X
JSConfEU took place the 10th time in Berlin this year and unfortunately it’s going to be the last time for now. Organizers will take a break and reconsider the conference in 2020. I honor steps like that a lot - as I know how stressful things can become that you once loved and become a burden with growing size and the accordingly growing responsibility you feel.
So this year was a lot of remembering things from the last conferences and as I attended for the first time it was really exiting to see how the community has grown over the years and how many exiting things have happened. I came to know that Ryan Dahl showed node.js for the first time at JSConfEU and learned a lot more about JavaScript‘s younger history.
What I really loved was the mixture of people and their backgrounds and how those all came together at a really cool venue with enough space provided to feel free and build relationships. I really enjoyed being part of it and feeling welcome everywhere.
Furthermore I am really happy to spent some time understanding the BiPocIT space better during and after the conference. It was a great mirror for me and me being part of a system that hurts and suppresses a huge part of our society and made me think about where I support this system and what steps I could take to change things to the better. See https://2019.jsconf.eu/bipocit-space/ for more info about it.
Technology
From a technology perspective I have a long list of things I want to have a look at. The last talk I attended was about PLC-Reader, a tool that connects Node to Siemens S7 and other Programmable Logic Controllers. This was really interesting and I hope to be able to play with that in the near future, as I would love to add some skills to my portfolio in the area of Industry 4.0. The talk overall was great and really cool to hear that JS can bring power to tissue paper1
Another things that is on my technical bucket list for a long time now is Machine Learing and with tensorflow.js it is much more accessible to me. If only there was a project I could use it for. Let‘s see what future brings…2.
The next thing on my list is WASM (Web Assembly). But as I am also quite interested in Rust recently this also seems interesting to me, though I won‘t have any performance critical stuff to do in the browser in the next month. So this probably this is not going to happen in the near future.
PS: plan some time to try https://sandgame.club - it is highly addictive. 3
One thing that seems to be coming in the near future indeed are some changes in terms of JS package management. As npm4 and yarn5 announced some new approaches to speed things up and integrate Monorepos better (yay!) there are definitely some things that I will have to look into further. Furthermore there is a great initiative for a federated package registry for JS that is called Entropic. This looks super promising. You should have a look into it. 6
I also attended the talk about stencil and to be honest I did not really get the point of it, especially as everybody else is going more lazy they are going more static. I guess there must be something in the ionic world I do not know well enough to unterstand what it is all about. 7
Last but not least: animations, video art and music have been awesome. Thanks to live:js for the great show! 8
Key Insights
We need communities
Something I was really excited about to see was how organizations work in the context of JS and technology. Both TC39 that standardizes JS as well as Open JS foundation that supports JS projects legally and with other kinds of resources had a panel at the conference. They explained how they work and what challenges they are facing. It was great to see those people trying to work things out as good as possible for everyone. Thanks for your work. We only can make the ~web~ world a better place together. I will try to think about that if I place my next rant about a language feature that does not get released fast enough or does not fulfill my expectations. Instead I want to consider contributing or giving constructive feedback.
You should care about the web
It seems as if we should really care about the ~web~ world. As big companies completely dominate every aspect of life online, we need better solutions for people that do not have the technical knowledge we have. We have to build better software - be it as products or as open source software and make it more accessible to users that need other people to protect the web for them.
As capitalism is the system we have and unfortunetly it is not going to change in the near future, it is on us to find ways to creatively protect the web from all the threats it is facing. Only ambitious and brave projects can succeed in that space and I am working hard on bringing some out there some day.
Get the hell auta‘ there
I always struggled to put myself out there. I’ve always been a shy person that does not love to be the center of a group of people. I guess I’m still inspired by all the people at JSConf that had to fight much harder than me to be accepted by others and still went on. How couldn’t I use my privilege and giftedness to help our planet and the people that still have to fight to being treated equal. The shape of stuff is still very vague as is this post just a collection of random thoughts that I mostly wrote in the train back from Berlin. But I am super excited where they lead and what changes in my life due to JSConf. Thanks everyone for being part of it.
Thanks to everyone who made this weekend special and I wish the team of organizers a great year off!
- https://2019.jsconf.eu/pier-paolo-fumagalli/tales-from-the-toilet-how-javascript-helps-the-production-of-tissue-papers.html [return]
- https://2019.jsconf.eu/nikhil-thorat/tensorflowjs-bringing-machine-learning-to-the-web-and-beyond.html [return]
- https://2019.jsconf.eu/max-bittker/simulating-sand-building-interactivity-with-webassembly.html [return]
- https://2019.jsconf.eu/kat-marchan/tink-a-next-generation-package-manager.html [return]
- https://2019.jsconf.eu/mael-nison/yarn-2019-and-beyond.html [return]
- https://2019.jsconf.eu/c-j-silverio/the-economics-of-open-source.html [return]
- https://2019.jsconf.eu/manu-martinez-almeida/stencil-a-built-time-approach-to-the-web.html [return]
- https://2019.jsconf.eu/live-js/making-of-this-stage.html [return]