EmberConf 2014 - Setting the Scene

Last week, I went to EmberConf 2014. This conference was the first official Ember conference and it was fantastic. For those of you who don’t know what ember is, it is a JavaScript framework that I’ve been working with for the past two months. The conference was in Portland and it was a single-track, 2-day long, wonderful experience. Because I took copious notes, I figured I would do that same thing I did for RubyConf this past year and write up a post for each session. Some of these will be longer, some will be shorter, and if you know Ember, PLEASE, feel free to add comments and additional thoughts. I also want to get these up pretty quickly, so there will likely be a few posted at a time.

I’ll be honest, I was nervous going to this conference. I’ve only been to a few tech conferences so far and at most of them DC Rug and Arlington Ruby are represented pretty heavily so I generally never feel like I’m stepping into the unknown without a solid group of people to fall back on if I’m feeling lost. I’m also used to going into a conference as a “known newbie” either because it’s a smaller local conference and most people know my level of experience or, like at RubyConf, because I was an opportunity scholar. Emberconf was different. I knew a couple of people going in but they were much looser connections and again, there were few of them AND I was just one of the crowd.

My fears and nervousness were quickly quelled at the conference though. The general atmosphere was kind and excited and everyone wanted to meet one another. I also had some great people like Gustin, Chris, and Ashish offer some awesome twitter introductions which really helped as well! There were a total of 430 people there, which is a pretty manageable number. This was also the first single track conference that I had been to and I really enjoyed it. I did wish there was an opportunity to switch up the table you were sitting at during the day but for the most part, it was great. You sat at a table, really got to know everyone there. There were a good number of breaks and because everyone was hearing the same sessions, there was a lot to talk about.

The sessions were 30 minutes long, which I felt was a pretty good length for most of them, although didn’t always allow for enough Q&A time. Again, though, the benefit of a small, single track conference is that the speakers are all accessible to ask more questions to during the breaks. So, the scene is set… now onto the sessions.