BeerJS vol 9 - survey results and retrospective

Vol. 9 was a great start to the event season. It didn’t have the biggest audience so far, but it was close. We have you, the audience, to thank for that. BeerJS exists for you and for the growth and improvement our IT community. The activity and the involvement of the audience was at a record level, which I think is the most important metric for the success of such events. Active audience = good event 🍻

BeerJS vol 9. in numbers:

~15% are newcomers and have not attended a previous BeerJS event. A slight decrease in newcomers the previous event, which is to be expected.
The average score we received for the organization of the event is 4.47 (on a scale of 1-5). We had some technical issues as usual, which is a tradition by this point. We are improving in general, evident from the audio quality of the event recordings. We are still actively working on improving every technical detail.
The average grade for the presentations is 4.08 (on a scale of 1-5). Again, if you want to leave us more detailed feedback, send us a message at one of our social meda profiles or at [email protected].

Answers to direct feedback part, 3:

As we started post vol. 7 - direct responses to feedback (filtered from responses like excellent, good, great, etc ❤️):

What do you think about the new logo / site / t-shirts / stickers?

“Many things can be improved about the design and the site, it would be interesting to have a larger number of different stickers :)” - I agree, there is always room for improvement. But we don’t have designers on our team - anyone intereseted?
“The new stickers weren’t in the package on the seats?” - No, and that’s directly our fault. We had some around the room, maybe we should have put some on the seats as well. If you’d like some, feel free to write to us and we will deliver some of the new stickers ourselves 🍻
“9/10 (the color is a little unusual for me)” - we were a little limited by the choice of colors. We will have more color choices in the next batch.
“The t-shirts are great, but don’t support AI, support a living person with a soul who can make a cool design :D” - Even though the inspiration for the new logo was generated by MidJourney, the logo was made by me personally 😄 MidJourney was used as a moodboard.
“There should be more stickers and T-shirts for everyone who asks a question.” - If we made a mistake and didn’t give any swag to someone, who asked questions we apologize most sincerely and would ask you to write to us - we will deliver you stickers and t-shirts. In general, at an event, don’t be shy at all about reminding us that we owe you a t-shirt. We are really trying, but these situations are inevitable. We are really a small team.

Additional comments about the organization

“It was not like the previous one, it a little more peaceful and lacking free beers :P” - I agree, but calmer is not worse. The audience was more active with questions during the presentations as well, not only at the end. Regarding beer, our budget is limited. The fact that we limited the selection is only to make the budget “last” longer. However, from our point of view, the beer is a nice-to-have. The focus of the event is first and foremost on knowledge sharing and socializing.
“mic batteries :D” - not just that, we are also thinking of bringing our own microphones. Editing audio recorded with the existing ones in “Public Room” is not exactly the most fun experience in the world 😅

What topics would you like us to cover in the next edition of BeerJS?

“System design, architecture.” - Your wish might come true in April 😉
“Testing with javascript” - This topic is frequently present in the feedback form. We had one before, if anyone is interested in giving a new one, our inbox is open :)
“Node in the browser” - if you mean WebContainers or something like that, that would be really cool to see.
“Gaming” - we just had one, we’re open for more 😄
“I know that JS is in the name, but it would be nice if there were items that are not focused on JS, but on general technology” - for general technology topics we can have other events, founded and run by other people / teams. We would be more than happy if we could support events on other topics. We are not a big team and we can’t do everything, but we are happy to support other ideas and events.
“React server components” - I personally would like to see this one too 🍻
“It would be interesting to have a tutorial that covers a JS library like three.js and show some interesting projects…” - 🍻
“AWS, React Server Components, Solid.js” - RSC answered under (6), Solid.js - I would like to see one a lot (I personall think that Solid is one of the best things in webdev today), AWS - volunteers?
Mobile app dev - I’d love to see something Tauri or Expo related too 🍻
“design system libraries comparison” - cool idea 🍻

Vol. 9 was a great start of the year. The enthusiasm and activity of the audience was great! I would like to publicly thank everyone from on team, they did a great job as always. BeerJS is first and foremost, open source non-profit community event. As such, if anyone wants to help, we are open to anyone who wants to help and participate in the event. If that sounds interesting to you, write to us at [email protected].

PS: Pictures from the event —> click here