Ember{{fest}}
A conference worth attending, over and over
Ciao, je m’appelle Mo! ¿Cómo estás? 👋 I am an EmberFest enthusiast and am going to be your tour guide for today. This is also a collaborative blog post, so in some instances there are direct quotes from authors and in other instances there will be shared themes. Myself and 10 other contributors wrote and edited this article together, because we love Ember, EmberFest, and the Ember community at large.
🤷♀️ What is EmberFest?
Before we can talk about EmberFest, firstly what is Ember.JS? Ember.JS is an open source Javascript framework that allows developers to build scalable and maintainable applications. Many prominent companies use Ember as their frontend framework such as LinkedIn, Netflix, CrowdStrike, Intercom, and of course Phorest Salon Software.
EmberFest is a community driven, European, Ember.JS conference. Established in 2013, this two day conference started in Munich, and has moved to a different European city each year. In 2021 this gathering morphed into a hybrid conference, so attendees can learn online too. The foundation of this conference is to teach, question and learn all things Ember. However, what really makes this conference so special is the community. It’s an amazing environment to not only network, but make lasting relationships.
🤔 But why is this conference so great?
In the last few years the folks at Phorest have invested massively in using Ember. We do our best to actively participate in the community through open source contributions, blog posts, attending and speaking at conferences as much as we can.
Phorest attendees have had a strong attendance throughout EmberFest history, but for the purpose of this post we will be talking about our experiences both remote and onsite in 🇮🇹 Rome, Italy in 2021, 🇫🇷 Paris, France in 2022 and 🇪🇸 Madrid, Spain in 2023.
📚 Bringing home the knowledge
It goes without saying that gaining valuable Ember knowledge is a key part of attending EmberFest. One thing EmberFest prides itself on is world renowned and innovative ideas. Luis said, “I found particularly interesting [the] talks based on real experiences. How a company has a problem and the solution they opted for.”
After each EmberFest we are always motivated to contribute to open source projects such as ember-a11y and ember-headlessui. Open source is a big push during the conference. Alongside this, the implementation of building accessible web applications was directly correlated to attending EmberFest amongst many more improvements.
As a group, we learned about and gained practical skills such as testing, lifecycle hooks, routing, managing style guides, managing teams and so much more. This is paired with understanding the future of Ember and learning about new technologies such as Polaris and Embroider.
⚡ New opportunities for growth
The Ember community is very open to new joiners and encourages them to share, grow, and succeed. We’d like to give a big shout out to an EmberFest volunteer, Anne-Greeth, who is an advocate for new attendees speaking at the conference.
In Rome 2021, Anne convinced Mo and Aoife to give a lightning talk on their experiences with Pair Programming. They were accompanied by a second lightning talk by David where he spoke about HeadlessUI in Ember. They were all nervous about speaking and delivering valuable information. This was the opposite reaction though and the community embraced them along with many other new speakers to the stage.
The following year in Paris, Garret also had a chance to do a lightning talk on PWAs with Ember. He said, “although I was pretty reluctant at first and it took some convincing from Mo and Aoife (some might even say I got my arm twisted a little bit 😉). And even though it made me stay up until 3 am to prepare the talk and code a little demo, I’m glad I did it. The feedback I got afterwards was quite nice.” If anyone is ever interested in speaking at a conference, doing a lightning talk EmberFest is a great first place.
🎤 Show off your company
In the autumn of 2022 Phorest gave 3 talks, sent 7 in person attendees and 5 remote attendees. We had a strong presence at the conference and really wanted to show off all the fabulous work we had been doing over the year. Giving talks about that work helped us put Phorest on the map for new Ember developers looking for opportunities in a fast paced and innovative environment.
Aoife said, “it was clear from the previous year at EmberFest, that Phorest are doing great things and are on the cutting edge using the latest and greatest Ember technologies, so why weren’t we shouting it from the rooftops?” So we did just that!
Mo and Tomek gave their first feature length conference talks. Mo presented how Two Ember Apps Become One, while Tomek spoke about Performance culture — New opportunities with Embroider, and was apart of a panelist discussion about Data in Ember. He also got a shout out on one of the other speakers’ presentations.
Tomek said, “it was a great experience and he can’t imagine a better place than EmberFest to be on a stage for the first time. After receiving the feedback and curiously watching all other presentations I believe we have a lot to say and we should do it more often. That was very motivating!” So motivating in fact that Tomek spoke again in Madrid in 2023 for a second time speaking about, Perfecting CI pipeline for Ember projects. Faster and with more insights.
We want to encourage anyone who has something to share, big or small, to submit a CFP. Your experiences can help many developers!
🗣️ Networking solves problems
Luis expressed, “if I had to choose one thing from the whole EmberFest that would be the networking and the time spent with the people in Paris.” One thing is certain you are sure to make lasting friendships at EmberFest from the organisers Balint and Joshka, to the camera guy Alex, all the way back to the attendees.
Networking also helps us find great people and helps others know our brand. In 2021 Phorest was a sponsor, but by mistake submitted the purple acorn image with no text whatsoever and because of this, nobody knew who we were. By the end of the conference everyone knew who Phorest was because of our presence and networking. The following year, we rebranded and people were still able to spot us from a mile away.
Finally, the power of networking has even helped us solve problems with people outside the company that we wouldn’t have the opportunity to otherwise. In Spain 2023, Tomek spoke to some attendees after his talk and found that we could improve our build time even more. Now, “we are 38% faster on CI than before! 😍 (on avg.)” Optimisations like these happen when we get together and talk about our problems.
❤️ Bonding builds empathy
In Rome 2021, most of our colleagues met in person for the first time. Up until this point, we were just pictures on a computer screen. After this EmberFest our team gained trust, communication skills and respect for each other’s differences. We got to see each other through a new lens and this made us better at our jobs.
Drew, expressed “Paris is one of my favourite cities. My highlight was sitting with our team by the banks of the river Seine, drinking champagne as the sun set, playing ukulele and having a sing along. It’s all about the people.” During this time we as a group got to learn parts about each other we wouldn’t in day to day work.
We would learn about each other’s families, hobbies and different personality types. This translated to our day to day work life because we then knew how vulnerable we are in work and how we can give more support. When is a good time to ask a question or pair program and when is not. What type of growth trajectory are we on? Fast or steady pace. Learning all these nuances about each person helps us become better colleagues and a more efficient engineering community.
🧑💻 In person versus online?
It is a huge benefit for many people to have EmberFest be a hybrid event. Folks can still get some of that Ember buzz and lots of great knowledge from the talks. Software Engineer, Piotr agrees that, “I’ve been working remotely for the past 6 years, and it’s by far my favourite way to work and allows me to be the most effective. That is why the fact that I was able to watch the Ember conference remotely was the biggest advantage for me.“
Of course, there are many reasons to attend the conference in person, but if you just can’t make it or in person events do not suit you, then you can still get high quality and well organised talks online.
📣 Have we convinced you yet?
So let’s get down to the nitty gritty, should you and your company go to EmberFest? Well… is the sky blue? Do fish swim? What’s the opposite of no? Yes! Yes! A million times, yes!
If the blog post hasn’t convinced you why EmberFest is worthwhile to attend and invest in then hopefully these takeaways will. Getting your company name out into the community is a massive perk. Many years down the line, someone applying to your company can recognise the name from EmberFest. Alongside this, speaking at the conferences and showcasing the great work you do. When bringing the team over in person this gives them the opportunity to build trust for each other and people from other companies to solve problems together better and faster than before.
Some final words from our in-house organiser Balint says “the food and the talks change every year, but the fun, the camaraderie, and the Ember energy I come away with is constant.” Each person leaves with a sense of purpose just as Garret said after his time, “in the end, with all the traveling, late evenings and early mornings one might think that afterwards you will be very exhausted. But in my experience, after a really good conference I most likely leave full of energy, with lots of excitement and new ideas. Taking that as the measurement I can say EmberFest was definitely one of the better conferences I’ve been to and I’m already looking forward to going again next year.”
Thank you to the contributors of this article Aoife Hannigan, Tomek Niezurawski, Garret Alfert, Sarah Pender, Melinda Zhang, Luis Lorente Ruiz, Piotr Panek, Balint Erdi, Drew Neil, and Javi Espinosa.
See you all at Ember{{fest}} next year!! 👋 🐹
