by Keith Stewart
@thekeithstewart

Hey, everyone! We are right around the corner from when ng-conf 2018 tickets will be available. This year they go on sale on October 30th, 2017 at 12:00 PM MDT and it is first come, first served. This means that it is time for us to speak to our bosses to let them know that they should send us out to Salt Lake City to attend this incredible event.

I attended ng-conf for the first time earlier this year. My employer realized the value our company would gain from sending me to the conference. In this article, I hope to share with you how you also can convince your boss to send you to ng-conf.

First of all, let’s cover a few things that (while awesome) probably won’t help you make your case:

• The “crazy epic” parties (in the words of Joe Eames) that will be going on
• The Ready Player One theme for the conference
• The fact that Frosty wants to bring an astro-physicist out to talk to us about the neutron star collision https://twitter.com/js_dev/status/920149960611397632
• And of course, karaoke!

As fun as all that is going to be, these are not reasons that your company will sponsor you to attend ng-conf. What your boss is interested in is the value your company is going to receive from you attending the conference.

Below are some of the biggest benefits that ng-conf has to offer that you can take right back to your office:

Networking

When working on an Angular project, many times we will find ourselves working with technologies or techniques that are new to us. Maybe it is implementing a redux pattern with ngrx, or delving into server-side rendering with Angular Universal, or maybe trying your hand at a mono repo with Nrwal’s Nx. What better way to set yourself up for success than to get more plugged in with a community of people that are working in these areas, who you can reach out to for information or tips on where to find the information you need?

Ask Me Anything sessions

As developers, we are constantly facing challenges. The Ask Me Anything rooms and expert rooms at ng-conf are great places to go to get help with these challenges. These rooms are filled with many great speakers and other experts at the conference and are there to answer your questions and help you solve these issues.

Sessions and workshops for both beginners and more advanced Angular developers

For beginners, there will be an excellent pre-conference two-day intro to Angular workshop with John Papa and Dan Wahlin, as well as a room dedicated to an Angular tutorial that will have experts hanging out in it waiting to answer your questions.

If you are interested in more advanced topics, they are definitely going to take care of you, as well. The 2018 iteration of ng-conf is going to have more of an emphasis on education than ever. They are asking speakers to propose talks on more advanced topics like:

• State management with ngrx
• AOT
• Testing
• Advanced Angular CLI & custom builds
• Universal/server-side Angular

For more information about the topic areas that they want speakers to focus on please take a look at the Call For Presenters (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc_sWRfsyNsq7CRdHqjLaSM_bgL_z-WoEHAltQr8a-2y4yKmg/viewform).

In addition to these talks, there will be the following pre-conference workshops that you can add on:

• Migrating apps from AngularJS to Angular
• ngrx and redux
• rxjs
• Deploying to production
• Testing
• Webpack
• Flexbox, and CSS grids.

With all of these topic areas being covered, and all of the experts that will be leading these discussions, no matter what you are facing with your Angular applications you should be able to expand your knowledge at ng-conf and bring that value back to your workplace.

Conclusion

In conclusion, all of the information and networking opportunities that ng-conf affords you levels up your game as an Angular developer and also directly contributes value to your employer.  The main things that you need to convey to your boss to hopefully have them sending you off to ng-conf 2018 are that:

• Getting to know more people in the Angular community will offer you the support you need to do well on your projects
• There will be talks and workshops that are directly relevant to the things you are encountering in your projects
• The knowledge that you gain will not only help you grow as a developer in your own career but you will also be able to bring that back and help the rest of your team grow as well

I hope this helps you make it out to ng-conf in April 2018 and I’ll meet you there!

Keith Stewart is a UI Technical Lead for DevOps with CollabNet. He has been working full time on Angular projects since 2015. He is also an open source author and contributor, a speaker and panelist for ngHouston, and a curator for http://ngdoc.io/.