Something special happened at CityJS Athens
- 5 minsSomething special happened last week at CityJS Athens.
🏛️ But it started at the seat of civilisation ~4000 years ago. Location. . . Greece’s first theatre.
That was the beginning point from which every modern conference can trace it’s heritage back to. A group of people came together to share theories, dispense wisdom, and tell stories to each other. In essence these were the first meetups. Whilst there would’ve been far more himations back then than were seen at the City JS conference, the thread between the two points in time is strong nonetheless.
For two days, just shy of 200 attendees, speakers, and sponsors joined forces to celebrate the world of #JavaScript in the heart of Athens, continuing that ancient tradition. Taking over a community centre, we discussed every facet of JS conceivable, from dawn until dusk was a distant memory.
There are too many great talks to mention them all, however the three that stuck with me are:
Carmen’s upbeat look at dependency management, and the real world equivalent of our cable draws. Lots of nuggets of wisdom, plenty of memes, and the perfect pick me up in the morning.
Evyatar speed ran the creation of a unit testing library for form validation. This talk really made me question the approach I take to testing web front ends, and also inspired the room to follow our ideas through to completion. Naturally, I’ll just reach for his framework, VestJS, to do this task.
Soumaya continued the testing vibes, and gave a high level comparison of three popular frameworks for testing web applications. Which one won the battle I hear you cry! Well. . . it depends. . . as it does with most things in the world of development.
The conference overall was on par with what I’ve come to expect from CityJS Conferences. Friendly people, getting geeky, eating tasty food, and sharing their love of the web. The tech wizards who shared their skills and knowledge from the stage were a special bunch, and they dove even deeper at the speaker gathering. So many nuggets were learned from this group of people, and it was really fun getting to hang out for a few days.
As the closing speaker of the second day, I was afforded the luxury of some last minute tweaks to the slides after experiencing day one. Sometimes you need to get the vibe of the location and audience in order to make this effective. As a city that has clearly had brighter days, and knowing that hip-hop is often the voice of the people, I was sure I’d find some great local hip-hop to slide into the talk. Sure enough I did, slotting a clip from Sara ATH into the talk whist enjoying the vistas of the Athens skyline at night.
Beats, Rhymes, And Neural Nets, my session exploring the intersection of hip-hop and speech recognition seemed to go down well, and the event finished with the group delivering the ultimate energy needed for the moment. I knew y’all had it in you. Nice work folks 🙌
I do have a bone to pick tho.
The quiz team I was on won the JS quiz with a decisive lead. Regardless of what clips of Faris and myself that Muhammed might show you. . . we won fair and square.
Honest 😬
It’s amazing how real AI generated videos are nowadays 🤣
Despite having victory ripped from our hands at the last moment, the event is sure to be the conf highlight of the year. I’ve made friends, fallen in love with a new city, and added another country to the list of those I’ve rapped in.
The only thing missing was a conf branded himation. Perhaps a chiton too. It’s alway good for event teams to have targets to aim for tho 🎯
The day after the conference, the speakers and a select group of attendees were treated to a short guided tour around the wider athens area.
We took in an ancient theatre plus the temple of Poseiden en-route to a beach front restaurant that felt like a little hideaway. This is where the locals come when the Athens beaches are flooded with tourists in the summer months.
It was on this trip that the aquaintances we made amongst the group turned into friends. Whilst many of us had fuzzy heads from the night before, it was the PERFECT end to the conference trip. Laid back, relaxed, and leasurly.
Can’t wait to head back to Athens for either a visit, or the conference.
Originally featured on LinkedIn.