The Pacific Northwest conference CascadiaJS grew into something new and amazing this year: a 3-day web conference now called Cascadia Fest. Following the JS Fest format, talks were grouped into server and browser JavaScript days, and a brand-new CSS day. 400 attendees and their families along with speakers and volunteer staff came to the beach for 34 talks and 6 free workshops at Semiahmoo Resort, across Birch Bay from Canada. The venue was right between Vancouver BC and Seattle, both previous locations, as well as Portland.
Cascadia Fest awarded 10 diversity scholarships this year, making a big impact in the community. As Northwest native, I love the message & perspectives at Cascadia Fest: common themes reflect the community’s values. Speakers talk about compelling side projects and talking through the learning process, while admitting vulnerability. They enlighten us about being polite citizens in open source and beyond, elevating our skills, and investing in our careers and communities.
This year, three curators selected talks blending tech and human insights, resulting in code galaxies in WebGL, CSS fractals, ES6 and teaching beginners, JavaScript framework fatigue, culture hacking, command-line tooling, and much more. Multiple speakers debuted at Cascadia Fest, after making it through the highly-competitive CFP. I am proud to have been one of three female emcees this year, and thanks to a close friend in the community, was able to pull off 9 costume changes including a full-size bear, Canadian Mounty and Batman onesie. Cascadia Fest was the perfect place to be silly, make friends and learn a ton at the same time.
Real-time captioning made its introduction into the conference, providing the hard-of-hearing and those following along at home with a live-stream of every talk. It’s great to see this happening more at mainstream conferences (hey, organizers! You can provide live captioning, too!). The videos can be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLiioAbFTbKNpjG_yNpNfhAmQ9KsxFzX7
Next year will be the 5th edition, most likely to Vancouver or nearby. I highly recommend submitting a topic into the CFP (if that’s your thing), booking a plane or train ticket, and coming to see how we do things in the Pacific Northwest.
##Tweets:
Dear #cascadiafest, I can't even get over how awesome you are. Thanks for everything, including the best time ever. ✨💕😍👯✌️ https://twitter.com/amydearest/status/619754026893049856
I knew @CascadiaJS would be good but I had no idea it would be this good. So very impressed. #CascadiaFest https://twitter.com/rmurphey/status/619274049248595969