Punk Rock Software at Next Week's Halihax
Sep 20, 2023 17:53
My speaking career really started getting some traction in 2019, and then everything got reset by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Events are starting up again and I'm getting back in front of people again too.
One of the events I've been happy to see this year has been the HFX.js / Halihax Frontend Meetup. I went to one of their events back in February and another in June, and enjoyed the talks and the general vibe so much that I volunteered to do a talk for the next one. Well, that next one is coming up next Wednesday, September 27th.
It'll be at the new CoWork Halifax space at 6156 Quinpool Road, with doors at 6 and presentations starting at 6:30. You can get tickets here.
For this event I'm going to be doing an updated version of my "Halifax Burger Week and Punk Rock Software" talk. I premiered this in 2019 at Self.conf in Detroit and in very early 2020 at ConFoo Montreal - my last trip and event and speech before a live audience before lockdown. Here in the After Times, this was the closing talk at this year's Maritime DevCon in Fredericton - and the last speech ever at that conference, as it has now closed down for good.
The talk riffs on my annual project of making a lightweight renegade website for Halifax Burger Week, something I've written about here a few times in the past.
This is a talk about bloated tech stacks, renegade DIY website development, how to build something more impactful in 6K than in 6MB, the differences between Genesis and the Ramones, and of course burgers. Lots and lots of burgers.
This is a fun talk to give, since it's about rock music and I can coast on energy rather than getting bogged down in technicalities. That said, I do take the time to explain how all the code works. Yes all of it. Every single line of JavaScript in the entire project, which supports quick search, dynamic content, and even GPS-based distance calculations. It takes about ten minutes.
I also include discussions about the pendulum swing in software between complexity and simplicity, how burgers and punk go together right back at the beginning, and why it's not entirely a coincidence that Bill Gates wrote his famous open letter to the Homebrew Computer Club in the same year that the Sex Pistols were making it big. I intersperse this with descriptions of Burger Week burgers, and finish with some references to current debates and discussions - I'll be including some new insights I've found in just the last week or two.
If the AV setup works out, I might even have some Ramones and Black Flag playing.
So come on down to Quinpool next week. You can get tickets here. Looking forward to seeing you there!