WebCamp Zagreb 2014

I’ve finally got a moment to write up WebCamp Zagreb 2014, which I attended a few weeks ago. The short version:

It was awesome!

(update) You can now watch my presentation on YouTube:

Now for the longer version. This year the event switched to English for the first time, which pulled in speakers from all over. It also stretched to two days, plus a bonus workshop day. I landed in Zagreb around Friday lunchtime, sharing a flight with someone from one of the sponsors (check them out: Toptal). My workshop ran from 4pm to 7pm in what I believe was an office building belonging to the Croatian House of Commerce. (I might be wrong on that.) Great facilities, 13 brilliant attendees, and hopefully I didn’t fry anyone’s brain while we talked through Single Page Application development with AngularJS and Firebase.

Saturday opened with a cracking keynote from Ross Tuck, followed by solid talks on REST API design, Apache Cordova, and Firebase.

I gave a talk on Web Components. Big kudos to the organisers for lining up three Web Components presentations that meshed perfectly. I covered the fundamentals, Marchin Warpechowski followed up by building a Web Component with Polymer, and Nikos Zinas wrapped things up with a look at where Web Components are heading. I didn’t even know about the other two talks beforehand.

Here’s a photo of me presenting, and one of the ‘Web Components’ crew: myself, Nikos, Tomek and Marcin.

Refreshments flowed throughout the day. Pizzas and a local dish for lunch. And if soda and pizza weren’t enough, Google sponsored a drinkup at the end of the day. The beer appeared to come from a bottomless keg.

Will I be back next year? I’ll do my best. And I’d recommend you do the same if you’re anywhere near Zagreb.