During the OpenJS World Keynote Panel, Jeffrey Jose and Sandeep Gupta spoke on the best practices to follow to create great web experiences and the importance of machine learning to create an interactive and communicative web app.
As user expectations have evolved, web developers have a greater responsibility of evolving with them to create great unique web experiences.
Jeffrey Jose, Product Manager at Google working on AMP, spoke with Sandeep Gupta, Product Manager on TensorFlow at Google. This keynote session is divided into sections. The first part takes a look at how page experience and AMP work together. Then Gupta explains the use of Tensorflow.js to harness the power of machine learning to build novel experiences for the web.
Jose goes on to explain that a useful way of understanding User Experience is by using the four UX Pillars: Loading, User Annoyance, Security & Privacy, and Accessibility. Additionally, the core of vitals are not just a set of metrics but also a set of threshold guidance that map to user expectations. To further illustrate this, Jose gives the example of how the Chrome team has done a lot of research to come up with guidance to create a metric of performance.
Gupta emphasizes that Machine Learning touches our lives daily as it is spread across multiple fields like healthcare and education. It gives people new ways of interacting. An example of how Machine Learning is improving web experience and communication is how L’oreal uses it for a virtual make-up try on experience.
In their concluding thoughts, they encourage other users to continue following best practices for creating a better web experience. Machine Learning is an important component of this and gives your web application “superpowers.”
During OpenJS World, which was held virtually June 2-3, 2021, we heard from many inspiring people involved in all areas of technology. The presentations are recorded and available for free through the OpenJS Foundation. We are highlighting key points from those valuable contributions here.
Ashlyn Sparrow, assistant director of the Weston Game Lab, gave a keynote entitled “Game Design Thinking + Social Justice” on how the world of gaming not only influences billions of people across the world, but also how it has a remarkable effect on their social thinking and capacities.
Games have evolved into a cultural phenomenon and a multibillion-dollar industry. Games like Minecraft, Call of Duty, Among Us and Pokémon Go have seen a dramatic number of downloads within a very short period of time. The most fascinating aspect of gamers is their average age of 37 which explains how games of all kinds, regardless of their medium, influence people of all ages. While describing how fascinating the gaming environment is, Ashley brings up the transmedial (meaning a large number of different media) nature of games. There are board games, card games, computer games, that are all making an impact and establishing a loyal following of their own.
Gamification and inventive reassuring
Many things in our daily lives are gamified. Gamification is the process of incorporating gaming objects into non-gaming references. The most notable example of this is how technological advancements use gamification to enhance user personalization. For instance, Fitbit rewards users with stars as an appreciation for achievement. Similarly, Khan Academy rewards students with badges for reaching academic milestones.
Games are everywhere and influence major aspects of our day-to-day lives.
Games and social impact
Gaming allows for mistakes and creativity. If you fail an English test in school, it can have a negative implication on your academic career. However, there are no strict penalties for failing to unlock a mission in a game. It is more of a friendly suggestion encouraging you to do better.
Results of any kind can be optimized and improved when a safe space for mistakes and failures exists, along with opportunities to recover. This is one of the aspects of gaming that gets people hooked. When people are given a space to grow in an environment where they have power and control over how they navigate, they aspire to succeed by failure, experimentation and improvement.
This ideal environment is what every single game is based on: room for errors and improvements.
Seeing the World as a Game Designer
Just as a game designer considers dynamics, narratives, aesthetics and socio-cultural implications, individuals should think about themselves while also seeking different perspectives.
A game designer will consider both experts and novices when creating a game, resulting in the concept of difficulty level. Just like a game designer will go to great lengths to make it a pleasurable experience for the audience, an individual must seek out the people they wish to surround themselves with and choose the characteristics and skills they want to inculcate in themselves.
Just as a game has the same set of rules, gifts, and unlocks for all players regardless of their background, social problems can be eradicated when opportunities and rewards are equitable for all.
Conclusion
The most intriguing feature of a game is its inclusiveness and adaptability. A gamer in the west would play Call of Duty the same way as one in the east. Games make no distinctions based on social status.
Ashley explains in her concluding statements why it is essential to consider the most marginalised people of society. This is vital because the people on the edge will be able to deliver better improvements and insights to what you ultimately want should benefit all. Just like a game designer would consider people of all kinds while drafting the overview of a game, all social decisions should be configured including people on all levels of society.
During OpenJS World, which was held virtually June 2-3, we heard from many inspiring people involved in all areas of technology. In this keynote series, we will highlight the key points from the keynote videos. We hope to get a highlight of the speakers in a way that allows for people to hone in on the part of the talk that interests them the most.
Cian Ó Maidín, President and Founder of Nearform, covered how Nearform built a popular exposure notification app. Nearform designs, builds and operates web mobile and cloud platforms at scale. They are firm believers of open source and have been contributors to the Node.js and React ecosystem.
Early last year, Ó Maidín developed a chest infection and flu after returning from a trip. Shortly after, his wife began displaying similar symptoms. He remembered having a discussion with his wife where he predicted that this coronavirus would be soon labelled as a pandemic. A few weeks went by and he received a call from the health services executive in Ireland asking for Ó Maidín’s help to build an exposure notification application. He brought his team together and they built the Covid Tracker.
When building the app, the development team agreed on empowering people, prioritizing privacy, and creating trust and transparency as core principles. Plus make it user-friendly. The app itself helps track the number of people with symptoms and contact tracing.
In his concluding remarks Ó Maidín mentioned how the success of the app has led to more organizations approaching Nearform, and so they wanted to make it open source and to roll out the technology as quickly as possible. He also stated how this has made them better equipped and ready to face the challenges that may come with the next pandemic.
During OpenJS World, which was held virtually in June, we heard from many inspiring people involved in all areas of technology. In this keynote series, we will highlight the key points from the keynote videos. We hope to get a highlight of the speakers in a way that allows for people to hone in on the part of the talk that interests them the most.
During the OpenJS World Keynote Panel, Joe Sepi spoke to leaders in the tech world to hear their insights on the best Open Source practices and steps to make open source a more collaborative environment.
Joe Sepi, an Open Source Engineer and Advocate at IBM, spoke with Michael Dawson, Node.js lead for IBM and Red Hat, and Beth Griggs, Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat. They kicked the discussion off by talking about transparency, accessibility and the open governance model of Node.js.
In terms of collaboration, Griggs mentioned how accessibility is key to Node.js. In an effort to lower the barriers to entry, being a part of Node.js is as simple as people turning up by clicking on a Zoom link to contribute and join the discussion. She further added that to help make Node.js a more collaborative space, mentorships programs have been set up. For example, she blocks off a couple of hours a week to shadow the process on the release working group. Dawson shared that getting many people together to share ideas requires coming to a consensus; his personal view is that sometimes challenges should be hard as it is better to spend more time in discussion before finalizing a big decision.
In their concluding thoughts, the panelists mentioned ways to get involved: taking a look at the projects hosted by the OpenJS Foundation, looking through the GitHub repos, analyzing your experience and interests and then just joining a call!
During the OpenJS World Keynote Panel, Robin Ginn spoke to Jenny Toomey to hear her insights on the role the Indie Rock DIY revolution has had on technology and conversely how technology helped transform the music industry.
Robin Ginn, Executive Director of the OpenJS Foundation, spoke with Jenny Toomey, International Program Director of Technology and Society at the Ford Foundation. Toomey shared her thoughts on the digital music revolution scene in the 90s and explained how Washington DC had many high-performing globally focused individuals; “…it felt like you were at the center of the place where you could change the world.”
Toomey worked for seven years trying to find a balance between openness and control of records between the artists and record labels. That’s when she realized the way technology was changing the world – she explained that the early challenges of the portfolio included people not realizing ways in which technology was transforming their lives – and the systems that protected them.
People in positions of power back then thought of technology as transactional as opposed to systemic.
The Ford Foundation tackles problems of openness by building a field of experts who are concerned about net neutrality. Toomey feels optimistic seeing an enormous shift (which open source people always knew): the way you design something determines if it is rights protecting or rights undermining. She emphasized that competing models are key to transparency and honesty.
In her concluding thoughts Toomey mentioned the importance of bridging the gap between the public and private sector when it comes to matching skills to meet the needs of the public. She also explained how so much of the web is dependent on the invisible toiling of the open source community and how it is necessary for the health of the tech ecosystem.
During the OpenJS World, held virtually in June, we heard from many inspiring people involved in all areas of technology. In this keynote series, we will highlight the key points from the keynote videos. We hope to share highlights of the speakers in a way that allows for people to discover what parts of the talk interest them the most.
In a recent Keynote Speech, Charlie Robbins and Jonathan Keslin talked about how Open Governance at GoDaddy’s organizational structure mirrors their communication structure, known as Conway’s law. GoDaddy supports internal groups in an effort to push the decision process to the engineers and content experts. They only use those outside their field when necessary.
This technique has been successful for GoDaddy (GD). This process went on for a few years before a pattern emerged. Once they were motivated, volunteers stayed engaged because of interest in the mission of their group.
As GoDaddy’s internal and external communities have grown, so did the need for structure and governance. They created GoDaddy {open}. This is GD’s name for its open governance structure, a nexus of technology and community. It is extensible and repeatable and fostered by leadership. GD {open} groups are bodies meant to drive business outcomes or policies. They are formed across disciplines both technical and non-technical. It gives visibility to other parts of the company through shared goals.
Guilds are another form of open governance used at GoDaddy. Guilds are groups of people formed around a specific topic, such as a programming language. Individuals rally around a technical topic, sharing best practices and forming a community. One thing that guilds are not is a group that talks about standards or infrastructure. They are communities that come together to learn and grow. GoDaddy alsoparticipates in trade groups such as OpenJS, Domain Name Association, and Node.js. GD open lets them coordinate these across the company. GoDaddy also is anopen-sourced supporter, and have many different projects released to open source and communicate these efforts with their engineering blog. GoDaddy doesn’t have all the answers, but they dosupport them whenever they can.
During the OpenJS World, Jory Burson and Joe Sepi discussed the OpenJS Foundation’s efforts for getting the community involved in projects by creating collaborative spaces
.
Jory Burson, Community Director at the OpenJS Foundation, spoke with Joe Sepi, an Open Source Engineer at IBM. The discussion started with Sepi explaining how the Cross Project Council (CPC) helps open source projects by providing advice, support and multiple avenues for work collaborations.
The concept of collaboration spaces was created to provide opportunities for people in the ecosystem outside the project or the foundation to get involved. Burson elaborates that this is a way for the whole community to work together.
Additionally, the Standards Working Group is another active space where people with all levels of experience are welcome to join. One of the goals this year is to develop a set of resources and a website for developers to get involved in standardization.
Another key program recently launched by the OpenJS Foundation is JavaScript Landia. This is the individual supporter program, and it gives anyone access to online information where you can support different projects, collect badges, and much more.
In conclusion, Burson and Sepi both encourage viewers to join and become involved in the community by joining Slack, accessing Github and visiting openjsf.org/collaborate. They emphasized that the only requirement to be involved is a passion for JavaScript and a desire to help!
OpenJS World Keynote: Michael Jennings, Inclusion Strategy at Netflix
During OpenJS World, which was held virtually June 2-3, we heard from many inspiring people involved in all areas of technology. In this keynote series, we will highlight the key points from the keynote videos. We hope to get a highlight of the speakers in a way that allows for people to hone in on the part of the talk that interests them the most.
What is inclusion? Michael Jennings is the Inclusion Strategy Partner at Netflix and utilizes many of the tools created at OpenJS. He talks about creating an inclusion footprint and why it is conducive to businesses. Inclusion is an extension of companies themselves. Companies tend to market, whether unintentionally or intentionally, based on the people in their company. Jennings says that the greatest innovation you can make is to empower people.
Jennifs covers the importance of asking questions, how best to lead to the answers that you want. He talks about built-in biases, not only in an organization but within each member. He also says there is no quick fix, and that inclusion is a journey to undertake. He makes a great analogy about inclusion and bias as a piece of complex art, that is different for each individual. We need to see not just ethnicity, but different demographics and experiences.
HR is puzzle work. It’s hard to focus on experiences that meld into your project. Be innovative with people, not just technology.
Jennings talks about self-reflection being paramount to the process. Who do you work well with, who do you not work well with, who do you dislike, who can you not stand? When someone is different at the table, what is your instinct to do? How do you react and why? These are all questions he brings up as being important.
Ultimately, inclusion is an opportunity for all, not just for our leaders.
We recently interviewed Rahul Kumar Saini, software engineer at Successive Technologies, about his experience taking the OpenJS Foundation Node.js Application Developer certification. Here’s what we learned.
Why get certified through OpenJS?
The OpenJS Foundation is a well-reputed organization among the JavaScript community, with a history of many successful projects that has a large impact on the javascript echo system. The certification is provided in collaboration with Linux Foundation that encourages me to get certified with OpenJS.
How was the test-taking experience? Compared to vendor-specific certifications, how is a vendor-neutral test different?
The test-taking experience is quite good, the examination platform was user-friendly and easy to use. The pattern of the exam was problem-based not just objective type. In my opinion, vendor-neutral tests add extra trust and security in comparison to vendor-specific certification.
How has the certification helped or added value for you?
It boosts my knowledge since the curriculum of the exam was covering all Node.js core modules/APIs in detail. It helps me to explore the best practices and standards.
What are your career goals and how do you think certification can help in reaching them?
I want to get expertise in Node.js and Javascript ecosystems, and I think this certification is a milestone toward this journey.
Anything else to add?
I like the problem-based exam pattern that also tests your abilities in real-life scenarios instead of just multiple-type objective questions.
Congrats to Rahul for this great accomplishment!
If you are considering taking a Node.js Training or certification exam, now is a great time! Now, through July 9th, you can save 60% on all Node.js offerings with code NODE60. Head over to the Linux Foundation Training and Certification site to snag these savings.
During OpenJS World, which was held virtually June 2-3, we heard from many inspiring people involved in all areas of technology. In this keynote series, we will highlight the key points from the keynote videos. We hope to get a highlight of the speakers in a way that allows for people to hone in on the part of the talk that interests them the most.
During the OpenJS World Keynote Panel on Getting Hired, Scott Hanselman spoke to leaders in the tech world to hear their insights on best practices for getting hired, especially during a pandemic, for entry-level job seekers and people of diverse backgrounds.
Hanselman spoke to Zainab Ebrahimi, CEO at Flourish, Jerome Hardaway, Executive Developer of Vets Who Code, and Saron Yitbek, Founder of Codenubi.
Haselman started the discussion by highlighting the impact the pandemic has had on employment. Ebrahimi dove into this topic by sharing an example of how difficult it has gotten for entry-level job seekers to get hired. She explained how she recently saw a job posting for an entry-level position asking for five years of working experience. Yitbek mentioned how a shift from calling the position junior developer to early career developer shows that there is hope and that the industry is slowly becoming more open-minded in the skill levels they are willing to accept.
Hardaway talked about the importance of upscaling your skillset. The conversation discussed the importance of focusing and investing time in mastering a specific skill. Yitbarek talked about how people often find themselves bouncing around from learning one skill to another; she ties this in with a Hardaway comment about the importance of learning how to plan and be organized.
In their closing thoughts, all the speakers agreed that the barriers to entry for entry level job seekers and for people of diverse backgrounds are high. They all focused on how the community needs to accept people for just being themselves, take them as a whole, allow room for learning from mistakes and invest in being patient and teaching skills. While acknowledging that baby steps are being taken to make it a more welcoming environment, they recognized that a lot more needs to be done to address this wide set of issues.
