In this blog, I’ll share my experiences from the ARCtic conference, held in Oulu, Finland, from March 11th to 13th, 2025. The first part will cover my travel and experiences during the conference, and the second part highlights key technical takeaways and insights from the event.
Part 1: Travel experiences
Planning
Initially it all started as a joke from one of my colleagues. (I am now on Erasmus+ student exchange in Helsinki). It felt a bit ridiculous – even though Oulu is in the same country, it’s about 600 km away (which means a 9.5-hour train ride). Plus, the conference tickets were a bit pricey, as the first wave of tickets was already gone.
But during the next few days it started going through my head back and forth as I thought about it more deeply. The first reason why I thought about it more was that I was already planning to go on vacation to Lapland during the week before the conference and my bus would most likely go through Oulu exactly on the night before it would start. The second reason I came up with was that I found out that one of my high school friends and a previous colleague of my team will have a talk there.
Soon after, I started discussing the possibility of going there with my team lead Igorqo. It took some time, but on 25th of February I got my tickets! In the meantime I also had to plan my transportation and accommodation. In the end it was not as easy as I thought, because the travel agency with which I was going to Lapland didn’t let me get off the bus outside of their designated stops.
Day 1
In the end, I got off the bus at 10 pm in Rovaniemi, where I had about 4 hours of sleep so I could catch a morning train to Oulu at 5:15am. I arrived at Oulu at half past seven - just in time to go to the first workshop with Paul Hudson. The first impression of the city wasn’t really nice - it felt the same as the slang title of the city – paska kaupunni – just after I left the train station building I slipped on the ice, and it bruised one of my fingers.
The complications didn’t end right there – as I was going to the workshop “Level up your Swift and SwiftUI” by Paul Hudson, I realized that I don’t have the recommended version of Xcode installed. So without thinking I started downloading and installing the new version (which I apparently did not need) which blocked me for at least the first 45 minutes of the workshop. In the end it did not matter too much as I just rather listened and tried to understand the discussed topics instead of mindlessly copying changes to my project.
In the afternoon I went to another workshop about TipKit from Alaina Kafkes. We were trying two different approaches on how to show new features to the app users. After this workshop I quickly checked into my apartment after which I went for a pub quiz organized by the conference. The quiz was mostly about Apple history, so I had a hard time helping my team as I have been doing iOS development only for a few years now. More importantly, I had an opportunity to informally hang out with the organizers, speakers and other conference attendees. Later during the evening we motivated each other to go in the morning to the sauna by the river.
Day 2
As the sauna was neither close to my accommodation nor the conference center, I had to wake up very early again. But the sauna felt amazing - first, the combination of sauna and cold river woke me perfectly for the first day of the conference talks. Secondly, it was great to show Finnish sauna culture to the people from all around the world.
After the sauna we went to the main conference venue in the RIO theater, where we got another taste (literally) of the Finnish culture - Laskiaspulla and coffee. (Laskiaspulla is a traditional pastry specifically made during this part of the year).
The main program of the conference took place in the cozy theater hall. Compared to some larger conferences, there was always just one talk at one time. Therefore I didn’t have a dilemma of choosing which speaker I should listen to and FOMO of not being able to listen to all of them. Another benefit of the conference being relatively small was that it was very easy to network with other iOS developers (including the organizers and speakers). This was further enhanced by the reality that I was the only one from Ackee there - so I had no other option than to interact with others.
After the main program ended we got two amazing musical performances by Iterum Nata and Mactopias. Immediately after the performances ended we were pleasantly surprised with the aurora, which was visible just in front of the theater. It made me so happy for all the people who had never seen it before. We ended the second day of the conference with karaoke (which is also another typical activity among Finnish people). Same as the day before, I was talked into going to the sauna the next morning, but this time I had to say no, as I knew I would have to check out from the accommodation before heading to the main conference venue.
Day 3
The last day of the conference was again full of great speeches (see Part 2). The day (and the conference) ended with a live recording of a Swift over Coffee podcast session and afterparty in a local brewery nearby. At midnight I took an overnight train back home to Helsinki, which surprised me with another look at the northern lights.
Summary
So the question is: “Would I go there next year for the 2nd ARC conference? And would I change anything?” I would definitely say yes to another opportunity to go there. And with the changes – I would probably book accommodation in the same place as others, so I wouldn’t have to spend so much time travelling around the city. I would also think about joining the skiing trip which was planned after the conference ended. Going alone to a conference will force you to step outside of your comfort zone and it will motivate you to interact with many new people. It will most likely result in many good memories. And just a quick tip at the end: Don’t travel north just with a single goal of seeing aurora. There is a lot more to see and experience. Aurora is just a small gift from nature which you might get or might not get at all.
Part 2: Technical takeaways
Communication & Code clarity
The importance of writing clean and understandable code was a recurring theme.
Alaina Kafkes gave a talk on the philosophy behind code comments, emphasizing that they are crucial abstractions. She pointed out that good comments explain what and why something is done, but not how –implementation details should be left out of comments, especially around interfaces, and even suggested using xsource flags to link relevant files.
Ben Scheirman continued with the theme of team communication and reminded everyone that professionalism and respect are as essential in coding environments as technical skills themselves. His key takeaway could be summed up as a gentle reminder to "not be a jerk" – a simple principle that often makes all the difference in team dynamics.
Accessibility
Accessibility was another key focus. Klemens Strasser shared his own experience developing accessible iOS games and highlighted how principles from video game design can inform mobile app accessibility. He emphasized that thinking about accessibility from the beginning makes it much easier to implement effectively, rather than trying to retrofit it later. He introduced tools and resources like accessible color palettes from Paul Tol, dyslexic-friendly fonts, and mentioned the Apple Vis forum as a valuable place to get feedback on accessibility features in your app. These suggestions help create more inclusive digital experiences.
Attendees were also encouraged to test their apps using the Accessibility Inspector and VoiceOver with screen curtain mode, which simulates visual disability and allows developers to better empathize with users who rely on assistive technologies. A helpful tip was to use a custom accessibility stack (AStack) instead of the standard VStack or HStack to improve overall accessibility and VoiceOver navigation.
The conference concluded with a live recording session of the Swift Over Coffee podcast, which centered around app accessibility – a fitting end to a conference that strongly emphasized on inclusive design.
### Apple Technologies and Swift
Ellen Shapiro spoke about Apple Intelligence and demonstrated sample use cases for the new frameworks. Her talk covered features like Image Playgrounds, Genmoji, Writing Tools and Translation, providing practical insights into how these tools can be integrated into iOS development.
Paul Hudson had a session on Ignite, a static site generator built in Swift, showing how Swift can be used for building static websites. This approach is particularly beneficial for developers who are already familiar with Swift syntax, as it allows them to build sites without needing to understand HTTP or CSS.
Mikaela Caron presented TabletopKit, which is part of Apple’s visionOS, and explored how it can be used to create tabletop games. It offered a glimpse into the future of interactive development on new platforms.
Swift Language Deep Dives
Daniel Steinberg offered a deep dive into SwiftUI generics. He explained how some View allows flexibility while still enabling the compiler to know the type at compile time—we as developers don't care what specific type of view it is, but the compiler does and uses that knowledge to ensure type safety and performance, and he discussed the value of primary associated types for managing complexity in generic code.
Priyal Porwal’s session focused on Swift macros, a new feature that helps maintain clean and scalable codebases. It was a good overview of how these macros can be practically used in iOS apps.
Performance and Debugging
The last discussed topic was performance and debugging. Pol Piella Abadia gave a talk focused on Instruments, offering tips on how to use tools like the Time Profiler and Swift Tasks Instrument to detect hangs or unnecessary recomputations. He also touched on using the View Body and View Properties instruments to investigate what triggers UI updates.
Technical part reflection
Looking back at the technical part of the conference, the topic that impressed me the most was accessibility. It went far beyond the usual "add VoiceOver labels" advice – there were concrete examples, tools, and proven personal experiences that showed how deeply accessibility can be integrated into the development process, especially when considered from the very beginning.
Another standout was the session on Instruments. While it's a powerful part of the developer toolbox, many developers (myself included) don’t use it to its full potential. The talk provided practical insights on how to identify performance issues and better understand what's happening in the app's UI layer, which is something I’ll definitely try to incorporate into my own workflow.
