Droidcon NYC: Submissions Status

We had a big meetup Tuesday and lots of chats about what people are submitting for Droidcon. Pretty much everybody said they wanted ideas for topics. They also wanted to know what people were submitting. So here it is. 

Last year we made the submission list public, which wasn’t everybody’s favorite way of surfacing talk submissions. I get that. However, when it was public, it was easier to figure out what to submit. I might still make the topic list visible, at least to people who are submitting talks. That’s TBD.

For now, however, I went through the current list and came up with some trends. I counted up talk submissions about various topics to get an idea of what was “big”. I’ll share that, and some editorial thoughts.

1. “Best Practices” is kind of the winner. That’s a broad topic, but a lot of talks are about how to best build apps, architecture, team structure, etc.
2. Testing in general is also big. 10-ish submissions.
3. Custom UI components, UI performance, etc, 7 submissions.
4. Security got 6. That includes 2 on fingerprint readers, then the rest on encryption and general security concerns.
5. Tools got a few. That includes Studio, but other products.
6. Cross platform got 6. That includes ionic, iOS architecture. Nobody submitted for Xamarin, react native, or anything else. Might be a topic.
7. Storage got a few. Realm specifically got 2. They’re both the same, though, so while I’m sure one will be in, if you don’t run a popular podcast, its probably not yours. Just FYI 😉
8. A few talks about performance, general an ui specific.
9. RX has 4 talks. Anything there should be new or specific to a certain aspect.
10. Dagger has 3. Model/View/Presenter has 4 different submissions.

There are 3 submissions that deal with AOSP and/or building custom hardware. That’s interesting. 2 on IOT.

Topics that have surprisingly few submissions:

1. VR/AR – 1
2. Android N – 2
3. Kotlin – 2
4. Design – 3
5. Building for either outside the US, not English, or both – 1

Weird stats. There are 2 submissions that fall under what I’d call “Life Coaching”. There’s a swift on Android talk, but about actually doing it, not speculation (which I’d watch). Three submissions about how to use Git?

I think we need more design submissions. I don’t know if we know enough yet about what’s coming for VR and Android, but more VR would be good.  Something cool with tango would be great.  I’m surprised about the small number of Kotlin talks.

More deep dives into specific parts of Android or frameworks are good. Examples, TextView and 60fps. Surprising performance tests. That kind of thing.

Comment with other ideas if you have them. I’ll update as the situation evolves.

In the meantime, submit your talks here.