National JavaScript Conference

New Zealand’s very first dedicated national JavaScript conference happened last week. It had a diverse range of content that educated, challenged and inspired the tech community.

Highlights for the Abletech Team were:

Igor Cost at nz.js(con);

**Deep Learning in your Browser by Igor Costa: ** How JavaScript could be used to harness the power of deep learning algorithms to understand the world around us. This presentation explained deep learning in a simple way using existing knowledge in JavaScript, implementing and solving funny and real examples.

Stefan Judis at nz.js(con);

“I can’t work on my phone” — desktop all the things by Stefan Judis The web platform gets stronger and new technologies are coming into our browsers every day. Does this mean that we don’t need desktop apps anymore? No, a big trend is happening in parallel. A new platform to build desktop applications entered the stage–Electron.

Julien Simon at nz.js(con);

Building serverless apps with Node.js by Julien Simon

After a quick refresh on what serverless architectures are and why they matter, this code-level talk demoed how you can easily build and deploy Node.js serverless applications on AWS, using AWS services such as Lambda and API Gateway, as well as several Open Source frameworks.

Nigel Ramsay found Julien Simon’s talk interesting . Nigel says it is “good to know there are now deployment frameworks that facilitate the automation of collating and shipping groups Lambda functions together into ‘apps’”.

Awesome to see our very own Abletecher Dana Iti on the stage. Dana was invited to be on the panel discussion about mental fatigue in the IT industry. The panel talked about addressing exhaustion, and what can be done to prevent, spot or overcome excessive mental and emotional demands.

Open Sourcing Mental Health Mental fatigue and burnout are almost unavoidable in the IT industry, but it’s not something we have to go through alone: there is help out there. This panel talked openly about personal challenges with mental health and how, as an industry, we can deal with it.

Dana says that not everyone feels comfortable talking about mental health, but it seems to help if someone starts the conversation. “I wanted to help open the door,” Dana says. “It’s something that we all need to be thinking about, even if we’re not ready to talk about it.” Despite feeling out of her comfort zone, Dana got up on stage to speak, “for those who feel they can’t speak about it in front of others yet,” and she’s glad she did. Feedback was very positive and many wished the session was longer. “People said they were sitting there in silence listening and taking in every word.”

Technology for Everyone by Alex Gibson Alex gave an important talk about how the tech community needs to spread past its industry borders to make New Zealand a place where talent not only wants to live, but where talent can grow.

Alex’s inspiring talk covered the crusade to build an all-inclusive, diverse culture of technology for everyone, and we learnt how, as a tech company, we at Abletech can help too.

See conference tweets.

Read more about the conference topics and speakers.