Angular ngVikings Conference 2017

WRITTEN BY GARETH DUNNE @JSDIARIES

Following on from some of our Angular posts, we were itching to learn more. Where better to accomplish this than attending the most renown Angular conference in the Nordics?

The event took place in the IT University of Copenhagen. First of all, I would like to acknowledge how well thought out and structured this conference was. Going back and forth between two lecture halls was all that was necessary for the size of this conference. And the building allocated was the right fit.

Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of the event was the easygoing, relaxed environment it provided to network with other Angular enthusiasts. I know there are many who, like myself, are unable to to work with Angular in our day-to-day roles so to be able to be among a whole conference of like-minded people proved invaluable and motivating.

Before covering the guests in the talks, I would like to mention that the university itself was a sight to behold. The frozen-over lakes inside the university looked spectacular. This in combination with the incredible architecture of the university made it a fantastic venue for the conference and really solidified the Nordic feel. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking here.

I’ll be focusing on 3  speakers in order to give you an idea what the conference was about.

One of the opening speakers, Kenneth, gave an insight into the future of specific browser based development(or lack there of).. You can find his slides here.

An increasing amount of the applications we are using will be able to obtain browser-like capabilities. The actual need to use a browser will diminish as time goes on. He demonstrated that originally browsers were designed to generate income through use or by providing browser start-up pages.

This is obviously not the case any more because we see that the functionality of a browser is paramount to daily web use. But as stated, this functionality is no longer exclusive to browsers.

Web applications provide just as much functionality as a browser and so the lines between the two become blurred.  An increasing amount of the applications we are using will be able to obtain browser-like capabilities.

The actual need to use a browser will diminish as time goes on. He demonstrated that originally browsers were designed to generate income through use or by providing browser start-up pages.

As web applications provide just as much functionality as a browser then the lines between the two become blurred. From this point Kenneth predicts that if any web application is a browser, then a new meta platform will inevitably arise; e.g. React apps are created and viewed using Facebook as its browser engine.

This future prediction alludes to the fact that the frontend developer role will become a more intriguing space to be working in than it already is.

It is something to be kept in mind in the future as new roles and responsibilities for JavaScript developers will inevitably be created by this migration of browser functionality .

Tracy’s talk focused on Angular Material Design. While we have covered Angular Material on the blog before, I was really unaware of how powerful and seamless it is to integrate a quick materially designed functional layout.

She also has a informative series of posts setting up Angular Material here.

Tracy made an app on the fly that focused around animal puns which was quick to build due to the vast amount of readily available material design components.

Grids, sidebars, dropdown, indicators, popups, navigational components. These are all generated using a HTML tag attribute specific to the material design package.

  This is a button 

Will generate a nicely coloured material design button.

For more on this you can see the component library here.

Overall, Angular material design seems to perform consistently fast as well as being fully optimized specifically for an Angular application.
I can already see myself using this to create an admin section of a website that is easy on the eyes with minimal effort.

To really simplify how Angular Material might benefit a development process, simply put, it allows you to build a structured grid quickly, with a wide variety of input components while also looking good in the process.

I was really fascinated with Uri’s talk. I had never previously seen an Angular 2 application interact with a piece of hardware. The ng-beacons not only looked great but also provided a new perspective of how Angular can connect to physical devices.

Uri also goes into more detail in his medium post here.

If you have any experience with physical computing, this was reminiscent of how a Arduino IDE would interact with an Arduino board to manipulate lights/temperature etc.

The beacon itself emits a low energy Bluetooth signal. Which is then outputted and detected.

The heat generated from the beacon is detected on a slider which is designed in material design.

3 volunteers were chosen to handle one of the beacons each. The heat generated from the participants moving was registered and updated in the sliders in real time over the Bluetooth signal.

You can find Uri’s GIT for the hot or not application here as well.

I really enjoyed this presentation. For me, it redefined how an Angular application can interact with a practical piece of hardware. I think there is a market for the ng-beacons within the Angular community as well.

There is currently no available way to purchase one of these beacons. But I’m sure the high niche demand created from the Angular community will enable this to be possible in the near future.

Although only three talks are covered here. A wide variety of Angular topics were covered throughout the duration of the conference. I hope this insight gives you an impression of what to expect next year.

The office hour segments in particular were extremely advantageous for those who took part in them.

If you missed the format of this, some of the speakers were available to speak to in an informal setting to give advice and answer your questions.

Special shout out to Leonardo @Zizzamia  and Mortem Kirstein @Mortenkirstein  for sitting down with myself @dunnedev and @mindinventive.

Both of them separately sat down with us and gave detailed explanations of a suitable freelance business model that coincided with our aims of being independant developers.

I’ll be sure to cover this in more detail in a future post. Be sure to keep an eye on ngVikings as its sure to expand bigger and bigger and become the cornerstone Angular event in Europe.

PHOTOS BY SEAN CORCORAN @mindinventive