JSConfUS has officially made a come back after a three-year\nhiatus. I’d like to take this\nmoment to thank Chris & Laura\nWilliams for all of the work that they\nput into building such an awesome & welcoming community. I’d also like\nto thank the new organizers that\nbrought JSConfUS back! This year was exceptional, as you’d expect from\na JSConf!
\nI had the pleasure to attend JSConf 2015 along with this most recent\nJSConf. This year JSConfUS was held in sunny San Diego. I prefer the\nresort in FL simply because there was direct beach access. Let’s be\nhonest, that’s a total nitpick. 😆
\nOne of the new twists to JSConf this year was the addition of a first\ncome, first speak format. This allowed anyone to sign up and give a\ntalk in Track B, which is exactly what I\ndid! I wasn’t\nselected to be apart of the main track but that didn’t stop me from\ngiving my talk on BigTest. I love this idea\nso much. There were a ton of interesting talks that came from Track B\n& it allowed some to speak for the first time.
\nIt would take me forever to recap each talk, so I’m going to narrow\nthe field down to my favorite seven. Turns out when all the talks are\ngood it makes it really hard to pick your favorite seven, but I’ll try\nanyway!
\nIn this talk, Kevin covers all of the challenges he’s overcame to be a\nfront-end developer with a visual impairment. He covered a range of\nchallenges like finding a job in a city that had good public transit\nsince most jobs required him to be in office when he can’t drive. This\nis ultimately why Kevin, a San Diego native, ended up in Tokyo!
\nHe also covered the challenges he faces when trying to do pixel\nperfect front-end development and the different browser extensions &\ntools he uses to get the job done, which I found fascinating. Tools\nlike Atoms Telatype allowed him to pair\nwith his coworkers without having to adjust a ton of settings.
\nI had the pleasure of sitting at the same table with Kevin before and\nafter his talk. Once he was finished with his talk, one of the coolest\nthings happened. A PM from the Firefox dev tools team came over and\nasked if there was anything they could do with their dev tools to help\nimprove Kevin’s development experience. Which got me thinking… We put\neffort into making the experiences we’re building accessible but\nrarely give thought to accessible developer experiences.
\nI wasn’t sure what to expect when I sat down to watch this talk. My\ninitial reaction was “I’ve been writing ES6 since 2015, what could I\ntake away from this?”. I’m happy I did attend and didn’t judge purely\nfrom the title. Tim had a pretty awesome presenting style that I\nenjoyed. It kept me engaged and entertained as we took a tour through\nwhere ES6 came from, what actually made it into ES6, and what followed\nin ES2016-18.
\nThis is a great refresher talk for anyone that has been using ES6 for\na while as well as a great intro talk for those who are still looking\nto dip their toes into the new language features.
\nI had the chance to see this talk earlier in the year at Assert\njs, which blew me away. Justin is\nan excellent conference speaker with a ton of experience. This talk\nhad something like 725 slides! I thought I had a ton at 250. This talk\nwas slightly different from the one he gave at Assert. The main\ndifferences I can pick out are tweaked examples and a little more fine\ntuning on the message.
\nThis talk was pretty damn awesome & a ton of information was thrown\nout there at a rapid pace. The main takeaway is: mocking in unit tests\nis supposed to help shape the design of your program rather than\npunching holes, in reality, to make it easier for you to test. It\nhelps you figure out when and where the right time to mock in your\nunit tests.
\nThis might have been the best talk from JSConf, but it’s so hard to\ndeclare that with all of the other amazing content. Lastly, I’m super\nimpressed with the closed captioning service at JSConf. They were able\nto keep up with Justin and nailed it.
\nThis talk by Myles wasn’t technical but it was by far the most\nthought-provoking one I saw. He covered different ways bias works its\nway into the programs we write — whether we like it or not. We work\nour own biases in when we create. It’s up to you to recognize your\nbias and actively challenge them.
\nMyles gave a couple of solid examples to demonstrate these biases. My\nmain takeaway from this talk is to always keep looking at and digging\ninto the data you have. Is it fully formed? Where is the inherent bias\nin it? What can you do to challenge that and create a better data\nmodel?
\nThis is one that you’ll want to watch once the video drops. 🔥
\nAs a part-time IOT nerd who is always looking for ways to automate my\nhouse, this talk from Suz was a lot of fun and super informative. Also\nbig kudos to her for coming straight off a vacation and filling a\nspeaker role that opened up in a weeks time. 👏🏼
\nSuz covered how the browser used to interact with physical devices\nconnected via USB, what changed, and what’s coming down the pike. She\nhad a live demo on stage, which is gutsy! But totally worth it because\nit was neat to see a full end-to-end demo. She plugged in an Arduino,\nallowed the browser to connect to the device, drew a message in the\nbrowser, and then sent it to the Arduino.
\nIf you have any interest in IOT & controlling those devices visa USB\nthrough the browser, this talk is for you!
\nThe best way I can sum up this amazing talk from Mariko is it covers\nall of the things Google engineers have been yelling at me for. But\nshe did it in an awesomely informative way. I learned so much about\nhow the browser works.
\nHer slides and diagrams explaining how the browser offloads different\nprocess to the GPU or other threads were SUPER helpful. If you’re\nstruggling with getting silky smooth 60fps animations without page\njank, I highly recommend checking this talk out. It made a murky\npicture pretty clear for me!
\nBy Burke Holland and Jasmine Greenway
\nThis was probably the most fun talk at JSConf and they saved it for\nlast! Burke & Jasmine detailed their experience trying to parse\n@horse_js’s tweets to figure out who @horse_js really is.
Turns out they weren’t really able to use machine learning too much to\nhelp them with this, but they did learn a lot about different data\ncrunching techniques. There were a lot of hilarious jokes & puns\nsprinkled throughout the talk, which made it great to end the conf\non.
\nThey ended up narrowing horse down to 4 different possible people (who\nwere never exposed, for good reasons!). One in ATX and three in\nNYC. Am I horse JS? 🤔 They never said who it was… the mystery will\nnever be solved!
\nJSConfUS 2018 was amazing as all other JSConfs usually are. The new\norganizers did a great job making sure everyone felt welcomed and were\nsuper responsive to any questions I had. It was one of those\nconferences where the organization was done so well it fell away and\nwas out of sight.
\nI tried my best to narrow my favorite talks down, but let’s be honest,\nall of the talks were amazing. If you have spare time when the videos\ncome out I recommend watching all of them. They were diverse and full\nof super interesting information!
\nI can’t wait for JSConfUS 2019! My checkbook is waiting…
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