Meet.js Summit is the very first conference I gave talk at, all the way back in 2012, so a decade later I was quite happy to be able to join the 2022 edition as a speaker again.
It started small, as I was suppose to give a short lightning talk, since a gamedev-related session was already accepted, but since I was going anyway, I ended up being a backup speaker. You know, if someone else from the regular speaker’s list can’t arrive and give a talk for any reason, then I can jump in and save the day. Well, that actually happened - Aleksandra Sikora (with the Blitz.js topic) got sick, so I filled her slot in the agenda.
Funny thing is, I misunderstood Zbyszek Tenerowicz (the conference organizer) when we talked about it a few days before the conference (happening on Friday September 16th), so even on my way to Poznań the day before I was still polishing the lightning talk slides. It was this day’s Speaker’s Dinner where I learned I’ll go for the full time slot, which wasn’t much of a problem, since the lightning talk slides were actually butchered from the full set.
On the day of the conference, during the opening session, Zbyszek actually showed a picture of me giving a talk (about CSS4!) from 2012. If you happen to find the recording of that, please don’t watch - it’s a classic case of all the things you shouldn’t do while giving a talk.
Even though I’m a web game developer for more than a decade now and I’m attending the front-end conferences to meet with old friends rather than listen to the talks, I still enjoyed a few of them like GitHub Copilot intro from Krzysztof Cieslak or battle tested insights from using TypeScript by Bartosz Król, and I also liked seeing both the gamedev and blockchain topics from Konrad Hanus and Jakub Pusiak respectively.
My talk “Lessons learned from building games in 13 kilobytes” looks like a session about the competition itself, but it evolved much since the first version and I’m using it as an excuse to show what front-end folks can learn from js13kGames participants and apply to their work and hobby related projects.
After all the sessions we went for an unofficial afterparty and enjoyed the evening, talking about anything and everything, with a big chunk on the blockchain topic. The whole conference was organized perfectly well, and so folks could chill and enjoy the rest of the time.
I’m really happy I was able to attend the event and give my talk, from what I heard it was well received even if it was quite the surprise to the attendees - the schedule was updated in the morning of the conference. Also, the video recording of my session should be published soon!