Another Web Summer Camp is behind us! More than 200 participants, companions, speakers, and sponsors gathered for hands-on learning, networking, and fun on the last days of summer.
Workshops
Due to your interest, Web Summer Camp 2017 was sold out mid-May – thank you for this amazing turnout! PHP track was sold out even before the program was announced, and other tracks quickly followed after the full program disclosure.
This year, there were 190 workshop participants, sponsors, and us organizers from Netgen and Salsa Adria Productions, and 15 companions. Attendees came from 17 countries from all over the world: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of America.
Same as before, we limited the number of participants per track in order to maintain the quality of sessions and were remorseful to have to turn down anyone who asked for additional tickets.
First of all, a big thank you goes to our sponsors and friends, especially eZ Systems who have been with us since the beginning in 2012!
We met in Rovinj once again, with Lone hotel being our venue for the second year in a row. A great novelty this year was adding a JS track which turned out to be a good decision. Along with the new frontend track, we had well-known PHP and eZ track, and a UX track (last year called Design). You can read more about the #websc 2017 concept in the earlier blog post. Also, find all published slides and repos on the workshops’ pages. Videos from PHP, eZ, and JS tracks will be available soon!
Per your feedback last year, we decided to include dinners on workshop days in the price of the ticket (lunches were always a part of it). It was a challenge to accommodate a number of people this large and the majority of you were contented. There were some bumps even though we tried to do our best but, on the bright side, we learned what and how to improve next year.
Oh, and don’t forget to look through all great photos our Marko and Hrvoje T. prepared for you – find them on the #websc Facebook page.
Day 1 workshops & Agent.sh raffle
Since we opted for longer workshops, we had two 3-hour sessions per day and per track. PHP track featured Middleware architectures in PHP with Zend Expressive by Marco Perone and Steve Maraspin (MV Labs) and Building APIs in an easy way using API Platform by Paula Čučuk and Antonio Perić-Mažar (Locastic). On eZ track you could participate in Real-life use cases leveraging Solr power by Petar Španja (Netgen) and eZCoreExtraBundle in practice by Jérôme Vieilledent (Code Rhapsodie). Our JS track offered They came for the offline-first, but they stayed for the performance by Jason Lengstorf (IBM) and Universal JS web applications with React by Luciano Mammino (Planet 9 Energy), while the UX track was reserved for a full-day workshop Story techniques in design research by Steph Troeth (Clearleft).
A great start of the conference! After the workshops, we had a short session in which Daniel Rotter presented Agent Conf, our winter frontend counterpart, and raffled a ticket for the 2018 edition – January is nearing, and they have Blind Bird tickets available and Call for Papers is still open.
Day 2 workshops & Web Battle
On the second day of the workshops, on the PHP track we had Lean and functional domain modelling by Marcello Duarte (Inviqa) and Basic CQRS and Event Sourcing with Prooph by Marco Pivetta (Roave LLC). Migrating legacy back-office modules in a future-proof way by Edi Modrić (Netgen) and Introduction to the Hybrid eZ Platform UI by André Rømcke (eZ Systems) occupied the eZ track. JS track featured Working with JavaScript module systems by Marijn Haverbeke Supercharged React Native development with Shoutem by Željko Rumenjak and Domagoj Rukavina (Shoutem). UX track comprised of Contextual Experience Design: Designing great user experience with context by Chui Chui Tan (beyō Global) and Designing a customer journey from discovery to conversion by Stig Martin Fiskå (Keyteq).
This year as well we continued our tradition of having an unconference session. This year we had interesting various topics, from design and data over chatbots to cryptocurrencies. Thanks to our live voting system, we announced the best-rated Web Battle speaker who won a ticket to Web Summer Camp 2018 – congrats again to Marisa Morby!
Day 3 workshops & the closing keynote
The closing workshop day featured Symfony Flex: The easier, faster, and brand new look of Symfony by Ryan Weaver (KnpUniversity) and Add search to your PHP apps by Hannes Van De Vreken on the PHP track, Hands-on: HTTP caching with Varnish by David Buchmann (Liip AG) and Hrvoje Knežević (Netgen) and Extending eZ Platform REST API for building decoupled sites and applications by Jani Tarvainen (eZ Systems) and Antonin Savoie (Kaliop) on the eZ track, Web of Things – Peer to Peer Web by Princiya Marina Sequeira (Zalando) and Building a better login with the credential management API by James Allardice (Tesco) on the JS track, and Schemas, standards, and structure: Adaptive content as UX strategy by Rahel Anne Bailie (Scroll LLP) and Interaction design beyond the pixels by Kevin Cannon (frog design) on the UX track.
This year, with 4 web-related tracks, we felt we needed an overarching lecture that would encompass the topics discussed in the workshops. We invited Rachel Andrew, a front and backend web developer, author, speaker, co-founder of the CMS Perch, to hold the closing keynote. She gave an inspiring talk Knowing It All about the pressure to learn everything, and contributing and learning by teaching others. The talk was streamed and you can watch it on the #websc Facebook page.
Companions
The Companion track also grew a bit this year. All activities were enclosed in the price, including lunches and dinners with other participants on the workshop days. The weather didn’t serve us quite as we expected on Friday, but our companions still managed to have fun and relax.
We received some constructive suggestions for the next year. Stay tuned!
J. Boye Masterclass
This year we collaborated with Janus Boye, founder of a networking company J. Boye. Janus held a masterclass The Digital Manager’s Agenda on Wednesday and gathered professionals from the region and beyond to discuss important topics such as GDPR, data and user insights, and particular case studies.
Being part of the masterclass myself, I enjoyed both the educational and the networking part of the session. We hope to continue our collaboration with Janus next year as well, maybe even in a new format.
Extras
A day before the official start of the conference, we organized a help desk for all participants who might have had a technical problem and mingled during welcome drinks.
The conference was unofficially opened with a morning swim, after which the registration and the traditional Shortest Keynote Ever followed.
Due to circumstances, we weren’t able to hold a triathlon like the previous two years, but we had morning recreation in the form of running and swimming every workshop day. Even on Friday in a pouring rain.
Also, it was a close call with our signature boat trip on Saturday – it was almost cancelled. However, eventually the sun came up and most of the participants braved the storm and even took a swim.
At the Friday night closing dinner, we raffled some great prizes and announced the best-rated #websc speaker. With an amazing score, it was once again Ryan Weaver. Thank you, Ryan, for being with us once again and congrats!
Your feedback
Almost half of the participants filled out the questionnaire we sent out, giving us valuable and important insight.
- 92% of the participants said they could apply the information presented at the workshops to their work and 99% said they would recommend Web Summer Camp to others
- Web Summer Camp overall got an average of 4.66 and 4.82 was the average for the organization during the Camp
- Virtual machine installation got an average of 4.47
- The speakers overall were rated 4.28
- Word of mouth value proved itself again – 51% of the participants heard of #websc from a friend
- 97% likes that we created a Slack team for the conference
- You liked the option of having a bus Zagreb-Rovinj-Zagreb
You also left us some interesting propositions to think about for the next year. Thank you!
Stay tuned!
If you have any additional suggestions or additional questions, please don’t hesitate to send them to [email protected].
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