Reactions to CSS Dev Conf 2014

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Two FINE Developers, Mark and Alex, attended CSS Dev Conf this year in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year’s conference was a “three track” conference, meaning for every presentation you saw you got to choose between three options. Mark and Alex decided to divide and conquer, each attending a different presentation to thereby maximize their collective knowledge. Here are their thoughts!

What was your favorite presentation and why?

M: Become a Sublime Text Power User by Wes Bos. As an old-school CSS dev who doesn’t sharpen his tools often enough, I found Wes’ presentation incredibly informative and inspiring. Also I learned that Canadians have their own Thanksgiving.

A: Hyper-Optimized Workflow with Grunt, LESS, Autoprefixer, Uncss, and More by Jason Lengstorf. It was a fast-paced beginner’s guide to grunt and gulp.

Who was your favorite speaker and why?

*M: *Kenzey Conrad. Her delivery and attitude were phenomenal.

A: Wes Bos! The dude knew his stuff and he was very engaging in his delivery.

Please provide an example of something you learned during the conference:

M: I learned how to harness the terrible power of the Shadow DOM from Andrew Rota.

A: How to setup a super basic Grunt workflow for running a grunt server including fun libraries like autoprefixer, slim, minifiying, linting, live reload. All great to start the templating of a project without relying on an already existing Rails setup.

What was your favorite experience in New Orleans?

*M: *After an evening of wandering and drinking, we found Balcony Music Club. The music was fantastic and the outdoor patio was beautiful. Next time I’ll skip Bourbon Street and go straight to BMC.

*A: *Every experience was fantastic! If I had to choose one, it would probably be stumbling across the two dueling violinists at Jackson Square after dark. The ambience was perfect and those violinists were amazingly fantastic.

What are your overall impressions of CSS Dev Conf?

M: My favorite conference ever. Despite some technical glitches and silly moments (it sounded like someone was grinding rocks in the next room during Rebecca Murphey’s opening keynote) the conference was well organized and we felt well taken care of (drink tickets aplenty; hilarious tours during tornadoes… can’t beat that).

A: This was hands-down, the most amazing conference I’ve been to: the topic was perfect for my interests, I got to meet/see all the celebs in my field, and I was inspired by amazing topics and people.

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