With a line up of high calibre speakers such as John Resig, Douglas Crockford, Steve Souders, Nicole Sullivan, Amy Hoy, Tomas Fuchs, Tobie Langel (… the list goes on (and on)), JSConf.eu had already set the bar for European web tech conferences before it even began.

I wouldn’t consider myself a massive JS geek, in fact if it wasn’t for jQuery my exposure to JavaScript would probably be still limited to alert()’s. So I took it for granted that I’d have the opportunity to brush up on some areas, and find out about new developments in frameworks etc.

From the minute the pre-event meetup kicked off on the Friday evening, I could tell that it was going to be more than just an opportunity to upskill.

I wont go into a review of each talk, as I’m sure video footage will be online soon enough. There were some stand out moments for me, however. While my favourite presentations were from the speakers named above, a live demo of node.js by Ryan Dahl would be my WTF? moment of the weekend. Ryan showed how he could create a simple IRC channel with server-side JS using node.js and the audience responded appropriately with oohs and ahhs and even a modest sized standing ovation.

Server-side JavaScript seemed to be the hot topic of the weekend, I’ll be honest and say that surprised me, as the last time I looked at server-side JS, SSIs were still cool. But, I think there will be some really interesting developments in this area in the coming 12 - 18 months.

So, to what really made the this conference special and what exactly I mean by “Why JavaScript is the future”.

It wasn’t the constant flow of refreshments, or the thoughtfully laid out lounge, or layout of the conference rooms, or the sound quality, or the venue staff, or the organisers, or even the fact that the wifi held up. What was special about this conference was the people: the audience, the speakers, the organisers. JavaScript is what I would call a uniting force. While every development language, framework and even CMSs have their own dedicated conferences all the time, a Javascript conference has the power to bring people together that normally wouldn’t have to opportunity to do so.

JavaScript is the cement that holds the web together

Javascript is the lowest common denominator (yes along with XHTML / CSS), that all web developers and great web designers use. I believe this is one of the main reasons for attracting the diverse bunch of people that I met at the event. I met JS framework authors and evangelists, iphone developers, developer-entrepreneurs, server-side dudes from Germany and around the world.

The conversations I had were passionate, insightful, inspiring, but mostly fun. I walked away from JSConf with a renewed sense of fun - having fun for what I do, and what others do.

At echolibre, we believe that being a good coder means that you code for fun, so this resonate d with me.

I’m looking forward to next years JSConf