Last week I was in Boston – my first time to the city – for Roost, a conference on JavaScript. I must say that Boston is probably the coolest city I’ve been to yet. There was so much to explore, great food to eat, and nice people to meet. I never realized how much I would enjoy myself by traveling alone; it affords you the ability to go where you want, when you want, and to meet new people, as you’re not preoccupied with your travel mates.
I arrived in town via Bolt Bus on Saturday, 12/1 – a 4.5 hour and $17 trip from Newark, NJ, to Boston South St. Station. I rented a room via Airbnb, only a couple of blocks from the conference hotel, from a nice fellow with an adorable spaniel named Myla – such a doll! This was my second time using Airbnb to find a room instead of getting a hotel. It’s great, because it’s cheaper and you usually get to stay with folks who know the area well and can recommend all the good places to go to. I found myself eating a fantastic dinner in a jazz club 10 minutes away on foot.
Saturday was my day to explore, as the conference was Monday and Tuesday. I had a conference call at 3pm, so I got up early to take the subway to the harbor and see the New England Aquarium. My host’s nephew told me I could pet the stingrays there, and so I was sold. I saw my first 3D movie there and didn’t get a headache.
I PET ALL THE STINGRAYS!
I had just enough time to head to the MIT Science Museum, which was small but very cool. Lots of robots and holograms.
Kismet!
It was cool to check out the guts of Kismet, one of the most famous robots in the world. It was built during the 90s to mimic social cues by changing its facial expression, based on people who are interacting with it.
A Lisp machine – a workstation built to efficiently run…Lisp.
One of many odd and incredible moving sculptures on the 2nd floor of the museum.
After getting back to get some work done, I went back out to get a manicure and dinner. I hung out with a kidney doctor from Holland and IT guy from DC. Way too much was spoken about politics and religion. I focused on my beer and portabella burger.
Monday and Tuesday was the Roost conference, put together by Bocoup. I was looking forward to learning more about object-oriented programming with JavaScript and seeing Rebecca Murphey talk. For the first time, a conference totally exceeded my expectations. I learned SO MUCH and got to hang out with such cool people with diverse levels of coding knowledge – but all with a great interest in learning.
Coffee, code, and MacBook Pros a-plenty!
Many folks are surprised to learn that I do not get to interact with other developers and engineers. At work, I’m surrounded mostly by students and faculty. In freelance, I work mainly with designers and non-technical clients. This is why I jump at the chance to go on these types of trips.
So back to the JavaScript: my programming background is mainly with Java and PHP, and I’ve fallen in love with JavaScript over the past couple of years. My Rubric-Feedback-Generator uses a good chunk of jQuery, and I wanted to learn some new tricks and tools for making my code more modular as I rewrite the whole thing.
One of the most useful tools I got to play around with was grunt, a “a task-based command line build tool for JavaScript projects.” My workflow is so much more efficient via the command line that this tool really speeds up the process when creating JS projects. I also got some better understanding of advanced git topics – especially from chatting with folks in the conference’s IRC channel.
All in all, Boston was a fantastic trip of exploration and code. As 2013 comes to an end, I’m happy with how I’ve spent the last 5 months of being on my own after the breakup and learning to step out of my comfort zone to do new and exciting things. I’m happy to have a couple of weeks of rest before the holiday, though – I feel like I haven’t slept a full night in decades. Maybe it’s from all the nightmares after seeing these decapitated baby heads in a Boston shop window:
WHYYYYYYYY?
My name is 
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