I was at the JS World, VueJS and DevWorld Amsterdam

For the second year, I visited Amsterdam to attend JSWorld. Last year was an amazing experience, so even the crazy ticket price couldn't stop me.

First of all, let me explain why I was at 3 conferences. The organizers changed the formula a bit and connected JS World with DevWorld. So only two days happened at the Amsterdam Theater and one happened at RAI. I have some thoughts about this and I will share it later.

This year was different

Last year, when I visited the conference for the first time, I was new here and didn't know almost anyone. Of course, I made some connections and when I came this year I felt more of a "one of them" person.

This changes how you approach such a huge event. Because, if you are new, it can be a bit scary and overwhelming.

While learning new things is important, making new connections is crucial.

Warmup

I was in Amsterdam a day before, so I could take part in the VueJS Rocks meetup organized by Jiří(he provided the vision) and Konstantin(he did all the actual work).

There were three amazing talks:

• Alvaro talked about the importance of DevTools

• Justin about the web as a platform and how frameworks are changing

• Ramona about visual testing

I enjoyed all of them and I hope that next year we'll similarly start the event.

Of course, it wouldn't be a proper meetup with beer, pizza, and many hallway talks.

The best talks

There were a lot of great talks and it's not easy to choose the best ones. I decided to pick the top 5 (order is random):

The Progressive Path by Anthony Fu

The progressive path is a process that enables a user to reach his target. Stairs are a great example of a progressive path in the real world. Without them, most of us wouldn't be able to reach multiple places or it would be very difficult.

Anthony explained how we can enable our users to start using our software with documentation, simple installation, etc.

Common Mistakes in VueJS by Daniel Kelly

Daniel listed a few common mistakes that happen very often and showed how to fix them. As not a VueJS developer, I enjoyed it, but also it got me thinking about how difficult the front end has become.

A Vue into Rock & Roll Prt. 2 by Tim Benniks

Like last year, Tim decided to play his guitar on the main stage, and along the way, he showed that we can use JS as a guitar amp. Tim already wrote a bit more about what happens behind the scenes here.

CSS Between the Pages by Phil Nash

A great talk that summarized everything related to WebTransitionAPI. Bonus points for Phil for finding out that Internet Explorer had page transition before it was cool.

All things Astro by Elian van Cutsem

Elian summarized what happened in the last 529 versions of Astro that were released during the year. I was kind of hoping for a sneak peek of Astro Studio, but that didn't happen.

Node documentary

Last year, we had a chance to watch to official React documentary. This year it was Node's turn.

I'm a person who uses NodeJS, but I never dived deeper into its history. I only knew who created it and I swear a lot after each update.

It turned out that Node's history is amazing and full of twists. Also kudos for everyone involved in bringing Node and IO.js together.

DevWorld conference

I mentioned at the beginning that this year JS World happened as a part of the DevWorld Conference. I didn't enjoy this change. I'm not saying it was bad, but compared to the more intimate atmosphere of Amsterdam Theater, it just didn't have the magic.

DevWorld happened in a huge hangar, there were 5 or 6 scenes and a huge topic diversity. Also, I was quite surprised that there wasn't free coffee and lunch (like at the Amsterdam Theater).

Overall, if the whole event would happen as a part of DevWorld, I'm not sure if I would visit it. The tickets are already batshit crazy and the event is happening in a very expensive city, so the event has to be perfect. And DevWorld is far from perfect.

Key takeaways

I had an amazing time. I'm tired as hell, but it was worth it. Spending time with my old and new friends was worth all the trouble.

I learned a lot and feel inspired - I already made notes about things I must try. Now I have to queue everything correctly 😄

And I also feel a bit sad already, because it will take a while until I will see all my amazing friends.

See you next year Amsterdam 😄