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Interview With Chris Williams
When you think about people who have made an impact in the JavaScript community, I think most people would immediately think of Brendan Eich, Douglas Crockford or John Resig. And rightfully so, as their contributions have unquestionably impacted JavaScript as we know it.
There's another person who I feel has made a profound difference in the way that JavaScript is viewed and has done as much as anyone to bring organization and structure to the JS community. And that's Chris Williams, the founder and organizer of JSConf. I think we tend to underestimate how important a community is to the vitality of a technology and Chris has worked hard to cultivate the JS community through his outstanding conference, making it one of the most sought-after events for web developers. It has been so successful that it has spawned off sister events worldwide, all with the sole focus of improving the community.
It's not to say that everything is always rosy but Chris is undeniably passionate about JavaScript (and now robots) so I wanted to ask him a few questions about his conference, the state of the community and what's the big deal about robots anyways.
Q Let's start off with the usual. What do you do and why do people love you so much?
It was the first time that a technology conference focused on the deep technical perspective of JS.
Well first off, hello everyone! I am a bit of a jack-of-all-trades these days. I am the Vice President of Product Development and co-founder of a senior safety monitoring company called SaferAging. As part of my work there, I created node-serialport, which is the package through which JS developers are able to control and manipulate objects in the real world through devices like Arduinos and Raspberry Pis (among others). The project has evolved into a larger idea called NodeBots which basically lays the groundwork for making hardware hacking accessible, easy, and understandable to any web or high level language developer. Watching the world wake up to the exciting world of hardware has been amazing, it is why we are starting RobotsConf in order to help more people experience this energy and happiness.
Alongside these efforts, and possibly where most people know of me (not entirely sure about love, but possibly), my wife and I started the JSConf technical conference in 2009. It was the first time that a technology conference focused on the deep technical perspective of JS. We did it with a strong focus on not just technical lectures, but on fostering a strong, social community, something that has continually grown year over year. We have worked to engender a strong sense of mission to the community whether it be through various charitable donation drives, constantly encouraging and supporting new conferences and community leaders, or using the platform we have built to fix the issues in our community.
Q JSConf is one of the most sought after conference tickets. Why not just open it up to a bigger audience?
By distributing the events around the world, we allow more people many more opportunities to participate in our community instead of allowing a small group have a chokehold on speaking slots and defining our community.
We do get this question a lot and it normally involves a long, philosophical dialog which ends roughly the same way every time. The original JSConf worked, because of its very intimate nature and that is something we have always tried to retain. By creating an intimate event, everyone at the event feels like they are part of something instead of feeling lost in the crowd. I have been to many conferences over many years and the ones that stick out the most in my experience were the ones where I felt like I could connect with everyone and left feeling part of something bigger.
All too often, the crowd demands "just add more seats" without understanding that by doing that you drastically affect the overall experience, the cost structure (conference costs do not scale linearly with attendee count), and, in my opinion, it yields an overall degraded experience for attendees. My proposed solution, largely influenced from a wonderful talk by Jason Fried at the SEED conference, is to make or help make many smaller, regional events that are finely tuned to and help reinforce the local community. By distributing the events around the world, we allow more people many more opportunities to participate in our community instead of allowing a small group have a chokehold on speaking slots and defining our community. The talk I referenced provided me with this great tidbit I have never forgotten and has been very shaping on my vision of how events should be, "I would rather sell cookbooks that help others make their own masterpieces than to be the greatest chef in the world".
I believe a lot of the argument rests on the assumption that a technology conference should just automatically accommodate everyone, which is impossible. JSConf US is organized entirely by the Williams family; yes, even the two year old and two month old helped out with this year's event as did our extended family. Trying to balance everything and maintain our family life and responsibilities, while still focusing on the conference, curation of experience, and quality of talks has already been almost impossible to accomplish. In the end, the size and style of the conference we organize is up to us and only us – we do appreciate the feedback, but for now we are going to continue as we see fit – for better or worse.