A Day at jsMobileConf

jsMobileConf, a conference on the future of JavaScript and mobility, is going on now. I was there on day one and give my take on the exciting event.

Technology changes fast. It’s easy for even me, a lifelong tech-enthusiast (rather than a professional developer), to see just how differently we use the web today compared to past decades or even last year. Ask the professional developers responsible for building on this always evolving infrastructure and the pace of change is only more apparent.

That’s why conferences like jsMobileConf are always a blast. It’s clear the attendees and speakers here have their fingers on the pulse of the tech industry, and there was a palpable buzz of excitement in the air as so many smart and enthusiastic people gathered to learn about the newest developments and how they can make the web better.

Held at the beautiful Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center in Boston, Massachusetts, jsMobileConf featured multiple pre-conference workshops, dozens of speakers, delicious food and great energy. An expo center with sponsor booths for Microsoft Azure (where you could test out HoloLens), nstudio.io, Moovweb and ProPlugins offered interesting opportunities to see how other companies are building the web (and of course grab free swag).

Day One Overview

I attended the first day, which was chock-full of fascinating sessions. Here’s a quick sampling of the things I learned:

• From keynote speaker Max Fritman, the more things change the more they stay the same. Claims of the end of the web or the end of native development have been rotating for years, and the innovative solutions on the market today have usually been tried before. Bottom line, forget the buzzwords and what everyone else is doing and just build an app with a fantastic UX and quick load time that doesn’t frustrate users—in other words, a good app. Check out fellow keynoter David Neal’s cool sketchnotes for a bit more here.
• Jen Looper used NativeScript-Vue and some nifty machine learning to build an app that could visually identify cheese and pair it with wine. We learned how to build an app, source the wine data, create the cheese data, plus lots of trivia about wine and cheese, all in 45 minutes.
• Jeff Whelpley talked about how you can best get your users from the mobile web—which is very accessible but doesn’t convert that well—all the way to installing your high-converting mobile app. Utilizing AMP, he said, can be a big part of getting your website fast enough for users to stick around, and he ended with an innovative way to quickly move to PWA/native from there.
• Nathaniel Anderson highlighted the differences between NativeScript and Flutter for app development. What I took from it as a non-developer is that Flutter is super fast but has some unusual limitations that surprised me, and NativeScript, while not quite as fast, is amazingly versatile.

There were many other amazing sessions attended by myself and my colleagues, including on the future of mixed reality, the importance of developers knowing the entire process in fostering a DevOps culture, how we can use symbiotic computing to measure brainwaves and build adaptive interfaces that make people more productive, and much more.

And I haven’t even mentioned day two, which kicked off today with an inspirational talk by David Neal and has tons of exciting looking sessions about NativeScript tricks, Alexa skills, PWA development and more.

You can follow along with the fun with the jsMobileConf hashtag on Twitter. 

Here are a few visual highlights:

One of my all-time favorite talks. “You. Are. Awesome.” From @reverentgeek #jsMobileConf pic.twitter.com/Kg5BvPayTe

— Rob Lauer (@RobLauer) November 13, 2019

This talk looked awesome—I'm sure everyone there for day two was feeling pumped this morning.

The path from the AMP to PWA to Native

A sampling of the versatility of NativeScript

Best #jsMobileConf ever! #sugarRush for the afternoon tracks! pic.twitter.com/MOxkfU0wEg

— Brian Jeffreys [Nativescript Dev] (@ProfessorrrX) November 13, 2019

Nothing like some sugar to keep you going. Candy on day two, and I can vouch for an amazing ice cream bar on day one (yes, the "real" food was also very good :)).

See You Next Time

Hope to see you at jsMobileConf next year!