My first international conference
In 2021, I was accepted to present at React Advanced in London. This was quite a big deal for me, as this was my first international conference. This week, the conference took place again. This time I held a remote talk and now, I want to compare those two experiences in this article.
Among the stars
"How typed is your framework?" This was the title of my talk that I gave in London at the React Advanced conference. You can watch the recording of this talk on YouTube. This experience was very surreal for me, as my avatar showed up between other very popular members of the community. Before my flight, I was really nervous, but not because of the talk, but because of the whole surrounding. Standing on a stage and presenting is really no problem for me, as I usually know what I'm talking about, but the small talk and loose conversations around the presentation were what was making me so nervous. Additionally, on the day before the conference, the speaker dinner took place, which meant I was in a room filled with some of the most expert people from the React ecosystem.
Eventually, I went on stage, gave my talk, answered interesting questions and sat back down. Filled with pride and relief. It was done, my first international conference talk.
Behind my monitor
"Why React should not adopt signals" This was the title of the talk, that I gave this year at the current instalment of the same conference and the experience could not have been more different than last time.
First of all, my talk was scheduled as a lightning talk, which meant I only had 10 minutes to bring my point across. This was an interesting challenge and forced me to strip out everything that wasn't absolutely necessary. Additionally, I was scheduled for the remote day of the conference. As a result, I had to record my talk weeks in advance. You now might think that this is so much more relaxed, as you don't have to present in front of dozens or even hundreds of people but the main drawback is, that you can attempt to make the perfect recording, again, and again, and again. Fortunately, I got "lucky" on my third attempt and could upload this recording to the talk. And now the waiting started. All the way until last monday, the remote day of the conference. My time slot came, and I watched myself on stream giving a talk that I could more or less recite by heart.
At the same time I observed the discord chat to see, if any of the remote participants had any questions. The 10 minutes passed, without questions. But then, a single user, uttered the line: "Thanks Andreas for the terrific talk". Only to say 5 minutes later, that they were confused and wanted to ask a question regarding a different talk...
Between a rock and a hard place
In the end, it's really hard for me to decide which experience I liked better. The effort to fly to another country, especially during covid, but being allowed to speak in front of many people and being able to interact with them directly afterwards on the one side, vs the comfort of recording the talk at home, but sitting alone in front of your computer during the presentation on the other.
In the end, I will definitely continue writing proposals for conferences and who knows, maybe next year there will be another opportunity to go abroad to tell people how much I love web development.
