SmashingConf New York 2019
Tags: techtalks, nextjs, javascript, smashingconf
Published: 2019-11-20 22:00:09

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending [SmashingConf in New York](https://smashingconf.com/ny-2019/), travelling from a chilly Swedish autumn to a quite pleasant New York end of summer. I spent the weekend fighting jet lag by taking long walks and touristing so I could be fit for the first workshop I had signed up for. 

## TL;DR

Great conference but not technical enough for my taste. 

Watch [Wes Bos's talk](https://vimeo.com/showcase/6539127/video/367872808) ([slides](https://wesbos.github.io/Slam-Dunk-JavaScript/#1)) for good javascript insights and all talks can be found here: [SmashingConf NY 2019 videos](https://vimeo.com/showcase/6539127).

## Lightning fast performance with Scott Jehl.

Spending a whole day digging deep into performance sounded like a great way to spend a Monday so I had booked. 
The venue for the workshop was located at Microsoft, just a short walk from my hotel so I had plenty of time to get a good nights sleep, eat a steady breakfast and still make the 9 o'clock start without any problems.

Scott Jehl was really easy going and the workshop covered tools to measure performance and how to mitigate issues. 
I would however have liked more nitty gritty details and less time spent on using online tools. 

The [Move Fast & Don't Break Things-talk](https://vimeo.com/showcase/6539127/video/367887672) that Scott held on the second day of the conference was a distilled version of the workshop so check it out if you're interested.

In the evening I attended a Shopify-hosted jam session with lightning talks from Shopify, Microsoft, Forestry (about TinaCMS!) and a few others talkers.


## Conference day one

The conference took place at the [New world stages](https://newworldstages.com/) close to time square. 
The main stage was a musical theatre which worked well but the rest of the venue was quite cramped. 

Many of the talks were more of the UX/inspirational kind which can be nice, but I'm more of a hands on person so my favourites were the following.

[Marcy Sutton on Garbage Pail Components](https://vimeo.com/showcase/6539127/video/367853694) is a talk about accessibility with an 80's twist (and not even the first 80's flashback this conference).

[Wes Bos on Slam Dunk Your JavaScript Fundamentals](https://vimeo.com/showcase/6539127/video/367872808) is jam packed with new APIs that you might not have heard of yet, especially the Intl-object.

In the evening the SmashingConf party took place at Waylon bar where speakers and participants got to mingle. I met lots of friendly people from both sides of the pond and had a great time.

## Conference day two

With a slight hangover and not enough sleep I went to see the [mystery speaker dina Amin](https://vimeo.com/showcase/6539127/video/367875942) who makes wonderful stop-motion shorts with old discarded electrical devices.

Another fun talk was the [Using a Modern Web to Recreate 1980s Horribly Slow & Loud Loading Screen](https://vimeo.com/showcase/6539127/video/367885607)-talk where Remy Sharp recreated the loading screens of his old 80's Sinclair Spectrum computer. All ending with a photo of the audience being transformed to the Spectrum image format and shown on the big screen

## Next.js with Remy Sharp

With the conference over I still had a workshop day to look forward to so I went back to the Microsoft office to learn some next.js!

The workshop was good with all the basics of next.js covered, I had already tinkered with next.js (my homepage runs for example) so most things were familiar but luckily I had not read up on the changes in 9.1 so I did learn some new tricks.

All in all I had a great week in NYC and I met lots of great people but I would have liked if the conference and workshops were a bit more technical.