Abstractions (2016)

As the night draws to a close, so does my first software conference — Abstractions.

Abstractions is a new conference that brings together everyone involved in modern software development — designers, developers, DevOps, and community leaders — to teach, learn, and connect.

I discovered the event through a Reddit post in early June and could barely wait to attend a conference so close with a number of amazing speakers. August 18–20 was full of learning, humor, and, most importantly, growth. The chance to see some of the brightest minds in the industry speak firsthand was an opportunity I’ll surely treasure.

As seen above, Larry Wall, inventor of Perl, was one of the many presenters I had the pleasure of listening to. Some other notable individuals include Joe Armstrong, inventor of Erlang, Mike Monteiro, Co-founder of Mule Design, Raffi Krikorian, Engineering Lead at Uber Advanced Technologies center and former VP of Platform Engineering at Twitter, and Laurie Voss, Co-founder and COO of npm.

Some of the interesting topics I heard include:

• The Sound of JavaScript — Music and Synthesis in the Browser
• A11Y 411
• Scaling Engineering Culture
• Has the Fun Gone out of Web Design?
• De-facto standards hacking: bringing -webkit- prefixed CSS to a browser near you

In between the excitement of talks, I was able to grab a copy of Richard Stallman’s Free Software, Free Society signed by the man himself.

Overall, I had an incredible time. The team behind Abstractions, Code & Supply, did an amazing job organizing the event. One final note, the venue had a stunning view of Pittsburgh so it was hard to not venture to the terrace whenever possible.