 So, I'm very happy to welcome Tobi or TVSPRS, who will give us a talk about the very lifeline of a lot of events. Tobi, a participant of these events has experience with some portion of his project. Tobi is a maintainer or the maintainer for the event far plan project for Android. He loves open source. He's a big open data enthusiast and part of the code for Germany, lab in Berlin. And today he's giving us an update on the recent events in the event far plan project and all the stuff that is planned for the future. So now for the next talk, State of Event Far Plan 2021, Tobi. Thank you. Welcome to my talk. I hope you had a good night. And you enjoy lunch and this talk or one or the other, or watch the recording in the future. So I will give you an overview, as already told, and also mention some things of the past and also a quite short introduction if you don't know the project. Before I start, there will be a question and answer session afterwards. The link can be found on the website and the app and then the question pad. So you're welcome to join it with the Jitsi room so we can actually talk. And then you can ask all your questions offline without recording. So what is Event Far Plan or the Divock Schedule app in this event? It's an Android app where you can consume and read through the schedule of the event and see all the things, take your bookmarks and further things. Works on a smartphone, it works on a tablet and I will quickly show you the basic features. But before I do so, I'd like to acknowledge that I did not start this project with a person named Tux Mobile. At that time, the project was named Camp Far Plan. And I'm not the only one contributing to this project. There's many people. Big shout out to those. And you can be one of them. But for that later. So the main thing that you see when you open the app is the Schedule Grid view gives you an overview on the tablet or on the larger screen. There's more real estate so you can see multiple columns, multiple rooms at one view. But on the phone you can swipe through if you're in portrait mode or in landscape mode, you see what you see here on the screen up to four columns. And then it's easy to see which session takes place in parallel. You can take favorites. So you can mark your session as a favorite and then organize them in a list. And you can even export them as plain text or JSON and do the things with it or just share them with your fellow friends so they know what you like to see on a particular event and maybe join you. And then there's customized highlighting for the Grid view that you can switch in the settings. There's an alarm function. So you can be notified before the event or before the session. And then you can set up the alarm time if it's right at the start time or if you need like some time to go to that room. At a rear conference that can be essential because sometimes the way from one room to another is quite long. There's a change notification. So whenever the schedule changes, the app detects the changes and tells you about it. There's a special screen schedule changes that shows the actual differences. So green goes for a new and orange is for changes. And then there's also a red highlighting when a talk is canceled. There's also ways to configure this in the settings, but you can find that. There's more features. Actually there's a calendar integration so you can export your sessions or just single ones into your calendar. You can share it. I mentioned that before. You can vote and give feedback on the talks and you should actually do that because speakers like to hear what you think and it's anonymous and you can just tell anything that is related to the talk. And there's integration with sub-party apps. So at the Chaos Communication Congress there was the C3NF app that allowed you to navigate indoor and there is an integration where you can go to a session in the app and then navigate to the place where it's happening and it will actually show you the way. The export feature that I mentioned before is targeting the Chaos Flicks app. So once you have picked your favorites and you want to see them in the group recordings, you can take that list, export it for Chaos Flicks and then watch all your favorite talks in this app. And last but not least, a big shout out to all the angels, the heralds, everyone here helping for the event and there's also some integration for the angel system. You can actually load your personal shifts into the app and then there's a separate column so you can see if you're working or if you can enjoy one of the sessions. Okay. Another thing that happened last and the year before is translations. So there's quite some translations for the app and that's mostly because of Hectoberfest an online event where you can contribute to open source projects and a lot of people that I already showed in the first slide is translating the app and that's why we have many languages and when there's an event in your country, then you can actually see the app in the native language. What must be translated and separate is the descriptions of the talks. Those are not translated because they are just read from the back end. So shout out again if you are a native speaker, feel free to contribute with translations or just check the ones that we already have. Here's a short review of what happened in 2020. There were some events and don't try to read the details, it just meant as an overview. So over the year, those green bubbles, there's quite some events happening and I'm trying to cover those events with an app and also updates. But more than that, I released versions in between so those orange dots are releases that happen on a regular basis when I worked on the app and fixed parts, new features, etc. But mostly I also released before an event so there's time to see if the app works or breaks. So in that year, there were those events, there's FOSTAEM in February, then there was the FOSCIS conference which happened actually in real life in March was like the last conference and then in April, the first Divock event, September, the second Divock event and in September also the Darten Spuren in Dresden and in December the RC3 Congress. Very similar in 2021, there was a FOSTAEM conference, this time a virtual conference in between, there were some releases as you can see and here we are at the third Divock in April. To give you an idea of what actually happens, like how many people use the app on a big event, I pasted in the statistics from the Chaos Communication Congress in 2019 and that's like a typical curve of user statistics. Of course this is not the same in smaller events but the typical curve is what I mean right before the event there is a lot of people using the app and then over the year it flats down because it's not that useful anymore but some people still keep it and it's useful if you want to review things or if you want to see the recordings and there's use cases. So let's talk about the highlights of last year. I already mentioned the Chaos Flix export so you can export your favorites that was added in 2020. There was a really big rewrite of the date and time handling so all over the app there are dates and times for the events, for scheduling, etc. There was an implementation that had quite some flaws and Ulig, an external contributor, took a lot of time and did a big rewrite so right now we have like one central place where all the date and time handling happens and that offered a lot of opportunities for fixing other bugs. So thank you a lot. Second big thing, there was a performance problem in the app when you actually navigate into a talk, into a session and then go back. There was like a lag on the device and there's a lot of work has been done and that's quite fast on all so I hope you enjoy it. There is a visual thing. Customization for menu colors can now be done according to the event so right now we have the screen color scheme and that's affecting the menus also, it wasn't before. Technical, there's an Android X migration so a lot of libraries and Android were changed and I had to migrate a lot of things in the app so that was a big package. Then when you click on links there was actually no touch feedback, you couldn't really see which one you clicked so there's a highlight right now that hopefully makes it easier to see which link you tap and when you share an event for Twitter, any social media then you can actually see a preview now so we're using the system UI now in the app and that makes it more comfortable. I mentioned the transactions already. Next, what became very obvious at times of Corona and virtual events was when you share a session with somebody, it's quite important to know which time zone the event is happening so I added this information to the sharing text so you really know when things happening. There was a scrolling bug that didn't scroll to the right session so you get a notification and then you tap on it but it didn't actually scroll to the right position that has something to do with the data and time handling as I mentioned. The schedule update notification and the change dialogue appeared quite often and that was notified about that by some users and I found some ways to reduce that so hopefully this is not affecting you too much now but let me know. The data and time handling rewrite also enabled two other things. First we have summer and winter time in Germany and when you actually look back at an event that happened in winter time and you're already in summer time then the data and times didn't show up correctly. That's fixed now and also very important for virtual events if you're watching this from another time zone so you're in California or somewhere the app should show the date and time correctly in your time zone. You can enable that in the settings so you don't have to deal with German time zone times but you can actually see your time and last but not least there is a I wrote a small script that allows me to check when asteroid the alternative place door is ready with deploying the app and that sends me a notification. It's open source take a look if you like. Roadmap so here's a few points that there's open issues where work has to be done and I invite you very much to take a look and maybe help out if you like and I go quickly through the list so there's a lot of rewrite planned for the general architecture so data should flow from the database into the UI I don't don't go into details right now then we I like to migrate from using an ID which is a OIT attribute and the data to a GUID that's already started take a look then there was request to redesign the detail screen so add integration information and maybe animations that's interesting then for code coverage quality of code there could be some configuration and sonar cube people like to filter schedule changes by their favorites and not see all the schedule changes then accessibility I like to add a color blind mode for people and then there's an idea of extending the binary concept of favorites because it's like have a favorite or don't have a favorite but allow multiple tags on a session so you can actually decide on your own how you like to take a session one example that comes into mind is something like watch later and then you can actually filter the list for for your recordings quite easily then another one is that the emails and web addresses are not always clickable in the app so that should be an easy one and there's a search function missing which is quite useful if you attend events with with a lot of sessions and it's hard to find stuff I use bitmap icons instead of vector icons in the app which is not state-of-the-art in android so those could be a change but you know somebody has to do it the current value of the settings and the setting screen should be shown that's also easy one I guess and then accessibility again would be good if someone could do a review with the talkback app from Google or any other tool to see how good the app is actually usable via talkback and yeah for CI builds it would be interesting to integrate with GitHub actions and also to have a release build being tested and continuously being built and that's not everything there's the issue tracker the link is there on the slide and I welcome you to send me your ideas and and also help out if you want I'd like to mention that I work on this alone most of the time there's contributions from time to time but it's a lot of work and there's this bus factor bus factor thing so I really want you to think if you can help in any ways and there's a lot of things that you can do it's not all programming you can actually tell me about how you use the app and if there's use cases that I never saw because I'm in my tunnel but there's all things if you're a good at design or if you actually want to code you can jump in there's easy tasks there's hard tasks you can financially support me you can because I'm doing this also in my spare time a lot and there's a translation task as I mentioned and you can actually join the beta tester group so you can actually upfront test what's going on in the app if everything works and then hopefully it doesn't crash at the actual event but before the app is open source I invite you very much it's Apache 2.0 licensed I use Kotlin as the programming language and what's the Java but transitioning to Kotlin slowly but quite a lot already and that's it as I mentioned at 10 past one there will be a question and answer session the link can be found in the questions pad or on the website or in the app and yeah that's it thank you for your attention and the slides will be online I put the link in the talk description and now I'm open to questions from you thank you yes thank you Toby for your talk and now we I feel the questions rushing into the pad but we have a little delay with the stream so that might take a second if you have questions right now please write them into the pad you find the link in the talk description but there is already one question there so what does it say for adding angel shifts if the app already knows the link to the heaven precondition is it possible to only import the key without the link yeah so the the link to your personal angel's shift is is quite long and there's like an individual key at the at the end and when I added this feature I I thought it would be easier to copy the whole link and paste it because you're doing this on a mobile phone so you copy the whole thing and then paste it but if it's easier to copy the the ID then I can change that so we should actually talk about that because I thought it's easier to copy the whole thing yeah but technically that's no problem okay no links so far and no further questions so far we can wait a little bit to to see whether there are more questions coming in yeah so the now now the first thing that comes in is thanks for the great app which I second because it's as I said in the beginning bit of the lifeline for every participant yeah I like to use the time to say again like I'm living from this feedback feedback from people because there's actually no no tracking no statistics on the app so I'm quite blind about how many people use this the only thing is what what the google play store tells me but if people are installing we are after it which is totally fine I see like nothing and so I'm very dependent on on your feedback and that can be in many things so you can actually say how you use the app and and tell me your use cases that helps a lot and quite lately somebody wrote an issue on github and did a large description of how he uses the app and I found like new things that I never saw of and of course you can go on google play and wrote for the app and then like it's other people say that that you like the app but you could also like tweet about it or write on your blog or share on social media that there's an app because sometimes people actually don't know that there is an app and and last but not least if you know of any event that is very similar or any event that you like and they don't have an app just contact me and maybe we can set it up for the event and either you can do that or I can do it I mean it's open source you can also do that very good yeah the the feedback is coming in so one feedback is I use the adflot version and I really appreciate the compatibility with android 4.x so I also have an android 4 device back there and so that's my designated chaos phone yeah I'm trying to keep that it's quite hard sometimes because external dependencies they like like to change but I actually read that tweet read that tweet yesterday and yeah I mean for me I I don't see a reason to to raise that but sometimes it's just google and other parties that force me to to raise it so there was an addition to the to the angel shift question so perhaps two input boxes one for the whole link and one for the key only we are getting into the nitty gritty yeah yeah actually I would actually have a look at their angle system if they changed it and make made it easier to copy the link maybe I haven't taken taking a look lately one question you you mentioned that you could adapt the app to other events how difficult is it to adapt that to different events and does it take up a lot of your time to adapt to certain conditions and availabilities for other events the answer is as always it depends the app works best with when the back for a back end is pre talks or or frappe and there's like a compatible format of the schedule file but if that isn't the case then there's ways to like exchange the parser and the network and module I did that already for several events so there's a android conference the droid con I did there they use a different back end and then it's more work of course and besides that if it's like the the normal event there goes a lot of time into customization of colors icons the whole social media thing like setting up the play store writing texts and preparing screenshots and stuff that is really not technical in a particular way but takes a lot of time and so I yeah I at least need two days to like do the other work and then of course there can be technical things that the back end changed and new books and stuff like that so there's another question forming right before my eyes it's not finished yet but further down in the patch there are many thanks and appreciations piling up so everybody seems to be very happy with your work so maybe an anecdote I had the angel desk and the app on two different devices so I needed to type I need to type I need to write the whole URL it's quite I mean you don't want to type that so because you couldn't copy and paste I get it yeah okay okay the next question is not not a complete sentence yet but I will try to start with it when a linux app via app image or from build source code thanks I didn't get it maybe for the asking person maybe you could rephrase it or join the session afterwards and yes we can sort it out okay let's wait for a for a minute to if there comes anything more if we don't get any more questions right now we can as as you already mentioned there will be a dedicated Q&A session as a self-organized session at 13 10 so 1 10 p.m and the link is also in the pad but the link is also in the self-organized sessions list starting at 1 10 and I'd like to mention that I also speak German so if English is a problem there's the opportunity that we talk yes yeah so actually it's in about 10 minutes so it's a chance to take a break go and grab something to eat or go to the toilet and then we can meet again and yeah thanks a lot for your questions and word summed up yes I would say also that's are the other issues and also praises so if you just want to say thank you great work you can also join the session why not so use the link use the Q&A meeting later on and yeah well I would say this leaves me only to say thank you for your presentation and also the hard work that the presentation is based on and yeah keep keep up the good work and have a very good event everyone same to you thank you for moderating