24 April 2024 ~ 11 min read

My time at EpicWebConf 2024

EpicWebConf 2024

The build-up

It was a significant investment of time, money and energy to get myself to EpicWebConf. Munich to Utah is a long way. I had doubts. Would it be worth it? Would I meet inspiring people? Would I learn exciting tech? Or would it be a series of awkward moments and overwhelming technical lectures? 🫠

Knowing Kent was behind things, my doubts were small, admittedly, but one can never be sure until you arrive.

Regardless of the situation, I wanted to make sure I squeezed every ounce of inspiration and learning from the people I would meet. I arrived, totally jet-lagged but also buzzing with excitement. I spent two days exploring Park City. It was beautiful—the mountains of Utah are incredible. Things were off to a good start.

Being new to Twitter, the first thing I noticed was that the conference began before everyone arrived. The anticipation posts from attendees and speakers who were on their way were buzzing. Excitement was in the digital air. Look at all these anonymous (and slightly intimidating) characters I was about to meet. I did my best to be a part of the hype, and some relationships started to form before anyone had even arrived.

Arriving in Denver Touching down on American soil on my way to EpicWebConf ✈️

Workshop day

The first day came—workshop day. The eager beavers arrived, and a solid day of learning was had. Kent ran an excellent workshop on advanced React patterns, from which I learned a ton. This new knowledge became the first bump in my career trajectory. Learning these patterns gave me a new set of tools to improve the quality of my code, but more notably, it unlocked a mindset shift in me—more confidence and more belief in myself and my opinions.

Becoming a better developer is not only about your code skills but also about having the confidence to voice your opinions and justify them. The workshop empowered me to share my views and encourage my teammates to achieve a higher standard. That evening, during the backup speaker talks, this confidence was reinforced.

Kent in the workshop Kent taking us through some advanced React patterns️️ ⚛️

Zeno gave a powerful talk about striving for a higher standard. He spoke about why it is worth caring about the details. He practices what he preaches - as you can see in Resend. His talk should be up soon on the EpicWebDev channel. I highly recommend it.

A fellow European companion, Barry, also spoke about building with Remix at Shopify. Barry is a super funny, friendly guy and was one of the best friends I made during the week.

Exhausted but feeling fulfilled, it was time to get a good night’s sleep (as best as possible with the jet lag) before the main conference day. Judging from things so far, I could tell it would be good. They say high expectations only lead to disappointment, but I couldn’t help myself.

Zeno Rocha from Resend Zeno sharing why we should care about the details ✨️

The big day

The big day arrived—the Epic Web Conference 2024. Things kicked off with an early morning run organised by Simeon, a cheerful, humorous Aussie and long-distance runner. He got the energy up and vibes good before the big day ahead of us. After the endorphins were flowing, it was a quick shower and off to the conference.

On the way, I bumped into Sandrina - a strong and wise personality. I knew she was giving a talk about accessibility - a weak point of mine. It was nice to get to know her ahead of her talk, which was eye-opening. After chatting with Sandrina and bumping into Barry, we arrived at the venue and were welcomed with delicious breakfast and good morning chats in the hallway. Anticipation was in the air, and the social nerves were getting shaken out as everyone slowly started getting to know each other. It was time for the first talk.

“It’s our duty as web creators to make an accessible, epic web” - Sandrina during her talk 🌎️

The talks

Boom, we were greeted by stacks of energy and laughter as Madison and Mark welcomed us to the day with fantastic humour. They are natural entertainers. Check out #GoodMorningWithMark for some daily positivity to see what I mean.

Kent gave the keynote talk and reminded us of our power as web developers. It is magical to deploy anything we can conceive to the entire world immediately. This magic is a power we should appreciate and a responsibility we should carry with care. With this graceful and empowering reminder of the power at our fingertips, we flowed through the morning’s talks.

Una shared some epic CSS features that are coming our way. Check out her talk on scroll-driven animations, anchor positioning and the popover API. Adam also showed us some crazy stuff about creating type safety in CSS.

Michelle gave us an always-welcome reminder to keep our lives balanced. The hype and speed of the tech world is a tempting siren, but the truly effective approach is balanced with rest and self-care.

The MCs on stage The MCs guided us through the day with heaps of laughter 🔥️

Simon spoke about the sweet spot between design and development. He shared how teaching his teammate, designer Chris, the basics of Tailwind resulted in some magical UI that didn’t even need a developer to ship. It got me so excited I almost had to leave and write some tailwind.

Artem ran us through MSW’s latest feature: web-socket mocking. If you haven’t heard of his mocking tool, it’s worth investigating for your next project. I managed to chat with him before his talk—he’s authentic and super smart. Here’s his talk.

Saron told an eloquent, empowering story about raising funds as a startup founder and building an audience by learning in public. This memoir was the second significant bump in my career plans. Learn in public, and grow your network as you do—not for the goal but for the skills you learn along the way. I’ll be joining the BigCashMoney community soon.

Lina gave a great run-through of the core concepts in Remix. Jacob finished the day with a crash course on taking your remix app to the next level. He covered some advanced Remix concepts that were far too complex to comprehend in the talk, which is why he is launching a course on these concepts through Kent’s EpicWeb platform—a powerful guide to building high-performance professional-grade Remix applications. I’ll be adding it to my course wishlist.

Simon on stage Simon sharing the magic of the design-dev sweetspot 🎨️

Not every talk was perfect. There were some nervous laughs and some minor mistakes here and there. It was a relief, to be honest. Every talk was at such a high standard that I was getting worried AI was further along than I thought 🤔. The slight imperfections were a pleasant reminder that the speakers are human, and we can be like them, too. We have to start at the beginning, give a few nervous talks and hone our craft. The speakers have all been through this.

It got to that time of day—brains fried, conversation slowing, and information sufficiently overloaded. I was on my way out to try and recharge my social battery in my hotel room before the afterparty later on. I heard there would be karaoke, which I had no plan on taking part in.

The after party

“Oh hey - Adam and I are going to jump on the one-wheels after this - do you want to join us?” - Kent asked me, knowing I liked board sports and adventure. “Sure, that’d be fun!” I said, playing it cool (I was excited to be invited for the ride). After four days in the hotel, one-wheeling around the hills of Park City sounded like a much better way to recharge my social battery than being in my room, and oh, it was. We found a little mountain trail, and I slowly got to grips with the one-wheel while hanging out and enjoying the beautiful views with Adam and Kent. It felt like we were teenagers, just cruising and having the best time. My body was re-energised, and my social battery was semi-recharged. It was time to head back to the venue.

We returned to waffles, karaoke and more great chats. The hallway was buzzing with lots to discuss after the day’s talks. There was also one guy singing to himself in the massive auditorium. Slowly but surely, though, we wandered closer to the stage. Annie jumped in without hesitation - a seasoned professional. Karaoke is not my thing, but Annie seemed to be having fun and was singing alone. I’d come all this way and had a memorable time by saying yes to everything I could. It was time to say yes to singing terribly on stage. I ran up and grabbed the mic - Annie’s questionable backup singer had arrived. We left the stage full of smiles and laughter—another good memory.

A few performances later by some impressively extroverted software developers, I found myself belting out Sum41’s In Too Deep with Ryan. A pretty hilarious moment I’ll look back on with a smile (and a cringe). Tired but full of joy, I headed back to get some sleep. The conference day was over, and it was more than I could have hoped for. But the week was not done.

Ryan and I going all out at Karaoke Good vibes and mediocre performances at the after party 🎶️

The day after

I ended the week with a day of nature, sunshine and adrenaline. A few of us headed out to Solitude for some snowboarding. I got to know Simon better and heard about the life he had intentionally crafted in Australia - a surfer’s dream with his family. I heard about the Devtools podcast from Andrew and Jacob’s adventurous travels as he tested out the nomad life. The action and casual chats were a welcome change to the mental stimulation all week. The mountains were majestic, and the smiles were just as large. My smile lasted all the way back to Munich.

Thank you to everyone I shared a small chat, smile or idea with. Taran, Devin, Brooks, Edmund, Dan, Tyler, Knut, Andre and everyone else I met - It was a pleasure to meet you. The EpicWeb community is thriving, welcoming, and full of joy.

I can’t wait for next year.

Highlights

Headshot of Devon Neill

Hi, I'm Devon. I'm a software engineer based in Munich. You can follow me on Twitter, see some of my work on GitHub, or read more about me on my website.