Past Talks

November 2025 @ Genio

Join Colin as he tells you the tale of building his first native iOS app and how following Apple’s recommended development approach left him unable to achieve his vision, leading to him killing his app

Colin Wren is a Senior Software Engineer by day and wannabe Product Engineer at night. He helps run the LeedsJS and MoT Leeds meet ups and when not writing code can be found failing to merge Chiptune and Doom Metal into some horrible hybrid that no one but him would ever want to listen

No touch. No gestures. Can you still build a Great UX?

October 2025 @ hedgehog lab

Building applications for TVs, kiosks, and other remote-controlled devices isn’t the same as building for mobile. There’s no touch. No gestures. Just a handful of buttons—left, right, up and down. That constraint changes everything.

In this talk, you’ll learn how to design and build Flutter interfaces for these input-limited environments using the power of focus navigation. We’ll dive into Flutter’s focus system, directional navigation logic, and how to create clean, intuitive UIs that users can control from across the room.

And the best part? The presentation is the app. Shaped like a TV-style Flutter interface, the talk itself will demonstrate how to structure widgets, style your UI, and guide the user using focus alone.

If you’re used to building for touchscreens, this session will help you shift your thinking—and show you how to create smooth, accessible, and fun experiences on remote-controlled devices.

By Vadym Pinchuk

October 2025 @ hedgehog lab

A concise look at visual regression testing: comparing Flutter golden tests and native iOS/Android snapshot testing—how both use baseline images to catch unintended UI changes, where Flutter’s unified rendering brings speed and consistency, and where native approaches stay closer to real platform nuances. We’ll cover strengths, pitfalls (flakiness, baseline churn), choosing the right granularity, and practical tips.

Owain Brown is a seasoned mobile developer with over 10 years of experience, specialising in iOS and Swift development. Currently leading mobile engineering teams at hedgehog lab, he has expanded his expertise to encompass Android, Flutter, and React Native development across diverse platforms. Throughout his career, Owain has focused on software engineering excellence, with much of his work involving collaboration with financial companies managing large-scale codebases. He specialises in helping organisations evolve their mobile architecture to meet modern demands and scalability requirements.

Once a guest speaker at WWDC (it's less interesting than it sounds). Unashamed Apple fan boy, proud nerd, rugby watcher, father of two. Raised in Sunderland, North East resident (accent uncertain). Half Welsh, but using the English pronunciation.

September 2025 @ NatWest Accelerator

In this session, we will take an introductory look at mobile security, the threats we face as mobile developers and the steps you can take to become a 'security champion' for your app to protect your business and, most importantly, your users.

Ed Holloway-George is an Android Developer and Google Developer Expert originally from Oxford, UK but now currently residing in Nottingham, UK.

An Android developer for 10+ years; Ed now works for Kraken as a Lead Developer having previously worked on well-known applications such as ASOS, National Trust, My Oxfam, Snoop, Carling Tap and many more.

In his spare time, Ed can be found playing trading card games and posting pictures of his dog.

September 2025 @ NatWest Accelerator

A look back at the first two years of Leeds Mobile, and a glimpse into what is coming in the future. 

Luke Stringer has been professionally building software and leading development teams since 2012. He finds writing code and working with people just as fascinating and rewarding as each other. Luke lives in Sheffield and works for Tide as Head of Engineering for Experience Foundations. He has been running the monthly Leeds Mobile meetup since 2023. When not at work, he plays guitar, solves Rubik’s cubes, and enjoys spending time with his partner and son.

August 2025 @ Wizu Workspace

Learn everything you need to know about Passkeys, why we need them, what they are and how to implement them in your apps

Tim Condon is a Swift developer from Manchester, UK and one half of the Vapor Core Team. He sits on the Swift Server Workgroup and delivers talks and workshops on Vapor and server-side Swift around the world. He runs Broken Hands, a server-side Swift consultancy and works with clients around the world to help them deploy Swift on their backends. He also co-organises the ServerSide.swift conference – the world’s first and only conference focused on server-side Swift.

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.