Couch Con’ing O’Reilly Fluent Conference 2016
I was planning on attending this year's O'Reilly Fluent Conference in San Francisco until Mozilla needed me elsewhere the next week. I suppose technically I could go to Fluent but I'd be away from home for two weeks and, with a newborn, Mrs. Walsh Blog might give me the boot for good. I don't want that, of course, but I'm going to "couch con" Fluent; that is live the experience from home. The following is what I was hoping to attend while I was at O'Reilly's awesome conference.
Tuesday
9am: React & Flux from Scratch
One regret I have to this point is not having worked with React. Facebook's popular framework was partially created and developed by half of my old MooTools teammates which should be reason enough to learn React but I haven't needed it for anything. Maybe this talk could convince me.
1:45pm: Scaling your Node.js API like a boss
The dream of any API creator is for their API to get super popular, and as someone that wants that problem some day, knowing how to scale a Node.js API is something that would be good to know before even starting my API coding.
3:45pm: Real-time drawing in the browser with HTML5 Canvas
Now that I'm working with games on Panasonic TVs for Firefox OS, it would be good to get a taste of what's involved in creating advanced, real time HTML5 games.
Wednesday
11:15am: JavaScript and the Internet of Things
Mozilla recently stopped development of Firefox OS for phone and will instead shift Firefox OS' focus to the "Internet of Things". This talk would get me acquainted with where JavaScript may be powering IoT today.
12:00pm: Promise to not use Promises: Observables in ES7
I've been using promises well before they showed up in browsers or Node.js became popular so seeing "Promise to not uses promises" raised my eyebrow. I'll promise to hear the speaker out.
1:30pm: WebGL: The Next Generation
WebGL is amazing -- I've seen it achieve some incredible feats within Firefox OS and the browser. A next generation of WebGL? Can't wait to see what that includes! Hopefully they show some sweet demos or videos if possible.
2:15pm: ECMAScript 2016 and beyond
It's been nice seeing Microsoft push web standards forward with Edge and recommendations for the W3c, it will be interesting to see what they think or can teach me about ES 2016.
3:00pm: Move fast and (don't) break things: How we avoid screwing up the most expensive JavaScript project in the world
Uber has exploded in popularity and you don't do that without creating incredible systems. This talk is specifically about the JavaScript side of Uber which speaks to the developers in all of us.
4:30pm: Avoid critical UX mistakes and keep your users coming back
If you want to make money and/or build a following on the web, you need create a user experience that encourages returning. I'm sure I'm making many of these mistakes.
5:15pm: Don’t turn off that JavaScript just yet
The most neglected people in the internet world are those that use accessibility features we don't need. And the internet is a total "out of sight, out of mind" environment, so learning about how we can better help those users is a talk every front end developer should hear.
Thursday
11:15am: High performance in the critical rendering path
This talk promises to touch on the more important performance improvement techniques; we all know minification and concatenation are important, but what about next steps?
12:00pm: Making sense of the new CSS layout
Now that we have grid and flexbox CSS layout properties, which should we use and for what? I don't have the answer but hoped to learn it here.
1:30pm: HTTP/2 vs. HTTP/1.1: A performance analysis
Everything I hear about HTTP2 is unicorns and kittens but I don't know any specifics -- this talk would help me to find the Kool-Aid.
2:15pm: Rewriting Facebook's comments plugin with React and Flux
Stoyan Stefanov is a JavaScript hero of mine so hearing him talk about his work at Facebook, a hugely popular and performant site, would be a pleasure. Big bonus that he'll talk advanced React and Flux.
3:00pm: Changing how we work at PayPal through Node.js, React, and an experience platform
Paypal is another hugely popular website using Node.js, so seeing how they use JavaScript on both sides would be interesting. Hopefully there's a bit of security spoken about as well.
4:30pm: What web pros can do to thrive in a postbrowser world
Mobile, mobile, mobile; the desktop browser (and browsers in general) are not as relevant as they used to be so hopefully this talk can teach me how to keep employed a decade from now.
5:15pm: WebRTC data channels vs. WebSockets
Mozilla pushed WebRTC hard for years, and WebSockets have been the key to speedy interactivity for a long time, so I'm hoping this talk can steer me toward learning one more quickly.
Like I said, I'm pretty bummed that I can't make Fluent in San Fransisco in March. If any of you are going, please let me know what you learned!
