Build Stuff 2018

It's a familiar scenario. You’re on a train, your phone goes ‘ping’, you take it out of your pocket and hey - someone sent you a message! It’s a funny cat picture. You laugh, you reply ‘LOL’, you put your phone back in your pocket… but have you ever stopped to think about what’s actually involved in making that happen? Inside even the most basic smartphone there are literally hundreds of innovations, algorithms and inventions - but how do they really work? How were they developed? And what’s the next generation of algorithms and applications going to look like?

In this talk, we’ll take a deep dive into the technology behind those everyday experiences, and demystify the algorithms and abstractions that make our digital world go round. We’ll look at everything from network addressing algorithms, frequency-hopping cellular data networks and shortest path optimisation, to wavelet compression, fingerprint recognition and media encoding schemes. Whether you’re a programmer, a product owner or just somebody who loves using the latest tech, after watching this talk you’ll never look at your phone quite the same way again.