Back from Germany and Turkey!

Hello John Doe,

Last week, I was in Berlin, Germany, where I gave a talk on SwiftData Performance Optimization at SwiftCon.

SwiftCon was part of the larger next.app conference, which brought together talks on Swift, Flutter, Android, Agentic AI, React, leadership, and many other topics.

I really enjoyed this format because it gave me an opportunity to step outside the iOS ecosystem and attend sessions on technologies and platforms I don't usually work with. It was refreshing to hear different perspectives, learn how other developers approach similar problems, and explore what's happening beyond the Apple ecosystem.

This was also my first experience presenting on a silent stage, which was quite interesting. Instead of listening through speakers, everyone in the audience wore headphones while I spoke into a microphone.

The reason for this setup was that multiple talks were happening at the same time in the same venue. The headphones allowed attendees to focus on their chosen session without being distracted by other presenters.

It felt a little unusual at first, especially since I was speaking to an audience wearing headphones, but I thought it was a clever way to accommodate multiple sessions without having the speakers compete with each other.

After Berlin, I headed to Istanbul, Turkey, for a short vacation. Turkey is an amazing country with so much history and culture. Everywhere you look in Istanbul, you are surrounded by incredible architecture that reflects the city's rich history.

Apart from the beautiful architecture, friendly people, and delicious food, one of the highlights of my trip was interacting with the cats of Istanbul.

Cats are everywhere in Istanbul, and they are incredibly friendly. They will casually walk up to you, looking for attention, food, or just a little company. I probably spent more time interacting with cats than I had originally planned!

By the end of the trip, most of my camera roll was filled with pictures of cats. Below are just a few of the many furry friends I met during my visit.

Now that I am back in the US, it's time to get back to work!

I've been working on an interesting series of articles and videos covering server-side sorting, filtering, and pagination in SwiftUI. I'm currently recording the video series, which should be available soon.

I hope you enjoy the content and find it useful in your own SwiftUI projects.

Azam