Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend San Francisco’s DeveloperWeek Conference, where more than 4,000 technology enthusiasts, students, and professionals gathered for a week of building and learning. More than 80 speakers from companies specializing in everything from cloud computing, to social, to analytics shared ground-breaking insights and industry trends. Additionally, more than 1,000 designers and developers came together to build new Web and mobile apps during a weeklong hackathon. While I didn’t get a chance to participate in the hackathon this year, it was truly motivating and inspiring to watch early ideas and concepts turn into real, functional products.
Christine Sou at DeveloperWeek 2016
In the spirit of “Build Something,” which was this year’s conference theme, DeveloperWeek offered a number of workshops ranging from a crash-course in Javascript to a product presentation on best practices for mobile growth. The air about the conference venue was full of friendly competition, a strong desire to learn, and an eagerness to build great products. I also spent some time at the Expo, where companies showcased their latest products and spoke to why they were important to consumers or enterprise businesses. I enjoyed this part the most because it gave me the opportunity to connect with others and hear about their experiences building the products.
Reflecting back on the day, there are three key themes that stood out the most:
Mobile First: It’s true, mobile is definitely the hottest platform, and often times the only platform, that mattered to the majority of the companies represented at this year’s DeveloperWeek. From big companies like Dji to smaller startups like Pushmote, the priority is designing an interface that works best on a mobile device.
Users Define Quality: “Quality” can be defined in a number of ways, depending on who you’re speaking with. For example, in a session hosted by Applause, who’s focus is on helping companies achieve app quality, they pitched that users define quality. Users need your product to work well – it not only needs to be reliable and secure, but users also need to trust that it works the way they expect it to. Anything below their expectation, and you run the risk of never capturing that user again. Users have plenty of options, so putting them first can help you determine what is an acceptable level of quality.
Technology Moves Almost Too Fast: Didn’t get a chance to learn Angular? Well, now there’s Angluar 2. Haven’t had a chance to develop an app in Objective-C, well now there’s Swift and React Native. There’s no shortage in the number of development technologies, and the learning curve just continues to grow. Which is a nice reminder that part of a company’s investment in employee growth should include investing in their education – something I’ve experienced first-hand at Trulia.
All told, while no product journey is the same, DeveloperWeek serves as a great reminder that hard work, passion, and open-mindedness to listen to feedback is critical to building something that people want to use. This is mirrored in our culture here at Trulia, and I’m excited to “build something” in our upcoming Innovation Week – stay tuned here for more on that.
