The 7th annual JavaScript in South Africa (JSinSA) conference is taking place in Johannesburg on Saturday 15 July.
JSinSA has made a name for itself over the past several years by focusing on the ever growing interest in the “full stack” appeal of JavaScript and by being vendor-neutral.
Simon Stewart, the founder and organiser, says that JSinSA “has always been designed to be a conference I’d want to attend. All decisions I make are done in the context of a potential attendee.”.
The 2016 event sold out in a week and had to turn away a large number of people due to space limitations. 50% of the tickets in 2016 were sold in the first day.
JSinSA has become one of the hotly anticipated events on the local developer calendar with many tickets being sold within minutes after they were made available. Simon recalls the rush for the 250 available tickets in 2016 as like a “Justin Bieber concert, except for developers”.
This year, the organisers have chosen an even bigger venue (having outgrown 3 others since inception) to accommodate a target number of 350 attendees.
Both local and international sponsors have been keen to get involved – having either seen a benefit from being involved last year or seeing the impact of the conference on the developer community.
This year we have local sponsors such as bbd, Entelect, OfferZen, EPI-USE Labs, nReality, Intersoft, DeskStand & Broken Keyboards Software. And many international sponsors such as Amazon, Mozilla, SyncFusion, Tower – which shows the international interest and applicability of this local event.
Many of the overseas sponsors make developer tools or services that are well known to the community.
The 2017 event will have 17 speakers across 15 sessions, including frequent tech speaker Rouan Wilsenach talking about real world micro-services; Thabang Mathebula explaining his journey with NodeJS and ASP.NET Core; first time speaker Etienne Marais talking about the hot topic of VueJS; Alexander Pittendrigh covering the well-used, but little understood developer tool called Webpack; Len Weincier talks about WebAssembly – a new standard for developers; organizer Simon Stewart shows how “progressive web apps” bridge the gap between websites and native mobile applications, which is a growing trend in the industry.
In 2016, Patrick Kettner, the PM from the Microsoft Edge team in Seattle, was a speaker.
What makes the conference unique in South Africa is that we:
– keep ticket costs as low as possible. This year the ticket price is R925 which includes a day pass to all sessions, snacks, full lunch, lucky draw prizes and a welcome pack.
– don’t do cash sponsorships. Instead, we find a mutually beneficial arrangement with each of the individual sponsors, such as them giving away branded items; prizes; arranging for good coffee; etc… Having a high cash barrier to entry means that smaller companies never get a chance to have exposure and get involved. As a small business owner, this is a topic close to Simon’s heart.
Similar to previous years, several sponsored tickets are available, this time from a sponsor in Australia. These tickets are available to students or junior developers who would otherwise not be able to attend. Candidates are requested to contact the organisers via our site. This is an incredible opportunity to meet a few hundred members of the community and glimpse into the world of programming.
Like last year, all sessions are being recorded and made available for free on our Youtube channel. This is our way of sharing the information and it also helps increase the profile of the speakers. Something that Simon feels strongly about – particularly of the local speakers.
Simon goes on to say that “we have so much developer talent in South Africa. We just need to share knowledge amongst ourselves more so we can all grow together and become a more competitive country globally”.
Kudakwashe Murungu, a speaker at several previous JSinSA’s, joins the team as a co-organiser this year.
Having the conference on Saturday means employees don’t need to take leave and contractors don’t need to worry about a “cost to company” issue when taking a day off.
Previous attendee, Andre Odendaal, has this to say about the conference: “JSInSA attracts such a diverse crowd of people, you’re bound to learn from developers working on stuff you’ve never even heard of!”
Paul Sainsbury, frequent attendee of JSinSA, says this: “it’s the one conference I always go to because I know the value it gives me and my teams”.
Rishal Hurbans, a previous attendee and speaker, says: “The casual atmosphere and community focus makes it one of the best tech related conferences in South Africa”
Tickets are on sale now via the conference site – www.JSinSA.com.
Links:
Our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channe
Our site: www.JSinSA.com
Our Twitter account: www.Twitter.com/JSinSA