Check out Part 1 of my adventures in California.

Apart from a simpler trip from San Francisco to Berkeley, day 2 of BADCamp started out much the same as day 1. The Mobile Summit was held in the same room as the UI/UX Summit. The morning's sessions were presented by John Albin Wilkins (of Zen fame) and Sam Richard, a front-end developer who currently works for NBC Universal. John's presentation was an update on the status of Drupal 8's Mobile Initiative and an overall perspective on the importance of developing for mobile. Sam's presentation (which he called a "Fireside Chat" to make it seem a bit more intimate in such a large space) was focused on SASS and the power that it wields. We had just started to use SASS for theme development here at OpenConcept (including for the latest theme on OpenConcept.ca), so I found this session particularly interesting.

After breaking for lunch, Day 2 of BADCamp resumed with a presentation by Chris Ruppel on the power of JavaScript when developing for Mobile. Next up was Lewis Nyman who gave a very interesting demonstration of how to develop for touch devices. Touch devices are incredibly powerful and becoming more and more common. When browsing the web on a mobile device, one often finds oneself frustrated that they can't navigate a particular site or perform certain tasks in the same way that they are used to when working on a laptop or desktop. With multi-touch gestures becoming more consistent across smartphones and tablets and mobile detection becoming more straightforward, this problem has shifted from being the fault of the device to being the fault of the site's developer. As developers, it is now our challenge to learn to develop for a whole new set of devices and a whole new set of web users. And mobile is taking over! According to an article I came across, mobile traffic in the year 2011 was 8 times what it was in 2010 (which was coincidentally the total amount of internet traffic only ten years previous). If you're not considering mobile in your design and development process, you'll soon be left behind.

Following Lewis' presentation on the uses of touch in mobile development, Kevin O'Leary of Acquia presented New Interaction Patterns in Mobile for Drupal. Kevin had spoken at the UI/UX Summit on the previous day and I was quite impressed with his presentation style. For his contribution to the mobile discussion, he focused on a better admin interface for anyone who works with a Drupal site.

To close out the Mobile Summit, there was a presentation on using Drupal to develop iOS Native Apps for iPhones and iPads. While this presentation dealt with content that none of the others really approached, it didn't really interest me personally, as app development is not something I've had any experience with.

Come back soon for Part 3 of my California adventure!