I got to attend JSNation 2023 in Amsterdam
I attended JSNation 2023 in Amsterdam thanks to Frontend Coders Mauritius
Through a series of events that lined up perfectly, I was able to attend JSNation 2023 in-person in Amsterdam. This was an amazing opportunity to travel and meet people who share the same passion for frontend development from across the world.
GitNation, the organizers of the conference, offered 2 ticket for raffles to Frontend Coders Mauritius. Frontend Coders Mauritius gave away the tickets for during one of ours events. It turns out the winner couldn't attend (because travelling to Amsterdam from Mauritius costs a lot much, ~ EUR1000), he gracefully gave me the ticket as I was able to travel.
I was attending my company retreat in Europe(which was AMAZING BTW) one week before the conference, so the stars aligned, and I was able to hop to Amsterdam before coming back to Mauritius.
Kushul joined me in Amsterdam as well and we both attended the conference and various events around it on June 1st & 2nd.
Conference organization
The conference was absolutely amazing. There were two tracks called Resident & Community and the schedules were very well spread out. Just being there was breathtaking ! I mean, just look at this:
Seeing JS Heros in real life
I got to see some familiar names from the frontend tech sphere in person and it was a surreal.
- Ryan Carniato - Creator of Solid JS
- Tobias Koppers - Creator of Webpack/Turbopack
- Zach Leatherman - Creator of Eleventy
- Jecelyn Yeen - Chrome Dev Tools
- Miško Hevery - Builderio / Qwik
- Wes Bos - THE Web Bos
One of my favorite technologies to work with, Astro, won the Breakthrough of the Year award during the event, which I'm super happy about.
Astro wins Breakthrough of the Year
Frontend.mu in Amsterdam
Enjoying a beer while watching a live coding battle
Putting Mauritius on the Map
What I learned by attending the conference ?
All the session were top-notch, and the recordings will be available soon on their YouTube channel.
As an introvert, it was quite hard for me to just start talking to strangers, but I tried to overcome that and spoke to the sponsor booths present there and learn about them. I met fellow a fellow African company from SA called Offerzen, and an auth company called Descope which I want to implement on frontend.mu soon.
The (in) accessibility of tech conferences to Mauritians.
Unfortunately, due to our geographical location and inferior currency, EU Tech conferences are very inaccessible for Mauritians. Travelling such long distances can be very costly, time-consuming, and tiring. I was lucky enough to attend due to a series of events lining up perfectly, but I would have loved that more people can attend such conferences from the African countries. Of course the content is available online, and there is one awesome yearly tech conference in Mauritius, but nothing that's solely frontend focussed and boasting high caliber line-ups.
I would like to thank GitNation once again for their amazing support and making this trip possible. My next goal is to attend a VueJS-focussed conference, and hopefully that can become a reality.