From 2017 to 2020, I attended 63 tech events in Brazil. One of my career goals was attending at least an international tech event.

There was no other way to achieve that, but in style: Reactathon 2022, in Orinda, California.

Context

Going to events is really important to me. During those events, I could meet new people — and make good friends. One of them is Hugo Bessa. He helped to hired me to work with him at Automatiq, an american company that has an automated software for ticket brokers in the USA (and this opportunity has already changed my life). This is just one example of how connections in events are important — for your career and personal life.

The travel

I was really excited for my second travel outside Brazil. The first one was in 2018, to the USA as well, but this time was different.

My English was so much better than 4 years ago; I had a driver’s license, if I’d like to drive a car (it happened); I had more money to buy things that I’d like (such as food and clothes); I wasn’t shy anymore, so I’d enjoyed more this opportunity talking to people, practicing my Second Language, and create more connections.

The travel started on May 1, with a 9-hour flight to Newark, New Jersey. I had a 3-hour-ish layover. Then, I has this last 6-hour flight to San Francisco.

I took the BART right from the San Francisco Airport to Berkeley, where I stayed during the event.

Berkeley

The city is amazing! I stayed there from May 2 to May 7.

Then I stayed one more week and I went to Los Angeles (CA), Grand Rapids (MI), and New York (NY). But I’ll talk more about that in other posts.

As a good Brazilian, it was cold during this first week. 55º F is cold. Don’t judge me.

But I could adapt really quickly.

Hotel

I stayed at the Marina Inn hotel at the University Avenue. It was good to me.

I just needed a place to take a shower and sleep, because, of course, I wanted to explore the city and work from different places, like cafes or bars. It was better than I expected.

The event

This was my first in-person conference in years.

Beautiful outdoor venue, amazing connections, and great talks.

I was really impressed with the excellent Attendee Welcome Guide we received about a month before it happened. It was this document with helpful content about the whole experience, such as Covid Policy Information, Slack group invite link, Berkeley Map, Shuttle Service locations and times, dress code and recommendations, and food/beverage preview.

Speakers

Special mentions go to: Kent C. Dodds, Swizec, Wes Bos, Swyx, David Khourshid, Lydia Hallie, and Anjana Vakil.

The first 4 people mentioned I already knew from the great work they’ve done for the web development community for years now. The other ones I met during the event.

Talking to them was really great and I’ll keep those moments forever in my mind.

Topics to keep an eye on

Some topics are on my list to invest my time studying and practicing — or even reading more about: React 18, React Native, Remix, XState, Serverless, and Jamstack.

Some of these items I’ve been practicing with real work at Automatiq. I’m really excited to continue on this path learning a lot and helping people to create good stuff on the web.

Future

Some people say that the future has already happened. Maybe not.

Just thought about that graph Swyx shared in his talk — and everyone was talking about it:

84% of production JavaScript is jQuery.

We have a lot of future to create, a lot of “new JavaScript” to code. We have a lot of people to serve with our work.

This is exciting!

Special Thanks

Automatiq helped me to make this happen.

I’d like to give a special shout-out to:

• Drew Gainor, our CPO; and
• Hugo Bessa, my great friend and our Lead Front-end Software Engineer.

P.S.

Onewheels are really cool!