Impressions from EMEA Pug Challenge 2017
I had the pleasure to attend the annual EMEA (Progress User Group) Challenge conference. This is my second visit to this event as a speaker. I was very excited about it because I already had fond memories of the last year’s one in the Netherlands.
The Venue
The host of this year’s conference was Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. The city is known for its amazing buildings and rich historical heritage. It is one of my favorite places, not only for its architecture but also for its culture and cuisine. The view down the Vltava river is simply stunning. The “Clarion Congress Hotel” had everything necessary to host an event of such a scale.
The Conference
There were 7 halls of varying capacity simultaneously hosting sessions and workshops, so there was plenty of choices. The topics were revolving around Progress technologies like OpenEdge, ABL, KendoUI, NativeScript and more. There were also some general purpose ones about Software Architecture, Continuous Integration and UI Design.
KendoUI, TypeScript and Flow
This year I had the opportunity to hold two sessions, both related to JavaScript development and tooling.
“Understanding KendoUI for jQuery” was an introductory talk about KendoUI, where we’ve covered the fundamentals of the framework and peeked under the hood to see how some of its core features are implemented. I also prepared a live demo for some hands-on experience. I believe that we managed to create a productive discussion around the product and everybody learned something new.
“Statically Typed JavaScript - TypeScript and Flow” was more of a geek-out session where we discussed type safety and static code analysis in JavaScript. I was excited to share my experience with TypeScript and Flow, to compare their features and explain their similarities and differences. Although it was in the afternoon after a few long days, I was happy to see the attendees being so engaged and vibrant. When it comes down to reducing errors and producing clean code, the time always seems to be right.
Zofin Palace
The evening party was held at the beautiful Žofín Palace, located on an island on the Vltava river in the very heart of Prague. The building was spectacular both from inside and outside. We had a nice dinner and managed to catch up with many people, as the time never seems to be enough to talk to everybody during the session breaks. The event was accompanied by beautiful live music, games, and drinks. Prague looks even better during the night.
This year's #PUGChallenge dinner party in #Prague is something special @ProgressSW @NVSoftware pic.twitter.com/BRkmYMUbGR
— Denis Kyashif (@deniskyashif) November 16, 2017