Review by a mobile novice: MobDevCon 3rd July 2013.

I wasn’t convinced when I first heard about MobDevCon, as someone who had never done any mobile development- was it really worth spending not only my hard earned cash on but also a precious day of holiday? Thankfully I decided it was and booked a Super Early Bird ticket in about March for a bargain price of £50. As the event got closer I kept thinking that maybe I had made a mistake and I’d feel completely out of place and wouldn’t understand anything. I was wrong.

The keynote Neil Garner who spoke about Near Field Communication, something I’d never really known much about, started the day off brilliantly. He gave a high level view of the possibilities that this new technology offers us. The talk was engaging and left me wishing I wasn’t an ‘iPhone addict’ that didn’t have the technology in my device.


My favourite speaker of the whole day however had to be Ruth John, personally having never felt capable of creating a mobile app, Ruth opened up all sorts of opportunities in my mind, and I felt genuinely inspired. I think it’s great that web technologies are starting to evolve into mobile technologies. It definitely opens the door to a lot of web developers to try their hand at something different.

I chose to only attend the talks and to avoid the workshops but still felt a bit daunted by the titles of some of the talks, worried that they’d be at a really advanced level and it would go straight over my head. I can completely assure you they didn’t; I think they were at a suitable level for the majority of people. There were some more technical talks but each speaker seemed to take into account that there were both novices and hardened professionals in the room.

Lastly the venue, for me the venue was amazing, avoiding the hassle of the city and spending the day at such a marvellous centre of innovation made a lovely change to normal. The free parking was definitely a bonus too. I can’t wait for next year.