Bristol Branch

Speaker: Jim Galvin

Venue: University of Bristol , Room 1.11, Merchant Venturers Building

Please register for this event here. This event is free to members and non-members.

7:00pm Refreshments, 7:30pm Main Talk

Even in the last few years there have been significant changes to the Met Office with an ever growing range of services available, produced from a wide range of models using their newly-installed IBM Power-7 mainframe. Many of us will have seen and even experienced some of the more recent unpredictable weather both in the UK and around the world. So this talk will be a fascinating and informative look at the inside of weather forecasting.

Venue: University of Bristol , Room 1.11, Merchant Venturers Building

Speakers: Chris Brook & Jim Thomas

This is the last talk in the Mobile App Development Spring school. See the main article for the complete school program. Booking and payment is required.

How to market, sell and monetize your application

Chris will give an update on Bardowl progress to date. Share detailed information on the use of:

• Paid digital advertising for app installs (FB, iAd etc)
• PR
• Social Media
• Partnerships and Promotions

for getting people to install and then pay for your service within an application.

Testing Your App

Jim Thomas of Test and Verification Solutions will cover app testing in a mobile environment. How do you ensure your app, once developed, will run and perform as expected? He will address the important step of app testing in a mobile environment. He’ll cover:

• common testing challenges
• testing different aspects of your app
• use of emulators and real devices, and
• native, web and hybrid apps.

Venue: University of Bristol lecture theatre 1.18 in the Queens building.

Speakers: Hannah Tempest and Nan Xu

This is the third talk in the Mobile App Development Spring school. See the main article for the complete school program. Booking and payment is required.

Continuing on from the development session but you will learn more about the types of features that you may want to use to distinguish your application e.g. GPS, actuator, compass, building an attractive GUI, etc.

User centred design:

• Understanding your user
• Process from scamps to prototypes
• Future app strategy

Welcome to Bonjour on iOS:

• What is Bonjour and its concepts
• Bonjour API architecture and operations.
• Basic code walkthrough
• Simply application demo

Venue: University of Bristol , Room 1.11, Merchant Venturers Building

Speakers: Scott Alexander-Bown and Kieran Gutteridge

This is the second talk in the Mobile App Development Spring school. See the main article for the complete school program. Booking and payment is required.

Everything you need to know about developing an app; operating systems, development languages, SDK's etc. And how to test your application.

Kick start your Android app

In this session Scott will help you get started in the fantastic world of Android development. We'll short cut some of the common mistakes and leverage the awesome work of the Android development community. We'll take a whistle stop tour of some of the best libraries to supe up your app, make it look great and most importantly save a stack of development time! I'll also share personal experiences of making apps and comparisons with iOS. They'll be something for everyone form beginner to expert.

Getting started with iOS

In this session Kieran will help you get started with iOS development. We'll take a look round some of the tools and third party libraries that make life easier and faster. We'll also take a look at whats involved and required to be accepted into the iTunes app store.

Venue: University of Bristol , Room 1.11, Merchant Venturers Building

Speakers: Ben Reed & Gemma Coles

This is the first talk in the Mobile App Development Spring school. See the main article for the complete school program. Booking and payment is required.

An introduction to the whole ecosystem surrounding mobile phone application development, marketing, selling, etc.

Ben’s talk will cover:

• Developer tools & techniques
• Native apps, web applications and cross platform frameworks
• Testing methodologies
• Integration with complex back end systems

Gemma's talk will cover:

• The growth of the app industry & what's next
• Commercial AND compelling
• Making your app a success

Please register for this Event via Eventbright

This event is aimed at children, though adults are welcome as well.

The BCS is collaborating with @Bristol and the University of Bristol to bring you the Raspberry Pi Bootcamp. This day will involve a range of activities to help the beginner to get going and the expert to share ideas with others. The day is sponsored by ARM.

Details of the workshops will follow soon but you will need to register for the day (for free) to access the free workshops and tutorials

Both BCS Members and Non Members are welcome.

If you require any more information please contact me at simon.thorp@bcs.org

Speaker: Peter Taylor

Venue: University of Bristol , Room 1.11, Merchant Venturers Building

Please register for this event here. This event is free to members and non-members.

7:00pm Refreshments, 7:30pm Main Talk

We aren’t born to be professional level presenters but through this entertaining presentation the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ of good presentations are explored along with a ‘how to prepare’ for that all important event.

With a few simple lessons taught through the very medium of ‘presentation’ the audience will take away some great ideas for improving their own technique and ‘death by PowerPoint’ is definitely not the outcome.

Speakers: Darren Wilmshurst, Peter Morgan and Tim Cardinal

Venue: University of Bristol , Room 1.06, Merchant Venturers Building

Please register for this event here. This event is free to members and non-members. This will be preceded by the Branch AGM.

6:30AGM, 7:00pm Refreshments, 7:30pm Main Talk

The speakers provide insight into their experienced of using Agile in real world projects.

Testing is challenging in any environment – but especially so in an Agile development environment. Peter Morgan descries some of the testing learning points from his time at a multinational utility company in the electricity generation and supply industry in the vicinity of Gloucester – not many prizes for guessing the company. Agile methodologies present opportunities that not only benefit the Agile community, but also can be applied to more ‘traditional’ [some would say ‘clumsy’] life-cycle models. This presentation, therefore, could be of benefit to anyone in software and project management disciplines.

Adopting the best parts of Agile for non-IT projects

Over the past six months, Tim Cardinal has been leading a team to develop the new BCS Agile Certification Programme. In this talk, Tim will outline how he used different elements of Agile throughout the project, outlining the benefits but also the challenges of adopting a new approach for BCS.

Agile is Easy, Transformation ain’t (a personal journey)

Darren Wilmshurst will draw on his 28-year experience (no – he doesn’t look that old!) in the corporate world having worked with some world-class organisations. His first Agile Transformation was 8 years ago when he was Head of IT with a major ferry company. Now as a Director of Radtac and Head of Consultancy, he reflects on that (and other) Agile transformation; what went well and what didn’t and more importantly what he would have done differently.

Speaker: Professor Tony Pipe

Venue: Bristol Robotics Laboratory,
T Block, University of the West of England
See Venues for directions and maps

Please register for this event here.

This is a Joint event with the IET Bristol Branch

5.45pm - 6.00pm - Arrival / refreshments
6.00pm - 7.00pm - BRL open lab / networking
7.00pm - 7.45pm - Talk by Prof Tony Pipe
7.45pm - 8.00pm - Questions
8.00pm - close

Venue: Watershed, 1 Canon's Road, Harbourside, BS1 5TX Bristol

Speakers: Greville Commins & Matt Hatch

BEN, The Watershed, South West Founders, IET & BCS

Booking is required

Do you have any customers out there?

"Entrepreneurs often spend far too long perfecting their product and not enough time testing it with the market" – so says James Caan. He believes that instead of only spending 10% of the development time talking to customers, it should be more like 50%. By speaking to the market, businesses could solve problems sooner, assess whether the product will actually sell in quantity and maximise the profit potential. This will enhance their chance of raising finance, and being successful when they do launch.

This networking event aims to explore the journey faced by innovative businesses when identifying the optimum market segment for new products or services.

Our speakers will look at how to measure the size, and assess the growth potential,of your chosen market, even when your product/service is unique. So, when you next pitch your idea, you will be able to answer the questions – "How many potential customers are out there? What evidence have I got to support this? How can I find this information?"