After one full day of the first ever JavaScript Conference or simply JSConf, I can officially sum up my experience in one word: mindblowing. So many incredible speakers from almost completely opposite nodes of the JavaScript world presented really inspiring stuff, from Jeff Haynie’s (@jhaynie) talk on Appcelerator’s Titanium project to Jan Lehnardt and Chris Anderson’s talk on CouchDB, a completely radical twist on databases. And this barely scratches the surface. The talks at lunch, during the breaks, in the hallways were priceless from any serious developer’s perspective as the fusion of a ton of these projects could quite possibly yield a successful attempt at turning the internet completely on its head as we know it. I can’t express how inspiring today’s sessions were. It’s a bit like practicing a sport, if you practice and hang out with guys that are better than you, then you will in ultimately get better.
One of my side projects that I’m working on is “realtime sentiment analysis” of the capital markets via twitter, but namely via stocktwits.com. My biggest roadblock has been truly simulating the “realtime-ness” of the data on twitter. Since the firehose has not been completed yet, basically some advanced caching of Twitter API calls and near constant AJAX requests were my best bet. However, after meeting Jack Moffitt (@metajack) at the social meeting at Union Station, he mentioned the XMPP project that essentially, and simply, solves my realtime issue. Suffice it to say, I’m stoked about being invited to his private beta to access the API that they will be making public.
I’m sure it has been blogged a million times already, but John Resig’s (@jeresig) demo on JavaScript Games and TestSwarm was simply incredible, mindblowing is honestly the best word to describe it. Many people try to one-up or compete with Resig mainly because of jQuery’s popularity, but you simply cannot deny his efforts and talents. A Guitar Hero JavaScript clone that will actually pop up if you enter the Konami code on the jQuery home page? That’s just bad ass no matter what JavaScript library you use.
Finally, Mozilla stepped it up BIG with their sponsorship; the food so far has been plentiful and outstanding. Mushroom risotto and New York strip steak…for lunch? Not to mention coffee, teas, and goodies throughout the day.
I’m incredibly pleased with the conference so far and would advise any serious JavaScript engineer to save your money now for next year, it is by far worth every penny…
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[...] Programming, javascript Laura and I just wrapped up JSConf 2009, which evidently went over very well. We couldn’t be more happy with the way the conference went; the attendees, the [...]
JavaScript: The Great Part « Voodoo Tiki God added these enlightening words on Apr 28 09 at 7:09 PM
