JS Nation: The Conference That Mapped Out My Career Goals
On the 28th of November, 2023, I received a newsletter from JS Nation with an invitation to apply for a Diversity Scholarship for the JS Nation 2024 Conference. Usually, I skip such letters, mark them as read, and forget about them. But not this time. One magical word — Amsterdam — caught my attention. I had been there only once, very briefly, right before the Covid pandemic, and the city impressed me. The desire to visit it again in the summer, far away from rainy and cold Warsaw, was irresistible. So, I did my best to write a good motivation letter and started waiting for a response.
Five months later, I received a confirmation saying that I had been selected as one of the recipients of the Scholarship. I was happy, but at the time, not that enthusiastic. Warsaw is beautiful in summer, and Amsterdam is super expensive, as I learned right after reserving tickets and accommodation. But the main reason for my mixed feelings was that I was struggling with burnout again. It was caused mostly by the full-scale war Russia unleashed in my country more than two years ago and me finally starting to identify myself as a refugee. ‘World on the Brink: Why Focus on My Tech Career?’ — this is the title of my latest article on Medium, where I try to reflect on my situation.
Before the flight, I felt stressed, sick, and miserable — a deadly combination when it comes to perceiving a lot of information and meeting new people. On the conference day, I pulled myself together and took the metro to Kromhouthal, a former ship engine factory, where the organizers were expecting to gather 1,500 JS developers. A big crowd, but the only person I managed to have a small talk with was a videographer from Amsterdam, who was very curious about secret Russian military bases somewhere in Europe. My networking mission failed, and it was sad, especially compared to how much I enjoyed my last offline conference in 2018 — NgTalks in Kharkiv.
Now, the speakers. There were two I wanted to see live — Evan You and Anthony Fu. Evan You gave the opening talk, 10 Years of Independent OSS: A Retrospective. The slides he presented were almost the same as those I had already seen at the Vue.js Live conference in April. But for me, it was a historic event to see the creator of Vue.js and Vite standing on the stage in front of 1,000 people like a real rockstar. As for Anthony Fu, his talk, ESLint One for All Made Easy, was fresh, informative, and straightforward. I am a big fan of him as an engineer and of the projects he contributes to: VueUse, Slidev, and Icones. His blog post on mental health in Open Source was a great discovery for me.
This is how the JS Nation Conference went for me. Tomorrow, there will be another day of online talks, but I need to go back to work. I didn’t manage to use my free ticket to the fullest, neither in terms of the official program nor the social part of it. But I did get a charge of motivation and inspiration. I will continue working with Vue, but I also want to build something with React. And the most ambitious goal is to grow in the direction of full-stack development. Let me know if you want to read my next article by leaving a comment and following me. Also, here is my Buy Me a Coffee page. Thank you for reading.
