Latest

On Maintaining a Native Node Module

As maintainer of node-serialport [https://www.npmjs.com/package/serialport], a native node.js module, I constantly deal with a class of tickets focused on getting node-serialport to work with other native compiled environments. I decided to write up and share the experience of a native module maintainer for everyone.

Ask A Tech Event Organizer (AATEO)

In general, conference organizers have a wealth of information about their own specific event, which often ends up siloed away from others for various reasons. At the same time, organizers often have no idea what non-conference organizers, starting conference organizers, or even other similar conference organizers might know or not

An Addendum About Conference Proposals

Over the weekend, Raquel Vélez (@rockbot [http://twitter.com/rockbot]) authored a fantastic post about if your conference proposal is good enough [http://rckbt.me/2014/01/conference-proposals/]. You owe it to yourself to go and read through the entire post, take a break, and read it again if you

RobotsConf: The Future of Tech Events

> “You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of.” Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory It is rare for me to want to write a blog post after an event that I have helped organize, but with RobotsConf I am beyond compelled to do so. This

Our Culture of Change

Or How Conference Organizers Can Be The Agents of Change tl;dr: Here is a new model for an amazing conference that is very inclusive of all individuals, take from it and make your events better. Near the end of JSConf US 2012 [http://2012.jsconf.us], a blog post

Why RobotsConf?

With the launch of the JSConf US 2013 [view-source:http://2013.jsconf.us/] website, we (Laura [http://twitter.com/lwilliams] and I) announced that we were setting up a new conference series called RobotsConf [http://robotsconf.com] that would help ease and acclerate the connection between the software world and

NodeCopter Lounge At CascadiaJS

[https://a248.e.akamai.net/camo.github.com/89da77cf31ada14e8e9a44e6747c5bfc55fe7d6c/687474703a2f2f6e6f6465636f7074657263617363616469612e73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f6e6f6465636f707465722e6a7067] With the gracious support from Microsoft Windows Azure [http://aka.ms/cascadiajs], Matt Podwysocki [http://twitter.com/mattpodwysocki] and I (Chris Williams [http://twitter.com/voodootikigod]) were able to create a great little “Intro to NodeCopter” lounge event over the

JSConf US 2013 Call for Speakers

As part of our on-going reinvention of JSConf [https://www.voodootikigod.com/a-jsconf-reflection], we are going to break our single, most sacred rule [https://www.voodootikigod.com/how-i-pick-speakers-for-jsconf], if you have spoken at a JSConf, it is nearly impossible to speak again at a JSConf. Over the past four years

A JSConf Reflection

Hi, this is Chris [http://www.twitter.com/voodootikigod] and Laura [http://www.twitter.com/lwilliams] Williams. We started JSConf as a complete and total accident in the winter months of 2008, just a couple months after our wedding. When we created the first JSConf we had little idea of

NodeBots - The Rise of JS Robotics

On September 7, 2010, I committed the very first implementation of node-serialport [https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport] with a disclaimer in the README of “do not use”. I had extracted the library from a larger project for communicating to various wireless spectrums (open and propertiary, think X10 [http://www.x10.

The Regional JS Speaker Directory

As being the curator of JSConf, I see a lot of new names and exciting topics during the Call For Speakers process, but unfortunately we only have 20-24 slots available for speakers. If I could I would have everyone speak all the time! Luckily there are hundreds of JS meetup

Why I Am Sponsoring PyCodeConf (and What It Means to You)

tl; dr: Magic in Miami, a limited number of tickets for PyCodeConf are available for you at $300/each [http://eventrainbow.com/github/pycodeconf/?promo=JSCONF]. Don’t forget to pick up your hotel rooms at $179/night [https://gc.synxis.com/rez.aspx?Hotel=26735&Chain=10179&arrive=10/

How I Pick Speakers for JSConf

One of the main appeals of JSConf for the past two years running is the level and quality of presentations that are displayed by our speakers. Given that we are right in the middle of announcing our speaking roster for JSConf US 2011, I felt it would be a good

Hug a Conference Organizer: The Outcome

Note: Like many in this series, this has been written over many months - I have no idea what was in it when I finally hit publish. Sorry. There are many reasons to organize and run a conference, most of the “upfront reasons” are unfortunately bunk. I have experienced this

On Snake Oil and Experts

I just announced promotejs.com [http://promotejs.com/], which as described in my talk at the epic JSConf.eu [http://jsconf.eu/2010/] is the following: > Through pirate techniques and guerrilla SEO we can change how search engines present answers to common queries about our language. By driving traffic to

PromoteJS, Sustainability in Computer Science, and Deep Honesty - JSConf EU 2010 Keynote

This talk was presented at JSConf EU 2010 [http://jsconf.eu/2010], video is provided, but please also read the transcript. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We are an interesting lot when you look at the community as a whole. We are a rag tag group of designers, developers, noobs, and elites. We have

CouchDB Snippet: Find the Biggest Object

I use Apache CouchDB [http://couchdb.apache.org/] in the implementation of OurParents [http://www.ourparents.com] for holding a lot of our big data. One of the things I run into is a concern for the size of any specific object within the dataset. When you have hundreds of

Hug a Conference Organizer

As you may know, I, along with my wife, curate the rather successful JSConf [http://www.jsconf.us] which draws attendees from the international stage to present cutting edge JavaScript technology. Without a doubt, it has been our most ambitious project ever and continues to be a constant source of

NoSQL: A Modest Proposal

The NoSQL movement was coined to describe the variety of revolutionary data storage engines and techniques being aggressively developed to address massive and dynamic data sets. The rise in trending for non-traditional data storage techniques has seen a breadth and depth of variety of new technologies, ideas, and most importantly

JSConf Goes to Europe

Today, JSConf [http://www.jsconf2009.com] announced plans to take over another continent, Europe. On November 7th and 8th, 2009, the JSConf team will be presenting the first ever JSConf.eu [http://jsconf.eu/2009/] in Berlin, Germany. This is an exciting event driven by the German contingency of the

JavaScript- The Great Part

Laura and I just wrapped up JSConf 2009, which evidently [http://search.twitter.com/search?q=jsconf] went [http://www.michaelharrison.ws/weblog/?p=132] over [http://www.blueskyonmars.com/2009/04/27/jsconf-2009-the-best-conference-you-couldnt-attend/] very [http://www.subprint.com/blog/jsconf-2009-day-one/] well [http://www.subprint.com/blog/jsconf-2009-—-day-two/

Come to JSConf 2009

As you may know from previous posts, I am arranging JSConf 2009 which is shaping up to be one amazing conference focused around JavaScript in all forms. We have arranged some of the greatest visionaries and developers within the JS community from John Resig of jQuery to Jason Huggins from

So Long and Thanks for All the Ducks...

Over the past several months that has been an increase in the number of blog entries and twitter messages about Ruby and while that is nothing new since Rails hit the scene, the tone of these messages are growing detectably darker. The past two days have bubbled up two posts,

JSConf 2009

For several weeks I have been using tweetdeck [http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/] as my standard client for Twitter, not because of any issue with twitterriffic [http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific], but for the integration of search.twitter.com [http://search.twitter.com] feeds. I have two feeds that I

AJAX Head Design Pattern

Ken Collins from MetaSkills originally posted on his blog [http://www.metaskills.net/2008/5/24/the-ajax-head-br-design-pattern] about the concept of an Ajax Head pattern in which he describes a pattern for providing a thin controller API that is responsible for initial GET response and all other actions beyond that