Secret Lab is very proud to announce that we’re supporting the fantastic OZCHI conference this year! We’ll be making an iPhone app for the conference, hope to see you there! Don’t know what OZCHI is? Well…
OZCHI is Australia’s leading forum for work in all areas of Human-Computer Interaction and CHISIG’s (www.chisig.org) annual non-profit conference.
We invite original contributions on all topics related to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) including practical, technical, methodological, empirical and theoretical aspects.
The 2010 conference theme is Design – Interaction – Participation. It reflects the challenges of designing human interaction with and through digital technologies in ways that support diverse participation.
Awesome!
Paris
So, what’s happening for the rest of 2010?
Jon and I are hard at work wrapping up the author reviews (the final stage of proof reading) for our book, iPhone and iPad Game Development for Dummies – it’s so close to being done and that we can practically taste the day off that we’ll get! We’re also working hard on a really cool article for a pretty prominent technology – stay tuned!
We’ll be starting another awesome book project when the first one is finished – it’s going to be an amazing one, we promise you’ll love it!
As far as client work goes, Secret Lab is working on some amazing games for some very cool Australia, American and Canadian clients – you’ll start hearing more in the next few weeks as the wraps come off the various projects. We’re, literally as I write this, putting the finishing touches on some amazing fitness-based iPhone apps for an innovative new Tasmanian company – we think you’ll like what you see! And there’s so much more to come… stay tuned! Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want us to build an awesome app or game for you.
We’ll be speaking at, and attending, a bunch of conferences in the next few weeks and months (and years) – so please come and say hello if you happen to run into us! In the short term, we’ll be at (more to come):
- /dev/world/2010 in Melbourne, Australia – late-September 2010
- Unite 2010 in Montreal, Canada – mid-November 2010
- OZCHI 2010 in Brisbane, Australia – late-November 2010
- CreateWorld 2010 in Brisbane, Australia – early-December 2010
- Interaction 11 in Boulder, USA – mid-February 2011
We’re also running, or creating the material for, a bunch of awesome training workshops! Just finished was Melbourne, Hobart, Brisbane, Sydney and Mountain View (USA) – soon is New York City, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Montreal, and many others! Check out the awesome feedback we got from some of the last few iPhone & iPad SDK workshops:
- “It was very good. Best IT course that I have ever been on. (I’m old and have been on lots of courses)”
- “This was the best course I’ve done in a very long time. I really liked the fast pace. The balance was very good.”
- “High intensity but very useful. Not to mention a ball of fun. The presenters are great – I like the tag-team approach. Keeps the active one from veering too far away or forgetting something.”
- “Loved it, it was very enjoyable. Very easy to ask questions and helpful peers as well as teachers.”
It’s not too late to register for the New York City iPhone Boot Camp either: 13th to 15th August, in New York City – using material by Jon and I!
That’s all for now!
Paris
Update: we were saddened to learn that APPCON has decided to postpone the 2010 event. We look forward to speaking at APPCON in 2011!
Jon and I will be speaking at the awesome new conference (& expo), APPCON in Las Vegas in August. If you’re interested in mobile app development, on any platform, you need to be there!
App development conferences are a dime a dozen, but all of them are narrowly focused on one platform or another. Even the big must-attend conferences run by the overseers and owners of each platform (such as Google’s I/O, Apple’s WWDC, and RIM’s BlackBerry DevCon) are, by virtue of their provenance, limited to a single platform.
That’s why we’re really excited to both be speaking, along with our fantastic co-author Neal Goldstein, and the Product Evangelist of our favourite game development tool, Tom Higgins of Unity Technologies, at APPCON in Las Vegas – their holistic approach to covering mobile apps is a breath of a fresh air. It’s definitely a conference anyone who is serious about this industry needs to be at – even if you only develop for one of the big mobile platforms, you’re not doing yourself justice unless you’re also keeping up with the others!
Hope to see you there! Let us know if you’re there, we’d love to see the interesting things that you’re working on, or show you what we’re up to!
Paris Buttfield-Addison
Production Lead
Hi everyone!
After a busy month of teaching iPhone, iPad and Game Development and Design in Hobart, Brisbane and Melbourne, Jon and I are back in San Francisco/Silicon Valley to catch up with our clients here, as well as attend Apple’s annual developer love-in, WWDC 2010.
If anyone else is in the area and would like to catch up, please let us know! We love meeting other iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Game and Unity Developers, as well as chatting to fellow eccentrics of all kinds! You can find out contact details here, please do get in touch!
We’ll keep everyone updated with our reactions to the exciting things that are surely going to be announced at WWDC.
Until then!
Paris Buttfield-Addison
Production Lead
It’s time for another update on our very-near-future training and workshops! Jon Manning and I, the Secret Lab founders, will be the instructors for all these workshops.
ACS Tasmania iPhone and iPad App Development Workshop
10th, 11th and 12th May 2010, in central Hobart (Tasmania, Australia)
Three days of learning how to make awesome iPhone apps.
Open to the public! Sign up here!
AUC Unity Game Development Workshop – Melbourne
18th, 19th and 20th May 2010, in central Melbourne (Victoria, Australia)
Three days of learning how to make incredible games for PC, Mac, web, iPhone, iPad, Android and consoles!
iPhone Boot Camp Melbourne
21st, 22nd and 23rd May 2010, in central Melbourne (Victoria, Australia)
Three days of learning how to make awesome iPhone apps.
Open to the public! Sign up here!
(Sending a group from your organisation? Contact us for potential discount rates!)
AUC Unity Game Development Workshop – Brisbane
18th, 19th and 20th May 2010, in central Brisbane (Queensland, Australia)
Three days of learning how to make incredible games for PC, Mac, web, iPhone, iPad, Android and consoles!
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us (details on the sidebar) if you want more information about our training offerings.
Paris Buttfield-Addison
Production Lead
Want to meet up to talk about your projects? Want to throw some ideas around with us? Check out our calendar, and then contact us to arrange a meeting. We’re making the trip to Melbourne and Brisbane soon, and we’re available to talk!
Any day that doesn’t explicitly say otherwise means we’re in Hobart, and we’d love to meet you when we’re in our home city too!
Hi all!
We’ll post a wrap-up of our trip to GDC 2010 in San Francisco soon, but in the mean-time here is a quick snippet of our training plans for the coming month(s).
We’re training in both Melbourne (pictured, photo by Wiki.will from Flickr) and Brisbane, on the east coast of Australia. Please check our workshops out!
- Unity 3D Game Development – 3 intensive in Melbourne, 18-20 May 2010 – AUC Developer Training (Australian Uni. students and staff! register now!)
- iPhone Boot Camp – 3 intensive in Melbourne, 21-23 May 2010 – iPhone Boot Camp (open to the public! register now!)
- Unity 3D Game Development – 3 intensive in Sydney, 27-29 May 2010 – AUC Developer Training (Australian Uni. students and staff! register now!)
If you’re a University student in Australia, please register for the Unity courses – the AUC is a wonderful organisation and you can learn a whole lot from us in 3 days! Likewise, if you’re interested in learning to develop for the iPhone and iPad, register for our Melbourne iPhone Boot Camp! Early-bird registration closes in 1 day!
Hope to see some of you at one of these workshops!
Secret Lab went to Linux Conf Australia in January, and had a fantastic time, visiting many fantastic talks on a wide variety of topics. After the charity dinner it was decided that Bdale Garbee would shave his beard for charity. This was a huge success as it was a major contribution to the near $40,000 contributed to help save the Tasmanian Devil.
While the shave occurred, the open source game competition was in its final hours, so once there were photos online our very own Andrew Bennett had until his laptop battery ran out to produce a game worthy of the devil. With only half an hour to spare, we managed to produce a quick and dirty flash game, that while rough around the edges managed to get some great publicity for Secret Lab and hopefully the Tasmanian Devil as well.
Here are some well known sites that link to it:
http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/posts/Facial_Dignity.html
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22853/1090/
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090126/
We all just got back from the AUC’s /dev/world/2008 conference! It was a roaring success.
We presented on the following topics:
- Beyond AppleScript
- Embedding OpenGL in Cocoa
- Polishing Your Cocoa Application
