MelbJS and Web Directions Code 2013

Last week, I had the distinct pleasure of returning back to Batmania (Melbourne) for MelbJS and Web Directions Code 2013. Both events were fantastic and I had a wonderful time connecting with attendees, chatting with them about Kendo UI.

tl/dr: Two awesome events where we (Cameron Marsland and I) were able to connect with the web developer community. Lots of interest around Kendo UI. Great times all around

MelbJS

MelbJS is a prominent user group for JavaScript developers in Melbourne. It features presentations on a monthly basis from local speakers, highlighting a number of topics as they relate to JavaScript and web developer in-general.

The evening's event featured a number of talks by speakers at Web Directions Code. With 100+ attendees, it was a huge turnout for MelbJS and it was great to see!

While at MelbJS, I got a chance to speak to a number of developers about Kendo UI. There were a lot of questions to answer. In particular, I fielded a lot of questions about Kendo UI DataViz, our visualization library for SVG-based charts and graphs.

L-to-R: John Allsopp, Ryan Seddon (Modernizr), Garann Means, Steven Wittens, Jeremy Ashkenas (CoffeeScript, Backbone), Michael Mahemoff, Andrew Fisher

All in all, I had a great time. I (heart) MelbJS.

Like most house parties, the most popular room was the kitchen

Web Directions Code 2013

As the conference states, Web Directions Code is "for web professionals like you who care about code two days of intense learning, connecting and geeking out". In short, a web developer love-fest.

Web Code Directions 2013

For this year's event, 300 web developers were in attendance from across Australia; 20% higher attendance than Web Directions Code 2012. (Well done, Web Directions organisers!)

Web Directions Code 2013 at Melbourne City Hall

Web Directions Code 2013 featured many prominent speakers from Australia and overseas as evidenced by the conference schedule. If you were unable to attend, you can check out the presentations:

• Angus Croll - The Politics of JavaScript
• Julio Cesar Ody - What's ECMASCript 6 Good For?
• Silvia Pfeiffer - HTML5 Multi-party Video Conferencing
• Cameron McCormack - An Introduction to the File API
• Garann Means - HTML, CSS and the Client-side App
• Michael Mahemoff - What Everyone Should Know About REST
• Mark Nottingham - HTTP/2.0 - WTF?
• Troy Hunt - Essential Security Practices
• Aaron Powell - IndexedDB - A Database in Your Browser
• Marc Fasel - Put On Your Asynchronous Hat and Node
• Andrew Fisher - The Wonderful-Amazing-Orientation-Motion-Sensormatic Machine
• Steven Wittens - Making Things With Maths

The presentation that stole the show was Steven Wittens' talk entitled, "Making Things With Maths". So impressed I was with his delivery and timing, I tweeted the following:

This presentation by @unconed feels like a TED talk. A-mazing. #wdc13

— John Bristowe (@JohnBristowe) May 3, 2013

You can check out Steven's slides (linked above) but to appreciate the epicness of his presentation, you should check out a recording of his talk from Full Frontal 2012:

It was good to be back in Melbourne, my former hometown from 1999-2002. The sights, the smells, the colours. All of it combines into this magical city. Of course, some sights are more interesting than others:

Meanwhile, at the same venue at Web Directions Code 2013...

Being in Melbourne with my colleague (Cameron Marsland) did give me the opportunity to show him around. One of my favourite spots for a bite to eat is Supper Inn in Chinatown:

Supper Inn, Chinatown Melbourne

Which, in turn, led to this at Berlin Bar:

Drinks at Berlin Bar (Melbourne)

Good times all around.

To the next adventure!

Back to Batmania for MelbJS and Web Directions Code

Next month kicks off with a visit to Melbourne for MelbJS and Web Directions Code 2013. If you happen to be in the area, I'd recommend joining us for these great events.

As far as JavaScript groups go, MelbJS is pretty awesome. They have a great group of organisers and have consistently greatly talks.

This will be my second time at Web Directions Code (May 2-3). This conference features some of the top minds in the web development space from around the world. It's a treat for us here in Australia to have some wonderful talent visiting our shores.

Back in Perth-fection for Edge of the Web

Ah, back to Perth we go!

Another early morning wake-up. Haven't I been here before? Truth be told, I'm a sleep camel and can easily tolerate it. I probably would have been quite successful in the military. All that jogging and early mornings. Child's play if you ask me.

I kid, I kid.

This week, I'm in Perth for Edge of the Web, a conference for web developers and designers around Australia. I'll be speaking to attendees about web performance, which has always interested me since I started hacking on angle brackets back in the '90s. Things have certainly changed since then.

Anyway, if you're attending Edge of the Web and feel like listening to me rant and rave about web performance then I'd suggest you drop by.

AppFest Sydney, Day 1

“There must be something special about an event that compels me to wake up at 3:45 AM.”

I asked myself this question more than once as I made my way through the dewy confines of a Melbourne morning to Tullamarine Airport. Yet, a quick flight to Sydney and a short taxi ride afterward, I found myself bleary-eyed at the footsteps of University of New South Wales in Sydney.

The University of New South Wales (Sydney)

I was here to attend a developer event called AppFest - an event organized by the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) team at Microsoft Australia. Its purpose was to provide a venue for developers to meet, discuss, and hack against a wide range of Microsoft technologies and products, including Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Windows Azure.

The calm before the storm

My purpose for being here was simple; to hear more about Microsoft's latest offerings, to discuss them with fellow attendees, and to demonstrate the tools we have at Telerik to assist developers targeting the Microsoft stack.

My (new) Surface RT device, sitting very nicely on a tray table.

A side benefit of this trip was to test-drive my new Surface RT device in a real world setting; onboard an airplane. To push the matter further, I decided to book myself in the worst seat on the plane: the last row on a Boeing 737-800 (on Virgin Australia). Anyway, my overall experience was pretty awesome. The form factor of the Surface RT is perfectly suited for a standard airline seat. Everything from the angle of the screen to the surface area covered on the tray table was perfect. In fact, I cranked out a number of paragraphs of this article on the flight over to Sydney without a hitch. Other features like the ambient light sensor worked very well when the cabin lights were dimmed. Overall, I came away with the feeling that this little device is deserving of a lot more of my attention.

Get excited, dammit!

The idea of an AppFest isn't new. These sorts of events have been around for a long time - with names like hack-a-thon and code camp. Their purpose is to spark a developer's natural tendency, which is building software. Developers come in all different metaphorical shapes and sizes. However, the one thing that we are share is the feeling we get from the creative process. That is why events like these are awesome; they kick-start the "I want to build epic shit" engine dwelling inside the developers who attend them.

AppFest featured two concurrent tracks - one for developers and one for designers. Leading the developer track - which I attended - was Nick Hodge, a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft Australia.

Nick Hodge (@NickHodgeMSFT) showing off his "Metro-ness"

Nick spent the first hour providing a high-level technical overview of Windows 8, showcasing a number of sample applications and the code that underpins them. Next, he walked us through a number of aspects of Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform. One of the more interesting aspects of Nick's presentation was his overview of Windows Azure Mobile Services. Essentially, it provides the ability to automatically generate CRUD operations for mobile applications against a SQL Azure-based database. It supports Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, and iOS (quite surprisingly). Note to self: Spend more time checking out Windows Azure Mobile Services.

Before lunch, Nick spent some time walking the audience through the process of managing your applications for the Windows Store. This, of course, is a critically important aspect of developing for Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

Nick Hodge (@NickHodgeMSFT) running the show. Photo attribution: Code Red Paul (Flickr)

After lunch, Nick gave me an opportunity to demonstrate RadControls for Windows 8, along with a couple of Windows 8 apps - AppMock, and Tasks. (All of these are available in the Windows Store.) If you haven't seen these yet then I would strongly encourage you to check them out. Afterward, I shared some information about our newly announced Virtual Accelerator for Windows 8. This program gives you the opportunity to receive $30,000 in funding, a week in Hong Kong to attend a mentor-led boot camp, and three months in virtual acceleration program.

Telerik Virtual Accelerator for Windows 8

During the afternoon, Nick switched gears by turning attention to the Windows Phone platform. I'll admit that I was surprised by some of the things that Nick shared. It's been a long time since I've used a Windows Phone device and I was impressed by all the improvements that have gone into Windows Phone 8. Even though end user adoption isn't great, the platform is certainly capable.

Overall, I had a blast at the AppFest. Microsoft Australia did an excellent job organizing the first day of this event. My thanks goes to Lachlan Hardy and Nick Hodge of Microsoft Australia for having me at the event. Unfortunately, I cannot attend the remaining days over the weekend. However, if today is was any measure then the attendees are in for a wild weekend of technical awesomeness.

Kudos to Microsoft New Zealand for TechEd 2012

As I made my way back across the Tasman to Melbourne, I felt compelled to share with you my experience at Microsoft TechEd New Zealand 2012.

I've been to a lot of conferences in my time. Mostly, as a speaker. Sometimes, as an attendee. And, on the rare occasion, as an exhibitor representing a company. This year, I attended TechEd New Zealand 2012 wearing all three hats.

Conferences aren't easy. Ask anyone who's committed themselves to bringing members of the community together in a shared learning environment. It's a tough job. And, it takes a lot of effort. You have to organise and plan a lot of things.

Having been a part of Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) with Microsoft Canada, and having organised a number of developer events myself, I understand just how difficult they can be to coordinate, manage, and execute. I felt the team running TechEd New Zealand 2012 did a wonderful job. From organising speakers to coordinating exhibitors, they should be proud of their accomplishment. They were able to bring 2000 developers and IT pros together in a pretty awesome way.

Some of the highlights for me:

• I thought the keynote was excellent. (Nigel Parker: Take a bow.) It featured a great mix of creative and technical content. And, throughout each presentation, there was a wonderful narrative that demonstrated the passion Microsoft brings to the technology it builds. As it was articulated throughout the keynote address, this is the biggest year in Microsoft's 35 year history. Consider the some products and technologies that has been released this year; Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012, the .NET Framework 4.5. It boggles the mind.
• My apologies to Thiago Almeida for not submitting my presentation on time. However, did that bother him? Nope. Did he accommodate me as a speaker to make sure I could do the best I could? Absolutely.
• The events staff who looked after the exhibitors were excellent. They took care of any/all issues (no matter how small) with the utmost care and professionalism. There was never a time where I felt needing anything in order to better engage our customers.
• The in-room A/V folks were great. As a speaker, I was quite impressed with just how accommidating they were for my presentation. I had quite a few devices on-stage. At one point, I was a little worried at over-taxing them with things to do. Nope. They were awesome.
• The catering with quite good. I can't say I've ever consumed as much salmon as I did at any conference in the past. However, I'm wasn't complaining. :) The only thing I might change would be to have an assortment of drinks on-hand. I don't think I was alone in thinking it was odd to not have pop/juice available. Finally, the Internet access. Speed? Good. Coverage? Excellent. Well done. That's about it.

Again, awesome job, Microsoft New Zealand!

TechEd New Zealand In-A-Nutshell

I laughed, I cried, it was better than "Cats":

In all seriousness, I had a wonderful time. The organisers did a wonderful job. It was great to connect with so many Telerik customers at the same time.

Current Status: TechEd New Zealand 2012

Greetings from Auckland! I am in town for the next few days for TechEd New Zealand 2012. This will be my second time visiting Auckland, also known as the City of Sails. The last time I was here was about 12 years ago. To give you some perspective: at that time, .NET had not been announced; COM components were all the rage. But, I digress.

As part of Telerik's long-term commitment of supporting and connecting with the developer community, we have an exhibitor booth all decked out with jealousy-inducing swag and awe-inspiring demos. If you've got questions then we've got answers. Why not swing by for a chat? We'd love to connect with you, even if only to "kia ora".

I'll also be delivering a presentation entitled, "Create Your Own Lego: Building Custom Controls for Windows 8 Apps". Here's the abstract:

“Windows 8 provides a platform for you to create touch-based, immersive applications for consumers and business users alike. For developers, the building blocks of these applications are controls. Controls form the building blocks of applications. Much like Lego blocks, these controls are adaptable and reusable; facilitating a consistent look and feel across applications. In this presentation, you’ll learn how to create custom controls for Metro style apps with HTML and XAML. Along the way, you’ll discover many of the mechanisms available to controls including data binding, event handling, and designer integration. My main objective: Help developers to level up and be awesome on Windows 8.”

The session will start at 10:40 AM in the Marlborough Room on Friday, September 7th. I hope to see you there!

webDU 2012

I was in Sydney earlier this week to speak at webDU. This year marked the 10th anniversary of this conference and I admit that I walked away impressed by the quality of the presentations that were delivered along with the professionalism of the organising staff.

Initially, I had planned to deliver a talk on responsive design. However, I was asked to cover for a missing speaker due to illness. My first talk entitled, “Make Awesome Web” covered a top 25 list of sites and tools I had curated on Make Awesome Web.

• Kendo UI
• Raphaël
• HTML5 Please
• CSS3 Please
• CSS3 Test
• 39 Ridiculous Things To Do With CSS3 Box Shadows
• Bootstrap, from Twitter
• HTML5 Boilerplate
• httpstat.us
• FitText
• OMG Text!
• Pretty Loaded
• BuiltWith
• HTML5 Progress Polyfill
• Bacon Ipsum
• PeopleMov.in
• NewZealand.com
• JS Bin
• Paper.js
• MicroJS
• PhoneGap
• CreateJS
• jsFiddle
• HTTP Archive
• The Noun Project
• Wheels of Steel
• Anatomy of a Mashup
• Mother-effing Text-Shadow
• Mother-effing HSL
• Mother-effing Animated GIF
• FOUT-B-Gone

This talk went very well. In retrospect, I probably should have given the presentation a better title. Something like “Johnny’s Crazy-Ass Brain-Dump of Awesome Sites and Tools” would have been much more appropriate.

Later in the night, I was a panelist in a BOF entitled, Building Native Apps with Web Frameworks, which featured a lively discussion about building applications for mobile devices with web development technologies. Of course, I spoke at-length about how we (at Telerik) approach this problem with Kendo UI. Our view is that many developers and companies want to build applications that look and feel native without having to resort to differing frameworks and unfamiliar languages. During our discussion, I made the point that of all the viable mobile platforms in existence (and soon-to-be-in existence), the Metro UX metaphor presented by Microsoft is the one that certainly disrupts the in-and-out push-button experience you see across iOS, Android, and Blackberry today. This certainly got a few questions raised. Of course, the reality is somewhat interesting this days with Apple and Google owning a great deal of developer and consumer mindshare in this space. Nevertheless, it’s one that a lot of folks are watching with great interest.

As I stated earlier, I had planned to deliver a talk on responsive design on the following day of the conference. Unfortunately, my son back in Melbourne was very sick and I received word from my wife that I needed to come home immediately. I was (therefore) unable to deliver my talk but I suppose that’s life as a parent.

On a side note, I was great to meet a number of the speakers and attendees at webDU. I was quite impressed by the level of expertise and experience at this conference. I truly hope to be invited back to speak next year and I look forward to seeing the list of talks on-offer at that time.

Kendo UI Folks at an Event Near You!

Building a great product means listening to your customers. The feedback you get can have a tremendous impact on your success. That’s why those of us on the Kendo UI team are committed to connecting with developers like you. We love getting your feedback. We spend a great deal of time listening to your feature requests and suggestions. To date, we’ve had a total of 183 ideas posted on our user voice site. On our forums, we’ve had 2117 threads created, with a total of 6965 posts. These numbers speak volumes, especially when you consider we shipped the first release of Kendo UI less than six months ago.

Of course, building a great product also means connecting with your customers on a face-to-face level. This usually involves a lot of travel and time away from family, but it’s value cannot be understated. Nothing gets us more excited than hearing a story about the Next Big Thing being built on Kendo UI. Or, talking to a developer who wants us to implement a feature for the next release. We love it.

That’s why I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you the whereabouts of some of the Kendo UI team memebers over the next few months. Specifically, you’ll find Todd Anglin (@ToddAnglin), Burke Holland (@BurkeHolland), Brandon Satrom (@BrandonSatrom), and I (John Bristowe, @JohnBristowe) at one of the following events near you:

• April 2-3: JSConf 2012
• April 30 - May 1: Melbourne Internet Show
• May 3-4: WebDU
• May 4-6: New England GiveCamp
• May 16-18: WebVisions
• May 23-24: Web Directions Code
• June 11-14: TechEd North America 2012
• June 15-16: CodeStock 2012
• June 28-29: jQuery San Francisco Conference 2012
• July 31: CSS Summit 2012
• August 29-31: devLINK 2012
• October 16-19: Web Directions South 2012

If you’re at one of these events, please track us down! We’d love to have a chat.

In the meantime, please continue to submit your awesome feedback. It’s what keeps us going. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter! We’re at @KendoUI. Tell your friends.

YOW! Melbourne 2011 and that Crankshaft Presentation

Greetings from Melbourne! This week, I attended YOW! 2011, a conference for Australian developers featuring talks on web development, infrastructure and coding practices.

According to the YOW! conference organizers, approximately 500 people registered for this event. This wasn’t a surprise to me; Melbourne has a fantastic developer community and has always supported events such as these. Mitch Denny and I were witness to this when we co-founded the Melbourne .NET User Group back-in-the-day.

Opening remarks at YOW! 2011 in Melbourne

On day 1, I attended a number of excellent presentations. However, there was one presentation in-particular that was simply awesome. It was a presentation by Kasper Lund from Google talking about Crankshaft, the compilation infrastructure of V8 (Chrome’s JavaScript engine). FWIW, Kasper’s also a member of the Dart team.

Kasper Lund (Google) at YOW! 2011 in Melbourne

In his presentation, Kasper went into great detail about how Crankshaft optimizes JavaScript. It’s amazing to hear some of the things that Crankshaft does to tease out every possible drop of performance possible from JavaScript. Much of it involves runtime inspection of the code as it’s running and optimizing when it’s appropriate to do so. The big take-away for me was realizing that JIT compilers have a tough job; they have to walk a fine line between making JavaScript run super-fast without bogging down the environment.

After Kasper’s presentation, it felt like my brain had been through the spin cycle of a washing machine. This is a good thing. Many presentations today are way too shallow. I always prefer to “go deep” on something, struggle along the way, and then reformulate afterward.

Anyway, I found a video up on Vimeo of a talk Kasper gave about the V8 engine:

It’s worth a look in order to gain a better understanding how Google Chrome optimizes JavaScript.