From Code to Slope: AgentConf 2023

This year's AgentConf was an unforgettable experience for my colleagues and me. The event brought together professionals from across the tech industry, with talks and open discussions on topics ranging from web development to machine learning. But what really made this conference stand out was the sense of community and connection that we all felt.

In this article, I want to share our experience at AgentConf 2023 and the skiing trip that followed. From the lessons learned in the conference sessions to the thrills of the slopes, we hope to give you a glimpse into what made this event so special.

Day 1

The day started with Kent C. Dodds making us do squats in the morning and it continued with him talking to us about Progressive Enhancement and why JavaScript should enhance rather than be your experience. Super interesting talk!

As the day went on and we heard more and more talks, we became increasingly excited for the next day's talks, because we hadn't expected all of this to be so gripping. And right before lunch time, Nadia Makarevich’s talk called “React myths and legends” turned everything we thought we knew about rerendering in React upside down.

So to summarize, the high quality of the talks on day 1 set the tone for the rest of the conference!

Day 2

We started our day by listening to Max Stoiber explaining how to “get lucky” like he did by maximizing your luck surface area. Sara Viera got us to play around with a new programming language through her interactive Rust talk called “Rust for the rest of us” and we got our minds completely blown by Christoph Nakazawa when he introduced the crowd to his soon-to-be-released game built only using HTML, CSS and Javascript. He could use all of the separate game components right in his presentation and combine them in single slides. It was a fantastic presentation which we all won’t ever forget, as it felt more like he was playing around than actually presenting.

The slopes

After day two at AgentConf was over, those of us who had planned to go on the skiing trip boarded the bus to Lech. We then had dinner at our hostel and afterwards went down to the cellar where we discovered ping pong tables. Soon, we were joined by other attendees and even some of the speakers, and we spent the rest of the night playing ping pong and enjoying each other's company. It was an unexpected way to end the day and it was a testament to the sense of community and connection that the last days had fostered among the people.

These 2 days of skiing were an unmatched experience! Not only did we have fun on the beautiful slopes of Lech, we got lots of insights into React and the Chrome Dev-Tools, the benefits of progressive enhancement and we were also introduced to exciting new technologies such as Rust and AI language models. However, the most rewarding aspect of the conference was the opportunity to meet and network with like-minded professionals from the industry. It was great to put faces to names and connect with individuals who we previously only knew from Twitter.

We will definitely be coming back for next years AgentConf!