Author
Guzman Iglesias
Last Sunday August 7th, I attended the first South American CSS Conference (the CSSConf Argentina), which took place in Argentina, at Escuela Superior de Comercio Carlos Pellegrini, Buenos Aires. By the way, I was not alone; three other Moove-it folks were there: @aragno157, @gusability and @Mefistos0.
It was a great opportunity to get close to the community and expose ourselves in front of high qualified technical talks.
CSSconf Argentina promised an interesting trip trough several CSS disciplines presented by high-valued speakers. My expectations were pretty high.
Once we arrived at the venue and walked through the facilities enjoying a nice breakfast, we realized that the organizational aspects were taken care of and we would have a great day.
I must confess I was looking forward to seeing a presentation of a revolutionary technic, a different theoretical approach or maybe learn about new inputs referred to the future of CSS capacities. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend one of the workshops offered by the organization before the conference. Maybe that was the opportunity to go deeper on a specific practice and learn more insights. All in all, I really liked the talks. The variety of topics was remarkable and in general the talks totally engrossed me.
3 talks that I specially enjoyed:
- Werther Azevedo. Game Dev for Web Designers: Play with the DOM like you never did before! This talk was about exposing an alternative approach to game development by using CSS as a key element for DOM manipulation. The work of a CSS architect is normally constrained to developing web apps and involves interpreting PSDs, analyzing data architectures, following conventions and others technical, sometimes boring, tasks. Werther’s talk was a breath of fresh air, showing a work context I personally would like to explore.
- Aurelia Moser. Slippy Map Style: Geo-canvas design with CartoCSS.
This talk showed that CSS and its way of thinking about styles can have its very own place in cartography, through CartoCSS. The talk wasn’t about how to use CartoCSS, but a walk through of a variety of pretty awesome examples, showing that CSS is something to have in mind when designing and customizing a map. - Harry Roberts. Refactoring CSS Without Losing Your Mind.
It was the last talk, probably generating the highest expectations on attendants. Harry Roberts showed, once again, his ability to come up with new and smart approaches to the CSS world. This time was not an exception. His talk landed on the field of CSS refactor. Refactoring working-but-awful code is always tempting and sometimes inevitable. Harry’s talk gave me a bunch of helpful tips and tricks I’m sure I will be able to put into practice next time an opportunity to refactor the stylesheets arrives.
It’s worth mentioning the devotion of time and energy of some speakers to their slides, creating truly professional artworks that enhanced the overall experience. The excellent sound and screen visualization also contributed to the cause.
Conclusion
I enjoyed CSSconf Argentina. In future CSSconfs I would like to see more new CSS features to study and apply immediately. In any case, we always try to keep up with new CSS best practices and that’s why we never stop traveling to conferences and events around the world.
