London Node.js User Group April 2014

Sigh, I’m a bit late writing this one up (again) but never mind

On a barmy spring evening Mr white and I potted up to a very trendy part of Old Street to attend the 29th London Node User Group

Held in the Shoreditch village hall (which was far posher than I remember village halls being and with no smell of urine)

This was in the background of Old street which used to be a place you would not venture into without a body guard and an axe but is now Londons start up tech hub

There were 3 talks on the night:

Jeremy Ruston A Tale of Two Hosts: rebooting TiddlyWiki for Node.js and the browser

This talk was done by its creator and such talks are always fascinating, his discussion had a lot of moving from old tech to new with serious and precises technical terms (I had to go look up what transclusion means)

The talk was less about node.js and more a product demo, this was fine as I was really impressed with Tiddlywiki the product, very cutting edge with a lot of CSS3 and HTML5, I learnt about a couple of new HTML5 features I was unaware of as well as lessons on large scale state manipulation or lack of it

The product it’s self looks a boon for academics although less so for corporations due to their habit of living on old browsers.

It runs in both the browser as well as node.js and its ability to create multiple entries or wikis at will puts corporate wikis to shame.

Simon McManusHome Automation With Javascript

The home automation talk was an easy going change from its hard core predecessor, but Mr McManusHome was just a tad rushed and garbled (sounds like he has been busy at work)

It was interesting to see the challenges that even an obviously clever person has in trying to glue all the various home automation standards into something you can use for what you want

It was captivated seeing how hard he had to work to get even simple things working, it does however seem that there are companies out there that are fighting the good fight.

In the end I felt dumb but exhilarated and galvanised to learn more

Ismael Celis Streaming downloads proxy service with Node.js

This talk rounded up the night and concentrated on the bootic eCommerce application.

While not as fun as the other presentations, it was pure practical demonstration, strongly focused on node.js and shared a lot of lessons learnt and good tips and tricks, well presented especially considering that English does not seem to be Mr Celis first language

Roundup

The atmosphere between and after the talks was really welcoming and very friendly compared to something like a Java user group (they even do free training nights), I suspect this was because most people were from start-ups rather than the serious corporate landscape, indeed my references to using various technologies inside the corporates was treated with a bit of horror as if I was suggesting selling out to the forces of evil, a strange but refreshing attitude and a good U.G. all round.

 

 

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