficiencies and new form factors like foldables. Stay ahead with insights into where Android development is headed next.

As a seasoned app developer with over 8 years experience, Harriet Taylor has been integral in the creation of the android app for the UK’s top automotive market place, Auto Trader. With a masters degree in electronic engineering and a focus on innovation, she specialises in user-centric solutions and proof of concepts, both client and server side, using Java & Kotlin. She is dedicated to promoting diversity in technology, particularly empowering women in tech through advocacy and inclusive environments.

May 2025 @ AND Digital

Presented as part Google I/O: Extended 2025

Android 16 is just about here, and with it comes an interesting new feature - App Functions. What are App Functions, what are they for, and how do I use them? In this session we'll dive into the framework changes in Android 16, the un-published AndroidX libraries, and try to build something that uses this mysterious new functionality.

Jamie Sanson is a Google Developer Expert for Android. In his spare time he likes to build things - from apps, to mechanical keyboards, to brewing systems - and photographs anything and everything. Jamie is currently working as a Staff Software Engineer in the Apps Platform team at Marks and Spencer.

April 2025 @ Enablis

A look at how Xamarin evolved, the different things that ‘Xamarin’ came to mean (Native Apps, Class Libraries, much later Xamarin.Forms.. but also Xamarin Studio, plus tooling like HockeyApp / App Center and more) ..

• Advantages of the Xamarin avenues, but also pitfalls and problems.

• Where to turn now on each of those paths (not necessarily a case of ‘choose .NET MAUI’):

• Native Apps in C#, but also a look at Swift and Kotlin, discussing advantages of either approach

• And for Cross Platform: .NET MAUI, Uno Platform, Avalonia UI, or non-C# offerings.

• IDE choices, and replacements for tooling like App Center

Mike Irving is a Microsoft MVP, and the Co-organiser of Dot Net North and Macc Tech. He started programming as a young child on the Dragon 32 micro computer, and later on a ZX Spectrum. Professionally, Mike started out in web development on the Microsoft Stack. However, and in more recent times he has been heavily involved in mobile development, both native and cross-platform. Though regularly coding Swift, Kotlin and JavaScript, C# / .NET has remained a constant through his career.

March 2025 @ Royal Armouries

KMP enables shared code across different operating systems whilst maintaining native performance and flexibility without taking over your entire codebase. This talk explores why KMP is worth adopting for both small and large scale mobile apps.

Rafsanjani Aziz is a Senior Software Engineer specialising in native Android development with a strong focus on Kotlin Multiplatform. He is currently an engineer at NatWest Group, working on the Coutts Wealth mobile application.

March 2025 @ Royal Armouries

We often spend so much time and effort getting apps into production that we forget that what comes after is just as of not more important than before. This talk aims to highlight and demystify the importance of thinking about analytics in your mobile app and the importance of thinking about it early"

Matt Robertson has a proven track record of leading large distributed teams to successfully implement technical solutions. He has played a pivotal role in developing innovative, customer-focused, value-driven applications. By night, Matt switches gears as a passionate Game Streamer, showcasing his love for technology and gaming.

February 2025 @ White Rose Education

Many businesses seek to deliver seamless experiences across iOS, Android, and the web. With React Native, you can already build mobile apps for both iOS and Android from a single codebase. Now, with Expo Router v3, you can go a step further and create web and server applications within the same project.

John Galloway is a technology consultant and co-founder of Doza Consulting. Passionate about the mobile platform, he’s been working in the mobile space for almost a decade. In his spare time, he's an aspiring classic car mechanic and a slow runner.