Kotlin Kolkata User Group (Kotlin Kolkata UG) organised "DroidFest", in association with Google Developers Group Kolkata(GDG Kolkata), partnered by JetBrains on 28th January 2023 at Techno India University, West Bengal.
Unlike other developer-centric festivals, DroidFest has been one of its kind, brought to the people for sessions in Android App Development using Kotlin. Also, there is no other "DroidFest" anywhere in India, so having a unique event for students and professionals alike is itself a big feat.
Kotlin Kolkata User Group is one of the older Kotlin User Groups in India, initially Started in 2017 by Rivu Chakraborty (First Google Developer Expert, Kotlin) and Indranil Dutta (Senior Consultant at PWC). Currently, Both Indranil Dutta and Atri Das (Mobile Application Developer at NCR Techno Solutions) is managing the community.
DroidFest is a local, Kotlin-centric tech conference to be held annually every year from 2023, brought out by 20 volunteers to fit the learning needs and interests of the local developer community, with a strong focus on knowledge exchange and networking. The attendee registrations were reviewed and filtered according to the domain expertise and interests shown in the applications. The total number of attendants at the fest was 245, including the speakers, guests, organisers & volunteers.
The conference was attended by industry professionals, research scholars from IITs, and students across various domains and sectors, the most important uniting factor for everyone being the passion and love for Android development. It saw a huge turnout of young individuals, mostly college students in the greater parts of the audience.
The event started in the early chilly morning, with the opening keynote by Atri Das, followed by insightful sessions by Belal Khan, who travelled straight from Bangalore to deliver his talk on "understanding coroutines"; "Design principles for Android" by Dibyendu Bhattacharya; "Guide to Higher Order Functions in kotlin" by Santanu Pal; the ultimate session being "Using Jetpack Compose in Legacy Projects" by Narendra Nath Chatterjee. There was an exclusive session by Mr. Indranil Dutta, the organiser of GDG Kolkata, where he took questions from the audience and elaborated on his journey & views on GDG Kolkata.
In between the insightful knowledge-sharing sessions, attendees and guests interacted with each other and made connections with their fellow peers in the industry. There was also the provision of attendees sharing their experiences in their journey of becoming a developer & an interview session where everyone was free to ask for guidance and pathways.
