Discovering the Angular Community Through ng-conf
Looking back, 2020 has been such a roller coaster for me. From being furloughed to eventually being laid off, adding to the rising number of unemployed, becoming a volunteer for Out In Tech (a non-profit community uniting LGBTQ+ in Tech organizing events), and doing a personal rebrand strategy and exhaustive approach in job searching — all of these had their highs and lows but one thing is for sure — attending EnterpriseNG and meeting the Angular Community was one of the best things that has happened to me.
This is that story.
The Discovery
August 2020. I had the crazy idea of doing a 7-day rebrand project for myself to expand my job search (this even became a talk I gave in October 2020). Part of this strategy was to use this as my online business card whenever I network and meet people. A few years back, I was a serial attendee of a lot of local tech communities in the Philippines. Since quarantine, a lot of them have transitioned to online meetups. This enabled me to attend a lot of them again. Similarly, I’ve been attending international UX conferences, all online, since UX is one of my sub-specialties as a Software Engineer. Sure these were fun and I was happy to catch up with some familiar faces, but I did feel a problem creeping in for my job search that I had to face. Since I was attending many Philippine and UX Tech Communities, I was only getting referrals for either local roles to the Philippines and/or UX roles. This wasn’t going to work — I needed to attend developer communities in the U.S.
Flashback to March 2019. I had a conversation with my teammates about developer conferences and part of the conversation was ng-conf, the world’s largest Angular Conference hosted annually in Salt Lake City. As a short flight or half a day’s road trip from Los Angeles, it was motivating to hear about it. As a self-taught Angular developer, I was highly interested in attending but the timing wasn’t feasible so this idea went to the back burner. With that memory popping back into my mind, I quickly looked up ng-conf to see what was planned for 2020. Lo and behold, they had some teasers for ng-conf 2020, scheduled for November. I got excited and subscribed to the newsletter so that I could get the updates when there were more details.
The Free Webinars: ng-Webinar Series
It was mid-September and I was in the midst of organizing a lot of events for Out In Tech while busy with a lot of interviews and job applications.
During one of those days, I was scrolling through my inbox and noticed that I had been receiving more and more newsletters from ng-conf about the Angular community. I found out that the community had a podcast called The Angular Show. Though I may not be much of an auditory learner, it was quite amusing to hear the panel and all of their commentaries on various Angular topics, AND side topics. Definitely, a must to check out!
Aside from the podcast and learning what the focus of EnterpriseNG would be, ng-conf released a full series of webinars called the ng-Webinar Series. These were free back-to-back webinars starting in October aimed at helping Angular developers learn best practices, new tools, and sharpening their skills. I couldn’t believe I didn’t have to wait more than a month to attend an Angular learning event!
I remember waking up for first event and logging into zoom waiting for it to start. My first event was JamstackNG: Angular + Scully by Aaron Frost (aka Frosty). My jaw just dropped on how well organized it was, how amazing the content, and also how definitely personalized it was — dem donuts! This set my standard on what to expect for the rest of the webinars and the main event week. This series truly built the hype for the next couple of weeks leading to the grand show that was the free workshops and EnterpriseNG.
One kudos I want to give out to the organizers is their proactive approach to introductions with pronouns. Humble as it may sound, but I think this is a good sign and step to make people aware and truly bring the value of inclusion to these events.
The Scholarship
I was already delighted with attending all of the various free webinars for the entire week. It was truly a great way to level up and learn a lot of new techniques as an engineer. However, I came to a bump in the road. I still hadn’t met many people who would help me find work aside from the speakers and organizers.
In one of the regular coffee chats I regularly attend, I mentioned the free ng-conf webinars and workshops to share the opportunity with others. But as I was sharing this information with others, I stumbled across some new information on the ng-conf 2020 website about a scholarship program for Diversity & Inclusivity! Caught off guard , after the chat, I immediately applied seeing that I might be a great fit for their program. The application process was relatively easy. I think it was the waiting time to hear back that was much harder.
A few weeks after the submission, I was getting nervous day-by-day as the event was nearing because I hadn’t received a response. I really wanted to go! Finally, at the end of October, I received notification that I had been accepted and would be receiving a free ticket! Hooray! I was so excited!
The Free Workshops
After a long streak of attending the webinars, the nail-biting period of waiting to hear back about the scholarship, and exhaustion from job hunting and rejections, the week of ng-conf had finally arrived. The ‘main event week’ in November is composed of two parts, The Workshops and EnterpriseNG.
The workshops were scheduled for the three days before the actual conference. The first day, open and free to the public, had various morning and afternoon sessions. Days 2 and 3 were paid, full-day workshops.
A few weeks back when I was broke and surviving, tickets were incredibly still available. I registered for a free AM and PM session. I decided to register to JamstackNG: Angular + Scully (again) to see the workshop version of Frosty’s webinar and Advanced Usage of AG-Grid of Brian Love.
Compared to the webinar, a 1-hour introduction, the JamstackNG:Angular + Scully workshop was almost 3 hours. I was able to do much more hands-on practice and not rush to make things work. One great part of the workshop was that attendees were able to talk to the speakers and organizers easily during that time, giving a feeling like you were in an in-person live workshop. The workshop did a great job expanding on the core topics and had an in-depth take on the material, especially the patterns and strategies you can apply to your day-to-day programming. It felt like one of those director’s extended cuts for films- it was a richer and deeper understanding of the subject. To add the cherry on top, the whole session was playing the The X-Files Theme song and this just added a bit of suspense, fun, and thrill to the overall feel.
I used AG-Grid a lot in my previous work so I made the jump to do Advanced Usage of AG-Grid. Brian was phenomenal with his workshop. There were clear outlines of the topics and activities that made it easy to follow, even if you hadn’t attended the introductory workshop the day before. Most, if not all, topics had an exercise that was easy to follow and had their own sandbox where you could test it out on your own. After each exercise, Brian followed up with the solution to help make sure attendees understood. This guided approach was helpful for me as it strengthened a lot of the common strategies in coding I have done before, but at the same time, I learned new patterns that I could employ in future projects.
I wasn’t able to attend the next days’ paid workshops, but I’m sure that they were just as amazing as the free ones. Certainly, these workshops reinforced my excitement for what was soon to be the main Main Event!
The Main Event: EnterpriseNG
EnterpriseNG, the main event, was for 2 days consisting of multiple sessions on various topics. To attend, you logged in to an online platform called Tito where you could see the whole timeline of sessions, the booths of sponsors, and a chat thread where participants could talk.
It was pretty exciting to see the group thread where all the participants were chatting while the sessions were on. The energy stayed consistent, from the great keynotes to the panel talks at the end of each day. This whole event had a lot of uproar discussion on 2 things: Micro-Front Ends and the TSlint (deprecated in 2019) linter was to be replaced by ESLint.
Seeing a familiar face from my Out in Tech Talent Show days ~ circa April 2020; Cecelia Martinez did a talk on Testing Angular Applications with Cypress and this gave me a new perspective in testing strategies. This also gave me comfort as it was good to see speakers coming from diverse backgrounds and being represented in conferences like these.
The most valuable session for me diving into all of these topics was RxJS Patterns in Angular by Deborah Kurata. The high-level concepts and practical applications for those patterns were pristinely valuable for me as an Angular Developer, as RxJS comes off the shelf with Angular and you can apply the lessons to a lot of use cases in the features you are developing.
Also, as a fun activity during the conference, attendees were encouraged to visit sponsor booths to collect a series of secret codes to potentially win a grand prize. I thought this was a creative way to do things virtually. It was fun talking to people that were in the booths and other participants of EnterpriseNG. I got to talk more with Sam Julien as he did a webinar a few weeks back on Auth0. I was also able to learn about HeroDevs where I got to meet Mike Brocchi. I still remember something he said:
“You attend these (ng-conf and conferences) to learn what to learn.”
This resonated with me a lot. When attending events like these, you may not remember all the small details, but you can at least learn high-level subjects. Afterward, you can learn the nitty-gritty about them when the time comes that you need it. Determining when you need it comes with the awareness that these sessions provide for you. Pretty much, the two main discussions mentioned above still remain in my thoughts many months after.
A few weeks after the event, I received a lot of swag from the sponsors and ng-conf. It impressed me that we were able to get swag from a digital event!
The Lightning Talks
Another part of ng-conf is their extensive Hallway Track. Even as an online event, the conference had arranged for various activities for fun, entertainment, and additional learning for attendees, speakers, and organizers alike. One of the more interesting activities was the Lightning Talks session in which regular attendees could submit a 5-min presentation beforehand with the chance to give your talk in front of any other attendees who joined the session. Me being the extra person that I am, I registered and was given a time slot for the 2nd day. Before I got to that point, I had to think hard on a suitable technical topic I could even present. One of the major oppositions to this was the infamous imposter syndrome — who are they and why are they a pain?! After much thought, I decided on a topic that I had experience with and decided to call it Back To Basics: Organizing Styles In Your Angular Project. I chose this topic since I had difficulties in the past managing different styles for different frameworks, and this really anchors my Front End, UX, and Product specialty. I felt this was a relevant choice because some developers might have encountered some of these pain points as well. The night before, I was able to finish a working demo but I still had doubts because my app looked so geeky since it was a Pokédex (shorthand for digital encyclopedia of Pokémon, a TV show that I’m a big fan of). I didn’t know how the crowd would react to the topic.
Backstage! I was around the 9th or 10th speaker to present so I watched the talks before me in the video conference call. I was quite nervous early on but suddenly I heard the first speaker drop a Pokémon reference — Oh yiz! This happened not once, not twice, not thrice, but four freakin’ times with other speakers! Ain’t that a charmer! I was totally amazed and entertained by the level of geekiness people attending were showing — I loved it! I felt at ease watching the rest of the talks before me.
Showtime! It was my turn on stage and deep breaths. The ‘lightning’ of the lightning round was not as fast, since time slowed down so much for that moment but I actually enjoyed sharing my experiences and thoughts. I also told everyone point-blank that I was looking for work in my introduction. I felt fulfilled, and I even got some job referrals afterward (the things I do for job searching!). Definitely, the Lightning Talks were a highlight and ultra experience as I was able to meet new friends an mentors. Shout out to Erik Slack doing his talk Host Your Angular App On Firebase Or Else! and Michi Dewitt for Prettier: More Than Just A Pretty Face. They’re amazing!
This encounter was the pièce de résistance to my job hunt as a slew of impulsive actions, random events, and meetups followed. I was finally able to find a new job. What a journey! I am truly grateful to this community for providing me the opportunity to join the events through the scholarship that ultimately earned me a living, turning surviving into enjoying!
The Angular Community
Overall, I felt this whole experience has been a homecoming for me — both for being a total geek and a developer that uses Angular. The whole Angular Community is welcoming and you can truly be yourself. Whether you are new or highly experienced, it is a place of learning and growth. The community really wants you to be successful in the projects you face and want to help you grow as a professional. I also learned that many in the community use Twitter, so make sure to follow all of your favorite speakers.
… And Beyond!
What makes this community even more amazing is that it’s supported by a lot of local communities such as Angular Utah, Angular San Diego, Angular Portland, and many other city meetups. They even did a separate event called Angular Arena, The Battle of the Meetups! — an Angular Trivia contest. Ain’t that awesome? I also wanted to mention there is a thriving Discord Server for the community too! There are many opportunities to meet the folks within the community.
I have only been following ng-conf while they’ve been online for the covid quarantine, but even though these events aren’t their normal live conferences, they are extraordinary experiences. I can’t wait to attend ng-conf in real life, I believe it will surpass what I’ve seen so far and go ultra. For now, ng-conf 2022 is just around the corner and I’m excited to see how that event comes out. See you there!
Now that you’ve read this article and learned a thing or two (or ten!), let’s kick things up another notch!
Take your skills to a whole new level by joining us in person for the world’s first MAJOR Angular conference in over 2 years! Not only will You be hearing from some of the industry’s foremost experts in Angular (including the Angular team themselves!), but you’ll also get access to:
- Expert panels and Q&A sessions with the speakers
- A friendly Hallway Track where you can network with 1,500 of your fellow Angular developers, sponsors, and speakers alike.
- Hands-on workshops
- Games, prizes, live entertainment, and be able to engage with them and a party you’ll never forget
We’ll see you there this August 29th-Sept 2nd, 2022. Online-only tickets are available as well.
https://2022.ng-conf.org/
