My Experience at JSHeroes 2023

After a couple of years without in-person conferences, I was really glad to return to JSHeroes for a 2-day event. So I’m gonna use this blog post to share my experience with you.

I have to start with the MC - Anjana Vakil - which I think was a perfect fit for the role. She was so full of energy and enthusiasm that she really got us pumped for the conference. I’m embedding the after movie - starting at second 22 - so you can see her contagious energy for yourself!

Moving on to the technical side, the conference had a big diversity in the topics covered. Things like CSS, performance, accessibility, realtime apps, state management and AI-powered experiences were just a few of the subjects talked about.

I think any developer, no matter the experience, found something useful among the talks. I went with 2 friends which are just starting their JavaScript journey and both left with some extra knowledge and excited about becoming developers.

My favorite 3 talks were:

  1. Building AI-powered user interfaces by Jani Eväkallio

  2. Leveraging (algebraic data) types to make your UI rock solid by Matthias Le Brun

  3. We’re All Doing the Best We Can by Jeffrey Lembeck

I’m not gonna get into each specific one, but I encourage you to check them out on YouTube.

During the breaks, there was an alternative stage where together with the speakers we would have some casual discussions on the topics. There was a really nice debate about AI and the future of programming now that we have tools like Copilot and ChatGPT. I wish that was recorded…

Oh, and did I mention the conference is non-profit and open-source? They had a “souvenir booth” where all the proceeds went to a local bears sanctuary. And they do publish they expenses report each year. That’s pretty nice!

Looking back, the only thing I regret is not participating in the after-conference activities, but I promise I’ll be there next year.

See you in 2024!