JavaScript in the Wild at NEJS Conf

Welcome back everyone, this is the Change Log and I'm your host, Adam Stikoviak. This is episode 166, and on today's show we got an awesome show about JavaScript. In the wild, as a matter of fact, we're talking to three of six of the awesome organizers behind any JSConf 2015 happening August 7th in Omaha, Nebraska. Today we're talking to Zach Leatherman, Nick Miese, and also co-host of the show, Jared Santa, who is doubling as an organizer of this awesome conference.

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Again, that code is the Change Log podcast, and you'll save 20% off any plan you choose for three months by using that code, head to co-chip.com slash the Change Log is started, and now on to the show. All right, we're back. We got a great show lined up today. It's all about JavaScript today.

As a matter of fact, it's not just JavaScript, it's JavaScript in the wild. We have three of six of the organizers making any JS comp 2015 happen. So we got Jared on the line, we got Nick on the line, and we got Zach on the line. Everybody say hello.

Hello. Hey, how's it going? All right. So who's excited about this conference?

Whoo! Everybody. Yeah. I think we're all excited.

I think that we're all nervous. We're going to go in the last couple of weeks here, so everything's kind of starting to come together. I'm glad you mentioned that. So today's record day is July 21st, the release date.

So the air date is planned to be July 24th, and the conference. So everybody's listening and potentially clicking a button to go buy a ticket, if there's some left, is August 7th, it's Friday. So we got roughly 150 people, 200 people coming. Is it fully sold out yet?

What's the date? I think we got about 30 or 40 tickets left. So if people want to get on board, they got to buy their tickets soon. Okay.

So just to start this show off right, let's get to know everybody here. So everybody knows Jared. Jared, you're known. You're normal.

You're normal. I don't know if I'm normal, but I'm normally on the show. You're normally on the show. People know who you are.

So Jared Santa, you live in Omaha, Nebraska. Correct. You're going to get some others on organizing this conference. You want to give an intro to yourself for those who may not know who you are?

Who me? Yeah, you. Yeah, Jared Santa. I live in Omaha, Nebraska.

I'm helping organize this conference. Co-host of the Change Log. That's right. What else do you want to know, man?

Object Lateral. Yeah. So I'm a software developer on contract. Object Lateral is my company.

I also do some teaching at Web Dev Bootcamp called Interface School for Kids and Wife. See, nobody knows this about you. I'm going to get to talk about your details too often. Yeah.

How's your details? I feel strange. The light is shining on me now. The veil just being pulled back a little time a bit and the...

I'm going to ask the questions. I'm going to ask the questions. Oh, these Jared Santa secrets are being exposed. Well, let's leave you alone for a bit then.

Exactly. Zach Leatherman, by the way. Zach Leatherman. I also live in Omaha.

I am one of the co-organizers of Nebraska JS, one of six organizers for the conference. I work for Filament Group, which is a small design and development consultancy in Boston. I think that's about it. What is Nebraska JS?

Nebraska JS is the meetup from which the Nebraska JS conference was born from. Nebraska JS started as a meetup, I think, in 2009. It kind of fizzled out in 2012, and that's when I kind of took over from three people that were kind of looking to get rid of it, and we made a couple changes to it, started publishing all the talks and meetup videos online, getting a bunch of different speakers to come in, and just kind of grew the meetup from that. Zach's also a frequent conference attendee and speaker.

He's spoken at Smashing Conch, Velocity, and I guess that's tough, even spoke at the White House recently. What? Are you kidding me? He's being humble, but I won't be humble for him.

Come on. Tell us about that. The meetup organizers to go to the White House to speak, just kind of highlight people that were doing things to get people involved with technology in their communities. I was probably the most under-qualified person there, but there was a ton of very talented and very amazing people doing crazy things in their development communities to get people involved with technology, so people that were doing code schools, people that were trying to help people get out of poverty by learning to code, and humble meetup organizers like myself.

You did revive it, though. You said it was dying in 2012. You took it over, and now I'm sure it's blossoming because you've got a conference coming from it. Yeah, that was kind of one of the big goals that I had when I took it over.

That was kind of one of the long-term goals that we wanted to do, and now it's finally happening. Cool. I'm really excited about it. And silent so far is Nick Nese, so Nick, your software engineer at Site Pen.

Yes. Intro, this awesome audience to yourself. I'm hearing more about Jared, actually. No.

I'm a software developer at Site Pen. I work remotely. It's a 100% remote developing consulting team, mostly doing JavaScript and touch script these days. And I'm also a co-organizer of Nebraska JAS and of the AnyJAS com for Nebraska JAS com.

Anybody else on your team, guys, that you want to give a shout out to that's not present here? Definitely. Yeah. We have Matt Steele, who works for Union Pacific.

It's one of organizers. We have Sandy Bar, and we also have John Hobbs. Very cool. And so you got six people this year putting on the very first version of this conference.

So this is August 7th. So it's not very far away. The change level will be there. We're shooting our fourth season of Beyond Code there.

We'll also be shooting some video for the actual conference itself and just kind of being a part of the mix there. But as a first time conference, what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced or some of the biggest things you were most excited about actually doing this conference being its first time? We kind of had no idea what we were doing starting out. That's usually the case, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. So everybody was in over there here. I mean, has someone had some experience doing this stuff?

I mean, it just kind of started from the meetup, I think. Actually, the original idea probably came from JSConf in Florida. A couple of us went down there to the JavaScript conference at an Amelie Island. It's a pretty big JavaScript conference.

And Chris Williams, the organizer down there, really encouraged people to sort of start things in their own development communities and get things growing from grassroots to, I think, to try and probably get more tickets sold for the big JSConf there. So yeah, I think it was just kind of born out of an idea, just kind of sitting around drinking on the beach at Amelie Island at a resort. We're like, hey, we could do something like this, having no idea what we were really getting ourselves into. But a couple of years after that, we finally decided to pull the trigger and organize it.

Well, I think you've done pretty well here so far with your first time. I've never been to a conference that's been at a zoo, which does sort of lean towards the subtitle, which is JavaScript in the wild. So I mean, why is it the Henry-Dorley Zoo and Aquarium there in Omaha? And Jared, you've talked about this a couple of times, too, on the private side, just, you know, one more time at this conference.

What's unique about the zoo? Well, I mean, in Omaha, there's not too much to do. We probably have a worse reputation. Nebraska has a more boring and yawn-y reputation than perhaps it deserves, maybe it's accurate.

But, you know, Omaha's a decent-sized metropolitan, and there's actually kind of a burgeoning creative and technology scene, even a small startup scene here in Omaha and in the Midwest. But we really wanted to highlight, like, one of Omaha's main attractions and have something that's different than a lot of conferences that you typically go to. So the Henry-Dorley Zoo is huge. It's one of the best zoos in the world, and the back trip advisor calls it America, because America's number one zoo, or the world's number one zoo.

The world. I think it's the world. Wow. It has the largest cat complex indoor jungle, indoor desert, and I think that's it.

And also largest aquarium that's also attached to it. For a long time, we played Second Filled at San Diego. I think just because they had raw, square footage over us, but at some point in the last couple of years, we've overtaken them, and we're now number one. So yeah, I just think like a really cool, unique place to have a conference about JavaScript.

Well, we see any animals by any chance. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to have some live animal demos, animals roaming around. The plate goes.

Yeah, we're going to have some zookeepers come in. And bring in just some animals around in the conference venue. So it should be pretty unique, pretty cool. And also the conference venue itself is a conference center that's attached to the aquarium and includes a 24 foot 10,000 gallon reef aquarium.

So there will be a lot of fish in there as well. Oh, we love fish. Fish are very welcome here on the change log. Speaking of fish, we have a single track conference.

So this is a single day, single track, small groups. I guess being born from a meetup, it would make sense to start out, you know, in the smaller scale. So I think some of my favorite conferences to go to are 200 people or less because they just get a little bit more intimate. But coming off the heels of Gopher Con, I also enjoy 12 to 1500.

It just kind of depends on what place you're doing to them. So being this this first year, what was some of the things you focused on as, I guess, from a speaker standpoint, and also just making everyone feel comfortable, you know, conferences are a lot of work. So what was the focus initially placed on one set it up? Well, I think we wanted to keep it or I wanted to keep it single track just to make it simpler logistically.

That just, it simplifies things a lot for the organizers. But I also really enjoy single track conferences more because you always get that fear of missing out when you have a multiple track conference. You don't know what's going on in the other track or you don't know what you're missing. And we really want to minimize the number of decisions that attendees have to make.

We don't want to have people have to choose between talks. And I think it, I don't know, I just like it a lot better. I just like single track a lot better. I don't know if you own a opinion on that.

Yeah, I think basically it's a lot simpler to do that. It works out well at the venue to have just a single speaker at a time, at least for this first one. I've been to some multi-track conferences and it just, it seems like it's a lot more work to make sure that everything's coordinated and everything's synchronized. And so it just seemed like a lot easier in place to start.

And it also gives us the opportunity to highlight all of the speakers that we're inviting to come in and we've got speakers coming in from all over the world and even a couple of local speakers to kind of highlight the local talent that we have as well. Yeah, I think that's a good point Nick, because one of the reasons that we wanted to do a conference and the reason that we do the meetup is that we're trying to expose more local developers to the community and I think a single track helps do that as well. That are kind of not quite as well known, can get a little bit better exposure with a single track conference. Do you guys know the ratio of local speakers to out of diners?

Yeah, I think we have three local speakers out of nine. What was the process like, I guess, to, you know, one, obviously it's a single track. So it's got to be, you know, the topics have got to be enough closer to like a middle barrier where it's not too new, but it's not too senior. And then you're sort of in the middle there.

What was the process like coming up with some topics? You know, the call for what was the selection like and actually choosing some of speakers? I think the, I mean, the talk selection process was pretty grueling. Yeah, it was like, we spent the whole night at the bar, I don't know, maybe you're seeing an organizing theme here, but fighting over what talks we wanted.

And it got a little, I don't want to say it got a little dirty. Really? Some politics came up. Anybody get any beer tossed?

Well, we don't want to, yeah, we don't want to give that extreme, we don't want to waste any of that. I'll be wasting any of the liquids. But, yeah. Well, I think we did have a bent and this is something that Zach promotes heavily at the meetup, which is practicality.

So the rest of the day, as meetup, tries to highlight topics and speakers who are using JavaScript in a practical, real world, take it home and use it kind of way. And so even the subtitle JavaScript in the wild is kind of a play on words because it's of course, you know, in the zoo. But it's also like, these are things you can actually take, these are things JavaScript is doing out there every day, running websites and businesses and these things. And so we wanted to balance that with also fun and like enjoyable and interesting things.

And so speaker selection was difficult because we care about the speakers and we also care that these topics kind of like played into that ballpark. And so that's where a lot of the rub kind of focused are these titles in stone there on site because I wasn't wearing a couple off, if you don't mind. Yes. So we got, so let me help with some names.

I think it's, I'm going to say, Sally, Pam, Sally, is that right believe in streams? I think it's Pam sell. So all right. The email is silent.

Isaac, mercy you and the temporal dead zone ES6 variables for fun and profit. I'll just read the titles from here on out because I like put some names and offend people. But add a tool to your development Swiss army knife using custom elements today architecting communities is the next one SVG animation with snap SVG high performance in the critical rendering path, which I think we've talked about recently, Jared, a little bit here on the show. And then also reacting to the ISO morphic, but I'm assuming that's about words too because reacts out of you in there somewhere.

Yeah. Right. So that's right. More play on words, more fun from Bruce.

Good job, Bruce. Sorry. Was it a real fight when it came to choosing some of these speakers and some of the talks we just talked over? I really think so.

I think we had 78 total submissions. Wow. And I mean, we only had seven speaker slots and then two keynote slots. And so we had to whittle it down from that.

And it was really, really hard. So we all kind of looked at the submissions kind of on our own and started to prioritize the ones that we really liked. All of them were really fantastic. So it was really hard to do that.

But then we came together and shared our lists with each other, found the ones that were a common theme across all of the organizers and then kind of got a first pass with maybe one or two. And then the rest of the night was just arguing about the other ones, re-prioritizing the list and going on and on. So what's the total people count and total hour count going into making the selections? Oh, that's a good question.

I mean, when it came down to doing the final talk discussion, we decided to limit that to only one night because we could have done that for weeks and weeks and weeks, I'm sure. But I mean, I think we spent probably a good solid week on individual talk selection and then group selection as well. So... What were some of the things that when you were discussing the talks and topics, and was it the...

What were some of the things you could do? I remember... I'm thinking back to the show we had with Sarah May when she said they purposely hid people's names and genders and things like that, so they wouldn't be biased against it. What was some of the process y'all used to sort of have an unbiased opinion towards your selections?

Yeah, I definitely did that. And I hit it, looked at the titles and the descriptions of the talks to begin with. And that's kind of how I started with my side of the list. And then from there, I started looking at it.

I got my list from there on the things that I thought were most interesting. And then I started thinking about things like wanting to have a good mix of local developers and more known developers as well. And so it kind of went from there. And tech talks versus more soft skills talks.

Yeah, good point. Is there any talk here, or even just maybe not a person named, but just the topic or title name that one of you guys fought over hardcore and didn't make the cut for whatever reason? That's a good question. I don't really remember the talks that we didn't select because that process I think took place, I don't want to say it like a couple of months ago.

Okay. So... I mean that you're really excited about them that's in the list? Yeah, I mean, I think all of them are going to be great.

I think that Nicholas Bavak was talking on high performance in the critical rendering path is one of the ones that I really kind of pushed hard for because I think it's a very important topic, especially with the number of sort of client-side NVC frameworks that are kind of slowing down the critical performance aspect of websites today. So... Yeah, I'm excited for that one as well. I think I wasn't aware of Nicholas Bavak what prior to that.

I think he's admitted like... See the guy that's admitted like four or five? Like he just had talks. Is that him?

Yeah. I think he had at least three. And he's just throwing him in there, which is like, okay, this person's excited. Somehow we found our CFP before it was even before we even publicized.

I don't know how that happened. They're not easy. How hard to find is it slash CFP? Yeah.

There you go. Soon. Yeah. He's probably got a JavaScript bot just out there submitting his talks.

All these... There's a light pack right there. Conferences. Here's a couple of tips that I could give to people who are submitting CFPs and like hoping to get selected.

Just as people who have recently done this, and these should be... They shouldn't be... They shouldn't be... Had to be said, but I guess they do because we ran into this over and over.

So the first thing you do is spell your talk title correctly. If you misspell your title, you're not giving me so much of a chance to get selected. Even to proofread your synopsis. Have somebody else read it for you?

Read it out loud. Make sure that the sentences make sense. Because there's a lot of competition out there. And even if your conceit is really good, it's hard.

Even as a person who's like... I think there was one that was... Had some bad grammar that I was like rooting for, and I was arguing for, and I just couldn't get over the hurdle of... Yeah, but they did not take the time to make sure their words were spelled correctly in their synopsis.

And so we can't trust them as a speaker. So those are just a couple of tips, which sounds like the common sense, but apparently not for people who are submitting proposals to CFPs. And then that's an awesome tip is go to whatever the conference is slash CFP and see if you can get in early. And bombard us with multiple submissions because he was immediately on our radar because he had three talks in there before anybody did.

It's like, wow, this guy's serious. So anyways, just a few small tips that I couldn't believe he ran into so many almost lazy submissions. And how even though on a few of those, they seem like great talk ideas, they just couldn't get over the hurdle of slow down and take the time to do it, right? Yeah.

Any other thoughts of Zach or Nick on any feedback to those who have to listen and think, I want to submit a talk to a conference sometime soon or I've done it and I've never gotten selected some feedback or some tips? Yeah, I would say it involved the organizers. I would have been happy to review any number of submissions before the deadline went, but I never heard anything. Like no one asked me any questions.

And I think we put it on the website even. Hey, we'll help you with your submission if you want our feedback up front. And yeah, I think that can help quite a bit just to even refine your ideas with them before you even put in a submission. I think could help your chances quite a bit.

Another big piece to any conferences is obviously sponsors and what equates to cash flow, really. So, I mean, it seems like, and Jared, only because you're not outside of this, it kind of fallen a little bit of what's going on here, but it seems like as a first-time conference, you've got some sort of trick or something like that because you're doing okay on finances from what I can tell in terms of your homepage, you've got plenty of sponsors. So what was it like going out and seeking out either local or industry-known sponsors? What was the process like?

And who was in charge of that? Yeah, I think that was kind of a team effort between me and Nick. Nick is a lot better at emailing than I am. So, for sure, he took the reins on a lot of these sponsor contacts, but I think the running the meetup really was the biggest thing.

We were already exposed to a lot of companies in our community because their developers were attending our meetup, and we've been going strong for over three years now when I took over. So, everyone kind of knew about the meetup already, and because we sort of transitioned from meetup to conference, there was a very clear line between the two, and people were excited to get involved. And we've actually had companies kind of fight over us to provide us with venues for the meetup or to provide us with food. I mean, we've never had a problem getting sponsorship for the meetup, and I think the conference was kind of a continuation of that.

The support that we see from companies is, I think, kind of a unique thing in Omaha, just because there isn't a ton of, I want to say, bigger development communities in our area. We've had a lot of meetups, but I think they kind of, I don't want to say come and go, but they haven't really united different development aspects like JavaScript can. So everyone is exposed to JavaScript in some way, so that's also helped us for the meetup too. We have a lot of support coming out of that, just as I said, and it was really when we were going to get sponsors, and we actually had more pressure to get like an information document out about sponsoring, because we had sponsors just lining up immediately that wanted to contribute.

They wanted to help out. They wanted to make sure that this conference sees the light of day, and we really couldn't do it without them, so it's been really great. What are some of the biggest questions you guys can think of when it comes to a sponsor and asking questions back to the conference? What are their biggest concerns?

What are their biggest questions that took you time to get over or just get questions back to get them to commit to the support, or even lack of support? We did have a little bit of a problem with the sponsor that I won't name, but they kind of promised us some funds and then went dark, so we never really heard back from them, and we had kind of made some decisions monetarily based on assumption of those funds, and we're going to be fine monetarily, but certainly that didn't help the conference. We kind of had that check sort of disappear out from under us. Right.

I just want to because a lot of the, you always have levels, so I'm assuming you had levels, I'm thinking about typical levels as like premium gold, platinum, pick your metallic material and then apply the level to it or whatever, but I'm wondering- Yeah, we actually did. Animals. We did. Yeah.

So top level is line, I'm assuming. Elephant. Elephant. There you go.

That makes sense. Like we're just going to kill it until it's dead, and then we're going to bring it back and kill it some more. Any whales? Because I like whales.

I thought that was a little too on the nose, you know? And when it comes to like big things and money, you know, you're, man, I got a whale in the line here. Elephant. Well, that's kind of why we picked elephants.

Is that elephant in the room? Okay. Gotcha. Yeah.

I just wondered about the process there because I know that even for this show, right, it's a sponsored show, so we get questions all the time about the podcast and what's about and all these different things. I'm just wondering like when a sponsor comes to a conference or a conference goes to a sponsor and says, hey, we'd like to see your support in this conference because of this, this, or this, you know, what are some of the things that are like getting them involved or seeking you to them? Is it purely a financial benefit or is it like they're getting involved in the community? They're already there.

A lot of them are already there. They're already sponsoring us helping us out or at least trying to, you know, because we can only have so many venues that we can host to that each month and things like that. But also, you know, looking like one of the biggest questions that I got when when communicating the sponsors was kind of not in like specific detail, but like what are you going to use the money for? How's it going to go to helping the conference and, you know, if you have money left over, what are you going to do with the things like that?

And really just making sure that their investment is going into the community. And it really is. It's either going into this conference or feeding back into the, the meetup that we have every month or going into immediate planning for next year's conference. Should we decide to do that?

So just to be clear, this isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. No. Right. What's the worst one ever?

It's the worst one ever. Get-rich-never. So that makes some perfect sense, you know, what do you use the money for and, you know, will you give some of it back if there's some leftover that they can ask you that one? No one has to be that one.

No. No. They just wanted to make sure that we weren't doing it as a profit. Gotcha.

Yeah. That seems to be the case. We're going to take a break here in a second because I've got a couple of things I want to bring up on that note. We've got to break first and come back because we have awesome sponsors who make this show possible.

And we need to feature them. So let's take a break. We'll do that. And we'll come back and talk a bit more about why the conference exists and, you know, what we can expect for it from it in the future.

So let's take a break. You've heard me talk about Top Tal several times on this podcast, but today is different. I've got a special treat for you. I went out and spoke with a listener who a year ago had never heard of Top Tal.

He listened to the show just like you're doing right here right now today and heard us talk about Top Tal and what they're all about. And he decided to get in touch. And now he's living the dream as a freelance software developer with Top Tal. His name is Dean Elelzon.

And I sit down and I talk with him. I sit eight. What is it that you love most about Top Tal? Take a listen.

Well, for me, the thing about Top Tal, which I thought would be very hard for me personally as I transitioned to a more consulting role, was the way I would have access to new clients and what quality those would be. So I found that I had access to awesome clients through Top Tal. And it hasn't been that hard to find because they have a lot of choice. And even more than that, there's enough choice.

And I can actually be a little selective about what kinds of things I want to be working on. So I use that as a way to sort of hone my skills and go towards the technology that I think are worth investing in for the future. So whether it's including new front-end frameworks or doing a little DevOps work on the side, usually I'm able to find clients who have the needs of the things I want to get better at. So that's been truly useful.

All right. That was Daniel Lazan, a listener of the Change Log and also a freelance software developer with Top Tal. If you want to follow in Daniel's footsteps, go to toptow.com slash developers. That's T-O-P-T-A-L dot com slash developers to learn more about what Top Tal is all about and tell them the Change Log is sent to you.

Well, let's talk about why this conference exists. I know that it's its first year. Obviously, it's a single track. We're looking at roughly 150-200 people attending.

We know it's at a zoo and we're playing the animal puns to the end, you know, and we won't stop ever. What made this? Why finally this year? Why finally 2015?

Why did it take so long and why does it exist? So that is a very good question why it's happening this year. I think that the final impetus kind of came out of Jared's goading me into it because I had promised that we had a meetup. I want to say probably a year and a half or two years ago where we announced everyone that one of our stretch goals or one of our big goals for the meetup was to do a conference eventually.

So that was kind of on everyone's mind that that was going to be something that we were going to do. But it just kind of sat there and nothing ever happened. And I think it was Jared that finally said, hey, are we going to do this conference ever? Is this going to happen?

And I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back as it were. Jared's goading us into organizing. I'm actually laughing behind the scenes here too and I'm trying not to put on air because that's how a lot of things get started. I'm like, I don't know these ideas.

And he gets excited about the ideas. And then it's like, are we ever going to do these fun ideas? I don't know. I'm like, I suppose sure let's do it.

And we do it. So Jared, it's nice to see that you impact others as well in the same way. I have no free time because I'm constantly filling it with. I go to people.

You said goat or goat. I said goat. Okay. I just wasn't sure that was another fun.

I just bug people and tell them we do things. And then I'm like, oh, dang. Now we have to do that. I'm really just kind of jabbing at them.

But now we're putting on a conference, I guess, and I tell my wife. I'm like, well, I guess I'm going to help put it on a conference. She's like, that sounds like a big thing. I'm like, is it?

There's six of us. Turns out it is. Even with six. I was going to say, so how does this, do we answer the question though first?

Why exists? What about the little community? What's the meet-ups like? You said it came from a meet-up.

So what was attendance like? Was it getting bigger? Is JavaScript exploding there? Is it everywhere else?

Yeah. I think it is. The meet-up has grown. We have, I think, over 700-some people on our meet-up group on meet-up.com slash Nebraska.js, if anybody's interested.

And yeah, it's just kind of grown and grown and grown. And I think the biggest meet-up event that we've had, I think, had around 80-some attendees. And Jared was thinking. And Jared spoke at that one.

Yeah, so I guess Jared was kind of our hoodlighter. Whoa, Jared. And Angular. I thought maybe we were talking about React or something like that to get a crowd like that.

Well, this was back when Angular was blowing up last year and a half ago. Pretty 2.0 Angular. Right. No, no hurts against them.

Just, you know, bias. Well, as we say, open source is hard. Right. Everybody's out there trying to do awesome stuff.

And yeah, kind of the trends come and go. And Angular is definitely on a downtrend as far as overall popularity. Or maybe mindshare. But still out there doing cool things and people using it in masks.

And everybody seems to be, if you put React in the title. Or if you go the routes of Bruce reacting, you know, a little sleight of hand there. With the title there. Uh-huh.

So big meet-up, it got to as many as 80 at one point, Jared. That was a couple years ago on Jared's point. So it got to a point where it just naturally made sense to put on a conference. And this is Middle America.

One thing I liked about some notes here, which aren't exactly easy to find for every conference. Number one, you have a shuttle going to and from the airport, which is free, which is awesome. Anytime I go to a conference, I'm like, you know, where do I have to like spend money to get to and from? Because people always assume, okay, I'm going to a conference and the airport is going to be right next to where?

No. That's not always the case. Like in Denver, it was $60 to get to and from the airport back to like the conference land. So it was quite expensive.

And then you got to do it twice, right? To and from. So it's 120 bucks just on taxi to and from the airport. And then you got to walk and distance the after party and things like that.

So it seems like you guys have done some planning around this to also kick it off. Yeah, we're kind of trying to make it like an all inclusive resort in Omaha. Like the sandals as it were. Yeah.

Go to the airport. Get the shuttle to the hotel. We're going to have a shuttle to the zoo and back. We're going to have two meals.

I think it sounds like we're talking about finalizing the evening meal as well. Live band. Yeah. Yeah, that would be really cool.

Is that a bit at the after part? That's the live band time. Yep. Who is the band name?

The super bites. Super bites. That's cool. Is it a local band or?

Yeah, it is. All of them are local. Actually with the high school with two of them. The super bites?

Yes. All right. I just found them on band. They are rocking the super Mario style graphics.

8-bit all the way. Yeah. I think they don't have to do some sampling with some unique hardware. Yeah.

They use a Nintendo and a Game Boy on stage and they have pre-setup tracks that they created on those devices. So it's a really unique experience. So that's the after-party. We got all this time and so far.

We haven't talked about two of the names I think almost anyone listening to the show might know. Ethan Marcott and Christian. All right. Let's see it.

Hellman or Hillman? Anybody know the correct pronunciation of Christian's last name? I do not. What do you think Jared?

I will say Hellman though. Hellman. I was going to go to Hellman. All right.

Code Poet. Code Poet. Those are... You know, I never read that as Code Poet.

Jared, I just took this Code Po 8. Me too. All right. Nice.

We're learning. That's the big box. That's it. So Ethan Marcott.

He's doing the closing and Christian started off. What was getting these two involved? How did that happen? Did somebody email them?

Was it? You bumped into another conference? Well, Ethan has actually done some work with Filament Group, which is the company I worked for. So they did the Boston Globe sort of redesign, which was a huge or one of the biggest responsive web design redesigns a few years ago.

So they kind of worked together and that's how I kind of got that connection to Ethan. And did he come just with open arms or did he have to be coerced? No. He was super excited to be involved.

I did not have to coerce him at all. No blackmail? Not that I could say on air. No, I'm just kidding.

There was no blackmail at all. Yeah. He's super excited to come out and come to the zoo. I like it.

Hang out. What about Christian? I mean, he does a lot for the JavaScript world and he's done all sorts of cool stuff. Always been a fan of his.

So you got connections there as well? Yeah. Well, not quite as tight, I would say, but I don't know how I got connected to Christian originally, but I've just kind of followed him online since I started blogging back in 2006 or 2007. So I've just kind of been connected through Twitter and blogs online.

And I saw that he was going to be in the country because he's from London originally or currently, I should say. And so he was going to be in the country and he actually rescheduled one of his flights back to London so that he could come out and speak. So very, very accommodating for us. You know, one of the things that people always get most concerned about when putting out conference is one, will anybody show up?

Two, will I get quality speakers or anything that's worthwhile for people to actually show four? And if they do show up and the speakers show up too, will everybody enjoy it? So I mean, knowing all those three kind of pillars of fear so to speak when it comes to a conference, I just coined that just now, by the way. Three pillars of fear.

Three pillars of fear. Should work at local news. I do work at local news. Right here in Houston, myfoxusen.com.

No, but on a serious note though. So like around the topics, around the keynote speakers, was there anybody like throwing up or getting upset or just like really just like ruining their day over just the worry, the anxiety that comes from those three things? Definitely. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, there's a huge amount of stress that goes into running a conference and we sort of had Ethan from the beginning, which was very good because that helped us, I think, get us more exposure. So we had Ethan published before we even did the CFP, which I think helped us, helped us get a lot more submissions. We sort of legitimized this as a conference before we even started.

And then we got Christian a few weeks ago. But getting the speakers there I think is just one small piece, one small pillar in the pillars of fear as it were. There's just so many other things that are going on that you have to worry about as well. So logistics are kind of a nightmare when it comes to conferences.

What about financing and receding and things like that? How does that play out with the six organizations you have? How does the responsibility and the financial responsibility and things like that play out? And who points at the first dollar?

How does it work? That's my biggest. How do you actually do a conference? So, I mean, all the organizers sort of pony up fixed some because we formed an LLC to get it started.

And then sponsorship and sponsorship dollars started rolling in and we started doing ticket sales. And so we've been able to sort of stay out of the game in terms of paying our seats or paying invoices. So legitimate business was set up to sort of be the crux of this thing, not just, not just hey, you know, you're like in Jared's case, like object lateral or any of your guys businesses. Like it didn't mix.

You created your own organization and took some ownership in it to a degree. Right. Yeah. I don't know if I'd throw around the word legitimate that lightly, but certainly an LLC was formed.

Stay on the brassica. Thanks for the legitimate. That's where I was going to go. Okay.

That's all you got to have right there. Yeah. Okay. So this is very much like setting up a, you know, a real live business, basically.

I mean, you're going to have, you know, you're going to have, you know, you're going to have a path or a tax to somebody. Somebody's on the hook for some of this money doesn't even profit, right? That's a goal. That's why I said no profits.

There's a goal right there. Right. No profits is the goal. Okay.

Yeah. Sure. Insurance is a concern. You know, we set up an LLC because there's some personal protections there against things going wrong.

Yeah. Cashflow. Actually for us, I've been surprised. I thought cashflow would be a big problem.

Aside from that, one sponsorship thing that Zach talked about, we've actually been pretty cashflow positive as far as the down pains we have to put to reserve things and this and that. I think head sponsors not stepped up so generously right away. Yeah. I think we've been a lot harder sledding because we have made tighter decisions and wait on things and, you know, rely on ticket sales.

So we've been really fortunate that there's so many great sponsors here locally that hopped on board like right away. Yeah. The sponsors were just like, I feel like they were waiting for something to come around like this so they can jump on board. Really?

Because it took very little coaxing to get sponsors. So was it sponsors first speaker second? Is that what I mean? Because just thinking from a cashflow standpoint, you think about sales to a degree and you've got to get sales to put a product out there and the product is a conference.

You can't put the conference on so you get sponsors to commit and speakers to commit and things like that. And you got to have a place to call home so you can't get that until you put the money down. So it seems like this never ending chicken and eggs scenario for at least for a first time conference, you know, first year. Yeah.

Well, luckily a lot of our speakers have deferred reimbursement until the day of the conference. So that kind of helped us in the beginning, but I mean, our sponsors really were so excited to get involved that we had we had a pretty good song to get start, start paying our bills very early. And I think it also helped that we refused to put people on the website until we got payment. So we wouldn't put anybody's logo on there until we got money.

Yeah. That's a good rule to have right there. Yeah. Yep.

We're getting close to the end of the show. Let's take one more break while we have some time to hear we're from one of our awesome sponsors making the show possible. When we come back, we're going to talk about some closing topics like collaboration tools for the team. I like that little note there.

I didn't quite think about the collaboration necessary kind of scenes. And then, you know, the other thing I mentioned, which was the fear of nobody showing up, I'm kind of curious what y'all think about that. So let's pause here, listen to this awesome sponsor and then we come back and talk about those things. So we're back.

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We're back to close up the show with Nick, Zach and Jared talking about JavaScript in the wild here in the middle of America, Nebraska, man, I mean, I'm excited to get there for one Jared. I haven't visited yet. So I'm so excited to finally come out to Omaha, I've already done some business with local places around there. What's the tank there?

Yeah, I've done some business with them, you know, work with you and stuff like that, but not hadn't visited this, this, uh, fabulous place and there's finally a reason to go, which is this JavaScript conference we're talking about here. And I guess we're talking about showing up. Nick, did you have any concerns yourself, like did you, you said yes, the anxiety earlier, but you didn't elaborate. So can you elaborate a bit on this idea of no one showing up, the fear of nobody showing up for conference and you being an organizer of it?

Sure. I guess now at this point, I'm not worried too much about people showing up just seeing the ticket sales and the, the positive comments that we've gotten, but that was definitely a concern going into it. Just, I'm not sure, you know, if anybody will think that this is a good idea, but as Zach mentioned, the thing Ethan on board right away really helped to, as he said, legitimize it. The thing that's really scary now is we're, you know, we're 16 days away from it at this point and there's so much left to do.

We have all of these tickets and things kind of, these plates still spinning. And then, you know, we'll get all of that settled in and be ready for the conference the day up and then, you know, I'm just, my biggest fear is waking up in a cold sweat that morning and realizing we forgot microphones or something like, you know, something so necessary and so yet so small that we just kind of overlooked and really scared of that, but I think that will be, will be fine. It's just a, a terror thing that I have, I guess, but then finally, just, will people have fun? Will they enjoy the talks?

Will there be technical problems there that we have a deal with on the spot? Will there be, um, yeah, we'll see what they get, yeah, yes, every time, is somebody going to get mauled by one of the animals that we have coming into the conference? Hopefully. I don't even know what kind of animals we're having, but.

Hopefully it'll work fine. Yeah. Elephants, porcupines, lions, cats. No, I mean, I think we, porcupine is one of the animals that we might have, so.

Yep. I've heard that. I'm glad I'm talking about that. I'm glad it's LLC.

Yep. Alright, so let's, it's something that you quite, I kind of mentioned there, Nick, it seemed like just this organization process behind the scenes with the rest of the six. So you got six people that joined the NGS team to, to put this conference on this year. What are some of the things that you've done?

Who spearheaded it? Was it anyone, was there like a distinct leader? Was it sort of like all self managed to come up with checklist and like, or did you sort of divide up in teams? How did you all work to collaborate?

I guess, since you don't work in the same office, obviously, because this is not like a legitimate business issue. A conference and you got your own things to do. How did you, you know, collaborate day to day to make these things happen over time? I think that we all kind of, we're all very self driven and can work autonomously on things.

We kind of knew what things at high level we needed to tackle. If there is a distinct leader, definitely the ZAC, he kind of, you know, started putting things together, organizing things, organizing ways that we can communicate. And I think it was either ZAC or Jared that recommended using Trello for organization. So we've been using that and just adding, having lists of things to do and different stages for that and having everything as a card in there and it's, it's been working out pretty well.

Yeah, Trello is amazing. I don't, I don't think we could have organized a conference without it. Yeah. Well, we, we're in Trello all day long.

We use it to do change law weekly, so I know we can high five on that one there. I can tell you more stories about Trello and I agree with you, but I'll just leave it that I agree that Trello is super awesome. There isn't a tool that quite meets what it does for organizing, for organizing people and the whole agile process, whether you're doing software or not, it's just really flexible to however you want to work. In addition to that, you know, I've been taking cues as Adam and I have traveled around conferences this year.

We're at Space DJS in the spring and y'all know where it go for a few weeks back. So as I go to these conferences, I'm very cognizant of like how they're running things because I'm involved and one of the things that Space City did, which I think was cool and I think more conferences will start doing is to open up a Slack team for the entire conference. So all the attendees can hop in there. And so we did that recently for any JS and addition to that, we have kind of an organized private room and room for speakers.

And one thing about Trello is it's not great for just discussion, you know, it can get a little bit cumbersome for that and we didn't realize it, but we were doing too much just like chatting inside Trello because we didn't have an auxiliary tool and so the last month I was asking a Slack team and that has really balanced out where we have kind of your immediate needs, quick feedback, you know, paste a stupid gift in their chat room and then you have Trello, which is all about the organized, you know, assigned things that need doing. I think that's really been a good combination of tools for us. Slack is the party in the front and Trello is the business in the back. Yeah, really rounding out any JS mole that we're going for here.

I like it. Another important topic, which I, which we saw, you know, Jared, since you mentioned GopherCon, I loved their idea of a diversity scholarship. Did the job take some cues from that or was it somewhere else? But you seem to be focused on the inclusivity and accessibility conference.

So what was this diversity scholarship about and what were some, I guess, has there been anybody to take the free ticket? How was that process like? Yeah, so we are doing diversity scholarships through a local company called Big Wilbur Brigade. They've offered 10 free tickets for people underrepresented in tech, whether that be gender, sex, sexuality, race or veteran status or any number of other things.

And we've, I think people, I think we've redeemed almost half of those tickets and they are confidential. So to other attendees that your badge is going to be different or anything, the ticket will be identical to any other attendee ticket. But I think we've only redeemed half of those so far. Are there any caveats to that?

Like what's the criteria to meet the, is it even you guys that take care of this or is it totally through Big Wilbur Brigade that they handle that? I see Beth's name here. I'm just wondering if she is totally taking over that at all points. Yeah.

I'm just going to go to the point of contact for that. So she actually will go out and buy the tickets on our website using a special coupon code that we have for her. And so yeah, that's kind of how that sponsorship works and there's really, they really aren't doing any question or interrogation involved with that. They just will, hey, you want to take it?

Okay, here's the information that we need and we'll buy it for you. So it's not like a formal thing that you have to go through, like an application process. It's really just, hey, I would like to go to this conference and I'll get you a ticket. So.