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Today, I gave an introductory level technical talk about developing mobile apps for iOS platform at the American Society Of Engineers Of Indian Origin (ASEI), MI. The ASEI is "a two level (National and Local) non-profit organization of engineers and technical professionals of Indian origin". You can learn about them at http://www.aseimi.org. I was aware of the group but I had never attended any of their meetings, so  I was not sure what to expect.

Right after work, I made the 45 mile drive to the ASEI meeting. Fighting the evening rush hour traffic, I reached there on the nick of time ; I probably made the organizers quite nervous!

There was a pretty good turn out. These were people, who just like me, had driven in from work and who probably had ten other places they'd rather be on a fall evening with picture perfect weather. I had to ensure that my talk was well worth their evening.

Soon after the featured mobile app presentation, I got started. I surveyed the room and learnt that there were less than five developers in the room. The rest of the audience was a mix of people with diverse backgrounds (different industries , different roles, varying demographics, a few were not even iPhone users). 

My presentation was intended to be fairly technical , so my challenge was to make it appeal to the diverse audience. Although they were all not developers, I knew they all had one thing in common – they were very keen on learning more about iOS mobile development. I knew that was a start.

So for the next hour or so, I quickly moved through my slides. I had material for couple of hours but I tried to focus on material that would broadly appeal.  Then the questions started pouring in and they were all very relevant. People were paying attention (well- at least most of them were) and it was interesting to see different perspectives. 

I left the meeting with a greater sense of community. 

You can download my presentation from here. It is intended to be a primer to the iOS platform and developing apps for it .

Tags: American Society Of Engineers Of Indian Origin, App Development, ASEI, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Michigan, mobile apps, tutorial