zombievirus

Preface: I got into a car accident on saturday, so I was unable to attend Sunday. Instead I sat home in my PJs and my new oversized jQuery T shirt and read twitter live updates pretending like I was there.

Conclusion: It’s not that much different whether you actually attend or not. Everyone posts their slides about an hour after they present. If you follow enough people on twitter who are there, you get to read all the snarky responses and gossip. It’s almost better because you can play Borderlands and you don’t have to wear pants.

Of course, conferences are a great way to meet other developers, but I’m too awkward to socialize with strangers. I knew Paul, John and a guy named Sam who used to work at my company. I found the only thing I felt like we had in common was that we all worked at Molecular/Isobar and we were all at a jQuery conference. This makes for incredibly dull conversation after like 10 minutes.

Conferences, how do they work?

This recap is more for people who are like me. I use jQuery all day, every day. I love it and I am pretty good at it and always trying to get better. I am also still painfully aware of how bad at it I used to be and can empathize with anyone who is starting out. During this conference, I noticed that I had crossed over to that world of “all this crap on the slides makes sense to me”, but I kept thinking about how many people around me were confused. I felt like I got positive feedback because I wasn’t a dumbass noob, but at the same time, I was a dumbass noob last year and feel like noobs need hugs too.

When it comes down to the presentations, there was a post in the javascript subreddit that made me think about the value of them. One misconception I feel most people have about conferences is that you learn things at them. Conferences do 2 things:

1. Introduce you to neat things
2. Inspire you to learn new stuff… on your own

You will not actually learn anything from anyone’s presentation no matter how dumbed down they make it for you. All it is going to be is an introduction to a plugin or methodology, that you are going to have to investigate on your own later. Which makes sense, because how are you going to know what works on your projects unless you are manipulating code to fit your requirements.

You are not an idiot

If you sit through presentations and wonder if you’re the dumbest person in the room since you can’t follow anything the speaker is talking about, you are not alone! I was that person last year. Almost everything was over my head. This year I could follow every lecture I attended or slide show I fast forwarded through at home (except TDD, but I got java homework done, so it was still a good time). Some things I was introduced to were really cool, and later I looked them up and played with them. Some were kind of useless to me. Not everything is going to be relevant to you. You might go to a lecture and get nothing out of it, but you shouldn’t feel like a dumbass because you didn’t see the value.

Sometimes if you’re a newbie, you might not be ready for all the cool things they talk about. Last year I almost fell asleep during the UI widgets lecture. I could not understand a damn thing the speaker was saying. This year I have made UI widgets and they are not hard nor are they a big deal once I got into playing with it. Last year the sammy.js lecture seemed cool, I like structure, right? Frameworks. WOOO Frameworks. So into that. 1 year later: Yeah, I did absolutely nothing with that.

Mostly you go to a conference, you try not to let on when you feel stupid and you marvel over how often developers use unicorns in their PPT. Then at home you try to use the stuff that made the best impression on you. Most of the people who are going are just like you aka not super geniuses, so don’t worry about how much you don’t know. Just put that aside as stuff you should work on later. Next time you go to a conference on that subject you’ll be amazed at how much you learned since the last one.

Ask Questions

And lastly, though I could never take this advice myself, don’t be afraid to ask questions. If the “smart” people who are at the conference know why they are there, then they should be nice to you. But, after reading twitter and following Bocoup dudes and other speakers, JQcon might need a little bit of a reality check. I read at least 2 snarky tweets that made me want to unfollow the writer. But you know what? How the hell are the elite team of jQuery developers supposed to know who is attending their conference if a bunch of people don’t go up to them and ask them noob questions?

This year there seemed to be a huge disconnect between who is attending and who the presenters think are attending. Last year, there were 2 rooms, an advanced room and a newbie room. It was pretty good to pick which lectures were right for you. This year was more of an all round “So you already know jQuery, here is what else you can do” type of conference. Which isn’t a bad thing at all, if you already know jQuery. I found most of the lectures were way more entertaining and I got a lot out of them. But, I kept thinking about who I was last year, and I kept looking around the room at who was sitting next to me and… not a lot of jQuery “ninjas” in the house. I saw a lot of designers who were just learning how to code and a lot of programmers who have played with jQuery, but wouldn’t be able to know if the guy they are talking to wrote the plugin they are raving about.

Neat Stuff

So what was the best stuff from the jQuery 2010 conference IMO?

1. OOCSS
2. Mobile UI
3. Paul’s HTML5 talk because he’s great
4. Using JS Templates
5. Wigmo

There was more stuff, but that’s the stuff that is relevant to my interests. I have 3 presentations I haven’t looked at yet that I am interested in: CouchDB, Rebecca Murphey’s presentation, and Ben Schwart’s building a better web. I’ll get to them tonight probably… if I get my java homework finished.

So to recap:
Almost everyone who goes to a tech conference feels stupid at some point.
You don’t learn stuff at the conference, you just get an introduction to stuff.
You can probably get about as much out of a conference if you watch all the slides at home instead of going if you are motivated enough.

*My company does not pay for training/conferences etc. So IMO, jQuery conference is the best conference, cause it’s local and it is $200. UPDATE: Apparently my company will reimburse me and claim they have been paying for conferences for the last 6 months. Guess what was 6 months ago that I couldn’t attend because I couldn’t afford it. JS Conf. Yay for $200, but boo so uncool for not telling me earlier.