React Finland 2018 - Workshop Day

This is just a quick recap of the workshop day (24.4.2018). The next two days will are conference days full of talks. You can find the official information regarding the conference from React Finland website. Disclaimer: I had to write the day recap quite quickly, and it is more like a braindump.

Overview

The most important thing first, even though we have active web development scene in Finland, we don't have that many conferences on Web development. That is why events like this are super important and exciting!

If it warms anyone's heart, the organizers will receive my eternal gratitude for organizing the conference! Is there anything more delightful than getting world-class developers/speakers "delivered almost to your doorstep"?

Big thanks to the volunteers and organizers!

Back to the overview...

The workshops were in two locations: Valkoinen Sali and Elisa Appelsiini Office.

The recap that you're currently reading is my experience on a full-day workshop held in Valkoinen Sali. I attended the State Management workshop held by Michel Weststrate. More on the workshop later.

I think it is understandable that the workshops cannot be in the same location. If I counted correctly there were ten workshops with each capped to 20 persons; it is quite hard to find a venue that would have the perfect fit for all workshops.

Venue & Organizing

I wasn't sure if we're receiving anything during the day, so I filled my stomach with breakfast, took my fully charged laptop and headed to the Valkoinen Sali.

The place was easy to find, and service was good right from the doorstep. Having a coffee boosted my already good morale.

The venue works very-well, good location, service, and atmosphere.

Things to improve. These are small things, and one could say that the organizers were fast to React to situations, no pun intended.

Wifi. I guess most of the workshops require a laptop; the laptop requires a Wifi. One could use Wifi hotspot, but our workshop lasted from 09:00 - 17:00 so it will drain your battery.

The venue had a Wifi, but it required a password (complicated Finnish word), and it was super-slow. Even Michel, the workshop presenter, had to switch to his Wifi hotspot.

The two workshops were a bit too close to each other and the only thing separating us was a curtain. It would be better to have a separate room so that we would not hear the other workshop.

Most of the workshop attendees need to recharge the laptop battery, so the venue should have a lot of power strips.

State Management Workshop

The workshop was about MobX and MobX-state-tree. I was curious to learn other ways to manage web application state than Redux and RxJS that I had used before. I think there is no better way to understand the thinking behind the tool than let the creator himself explain it.

The workshop was well-paced, and the exercises had the right difficulty level. Michel created MobX, among many other things, so naturally, he knew what he was talking about.

I am not going to write about MobX now, but in context of full-day (09:00-17:00) workshop and MobX, the day was enough to give an overview of the MobX philosophy, capabilities and some idea of pros/cons of the approach.

If you're interested to learn MobX, I highly recommend attending Michel's workshop on the topic.

What's next?

Tomorrow will be the first conference day and everyone will be at the same venue. I look forward to meeting old friends and, hopefully, meet some new ones also! Come say hi.

And of course, the big thing is the great talks given by fabulous people all around the world.