SIM 2022
An entire maritime forum in one pocket hub
The official app for the Saudi International Maritime Forum 2022 by the Royal Saudi Naval Forces: agenda, speakers, exhibitors, live stream and offline favourites.
- Country
Saudi Arabia- Type
- Client project
- Timeline
- 2022
- Platforms
- Android · iOS
- content areas in one hub
- 14
- event days covered
- 3
Overview
The Saudi International Maritime Forum is organised by the Royal Saudi Naval Forces and brings together naval delegations, maritime companies and industry leaders. For the 2022 edition, Mahmoud built the forum's official mobile app: a pocket guide for attendees, delegations and exhibitors before and during the three event days.
Built between August and October 2022, the app shipped on Google Play and the App Store as SIM 2022 for the forum on 15 to 17 November. The listings were retired after the event, as is common for single-edition event apps.
The challenge
- 01
A hard deadline: an event app is useless one day late, so it had to be on both stores before the forum opened.
- 02
A lot of content changing until the last minute: agenda, speakers, delegations, sponsors, exhibitors, news and media.
- 03
Crowded exhibition halls meant content already seen, favourites and notes had to stay available offline.
- 04
An international audience needed Arabic and English, light and dark themes, and official protocol content.
Highlights
Programme
- Three-day agenda with session times, linked speakers, Ask a question and a jump to the live stream.
- Speakers and delegations with photos, titles and biographies.
- Bilateral-meeting section for delegations.
Exhibition
- Sponsors and exhibitors with profile, website and contact.
- Floor plans and show guide.
- Venue location with in-app directions on Google Maps with a route polyline.
Media
- SIM Live stream, news, photo galleries and a YouTube-powered video centre.
- About SIM, about the RSNF and about the Kingdom.
Personal
- Sign-in, profile and a personal QR badge.
- One-to-one attendee chat on Firestore.
- Offline favourites for speakers, delegations, sponsors, exhibitors and news, plus personal notes.
- Search, Arabic and English, light and dark mode, push notifications, help centre and FAQs.
Signature feature
The whole forum in one pocket hub
- The home screen is a single grid of 14 entry points, from About SIM and Agenda to Floor Plans and Location, so any content is one tap away.
- Speakers, delegations, sponsors, exhibitors, banners and photos live in Cloud Firestore, so organisers could update content up to the last minute without a release, and the on-device cache keeps loaded pages readable when the hall Wi-Fi drops.
- Anything the attendee stars is saved in typed Hive boxes alongside personal notes and shown in a tabbed Favourites screen.
- From any session the attendee can ask a question or jump straight to the live stream.
Screens
Swipe for more
Engineering notes
- 01
Content organisers can change live
Event data sits in Firestore collections, so late changes reached every phone without a store update. Firestore's local cache covers flaky venue connectivity, and Hive holds everything personal.
- 02
Typed favourites
Favourites use separate Hive boxes with generated adapters per type, which kept the Favourites tabs simple and fast.
- 03
Directions to the venue
The location screen draws the route on Google Maps from the attendee's current position by decoding the directions polyline.
- 04
Attendee chat
Messages are stored per user pair in Cloud Firestore and streamed live.
- 05
Built to a fixed date
Feature-per-folder Cubits let screens be built and shipped in parallel; the app went from first commit to the stores in about two months.
Results
- Delivered and published on Google Play and the App Store as SIM 2022 for the forum in November 2022.
- Covered 14 content areas of the forum in a single app.
- Listings were retired after the event, as is common for single-edition event apps.
Stack
- Flutter
- Dart
- Bloc / Cubit
- GetX
- Provider
- Cloud Firestore
- Firebase Auth
- FCM
- Hive
- Dio
- Google Maps
- YouTube Data API
- qr_flutter