As a newbie in development, I like to do a post on random things I learned during the conference. These often end up being CS terms, nerd culture related, or other interesting items that didn’t quite fit/make sense in a session post. Here are those from this conference.
Primitives: basic types in javascript like booleans and numbers.
Orthogonal: not a computer term, it just means adjacent.
Grok: means to really really understand something. It’s actually coined from a book about an alien and it’s understanding of humans. Check out the link to the book here.
D3 is a drawing library mostly used for graph’s or charts
Donut charts are pie charts with a hole in the middle
Truthy/falsy: this concept is more or less important based on the language. Basically, when stuff isn’t strictly true or false, javascript tries to help you out and guess which one it’ll be. A quick google search shows that there are lots of better explanations out there on what it is. This one looks pretty comprehensive and interesting: https://gist.github.com/jfarmer/2647362
CLI is a command line interface and it is how you interact with the app on the command line. (A perfect example of things I’ve been doing but didn’t actually know the name for)
This is a great background blog post that a few sessions referred to: http://emberjs.com/blog/2013/12/17/whats-coming-in-ember-in-2014.html
Finally, for other great notes from the conference, check out these links:
https://www.icloud.com/iw/#pages/BAKaAlrUjn9i0hXOyWyBDqAS2MEQFkyKTBaF/EmberConf_2014_Notes
https://github.com/zurt/notes/blob/master/EmberConf-2014.markdown
http://www.justinball.com/2014/03/27/ember-conf-2014-wrap-up/
http://pixelhandler.com/posts/we-are-emberconf-2014
http://hermanradtke.com/2014/03/27/emberconf-2014.html
Showing posts with label inclusivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inclusivity. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Ember for Children
I thought it was nice that this session was included in the first ever Emberconf. With so much information to cover and so many interesting components of the technology, it was nice that the organizers made sure there was a talk that focused on the community and what we can be doing together for underserved communities in technology. Highlighting an achievement like this, really shows that even though we’re cranking out amazing technology, building the community is important and giving back is core to that idea.
DeVaris Brown (who also does ember hot seat) talked about a new initiative he’s launched which takes at risk youth and teaches them about programming and code. He started by talking about the bootcamp idea (something I have mixed feelings about and have written on before) and wanted to provide a bootcamp-type opportunity to high school students that wouldn’t be able to afford something like that. He walked us through the curriculum he used to teach these students, the time he put in, and where the students were today. He worked with Black Girls Code and other organizations to find students. He also spoke honestly about the challenges he faced like reasons students couldn't come to class or the basic typing skills necessary (for which he recommended typing.io).
DeVaris received a standing ovation and got a lot of questions from people on how they can help and get involved. I think it’s great that the community is so interested in providing these opportunities and focusing on these sorts of initiatives. I hope that they can work together and some of the already established organizations to make more things like this happen instead of trying to reinvent a new initiative.
DeVaris Brown (who also does ember hot seat) talked about a new initiative he’s launched which takes at risk youth and teaches them about programming and code. He started by talking about the bootcamp idea (something I have mixed feelings about and have written on before) and wanted to provide a bootcamp-type opportunity to high school students that wouldn’t be able to afford something like that. He walked us through the curriculum he used to teach these students, the time he put in, and where the students were today. He worked with Black Girls Code and other organizations to find students. He also spoke honestly about the challenges he faced like reasons students couldn't come to class or the basic typing skills necessary (for which he recommended typing.io).
DeVaris received a standing ovation and got a lot of questions from people on how they can help and get involved. I think it’s great that the community is so interested in providing these opportunities and focusing on these sorts of initiatives. I hope that they can work together and some of the already established organizations to make more things like this happen instead of trying to reinvent a new initiative.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Opening Keynote
The opening keynote was done by Tom Dale and Yehudah Katz. It started with some thoughts on inclusivity which was really nice to see. I also think the way they frame inclusivity both for the conference and for the Ember community at large was really impressive. It wasn’t just a standard read of the code of conduct and it wasn’t presented in a lecture format. It was presented in a way that the emotion of exclusivity and inclusivity were really felt by the participants on a deeper level.
This idea of inclusivity continued throughout the talk. Tom and Yehudah spoke about the Ember core team and encouraged people to get involved. They made a point to stress that the core team is not just about being a developer, there is also space on the core team for event planners, community builders, and others who will be core to building ember in different capacities. They talked about contributing to the docs and, as a newbie, was encouraged by the fact that they stressed a need for newer developers to be contributing as well to ensure that the docs and pieces of ember were accessible and understandable to everyone.
They also spoke about productivity. A core reason for people using ember is to be more productive every day. They showed this through the idea of outlining flows. When you think about a flow on an app, even simple features can have a complex flow and many screens. They then highlighted different ember apps that showed ember from different flow ideas and representations, making the point that one of Ember’s strengths lies in it’s ability to allow developers to create and link new screens very easily. Some of the apps highlighted were Vine, Bustle, and Travis.
It was an excellent opening session that really set a good tone for the rest of the conference.
This idea of inclusivity continued throughout the talk. Tom and Yehudah spoke about the Ember core team and encouraged people to get involved. They made a point to stress that the core team is not just about being a developer, there is also space on the core team for event planners, community builders, and others who will be core to building ember in different capacities. They talked about contributing to the docs and, as a newbie, was encouraged by the fact that they stressed a need for newer developers to be contributing as well to ensure that the docs and pieces of ember were accessible and understandable to everyone.
They also spoke about productivity. A core reason for people using ember is to be more productive every day. They showed this through the idea of outlining flows. When you think about a flow on an app, even simple features can have a complex flow and many screens. They then highlighted different ember apps that showed ember from different flow ideas and representations, making the point that one of Ember’s strengths lies in it’s ability to allow developers to create and link new screens very easily. Some of the apps highlighted were Vine, Bustle, and Travis.
It was an excellent opening session that really set a good tone for the rest of the conference.
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.
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.
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