Welcoming Blake Meike - Friday January 27th 6-8pm at Rapidsparts!

Hello all, I just spoke with Blake and we arranged for him to give an interactive discussion on Android Fragments - a feature introduced with Honeycomb and a must know for ICS. Please forward this invitation along and lets try to welcome Blake with a nice crowd. 
See below for more information on Blake Meike. 
See you there 6-8pm @ Rapidparts Inc. - 2950 Walkent Ct. Grand Rapids, MI 49544

== Short bio

Blake Meike is an engineer with more than 30 years of experience, much of it with Java. He has built systems as large as Amazon's massively scalable AutoScaling service and as small as a pre-Android OSS/Linux based Java-like platform for cell-phones. He is currently deep in Android. He is co-author of two O'Reilly Books "Android Application Development" and "Programming Android"

== Abstract

When Android was used nearly exclusively for very small screens, the one-activity/one-screen UI worked very well.  Android kept a metaphorical deck-of-card: new task obscure previous task and the back stack enables quick and intuitive access to old state.

This changes completely, however, when the UI is spread over the surface of a larger tablet screen. Some parts of the screen will remain constant over longer durations than others. Some parts of the screen determine the contents of other parts. A card-stack metaphor simply won't cut it anymore.

With Android 3.0 SDK (API 11), Honeycomb, Android's developers introduced Fragments, a new, complex and powerful tool to encourage great large-screen UIs with consistent feel and behavior.  This talk will introduce Fragments, give a thorough example of their use, and describe some of the traps that lurk in their use.

Blake will also be giving away several copies of his newest book, Programming Android.