ng-conf 2022: A Personal Recap
I landed in Utah on the evening of August 31st, just as registration was supposed to be opening. I was particularly eager to attend Misko Hevery's workshop on building fast web applications. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the time difference between California and Utah and arrived an hour late for the session. It was a lesson learned — I'll be sure to account for the one-hour time jump next time I travel between the two states.
That evening, I reconnected with several familiar faces I hadn't seen in person for a while: Misko Hevery, Shai Resnik, Jordan Powell, Joaquin Cid, Ryan Hutchison, Brandon Roberts, and Alyssa Nicoll. Most attendees were still shaking off the travel fatigue, but the atmosphere was cheerful. I had the chance to talk at length with Misko, who's currently developing a new framework called Qwik, as well as with Shai Resnik, who served as the official MC for this year's conference.
September 1st marked the official opening of ng-conf. The day began with a hearty breakfast and moved straight into the Angular team's keynote, followed by a series of single-track talks. I managed to sit in on a few particularly interesting sessions: Shai Resnik's presentation on Angular test-driven development, Pawel Kozlowski's deep dive into standalone components, and a retrospective titled "Angular: A design review 10 years later" co-presented by Jeremy Elbourn and Alex Rickabaugh.
In the evening, attendees scattered across the city for dinner in small groups. Our crew discovered a restaurant whose waiter was a character—he served Heineken -1 and Heineken -0 with quite the flair.
Day two opened with a 7:00 AM yoga session, but I regrettably couldn't summon the energy to rise that early and skipped it. The schedule expanded into two parallel tracks, which meant picking one talk meant missing another. Fortunately, recordings will be posted online, so I can catch up on everything I missed.
The exhibition hall was buzzing with representatives from companies like Crunchbase, Ag Grid, Fidelity, Cypress, Syncfusion, Rangle, Octa, Herodevs, Nrwl, JetBrains, Advancedmd, Ionic, and many more. I also finally met a slew of people I'd only known virtually: Deborah Kurata, John Papa, Ward Bell, Dan Wahlin, Aaron Frost, Joe Eames, Jeff Cross, Mike Brocchi, Eric Slack, Manfred Steyer, Alex Okrushko, Michael Hladky, Isaac Mann, and countless others. It was genuinely wonderful to put faces to names.
The evening offered a packed lineup of activities: a pull request workshop hosted by the Angular team, karaoke, board games, trivia, and more. I joined the board game session and tried a game I'd never played before called Coup — it turned out to be an absolute blast.
I should also mention the secret mission Joaquin, Ryan, and I were given. Originally conceived by Mark Whitfeld, the NGXS team lead, we were tasked with handing out NGXS t-shirts to spread the word about the library and reward its users with some swag. We managed to complete the mission by the third day, and it gave us a great excuse to strike up conversations with even more people at the conference.
The final day began with another early yoga session that I also skipped — I love the practice, but waking up before 7 AM during a conference proved too daunting. After breakfast, the Community Keynote kicked things off, and a fresh set of presentations followed. I met several new faces that day, including Jonas Rexeke, Martin Kristell, Jason Warner, Sam Julien, Stephen Cooper, and Joey deVilla, who even joined the karaoke with a live accordion performance, making the session all the more entertaining.
I couldn't stay until the very end this year. I had a six-hour drive to Las Vegas planned and wanted to get there before sunset. But before heading out, I squeezed in a trivia session organized by Adrienne Marshall and Melissa Garrett from Rangle. The Angular-themed questions were a lot of fun to tackle, and I was thrilled to come out on top, winning a Raspberry Pi Pico as a prize. It was the perfect note to end my first ng-conf.
On that same day, I made a pledge. The folks at Octa handed me an ng-conf-2019-themed Rubik's cube with some history behind it, and I promised to pass it along to someone else at ng-conf 2023. That means I have no excuse not to be back next year!
I left ng-conf around 3 PM with a head full of great memories and the strong belief that I'll be returning in 2023.
Many thanks to everyone for the great discussions, the collaborative energy, and to the conference organizers for putting together such a memorable event.