Double Agent: Jowe from the Orga-Team “spies” the Program Committee

Being the 8th member, Jowe completes the Program Committee, which is now ready for the start of the evaluation phase of the #jskongress Call for Papers on October 16.

Also a part of the Orga-Team, he performs 2 functions–that are completely separated: During this stage, he doesn’t have full admin access for sessionize so that the anonymity of the evaluation won’t be comprised. Read more about our scheduling tool >>

Let’s welcome Jowe, who will give you some insight into the machinery behind #jskongress.

As a member of the #jskongress Orga Team and Program Committee at the same time, you have one vote as an equal member in the scheduling process. Why are you looking forward to #jskongress?

I’m looking forward to the third edition of JS Kongress which has evolved over each edition. For me, the realization that we, the Orga-Team, put something valuable out into the world is the most joyful thing. We aim for creating a technical and social impact by taking action on different topics.

I’m looking forward to seeing new ideas we tried out going into practice and make everyone feel that unique experience when attending the JS Kongress.

One of those ideas is the so-called #DeepTrack. Besides the main conference track, the DeepTrack is about sharing knowledge, discussing and working on all kinds of topics around JavaScript. It’s about having fun with like-minded people in a safe environment where the participants create the program! The overall idea is to have a creative space, to share ideas, work together, discuss and listen to each other — face to face.

I’m looking forward to all the joyful moments, meeting old friends and making new friends and get to know a lot of exciting and inspiring people.

What’s your vision for the program?

My vision is to create a program full of humans who will push you to think about the JavaScript landscape in new and valuable ways. It should cover JavaScript and the surrounding area every engineer has to deal with. Like tooling, deployment strategies, optimizations, organizing large projects, going at scale, distributed architectures, new approaches, etc.

It should be a pleasant experience for the different experience levels, so everyone can get inspirations and takeaways. Besides that, I think bringing the different experience levels together is the most valuable you can get out of the JS Kongress. It’s about learning from each other, sharing and discovering new ideas.

Do you remember, when you got in touch with JS for the very first time? What was the reason for it, or who?

I precisely remember this time. It was at a time where IE6 was the major browser. My friends and I wanted to exchange some pictures of the activities we did at that time. We’ve been annoyed by sharing them on CDs and doing that physically. There has been no facebook or another popular platform to share pictures at that time, so I came up with the idea to create a website for that. Taking action on that, I played around with applications like Dreamweaver and FrontPage. It was okay in the beginning, I was stunned how easy that was. Inserting GIFs, creating the typical Framesets and so on. But when going more individual, it got challenging. I wanted to click on a link to open two different pages in two different frames.

Since this was not easily doable out of the box, I started researching about it. I found a lot of approaches and started reading the first time “you can do it with JavaScript”. That was the time when I went deeper into the subject to get the opportunity to click on one link and achieve two different goals. After a few days of playing around and seeing a lot of JavaScript error alerts, I got it working. This sparked my interest in JavaScript, and I spent more and more time familiarizing myself with it. In the end, it helped me get this website done. My friends and I had a website to see our latest pictures and we’re even able to communicate on that site (by using a hosted guestbook solution, embedded around fancy gifs ). Last but not least, it changed the industry I was working at. It caused my interest to focus more and more on engineering, so there was a point when I moved from the interior design industry to the IT industry.

Do you have some motivation for all speakers and everyone who thinks about submitting their idea for a talk?

If you are playing with the idea of submitting a talk, I recommend that you push yourself out of the comfort zone and do so. Speaking publicly is a skill you’ll use for the rest of your life. And you already did it: Every time you explain something to a group of people, you are, in fact, speaking publicly. Give it a try and extend your audience. It’s an excellent opportunity to share your passion and the story about your learnings and pitfalls. This creates an impact by motivating others to help them avoid the pitfalls you had on a topic, share your passion about something and engage with the audience. I personally see speaking public as an open-source activity. It’s about giving something back to the community by sharing approaches and challenges you’ve discovered, and you’re proud of.

No one is a born master — for those who are thinking about giving a talk but never did it before we offer a first-time speaker mentorship program. Our First Time Speaker Support Team provides individual support for first-time speakers. Beginning from finding a topic, defining the story, writing the abstract, giving feedback on the presentation skills until the moment when going on and off stage. Stay tuned, we will share more information on that soon!

You are living and working in Munich. Do you have some secret tips for everyone participating JS Kongress, what they need to see, where to eat, or beautiful spots to have a walk (or others)?

There are plenty of things to do in Munich. From a walk through the old town of Munich, which can be done regardless of the weather, to a relaxed stroll along the Isar. If the weather allows I recommend going to one of the traditional beer gardens and enjoy the yummy Bavarian food. For more extended stays, the surrounding area around Munich is joyful as well. There are many mountains to hike and lakes in the immediate vicinity of Munich. For the evenings I recommend the smaller and fancy bars in Westend, Neuhausen or Schwabing. What I enjoy the most is bringing all that together: Starting with a walking tour in the city center, throughout the English garden, crossing the Surfers Wave at the Eisbach and continuing the way along the Isar with a stop in between at a beer garden.

If you want to get in contact with the local community, check if some meetups are happening when you stay in Munich. There are usually a lot, and it’s a good chance of meeting new (and mostly local) people.

The Call for Papers of #jskongress 2020 is open until October 15 — we are looking forward to reading your ideas on https://sessionize.com/js-kongress-2020

Find the FAQ on our Call for Papers on https://medium.com/@jskongress/cfp-faq-first-members-join-program-committee-8fec626a1ce0

As well we are looking for your idea for the #DeepTrack. Everyone with a ticket can participate, all attendees create the program together: https://github.com/JSKongress/JS-Kongress-Munich-Deep-Track

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