Node Summit 2017: An Exploration Into A Developer’s First Tech Conference Ever
This past week I flew out to San Francisco to attend Node Summit 2017 And this post is meant to cover as best I can all the firsts that I experienced along the way: first time in San Francisco (SF), first ride-share, first BART journey, first time getting lost, first time to use Twitter (totally did not read that), and so many more, as well as cover some of the material that I witnessed and took notes on.
At the very bottom is a nice mama-bird TLDR digest.
Shall we begin?
Prepare — Make Cute Business Cards
First thing is first, you cannot go to a tech conference without business cards, you simply cannot. Why? My former professor said so.
Saturday, the day before I flew out. I sat down with my housemate and he whipped up a nice layout for my cards and I provided the sketch. (former cartoonist) and my plans were to find a local FedEx to have them printed out.
I also took care of packing. I tend to pack light when I travel, so I packed one backpack with my laptop, chargers for both laptop and cell phone, several shirts, two pairs of outdoor pants, one pair of underwear, headphones, and my rock climbing shoes. (Wishful thinking on the rock climbing shoes) Packing-wise, I was good to go.
Execute — Stumble Upon a Printshop While Exploring
Monday I wandered around SF and did what I normally do when I am in a new city, find all the third wave coffee bars in town. The journey took me along the entire bay area, I ended up in Oakland when I needed to be in Mission (I went North instead of South…woops), I checked out the actual Chrome Bag store on Valencia, and eventually ended up at Autumn Express where I was able to get my cards printed out.
That pretty much had me pumped up and excited to attend the “Day Zero” pre-conference talks the following day.
Day Zero — Getting Lost in a Forest Heals You
Tuesday, it was time to attend “Day Zero”, a pre-conference event where people can pick up their badges and attend some talks to wet the palette. I attended one talk “Node.JS and Kubernetes: Zero to Multi-Cloud” then I bounced out.
Why?
- San Francisco busyness already had me overwhelmed.
- The topics of talks that day were not of interest to me.
- The Muir Woods are beautiful and I wanted to see them before I left.
- The Muir Woods are beautiful and I needed to see them before I left.
John Muir spoke to me, from beyond the loud overwhelming noises, horn honks and yelling, “The mountains are calling and I must go.”
Avoiding the Loud of People
Want to avoid crowds?
Canopy Trail → Lost Trail → Fern Creek Trail → Redwood Creek Trail
Taking that order of trails will take approximately 4 hours with time to rest and relax in areas with more-or-less complete solitude. Why does this guarantee almost certain solitude? The grade to go up Canopy Trail is steep and stays that way for the first half-mile. Most tourists are not ready for that.
My venture into the forest was a 4 hour hike through the Muir Woods with only my XeroShoes and my backpack full of gear (I did not want to leave it for a smash and grab). I met kind folks along the way and experienced, quiet streams, fresh cool air, and a silent stillness that can only be experienced to understand, the complete opposite of what is downtown SF.
The quiet helped me to center myself and prepare for the following day, Day One of talks.
Day One — Notes, Notes and More Notes
Wednesday, was the official first day of Node Summit 2017 and I had the following talks I wanted to attend:
- Four Years in the Life of a Node.JS-Based Platform at Condé Nast
Notes - 0–60 with Typescript and Node.JS
Notes - Twitter Lite, Powered by Node
Notes - Platform as a Reflection of Values: Joyent, Node.JS, and Beyond
- Node’s Event Loop From the Inside Out
- Machine Learning on Javascript
Thoughts on Talks
The talk, Four Years in the Life of a Node.JS-Based Platform at Condé Nast was a talk that I was highly interested in. My current work at HomeAway is on the UI Platform and so hearing about Condé’s four year retro on migrating over to Node.JS and lessons learned was so helpful, as I was drawing parallels between what happened at Condé and what is currently happening in my work at HomeAway.
The Twitter Lite talk was also interesting and was a retrospective on how Twitter approached their development process and transition to Node.JS. A great idea that I would like to adopt is how Twitter Mobile members would take every Wednesday at lunchtime to watch a Tech Talk and then afterward write up notes to discuss at the next retrospective. These weekly or bi-weekly active discussions help engage all the team members and also keep the team sharp on happenings in the tech community.
Lucas Aragno presented the Machine Learning on Javascript talk and I am glad that I stayed for the first half. He shared two libraries Synaptic.js and Neataptic.js that he had used in his machine learning projects. I caught up with Lucas on day two and we talked for some time about my own personal exploration into machine learning. We exchanged contact information and he offered to provide support on my explorations and personal projects related to machine learning.
Platform as a Reflection of Values — The talk that Resonated with me
Bryan Cantrill’s talk was the talk that resonated with me so deeply and made a lasting impact on me. Bryan started out at 100mphs with a fervor and vigor that would wake any sleeping giant. All my quotes are paraphrases as I cannot recall verbatim what he said.
“If no one shares your opinions in the community you are a part of, that is a sign that it is time to start a new community.”
“When people leave, they leave silently.”
“Look at your values and be those values, you cannot have them all as some contradict others.”
His words are still echoing in my head and they align with my experiences that are currently going on at work. I plan to bring this back to the committees that I am a part of and share it with my team. They are reminders to be our truth and speak our truth.
Day Two — Get Twitter, Business Cards, Communication at Hyperspeed
Thursday, was the second and last day of Node Summit 2017 and I had the following talks I wanted to attend:
- Debugging in 2017 with Node.JS
Notes - The Paved PAAS to Node.JS Microservices
Notes - Using Node.JS to Enable Enterprise Innovation
- CI/CD for Node.JS and Kubernetes
- Securing Your Serverless Node.JS Apps
Thoughts on Talks
This set of talks I mainly sat and listened to the speakers and now and then wrote down a few key names that I was going to search on Google later. In a similar vein to the day before, hearing Yunong’s talk on The Paved PAAS to Node.JS Microservices (link to April ’17, not NodeSummit Talk) was great to hear and also was a retrospective on lessons learned from Netflix when migrating over to Node.JS
Getting on That Twitter
On Day Two of the talks I decided to download and install Twitter on my phone. Since it came out, I never fully believed the connectivity that it would open up for me, I am glad that this was the time I decided to give it a go. I will let the following images speak for themselves, please scroll.
I started hash-tagging talks and the people involved as they occurred and immediately the Twitter activity started to pick up. Emily Rose was offering Heroku hours and so Emily and I exchanged words on the fly. At the end of the day I eventually found Emily and we spoke about starting out in the Node.JS community. One of the key words of wisdom that I received from Emily was, “Opinions are great, but sometimes you need to just block them out, focus on developing and come back and show what you have done. Then ask for feedback.” Gold.
This was one of the cute moments at Node Summit, asking Raquel Velez if I may have some NPM socks in exchange for my business card. Her words of reassurance about someone taking my socks was greatly appreciated.
Communication was happening at hyper speed and after one talk I met up and spoke Tierney Cyren (Node.JS Community Committee Secretary)about how I could get involved in contributing to the Node.JS community. Tweets were being retweeted and I was feeling empowered about how my thoughts and ideas were being received by people across the world. I am excited to what comes of this journey.
I felt a part of something so quickly and I enjoyed that me being me was what was being received by those I spoke with.
Closing Thoughts
I want to go to more conferences after this experience.
San Francisco is a very busy place and I was full of mixed emotions on witnessing the busyness, the juxtaposition of poverty with wealth, the constant technology talk, and the amount of sound being generated.
The forest really comforted me, and I am glad it exists so close to such a chaotic place as San Francisco.
Feeling included and welcomed goes hand-in-hand with reaching out to people and being genuine about yourself and what you are saying. I felt a part of something so quickly and I enjoyed that me being me was what was being received by those I spoke with.
“Opinions are great, but sometimes you need to just block them out, focus on developing and come back and show what you have done. Then ask for feedback.”
TLDR of my First Conference:
General Advice:
- Bring business cards and make them you, through and through and either plan a place to print them or be like me and randomly stumble upon a print shop.
- Arrive a few days before and explore the topic that is most interesting to you, I explored third-wave coffee bars.
- Figure out how to get around, use ride-share and public transport, maybe a rental if the city is not as crazy as San Francisco
- Bring a powerstrip and extension cord, you will meet a lot of new people this way.
Navigating the Conference:
- I looked at the agenda of the conference and marked which talks I wanted to attend.
- I took extensive notes as I listened via my laptop and opened a new tab in sublime for each talk I attended, this helped me in re-writing my notes later on.
- I skipped out on some of the talks sometimes to give myself a break from the stimulus
- I signed up for Twitter for the first time and began to follow all of the speakers at the conference, taking photos like a fan and tweeting in real time the topics that were being covered by each speaker.
- I went to the vendor booths and spoke with all the people there and exchanged cards.
Observations:
- I was surprised at how responsive everyone was on Twitter and that responsiveness also related to how inclusive all the people made me feel.
- Twitter is a great medium to connect with the tech community, and tweeting in real-time helped give me access to many of the speakers there.
- Being willing to venture a little out of your comfort zone and meet a few new people led to a longer conversation about brand new ideas.
- Actively writing notes as I listened to talks helped me to retain knowledge. Both paper and laptop worked equally well for me.
