On May 22 we have organized the first JS MVC Meetup in Amsterdam. With this post I’d like to share why we have setup the Meetup, together with some pictures.

Why organizing a JS MVC specific Meetup

Last year I’ve defined the technology stack for SocialExpress. I found it very hard to choose the right framework for our client application.

At the end I decided to go for AngularJS because of two reasons:

1. I had previous experience with AngularJS, which saves time learning something new
2. it is powered by Google, which adds quite some credibility

It was only after talking with Thijs and Ben that I noticed other people also experience the same problem of choosing the right framework for the right purpose. We knew that there already are quite some JS specific Meetups in Amsterdam, but none of them focus towards MVC frameworks.

On the first Meetup, we had about 15 people who attended. The talks were about EmberJS, AngularJS and SMACSS.

1. Introduction to Ember and Ember Data

Ben Konrath

During his talk Ben introduced some of the key concepts and features in Ember and Ember Data. He shared his experience using these technologies in a large project with an eye towards providing an objective view of the pros and cons of the Ember stack.

2. SMACSS

Prashant Palikhe

Prashant gave a lightning talk on SMACSS, guidelines for scalable & modular CSS architecture that he had used recently in one of his projects. He shared his learnings with all of us.

3. Setting up an AngularJS project with Yeoman

Niels Dequeker & Thijs d'Hulster

We talked about using Yeoman to quickly setup an AngularJS project. We discussed Yeoman as a workflow, in combination with Grunt and Bower. On the basis of a demo application, we talked about some of the core concepts of AngularJS, including directives, scopes, etc.

Some pictures

The location

Ben talking about EmberJS

Prashant talking about SMACSS

Thijs and me talking about AngularJS

Short break

Room for improvement

• Don’t change the date once the Meetup is announced, it gives too much confusion
• Do more promotion. Talk about our Meetup at other Meetups, flyer, invite friends… This time the only promotion we had was via Meetup.

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed the evening and it was great to talk with like minded people. During the break I heard about how others projects are organized and which technologies they use for ‘bigger’ client applications.

Next Meetup

The next Meetup is scheduled at June 26. For future Meetups, you can find more information on our JavaScript MVC Meetup page.