I was lucky enough to attend the Forward JS conference in San Francisco in late July. It was fantastic!

The conference occurs twice a year: in the earlier part of the year it is your standard in-person conference, in the later part of the year it is an online conference.

I attended the in-person conference, and did two workshops and one conference day: “Advanced JavaScript Fundamentals” with Kyle Simpson (workshop 1) and “Four Semesters of Computer Science in Six Hours” with Brian Holt (workshop 2).

While the content on the conference day was nice, I attended this conference because of the workshops. In fact, if I could have skipped the conference day, I would have. Why? I wanted hands-on, stick-in-my-mind, non-fluff non-excited-for-the-sake-of-being-excited (i.e. the way I assume most conferences are) kind of information.

Their workshops did not disappoint! Kyle Simpson is an incredible instructor and JavaScript master. Brian’s content was perfect for UI Engineers like me who feel like we may have missed something important in not getting a computer science degree. (I was actually surprised to see how little I was missing, i.e. what I already knew, but now I know what to focus on to make up for the rest!)

At a later point, I hope to post specific information from both of these workshops. For now: I could not recommend Forward JS more! (Or the city of San Francisco!)

Edit (Feb 2017): presentation I made of my Learnings from Forward JS Conference (PDF)