Nordcloudians at NodeConf EU 2019

NodeConf EU is Europe's biggest conference in the Node.js community. Nordcloud visited the 2019 edition in Kilkenny, the old capital of Ireland, with a team of four. Here’s a summary of the conference trip and the talks that impressed us.

Kilkenny is a nice small town with very friendly people with a nice accent. There are plenty of old buildings like castles and cathedrals to explore, not to mention all the nice pubs that are easy to find at every corner of the town.

Talks

The talks ranged from low level memory management in V8 to creating graph representations of cloud architectures and all the way to showcasing the open-source smart watch which were handed to each conference participant. The theme of the 2019 conference seemed to be open source software, which could be seen in a couple of presentations that shared the theme. Even the opening talk was about open source being art.

The talks were mostly well presented and the content was interesting and educational. It was nice to hear about the upcoming progression like the QUIC protocol, Node certifications, and what’s happening with the module ecosystem. All talks can be found from NodeConf YouTube channel.

These are the three presentations that you should definitely check out:

• WebAssembly: what does it mean for JavaScript and Node.JS?
• Visualizing cloud architectures in real time with d3.js
• What’s happening in V8?

Workshops

There were several workshops with very different topics to choose from. We were able to build personalized schedules based on our interests, which was something that we liked. Arranging workshops is always challenging and getting it right for massive audiences is not easy. Unfortunately some of the workshops in the conference didn’t manage to meet our expectations. A few of the workshops got sidetracked and did not focus on the topic at hand. Nevertheless we learned something from every workshop and didn’t leave empty handed. The workshop that stood out the most was  “Error handling: doing it right!” which was professionally presented and provided good concepts. 

Venue and afternoon activities

We would be lying if we said we didn’t like the venue, in fact we absolutely loved it! Lyrath Estate was fantastic and the conference’s facilities were top notch. The food was good, the snacks were tasty, the tea was refreshing, and not to forget the service which was the most excellent.

We stayed in the center of Kilkenny and enjoyed the well organized bus transportation to and from Lyrath Estate, and to all the activities. There were plenty of afternoon activities to keep us busy, and we especially liked the game night in which we got to participate in various circus party games. For the whole time of the conference there were two arcade machines available: Pacman and Space Invaders, which were a nice addition. The icing on the cake was the final evening gala dinner and its three course menu.

Sum up

NodeConf EU is a conference with competent speakers, great content, in a world class venue. The conference has been a yearly attraction at Lyrath Estate in Kilkenny Ireland for some time, and it can be seen in how well it has been organized. It is suited for pretty much everyone interested in Node, and there certainly is something for people with varying skill sets. You get a chance to meet and discuss with some of the Node Core developers and hear the latests news on what’s going on in Node and the community. The atmosphere is friendly and everyone is welcomed no matter the background one comes from.