Flutter

Flutter & Friends is a unique conference that brings together Flutter enthusiasts, developers, and experts from all over the world. It’s an opportunity to dive deep into the Flutter ecosystem, share knowledge, and build connections within the community. Recognizing the strength of Flutter and Friends, Scionova sent three of our consultants to attend the conference to strengthen our connection with the Flutter community and check out the latest hot topics in Flutter. Here is what Kelly, Kianoosh, and Sahil thought about it. 

This year’s Flutter & Friends Conference was a fantastic experience for us.  The three-day event, which took place from Sunday, August 31, to Tuesday, September 2, gathered 301 attendees and it wasn’t just about Flutter—it also gave us a chance to connect through fun and engaging social activities. 

We loved how the event struck a balance between technical talks and networking opportunities. From walks at the zoo to a bar outing with a fun quiz tournament, and even a party that featured a coding competition in the middle of the celebration, we had an amazing time. It was a great way to meet interesting people, and we left with a lot of new connections and ideas. 
 
To give a quick summary of this experience, we will share the moments that stood out the most for us during the event.

PS: To see he recordings and the slides from the event please access: https://github.com/spydon/flutter_and_friends_slides  

Day 1: Social Activities (August 31) 

The first day was all about helping attendees connect. We kicked things off with a relaxing walk at the zoo, followed by a bar outing with a quiz tournament. It was a fun way to break the ice and build connections before the technical talks began. 

Day 2: Talks (September 1) 

The second day was dedicated to technical talks, and it was packed with insightful sessions from Flutter experts. Here are some of our favorite talks from the day: 

• Keynote – Empathetic Flutter 
  The opening speech was held by Craig Labenz. His talk made us remember that the first Futter beta version was launched in May 2017 and in less than seven years, it has built a large community and revolutionized cross-platform mobile development. It made us reflect on how we can continue growing our community to include more developers and create applications that reach an even wider audience.  

• Flutter web superfast: WASM  
  Renan Araujo held a speech with the promise of explaining how WebAssembly compilation for Flutter can turn tables for web performance, a promise he later delivered. The introduction of WebAssembly Garbage Collection has opened doors for Flutter to build its web applications in WebAssembly instead of JavaScript. This means that applications are faster and run with close to native experience. All good things come with a price and in this instance, the price is limited availability as only Chromium browsers fully support this at the moment, and as the transition requires some changes in the code some libraries that you want to use might not be “wasm-ready. These issues will be resolved with time, and the future of Flutter web looks bright. 

Day 3: Workshops (September 2) 

The third and final day was focused on hands-on workshops, where we had the chance to dive deeper into practical Flutter development. These were some of the workshops that really stood out to us: 

• Simplify Design Systems and Designer/Developer Collaboration with Widgetbook 
  This workshop was led by the Widgetbook team. They focused on one of the biggest challenges in software projects: making sure developers and designers communicate well. We learned how Widgetbook helps solve this problem with its library, and how Widgetbook Cloud makes PR reviews easier. This has us excited to use these tools in our own projects to improve teamwork and get better results. 

• Let’s test it with Patrol! 
  This workshop was led by the LeanCode team, and we really enjoyed it. They provided a great overview of integration testing with Patrol, Flutter’s first UI testing tool. We found it to be more intuitive than Flutter’s own testing framework, which Patrol builds upon. This session inspired us to dive deeper into Patrol so we can incorporate it into our own projects. 

The Flutter & Friends Conference was an inspiring event, leaving us with fresh insights, stronger connections, and practical tools to bring into our projects. It was the perfect blend of learning and community-building, making it a truly memorable experience. Big thanks to the organizers (Alek Åström, Lukas Klingsbo & Johannes Pietilä Löhnn) and to Scionova for giving us the opportunity.