Month: August 2022

Five Years in Switzerland

Five years ago today we arrived in Switzerland to start a new phase of our lives. 2022 has been a definite improvement for us over the previous two years. COVID of course is still a specter looming over us, but we’ve learned how to live with it (being vaccinated and twice-boosted helps). We’ve traveled extensively within Switzerland, getting to know some of the most scenic parts of the country (focusing on the mountains and high alpine valleys).

In the Spring I returned to the US for the first time in three years and finally got to visit family.

I attended (and spoke at) an in-person tech conference for the first time in three years (and promptly got COVID). I’ve been serving as iOS Chapter Lead and building internal IP at YML for over a year now. The role continues to bring me enjoyment and satisfaction.

I hike regularly and when it’s too hot to hike I hit the lake on our paddle board or our foldable kayak.

Integrating into Swiss society remains a challenge, but over the past year I have finally joined and am active in a Swiss “verein” (a non-profit club): Swiss RPG. It’s an RPG club through which I run a D&D campaign (The Wild Beyond The Witchlight) and play in a West Marches-style shared community world. My son and I got into D&D 5e in a big way last year. Now instead of doom-scrolling Twitter I hang out in the Swiss RPG Discord discussing the merits of different character builds or how to DM particular adventures. This past year we also attended our first fantasy convention, Fantasy Basel where we were able to play some in-person D&D at the Swiss RPG booth.

At the end of this month I resume German lessons after a two-year hiatus. In October I plan to take the A1/A2 Goethe test that is a requirement for applying for permanent residency.

I’m looking forward to at least another year living in this beautiful country.

360iDev

I’m excited to be attending and speaking at 360iDev 2022 in Denver, Colorado at the end of this month. 360iDev was one of my first iOS conferences and is also one of my perennial favorites. The Wilker’s are really good people, and I’m excited to get to attend after a long hiatus.

On Sunday morning 28 August I will lead a half-day tutorial on engineering design systems and on Monday 29 August just after lunch, I present a conference talk on typography. (Yes, I’m obsessed with design systems and with typography in particular. My goal is to enable teams to build UI’s quickly and accurately with as many accessibility features as possible.)

Engineering Design Systems

Format: half-day tutorial

Many companies are coming to realize the many benefits that design systems bring. A good design system (and its accompanying set of engineered components) can improve design quality and consistency and provide significant reduction in production times for both design and development teams. But how do you engineer the components depicted in the design system? In this talk we will learn how to consume design files and then engineer our own mini design system beginning with the foundations of color, spacing, and typography. We will use our foundations to create a few simple elements, and then we will assemble those into a card component, form fields, and finally a form. Along the way we will consider accessibility through the lens of dark mode, increased color contrast, landscape support, Dynamic Type, and bold text support.

Engineering Beautiful and Accessible Text

Format: conference talk

An integral part of design systems and style guides is typography. Typography declares how text will appear in your product by specifying the font family, size, weight, line height, etc. While much of our focus on design goes towards colors, icons, and images, text is the primary way users interact with the majority of apps. Learn how to implement typography in your apps in a way that is accurate to the source designs, fully accessible, and that makes assembling pixel perfect implementations of the source designs a breeze.

Tickets are still available.

I’m also hoping to host a D&D one-shot during the hackathon/game night during the conference. So come geek out about design systems and typography, and then roll some dice with me.