It’s time for a summary. Devoxx was the first real-world test for Conference Guide and I have to say that Claes and I are pretty satisfied. Overall, the iPhone version was downloaded 299 times between its release and Sunday, November 22nd, while the Android version was downloaded 123 times on the same period.

For the iPhone version, we have some country-specific figures:

Sales by country

Sales by country

The Grails server held great, despite the fact that there is still no caching on the client side, leading to a lot of requests. Some people complained about the fact that they needed a network connection to use it, which is not the case with other similar apps. But contrary to those apps, we were able to update the server in real time when there were last minute changes:

  • One university session and one conference session were canceled and replaced by others
  • On Wednesday, when the sound mixer crashed, all sessions were delayed by 15 minutes and we could shift the timetable accordingly.

Now of course, we realize that this online solution is not ideal, and that’s why we are already working on a solution that will take the best of both worlds.

Given the success of this pilot project, we are already working on a new version. Our target is to be ready for the end of January to cover another Java event in Sweden: JFokus. This version should fix most of the limitations we’ve noticed in this version and add a few features, including:

  • The ability to “star” sessions
  • Venue information screen
  • More filters on all screens to get directly to the information you are interested in

We will let you know when the new version is ready. And once again, if you are a conference organizer and you would like your event to be covered by Conference Guide, feel free to contact us.