From AUC to the All Blacks

Thomas Verbeek, University of Otago & Sideline Junkies Limited

How much value does the AUC really provide its attendees? Enough value for a partnership with New Zealand All Blacks Ma’a Nonu, Tamati Ellison and Kees Meeuws, apparently. Past AUC Student Developer Scholarship recipient and presenter Thomas Verbeek talks about co-founding Sideline Junkies Limited, a NZ sports company that’s changing the way you keep up with local sport. This talk demonstrates what AUC delegates can achieve with the exposure and skills acquired from AUC events. Thomas discusses his involvement with the AUC, starting a company with All Blacks, the iOS technology involved to make their flagship app “Waterboy”, and the exciting road ahead.


Thomas is a Masters Student in Computer Science at the University of Otago, specialising in computer graphics. He is the recipient of the AUC Student Developer Scholarship of 2010-11. He’s previously worked for Areo, a photorealistic computer graphics company in Dunedin, New Zealand. He’s currently cofounder and lead app developer of Sideline Junkies Limited, a New Zealand and US based sports company.



Native UI / Portable Logic

Christopher Neugebauer

The conventional wisdom on producing applications that run on both iOS and Android says that to make the best possible experience for both platforms, you’ll need to write a completely separate application for each platform.

The conventional wisdom, of course, thinks that the only important task in mobile applications is to make a pretty UI. This ignores all the hard work that goes into writing application logic. With a bit of up-front design work, it’s possible to get your important application logic running on multiple operating systems.

This talk looks at separating application logic and UI from two separate angles. First, it re-introduces the concepts of Web APIs from the point of view of separation of concerns. Then we’ll look at approaches to building portable core code that runs on multiple systems, and ways to design your apps to take advantage of this — we’ll look at approaches using compiled code (probably using C++) and interpreted & embedded code (probably using Python).


Christopher is a Python programmer from Hobart, Tasmania. He’s a Computer Science Honours graduate of the University of Tasmania, and he now works as an Android developer at Asdeq Labs. Working with Android means that his day job involves more Java than he’d like. He has a strong interest in the development of the Australian Python Community — he is an immediate past convenor of PyCon Australia 2012 and 2013 in Hobart, and is a newly-minted member of the Python Software Foundation.

In his spare time, Christopher enjoys presenting on Mobile development at Open Source conferences, and presenting on Open Source development at Mobile conferences.




/dev/world/2013 – Call for Presenters

/dev/world is our annual developer conference for Mac OS X and iOS. While planning for the 2013 event is ongoing, our intentions are that the event will run for 2-3 days from September 30, in Melbourne.

The organising committee is seeking expressions of interest from AUC members and the wider Apple developer community in Australia and New Zealand who are willing to present at the event.

Continue reading “/dev/world/2013 – Call for Presenters”


X World Registration Deadlines

If you’re planning on registering for X World, there are a couple of deadlines you need to be aware of.

  • If you’re bringing a laptop or other device that you wish to connect to the venue’s wireless network, and you’re not from a University that supports eduroam, then you need to be registered by 5pm, Tuesday June 11 at the latest.
  • All registrations will close at 5pm (Sydney time) on Thursday June 27.

We look forward to seeing you at X World soon!



Casper and Configurator – Learnings from iOS Deployment

Andy Parker, St Cuthbert’s College, AucklandPart of XW13

This session will look at the technical aspects of deploying iOS devices using both Apple Configurator and JAMF’s Casper suite, and the use-cases of differing deployment types for individuals and labs with references to Apple’s three suggested models of app ownership.

I’ll share lessons we’ve learnt from the different methods we have used to provision iPads for students and staff.

The sessions will be relevant to faculty looking to provide iPads to users as well as technical staff responsible for making an iPad rollout work as painlessly as possible.


Andy is the Director of Information & Learning Technologies at St Cuthbert’s College, Auckland. The role has responsibilities for all aspects of the Colleges’s IT infrastructure, use of IT for the management of the College’s operations (both business and education) and integration of IT into classroom programmes. The College has operated a successful 1:1 notebook program since 2000.

Prior to working at St Cuthbert’s Andy was the Group IT Manager for the Academic Colleges Group responsible for delivery of IT services across the 10 members schools of the group through New Zealand, Vietnam and Indonesia.


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Apple Configurator

Arek Dreyer, Dreyer Network ConsultantsPart of XW13

This hands on session will cover Apple’s Configurator application for managing a fleet of iOS devices.

You will need to bring your own Macintosh laptop running MacOS X 10.8.x, and an iOS device running iOS 6 to participate in this lab.

Arek Dreyer is a Chicago, USA based author, courseware developer and computer consultant, expert in Mac OS X and directory services in Mac OS X Server. He is an Apple Certified Trainer and Apple Certified System Administrator and has been delivering system administration training for Apple Worldwide Training and Certification since 2002. He maintains expertise in Microsoft Windows and UNIX based environments, particularly Sun Solaris, Mac OS X has become his preferred platform, and he enjoys the challenge of heterogeneous networks like integration with Active Directory.

He has been a presenter at the Macworld Expo conference on many occasions and presented at X World in the past.

He is is the author of many books including; Apple Pro Training Series: OS X Lion Support Essentials; Apple Pro Training Series: OS X Lion Server Essentials and his new book on Managing iOS Devices with OS X Lion Server.


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Make an app, you can do that too

Jayant Varma, OZ AppsPart of XW13

Apps are everywhere, still there are ideas that are worthy of being made into an app. The biggest issue faced by anyone is getting the idea converted into an app for various reasons. These can hinge around various resource constraints like knowledge or finances. In this session you can learn how to overcome this and be on your way in converting your ideas into an app.

The takeaway from this workshop is Lua which can be run on Windows, Macintosh and Unix systems, and be very useful to write scripts that look like English, are powerful, and have a small footprint.

You will need to bring your own Macintosh laptop to participate in this lab, preferably running MacOS X 10.8.x.

Jayant is the author of the book “Learn Lua for iOS Game Development” from Apress.  He was formerly a lecturer at James Cook University, and presented at X World 2010 and X World 2011, and has run workshops for the AUC on Corona. He currently runs a consulting service known as OZ Apps, and develop apps for iOS and Android using a variety of frameworks and languages.


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Rapid Development for Singular Purpose Mac Computing Environments

Matthew Tilney, Australian National UniversityPart of XW13

With a change in IT to consumer BYO devices, there are still new and emerging areas for system administrators that can provide positive use of resources and add value in universities. This workshop is a hands-on session on creating the follow niche environments:

  • public movie display (using an iMac)
  • photo display feed from PhotoBooth
  • initial design for computer-based exams (replacing the exam paper pad with Word)

The focus is upon quick, flexible, re-usable and modular design to rapidly develop the above and similar environments.  All attendees are welcome, only broad background in Macintosh usage is required.


Matthew is a Macintosh system administrator in the Managed Operating Environments team for the Division of Information at ANU.  His primary responsibility includes installing, updating and maintaining the student Information Commons (IC) Macintosh fleet of over 500 machines along with Adam Reed.

His other tasks include the management of staff Macintosh based machines (and other Apple devices), setup of specific learning facilities, and day-to-day support of Apple and Microsoft and other IT based products as required.

Recently he has taken ‘personal development time’ to investigate the idea of creating ‘fun’ minimal user environments using spare iMacs for use by both staff and students such as photo-booth and image displays.


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