For over ten years, I lived and breathed Android. I knew the ecosystem inside out. Then, I decided to hit the reset button and become a full-stack developer. A scary moment, what was I thinking?
This session is the story of that transition, one that is still ongoing. I'll take you through the highs of discovering new technologies and the lows of feeling like a beginner all over again. I'll share the eye-opening "aha!" moments, the skills that transfer, and the ones that don't, the frustrating "WTFs," and the practical lessons learned along the way. 
I'll also demonstrate how knowledge of Modern Android Development is a competitive advantage in the broader software landscape. It's not a journey away from Android, but a return with a renewed perspective.


Danny Preussler

From Android to Full-Stack: A Developer's Journey to the Great Unknown

Join us on an enlightening quest as we unravel the realm of Compose UI performance. With a multitude of tools at our disposal, the challenge lies in knowing where to start and how to choose. Together, we'll diagnose and optimize a flawed app in real-time, providing you with practical insights and guidelines to navigate the world of Compose UI performance!

Agenda:
- Introducing the Janky App: Showcasing the flawed app and its evident performance issues.
- Performance Toolkit: Exploring diagnostic tools like Layout Inspector, Systrace, etc.
- Live Coding Demonstration: Real-time diagnosis and optimization of the janky app to improve its performance.
- Assessing Performance: Evaluating the app's performance before and after optimization.
- Building the Runbook & Discussing Performance Pitfalls: Creating a troubleshooting guide for common Compose UI performance bottlenecks, with strategies to avoid them.

By journey's end, you'll know where to start and what tools to start with to diagnose and fix common performance issues in your Compose UI!

Akshay Chordiya

Boosting Compose UI from Sluggish to Snappy

In a world obsessed with cloud connectivity, what if your app could sync data directly with nearby devices, without hitting the cloud? This session introduces peer-to-peer (P2P) sync patterns for Android that enable apps to share data over LAN, Wi-Fi Direct, or BLE. We’ll walk through building resilient, offline-first apps where data flows between devices securely and automatically, perfect for field deployments, disaster zones, or privacy-focused use cases.
Whether you’re building a logistics tool, health records app, or multiplayer experience. This talk will show you how to build apps that sync serverlessly!


Pulkit Midha

Peer-to-Peer Sync on Android: Building Offline-First Apps That Talk to Each Other

Often, when writing Compose code, we need to interact with code that does not support Compose. One sample of those it could be the Google Maps SDK, which does not provide out-of-the-box support for Compose. The Android Maps Compose library was written to overcome this limitation.

In this session, we will explain some of the techniques used to develop android-maps-compose, and provide a Compose interface for a library that did not originally support it. You'll learn how we leveraged interoperability techniques, such as the Android View bridge, to wrap non-Compose components, manage their lifecycles safely within Compose, and expose idiomatic, composable APIs to end users.

Whether you're looking to wrap legacy UI code or offer a modern Compose interface on top of a traditional Android library, this talk will provide you with practical tools, design patterns, and architectural considerations to help you “composify” just about anything.

Enrique Lopez Manas

Composifying Your Not-Compose Code

Don't let your app look broken on tablets and foldables! The large-screen future is here, and Jetpack Compose provides a powerful, declarative toolkit to build beautiful, adaptive UIs. This session dives deep into the practical strategies for creating layouts that fluidly respond to any screen size. We'll move beyond theory and build a real-world adaptive UI, exploring the material 3 adaptive library, WindowSizeClasses, custom layout logic, and state management patterns that make adaptability a core feature of your app, not an afterthought.

Chris Assigbe

Mastering Adaptive UI with Jetpack Compose

Jetpack Compose provides us with easy to use APIs we can use to craft amazing experiences. In this talk, I shall go over multiple ways we can leverage them to create an interface that stands out from the rest, while feeling great and accessible to all.

Ian Leshan

Crafting delightful experiences

How we cut Android start-up times by 60%. We’ll cover the bottlenecks that slow apps down, how to tackle them, and the tools that help speed things up.

Reuben Bichage

Optimizing Android Start-Up Times

Passenger check-ins and parcel dispatch are core workflows for travel operators—but they’re often slowed by manual data entry. In this session, discover how the Mobile team at BuuPass leveraged Android’s built-in intent-based QR code scanning to streamline operations and cut wait times by over 50%. We break down how to set up CAMERA and SCAN permissions, capture and process scan results via Broadcast Receivers, and validate them against backend data.

Samuel Juma

From Queues to Quick Scans: Cutting Wait Times with Android’s Built-in QR Code Scanning

Internationalization and localization are notoriously complex, especially for educational platforms where content needs to be understandable, accessible, and culturally relevant. In this talk, I’ll share how the Oppia Android team built a custom locale system to deliver interactive lessons to learners in their preferred languages, even those not officially supported by Android's default Locale class.

Our motivation stemmed from a core product goal: making quality education accessible globally. Oppia's lessons are translated by humans, both text and audio, then integrated into the app. But to present this content reliably and contextually across diverse languages that may not be natively supported by Android like Hinglish and Naija, we needed a flexible, extensible locale system. So we engineered our own solution: a custom locale framework layered on top of Java’s Locale, tailored to our translation pipeline, content model, and UI rendering.

This system has allowed us to reach underserved communities in over 20 countries including Kenya, Tanzania, India, Nigeria, Brazil, and Egypt, with more than 100k installs globally while still in Beta. In user studies, learners using Oppia in their preferred languages reported stronger concept mastery compared to those relying solely on traditional textbooks.

Adhiambo Oyier

Building Beyond Locale: Custom Internationalization for Global Learning at Oppia Android

What does leadership really look like on a mobile team of 25 engineers? In this candid two-speaker session, a former Engineering Manager and a Senior Engineer share their lived experience leading side-by-side at Zepz—one from a people and strategy perspective, the other from a technical and influence perspective.

We’ll break down how leadership plays out differently (and sometimes similarly) for managers and senior ICs when it comes to communication, ownership, and creating leverage. You’ll hear real stories—what worked, what didn’t, and what we wish we’d done differently. Whether you’re climbing the IC ladder or stepping into management, this talk will help you lead with clarity, influence without authority, and create impact that scales

Kim Taylor

Rygel Louv

Leading Beyond Titles: Mobile Engineering Leadership from Both Sides of the Table

Modern users expect more than just functionality; they want an experience. This talk explores how thoughtfully designed animations can transform ordinary Android apps into delightful, emotionally engaging experiences. You'll learn how to bring life into your UI using motion from micro-interactions to full-screen transitions while understanding the emotional language of animation. Whether you're aiming to guide, excite, or reassure your users, this session will show you how animation can do the talking.

Alpha Omondi

Making Your Android App Feel Alive: Tiny Animations, Big Emotions

This talk takes a deep dive into the internals of Android Automotive OS (AAOS) and its application in electric vehicle (EV) platforms. Attendees will explore the full AAOS stack -  from AOSP customization and system services to the Vehicle HAL and Car APIs  -  with a specific focus on enabling EV-specific features such as battery management, real-time telemetry, and charging control interfaces.

The session will walk through setting up a custom AAOS build environment, implementing and simulating vehicle properties using the VHAL, and extending the system UI for EV telemetry. It will also touch on the challenges of integrating AAOS with embedded EV hardware and the design considerations behind building scalable, software-defined interfaces for next-gen electric vehicles.

Developers, system integrators, and embedded engineers will leave with actionable insights on how to build, customize, and test AAOS for both OEM and retrofit EV platforms.

Wilfred Githuka

Under the Hood: Building Android Automotive OS (AAOS) for Electric Vehicle Platforms

You become a first time Tech lead in a remote company and it seems daunting. In this session I dive deep into some practices and processes we have in our Carry1st mobile team that work remotely across different geographical regions. I will share pitfalls, practises and gotcha's you need to look out for when leading a remote team. I will cover, how to collaborate, communicate and document in remote work environment

George Ng'ethe

Tech leadership in remote working: Learnings from the trenches

In this hands-on session, we’ll take the team through building, and breaking, various key storage mechanisms in Android.
We'll explore approaches such as:
- Android Keystore
- EncryptedSharedPreferences
- Firebase Remote Config
...and other popular methods


The goal is simple: put these key storage methods to the test, see how they hold up under real-world pressure, and learn which ones are more vulnerable to attacks or reverse engineering.

It's going to be interactive, practical, and a bit of fun chaos. Come ready to code, break things, and learn together. We will share apks during the session, so come with your reverse engineering skills and tools.

Michael Ndiritu

Musyoka Muasya

Break the Vault: Cracking Android Key Storage Methods

In a world where mobile apps are gateways to opportunity, security must go beyond compliance, it must be intentional. This talk explores Safety by Design (SBD) as a proactive framework for integrating safety, security, and trust into Android apps from the earliest stages of design and development.

We’ll unpack practical strategies Android developers can use to prevent misuse, reduce harm, and empower users, especially those from marginalized communities. From secure UX patterns and permission management to ethical data handling and inclusive threat modeling, this session blends human-centered design with robust security principles.

Join us as we reimagine Android development not just for performance, but for protection: because safety isn’t a feature, it’s a foundation.

Aisha Rashid

Safety by Design: Embedding Trust in Android from the Ground Up

During this talk, we will:
- Understand Error Types: Distinguishing between different types of errors in Kotlin;
- Create Rich Error Models: Designing error classes that carry context, such as error codes, messages, and potential resolutions;
- Transform Errors into Insights: Techniques to analyse errors for trends, common issues, and user feedback to enhance development processes.

Anselmo Alexandre

Kotlin Rich Errors: Transforming Errors into Actionable project insights.

Most developers use it daily but treat it like a black box: they copy and paste scripts they don’t fully understand, avoid touching build logic, and hope that everything just works. But Gradle doesn’t have to be scary or frustrating.
In this talk, we’ll demystify how Gradle works under the hood. You’ll gain a clear mental model of the build lifecycle, understand the difference between configuration and execution phases, and learn how tasks, plugins, and dependencies interact. We’ll walk through real-world examples from Android projects to show how small changes in build logic can lead to clearer, faster, and more maintainable builds.

Yves Kalume

Dompting the Elephant: Making Sense of Gradle for Android Developers

Rooted devices. Cloned apps. Hidden screen recorders. If your app isn’t verifying its environment, you’re already exposed.
In this high-impact session, we’ll dive deep into Google’s Play Integrity API, the new gold standard for verifying app authenticity, detecting tampered devices, and defending your app from unauthorized access—all in a clean, modern, Google-endorsed way.
But we're not stopping at Android. We’ll explore possibilities with  protection across platforms using Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP)and Compose Multiplatform (CMP)—building once, securing everywhere.
 What you’ll take away:
* How to block rooted, jailbroken, or emulator environments
* Prevent access from devices running malicious tools like screen recorders or app cloners
* Architecting the right flow: SDK → secure token → backend decoding → verdicts
* Why backend decoding is safer, and how to implement it cleanly
* Building a shared validation layer with KMP + CMP
* Real-world demos, edge-case testing, and production-ready guidance
 Whether you're securing a fintech app or safeguarding user data in healthcare or edtech—this talk is your playbook for building zero-trust apps the right way.
Packed with code, demos, and gotchas, this session will not only show you what’s possible—it’ll help you build it. Securely. Cross-platform. At scale.
In a world of modded APKs and unauthorized clones, securing your app's runtime environment is no longer optional—it's mission-critical. 

Benard Ngoda

No More Sneaky Devices: Bulletproof Your Android App with Google Play Integrity & KMP Magic

Kotlin Coroutines offer a powerful and efficient way to handle concurrency in Android applications. This workshop will guide developers through advanced coroutine concepts, structured concurrency, dispatchers, custom scopes, error handling, graceful cancellation, and reactive programming with Flows and Channels. Through practical examples and live demonstrations, participants will build a chat application live, gaining in-depth knowledge of coroutine usage, enabling them to build scalable, responsive, and robust Android applications.

Eric Wafula

Advanced Kotlin Coroutines: From Fundamentals to Reactive Streams

How does a large-scale app evolve its Android architecture? This workshop explores how applications transform from traditional MVVM to event-driven patterns, improving testability and significantly reducing state-related bugs.
Participants will build a feature using three architectures that power large-scale apps: MVVM (a common starting point), MVI (the current standard), and Workflow (for complex state machines). These patterns are battle-tested in high-traffic production environments
Starting with MVVM, we'll recreate common production bugs: race conditions, state inconsistencies in search results, and untestable ViewModels. Then we'll refactor using MVI, implementing a single-state approach with pure reducers that make features predictable and testable, Finally we would take a look into workflow, an architecture designed for complex user journeys for the purpose of software clarity, correctness and testability (especially at scale)
You'll gain practical insights: why certain patterns are chosen, how to migrate features without disrupting users, and common pitfalls to avoid. Most importantly, you'll take home an architecture decision framework – the systematic approach for choosing the right pattern for each feature.
Perfect for developers facing scaling challenges or teams evaluating architecture changes. Learn from real production experience borrowed from practical lessons working at getyourguide, not theoretical examples

Harny Otuoniyo

Architecture at Scale: From MVVM to Event-Driven Patterns - A Production Journey

Outline:
Introduction
 • What are AI agents?
 • How AI agents differ from traditional generative AI (GenAI)
 • Real-world examples of AI agents in app development
Modern Android Development
 • Building dynamic UIs with Jetpack Compose
 • Using Firebase for feature management and personalization
Live Demo
 • Creating an Android app
 • Remote feature control and personalization with Firebase Remote Config
 • Showcasing AI-powered coding assistance
Best Practices & Tips
 • Structuring scalable Compose apps
 • Managing real-time and remote state with Firebase
 • Maximizing productivity with AI-powered tools
Q&A
 • Open discussion and audience questions
Takeaways:
Attendees will learn the difference between AI agents and GenAI, how to build dynamic, data-driven Android apps using Compose and Firebase, and how AI can boost developer productivity.

Speakers

Benard Ngoda

Anselmo Alexandre

Michael Ndiritu

Harny Otuoniyo

Rygel Louv

Danny Preussler

Musyoka Muasya

Yves Kalume

Ahmed Nabil

Eric Wafula

Aisha Rashid

Ian Leshan

Chris Assigbe

George Ng'ethe

Alpha Omondi

Kim Taylor

Adhiambo Oyier

Wilfred Githuka

Reuben Bichage

Samuel Juma

Pulkit Midha

Enrique Lopez Manas

Akshay Chordiya

event info

Speakers

All speakers

Benard Ngoda

Anselmo Alexandre

Michael Ndiritu

Harny Otuoniyo

Rygel Louv

Danny Preussler

Musyoka Muasya

Yves Kalume

Ahmed Nabil

Eric Wafula

Aisha Rashid

Ian Leshan

Chris Assigbe

George Ng'ethe

Alpha Omondi

Kim Taylor

Adhiambo Oyier

Wilfred Githuka

Reuben Bichage

Samuel Juma

Pulkit Midha

Enrique Lopez Manas

Akshay Chordiya

event info