Kenneth Kousen
New England Software Symposium
Boston · September 19 - 21, 2014
President, Kousen IT, Inc.
Ken Kousen is a Java Champion, several time JavaOne Rock Star, and a Grails Rock Star. He is the author of the Pragmatic Library books “Mockito Made Clear” and “Help Your Boss Help You,” the O'Reilly books “Kotlin Cookbook”, “Modern Java Recipes”, and “Gradle Recipes for Android”, and the Manning book “Making Java Groovy”. He also has recorded over a dozen video courses for the O'Reilly Learning Platform, covering topics related to Android, Spring, Java, Groovy, Grails, and Gradle.
His academic background include BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from M.I.T., an MA and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, and an MS in Computer Science from R.P.I. He is currently President of Kousen IT, Inc., based in Connecticut.
Presentations
Basic Android I
The basics of developing for the Android platform will be explored, from setting up the SDK to using the Android Studio IDE and the generated Gradle build files. No previous experience is required, other than a basic knowledge of Java.
Basic Android II
Building on the the previous talk, we'll add intents, customized layouts for alternative configurations, talk about the activity lifecycle, use logging, and more.
Advanced Android I
This session will move beyond the basics cover Android persistence mechanisms, accessing RESTful web services, and more. We'll look at shared preferences, basic file I/O, and the Sqlite database. We'll also show how to operate off of the UI thread to access data from remote servers.
Beyond Managing Your Manager
This is a revised and updated version of the previous talk, with current thinking from practice and the literature. The talk presents why conflicts with your manager are inevitable based on differences in priorities and perspectives, and how to plan for them. The goal is to show you how to build the loyalty relationship that allows you to get what you need when you need it.