JS Conf Colombia is my favorite conference

The first time I came to JSConf Colombia was also my first time in Medellín. It was October of 2015 and I had been spending some time in my hometown, Bogotá.

I was about 5 months into my first job as a javascript developer and I wanted to learn everything I could 🤓 When I saw a conference in Colombia, only an hour flight away, and that there were still tickets on sale, I decided to buy a ticket.

It was the best conference I've ever been to! So much so that after that, I decided to make Medellín my home 😄

Every year, JSConf Co is the event I most look forward to. So much so that I turn down speaking opportunities and fun trips to be in town for it.

I have a deep respect for the team behind JSConf Co. They have built a wonderful conference and community, which I think should be a model for all conferences in the technology industry.

It's impossible for me to say it better than Juan Pablo Buriticá and Julián Duque did at JSConf US 2018. But since the video for their hasn't been posted, I'll do what I can.

Every year, JSConf Colombia provides many scholarships, in many forms. The idea being that anyone in the community should be able to participate, whether or not they can otherwise afford it. In a country with the second highest inequality in the world, an expensive ticket is simply out of reach for many people who could most benefit from it.

And even without a scholarship, tickets need to be affordable, though expenses are not. Juan Pablo wrote about this in 2015, though his post is equally relevant today.

I've learned about the past and future of javascript from Brendan Eich himself, the creator of the language. The following year, Thorsten Lorenz, an expert in Node.js and V8, showed us how to profile and solve complex memory leaks.

But It's not all serious. If you're taking a day off work, you should get to laugh and have fun as well 🎉

I definitely have. In 2015, I watched Raquel Velez give her first talk in Spanish, with an excited and supportive audience cheering her on. And in 2016, I watched Eva Ferreira show off how to make mind bending animations in CSS.

The talks at JSConf Colombia are constantly the most interesting and thought-provoking ones I see all year, and they shape my daily work.

I have met some amazing friends because of JSConf Colombia. Friends that I see regularly here in Medellín, and also friends that I've travelled as far as Argentina and France to visit.

Every foreign attendee I've talked to has had the same comment about the locals they've met at the conference. They say we're the friendliest group they've ever met at a conference. Most of them have fallen in love with Colombia and Medellín, some of them even enough to move here.

And given that the conference has always had a focus on diversity, I've met lots of people from all types of different backgrounds. Even from places of my own country that I knew nothing about.

If you've never been to Colombia, this is a chance to see a unique side of our culture. From eating local foods like empanadas 😍 to learning about the history of Medellín and its transition from one of the most dangerous cities in the world to one of its most innovative.

I'm beyond excited for this year's conference, and I hope this post got you excited to come check it out as well. You can also come to its sister conferences, NodeConf Colombia and Scale Conf Colombia, all equally as good. And if you do, say hi!