Meet the Speaker Committee for Node.js Interactive

It’s only seven days until call for proposals are due for Node.js Interactive taking place Oct. 4–6, 2017, in Vancouver, Canada — CFPs close on April 10. We know there’s a ton of amazing stories to tell about how you are using Node.js and JavaScript, best practices working with these technologies, as well as general stories you may want to share — like last year’s presentation Shedding Light on the Darknet by Nwokedi Idika.

This year, we are looking for folks to speak about the following topics based on requests from last year and community input (bolded are the ones that we received the most requests on in our post-conference survey):

• Node.js project: Core, working groups, TSC
• Node.js in Production: Deployment, APIs, scaling, microservices
• Security: Code guidelines, risks & countermeasures, dependencies management, HTTP, headers/CSRF/XSS/injection flaws
• Diagnostics: Debugging, performance, monitoring
• Education: Learning, teaching, and hiring in Node.js
• Front-end engineering with Node.js
• Serverless
• Emerging use cases: Machine learning, Desktop/Electron, IoT.
• Community Building: Grassroots efforts in workshops, meetups, NodeSchool, NodeBots, NodeGirls, NodeConfs, online communities.
• Wildcard: Excited about a topic and it doesn’t fit in another bucket? We want to hear it here!

To help us select speakers for the conference, we have created a community speaker committee that consists of Chris Williams, Safia Abdalla, Mariko Kosaka, James Snell, Thomas Watson and Joyee Cheung. This group represents a mix of talented technologists that have an array of expertise from organizing conferences, Node.js Core technologies, open source community development, diagnostics and testing, scaling Node.js and more.

Here’s a bit more about the folks that make up the selection committee, in case you are not familiar with them:

• Chris Williams: Chris created JSConf and RobotsConf and has been a huge presence in building JavaScript conferences worldwide. Oh, he’s also the godfather of NodeBots. In his spare time, he’s the CTO of a company he founded called Emerging Technology Advisors that provides client-services around cutting-edge technologies.
• Safia Abdalla: Safia is an independent consultant and a prolific open source developer with a passion for community building. You can find her speaking at conferences, writing for her quarterly publication The Captain’s Log, organizing PyData Chicago (a community of folks who are interested in open source scientific software and open science), or running around her city of Chicago.
• Mariko Kosaka: An incredibly creative developer who likes to knit — check out her video from Node.js Interactive 2015, she uses code to help her design textiles & organize a local JavaScript meetup in New York City called BrooklynJS.
• James Snell: James currently works at nearForm as its open source architect and is a member of the technical steering committee for the Node.js Project. He enjoys writing about tech and speaks at JavaScript and Node.js conferences around the world. Among other projects, James is currently focused on updating ES6 modules in Node.js.
• Thomas Watson: Thomas is a Copenhagen based open source hacker and is the Node.js lead at Opbeat — a JavaScript performance monitoring startup. Thomas has published over a 100 different Node.js modules and mad science projects and is a member of the Node.js Diagnostics Working Group.
• Joyee Cheung: Joyee is a developer at Alibaba Cloud working on alinode, an application management solution for Node.js in production. It has been used both inside and outside the Alibaba Group at scale. In her free time, she is a Node.js Core Collaborator and regularly makes contributions to Node.js Core and other related projects. She also enjoys hiking around Hangzhou, China, where she lives.

We decided to create a committee this year to bring in even more viewpoints, technical expertise and opinions from well-respected developers in the Node.js ecosystem. It’s also an excellent way to pair our views as two Node.js Foundation employees with representation from the larger community.

We really look forward to creating an awesome conference that will allow enterprises, vendors, the community and Node.js end users come together to learn from each other to help propel the project and the technology forward for years ahead.

Lastly, if you have any questions on the submission process at all, it’s best to send an email to events@linuxfoundation.org.

-Tracy Hinds, Education Community Manager of the Node.js Foundation, and Mikeal Rogers, Community Manager of the Node.js Foundation