Oh and all the pets on the conf wall were adorable 😍

See you all again next year!

And I lapped up all the weirdness @sachajudd.com told us about. We need more "useless" and weird things on the web. Have to fight that soulless corporate beigeness with whimsy (and accessibility)! Love how it was different from @localghost.dev and @olu.online talks despite the similar message 💜

Also @gearsco.de talking us through his coding journey. It's amazing how someone so young is already a better teacher than a majority of the people that have taught me 🙃 (and a better dev than I'll ever be :)) Well done, can't wait to see what you do next!

Highlights were @jesslynnrose.bsky.social & edaeren.bsky.social talk on how LLMs prevent you from learning properly (even though they're marketed for it!). I'm paraphrasing; because I was pushed to use it instead of getting real support before. It's trash and can't replace humans like this, c'mon.

Love the localisation article, thanks for sharing!

I'm planning to be there, too. Looking forward to seeing you!

So, if you made it this far in the thread, and even if you can't go yourself, see if you can help others make it. I'm sure there are some of you with unspent training budgets.

ffConf is my favourite place in tech and the highlight of my professional year. The event is always super friendly, even for anxious hermits like myself, you'll always learn something new (and you'll struggle to find a conf venue with more comfortable seats!).

It introduced me to some incredible people in the field who I could learn from, both personally and at a distance. I honestly think I'd be in a massively different place, and likely not working as a dev right now, if I couldn't go.

And it changed my career. It made me feel like there might be a (small) space for me in this industry after all. That I don't have to be a framework bro with shitty morals to get a paycheck.

It's very rare that scholarships offer travel and accommodation as well, even though that is often what excludes people even if they can get a ticket! Only one example of how much thought Julie and Remy put into putting this event on.

I was lucky to get a spot when I was starting out in tech.

one of my favorite chatgpt commentaries is "you dont need AI i can also drink a bottle of water and lie to you"

This is one way to make me buy more books haha

Oof, that's so not ok. Maybe you could put it in the bin in this beta period. This garbage never should have seen the light of day.