HalfStack on the Shore(ditch) (London)
2023
What to Expect
HalfStack events are fun, creative single track JavaScript events hosted in relaxed environments. HalfStack provides authentic, high value experiences for all attendees.
The priority for HalfStack is the attendee experience, with great food, drinks, talks, swag, and community. Hosted by London’s longest-lived JavaScript meetup group, HalfStack now runs events in Belgrade, Charlotte, London, Newquay, New York, Phoenix, Tel Aviv, and Vienna!
HalfStack carefully curates talks that inspire and inform the audience in a highly interactive and entertaining manner. Each HalfStack event provides an intimate feeling where each attendee has time to meet one another.
Call for Proposals
Visit our CfP page for more information on proposing your amazing HalfStack session!
Fair Pricing
Visit our Pricing page to understand what we charge and why.
Our Illustrious Speakers
Each of our events has between 8 and 12 sessions. We update our speaker information regularly. We usually save a few details to give you some surprises on the day of the event, including the order of the sessions.
Alistair ShepherdCreative web: building dynamic websites for work and play
Alistair is passionate about creating awesome products for the web. He's a super savvy Front End Developer at Series Eight, and he has an amazing knack for building stunning websites that leave clients in awe - from small-scale businesses to large corporations around the globe. With all the cool web technologies and browsers we have today, his talk will really remind us of how with just a bit of modern CSS and JavaScript as well as some clever techniques you can make a website look great. This session is sure to be quite interesting as it will include a lot of great information about CSS Custom Properties, Parallax effects, color schemes and how you can use SVG for generative artwork. After hearing him talk everyone will feel inspired and ready to go out there an utilize modern tech tools in new and inventive ways!
Keren KenziHello (Virtual) World!
With an incredible amount of experience in the field, Keren is here to help us out and show us how coding with JavaScript and HTML can be used to make our own virtual world. During this talk, we'll go over the fundamentals of how to make a basic virtual reality game using A-Frame, JavaScript, and of course that awesome 'ol DOM API. It'll sure be a fun journey working together!
Phil NashCSS Between the Pages
It's really cool that for a while now we're able to animate and transition within single web pages. Animations between huge state changes like page loads are obviously more difficult, but it's still fun seeing these things in action. Phil is ready to give the talk of a lifetime about using the View Transitions API so that you can push your webpage designs further than ever before- effortlessly transitioning from boring page to exciting and smooth with just CSS & JavaScript. Get pumped for this awesome way of seeing into our tech future!
Carly RichmondFu-Finder Revisited: Capturing Querying Behaviour Using Elasticsearch
Carly built a game to help evaluate search engine user query behaviors and it was the first website she ever created, and even though it looks a bit dated now, she still has fond memories of the process of designing it and learning more about how search engines work. It seems that at some point recently, most of the world decided that IT is an elite profession that needs to produce only value no matter what. She's gonna go over how to build this game using Elastic Web Crawler, Elasticsearch and the Node.js Elasticsearch client; plus she'll give us a starter guide to the fundamentals of Elasticsearch as well! That will be awesome!
Kevin CunninghamSourDoughScript: Mastering Sourdough with TypeScript
Kevin, an enthusiastic home baker discovered that baking sourdough bread was quite a challenge to learn. Despite its complexity, he remained dedicated in his pursuit of perfecting this technique. He's gonna be showing us his cool journey in this session, from scratch to a finished product - the TypeScript-based Sourdough Guide! We will have some fun learning how to build a cool starter tracker that keeps track of our feeding so we can keep healthy and happy. Plus, we'll talk about ways to incorporate real-time weather data like temperature and humidity into your dough preparation process since those elements will definitely help affect the outcome. Not only will you become an expert on mastering the art of sourdough with TypeScript, but you'll also discover how coding can make a huge difference in streamlining complex activities that form part of our daily routines.
Rob BatemanAn Emulator's Journey
Ten years ago, Rob started AwayFL, an open-source Flash emulator for the web written in TypeScript and WebGL. It seemed impossible during those times since we did not have Flash available yet; however, he was determined to make it happen. In this session, let's dive into the details of what makes up a language, why reverse engineering can be so dumb at times, and how to still keep going even when it feels like no one is paying any attention or cares about your work. Plus, you can get a blast from the past and enjoy some really cool retro Flash games while doing so at the same time!
LightningLightning Talks
Want to share something you've been working on lately? Spend 2-3 minutes on stage sharing your project! First-come, first-served sign-ups on the day of the event.
HalfStackAfterparty (JS Pub Quiz and Battledecks)
We will kick off the afterparty with Battledecks, a tech improv game. You have 5 minutes to pitch a fake tech startup from a randomly generated slide deck. Then we'll proceed in teams with our unique JS Pub Quiz!
